Tag: Obama and immigration

Obama's Focus on Employers Causes Massive Firings, California Immigrant Activists Say

A month ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent letters to 652 businesses across the country to let them know their hiring records would be audited “to determine whether or not they are complying with employment eligibility verification laws and regulations.” The goal was to check whether those companies have been making sure they are not hiring people not authorized to work in the U.S., a.k.a. undocumented immigrants.

Workers protest firings at Overhill Farms - Illustration: Southern California Immigration Coalition

Workers protest firings at Overhill Farms - Illustration: Southern California Immigration Coalition

The initiative apparently has led to firings at some of those companies. Last Saturday, pro-immigration activists and workers demonstrated in Los Angeles to demand that President Obama stop the audits as well as the use of e-Verify, an employee ID verification system widely criticized by immigrant advocates.

ICE’s increased vigilance over employers –it said the number of letters it sent in July exceeds the numbers sent during the entire previous fiscal year– follows Obama’s promises that his approach to enforcing immigration laws would focus more on the labor demand side rather than on the supply, i.e. the undocumented workers who’ve been the target of raids and deportations in the last few years.

But L.A. activists said this particular measure has swollen the ranks of the unemployed in the midst of the economic crisis.

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Immigrant Detainees on Hunger Strike After White House Rejects Change to Detention Standards

Immigrants in a Louisiana detention center began a hunger strike this week to protest the dismal conditions in which they say they are being held.

The detainees’ decision comes in the same week that two new reports –by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC)– showed that the U.S. government continues to violate the rights of detained immigrants –held for breaking civil, not criminal, laws.

The hunger strike is also a response to the Obama administration’s refusal to change the system for inspecting  immigration detention centers that was created during the Bush era and for enforcing minimum standards the government set in 2000. This decision, according to The New York Times, “disappointed and angered immigration advocacy organizations around the country.”

Immigrants at the detention center in Basile, Louisiana, decided to start the protest after reporting “egregious violations to jail staff, immigration officials and advocates,” said the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, which is supporting them. According to About.com’s immigration specialist Jennifer McFadyen, this is the fifth hunger strike in four weeks at the jail.

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Immigrants Protest Napolitano as She Asks the Public to Join Fight Against Terrorism

Advocates are getting frustrated with Obamas immigration policies. (Photo: New York Immigration Coalition)

Advocates are getting frustrated with Obama’s immigration policies. (Photo: New York Immigration Coalition — Click to see more photos.)

NEW YORK — More than 30 immigrants and immigrant advocates demonstrated on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Wednesday to protest U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano as she visited the Council on Foreign Relations. Napolitano was in New York to announce a new strategy to involve individuals in the fight against terrorism.

The demonstration, which ended with a press conference, is one of the most visible signs to date of immigrant advocates’ growing frustration over the Obama administration’s immigration policies.

“By the end of this year, we hope he (President Obama) will have much more to show. He has to switch from talking to actions. Right now, statements are positives and actions are negative. There is a big gap,” said the director of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), Chung-Wha Hong.

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New Reports Show Rights of Immigrants in Detention Continue to Be Violated

While New York immigration advocates demonstrated Wednesday against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, evidence kept piling up that the U.S. government is violating the rights of immigrants in detention.

Immigrants in some detentions centers in Texas and Arizona are held in “unacceptable conditions,” with their rights to due process “compromised,” concluded a report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which visited the centers just last week.

A separate report released Tuesday by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), said that “information not available to the public until now reveals substantial and pervasive violations of the government’s own minimum standards for conditions at facilities holding detained immigrants.”

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Immigration Reform Advocates To Protest Against Napolitano in New York Wednesday

NEW YORK — Local immigration activists plan to demonstrate against U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano Wednesday morning when she comes to the city to deliver a speech on terrorism, in what may be the first significant protest by presumed Obama administration allies against a member of the president’s cabinet.  (Editor’s note: We previously reported incorrectly that the demonstration was scheduled for Thursday.  We regret the error.)

May Day rally at Madison Square Park in Manhattan.

A previous demonstration by New York immigration groups, on May Day. (Photo: Maibe Gonzalez Fuentes)

Several pro- immigration groups are organizing a demonstration and press conference at the Council on Foreign Relations, where Napolitano will deliver a speech titled “Common Threat, Collective Response: Protecting Against Terrorist Attacks in a Networked World,” which will be broadcast live on the web.

The groups plan to protest Homeland Security’s “backward policies such as the implementation of e-Verify and the expansion of 287(g)” (a program that deputizes local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws) said Norman Eng, a New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) spokesman. The demonstration comes on the heels of the release last week of a report that found Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a DHS agency, violated the Constitution by conducting home raids without warrants and appropriate documentation under the Bush administration.

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Change for Domestic Violence Victims May Herald New Stance on Immigration

A change in policy spearheaded by the Obama administration toward victims of domestic violence seeking asylum in the U.S. has anti-domestic violence and immigrant advocates cautiously celebrating. It’s one of a series of actions by the administration that suggest a new approach to immigration laws and has advocates anxious to see what follows

Domestic disturbance, by Nathalie Renaud/Flickr - Click to visit

Domestic disturbance, by Nathalie Renaud/Flickr - Click to visit

The latest sign surfaced last week when the Board of Immigration Appeals ordered an immigration judge to further review the case of a battered Mexican woman who filed a petition for asylum in California, arguing that she moved to the U.S. to escape severe violence by her common-law husband in Guanajuato, Mexico. The New York Times’ Julia Preston described the case in detail here.

Lawyers and women’s rights advocates have argued that physical and sexual abuse victims should be counted as one of the groups protected by American asylum law, which holds that people seeking the status of refugee must demonstrate a fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social group.”

“The truth is that this social group is consistent with the intent and legal principles of asylum law and the protection of persecuted individuals, and we should welcome the administration’s position,” Bitta Mostofi, a staff attorney for Safe Horizon’s Immigration Law Project wrote in an e-mail. Safe Horizon is the largest provider of support services for victims of domestic violence in the country. (more…)

Once Again, Obama Presses for Immigration Reform… to a Hispanic Audience

Obama once again comes out for immigration reform on Hispanic media. (Photo: The White House)

Obama once again comes out for immigration reform on Hispanic media. (Photo: The White House)

President Barack Obama is again insisting on keeping the pressure on Congress to pass immigration reform… on Spanish-language media.

Obama, in a conference call with Hispanic broadcasters Friday, said he hopes a comprehensive immigration reform bill will take shape by the end of this year or in early 2010.

As has happened in the past, the president has chosen media aimed at the Hispanic population to maintain his presence on this issue, while in mainstream appearances he is busy with other topics, like health care reform or the economy.

According to Spanish-language wire service Agencia EFE, Obama said immigration reform is “something we want to move forward on. (more…)

Ready to Celebrate: Nuyoricans, Hispanic Media Look to Sonia Sotomayor's Confirmation to the Supreme Court

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor
Bronxites are getting ready to celebrate Sotomayors confirmation - Photo: peterkreder/Flickr

Bronxites are getting ready to celebrate Sotomayor's confirmation. (Photo: peterkreder/Flickr)

With the end of Senate hearings Thursday, Spanish-language media are taking Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court as a given — and Puerto Ricans in New York and elsewhere are getting ready to celebrate.

“This has been bigger than when Menudo came to New York,” Bronx State Assemblyman José Rivera told New York newspaper El Diario/La Prensa. He promised to organize a parade through the borough’s streets when the judge, who grew up there, is confirmed to the nation’s highest court.

The Bronx was abandoned, but Sotomayor is rescuing it,” he said.

“Now the whole world understands what we already know — that the days when buildings were burning are in the past,” Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. told the newspaper.

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U.S.-Cuban Immigration Talks Resume, Outlook Unclear

By Maibe Gonzalez Fuentes, FI2W contributor

After six years of stalled negotiations, the U.S. and Cuba have started talking again about immigration issues affecting the two countries.

A meeting held Tuesday at UN headquarters in New York City is the most recent signal from the Obama administration that Washington wants to set a new tone with Havana. In April, the administration lifted restrictions on Cuban immigrants that wish to visit or send remittances to the island.

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Tuesday’s encounter was the first time Cuban and U.S. diplomats sat at the same table to talk about immigration issues since President George W. Bush suspended the negotiations in 2003.

Bush had cited failures by the Cuban government to honor previous immigration accords such as ensuring that Cubans with U.S. visas obtain permission to leave Cuba, and that Cubans who have fled the island and are caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally are accepted back by the Cuban government and treated justly.

A brief statement issued by the U.S. State Department after yesterday’s meeting said that it, “reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to promote safe, orderly, and legal migration.” (See the full text below) (more…)

In Puerto Rico, Sotomayor Becomes a Celebrity and a Source of Hope for Self-Determination

San Juan, Puerto Rico, where Sonia Sotomayor has become a celebrity. (Photo: Valeria Fernández)

San Juan, Puerto Rico, where Sonia Sotomayor has become a celebrity. (Photo: Valeria Fernández)

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Sonia Sotomayor has gone from virtually unknown to a symbol of national pride for Puerto Ricans after her nomination by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This has been a major event in our country, very flattering,” said Marcial Díaz, 61, a Humacao resident who chose the Spanish word país, or country, to refer to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

“In Puerto Rico, they might not know how she decided even one of her cases but for them, and for us, she’s Puerto Rican,” said Susanne Ramírez de Arellano, news director at the Univisión affiliate in Puerto Rico.

“She is a heroine, as (Joe) Acaba, the astronaut, is a hero, as Benicio del Toro is a hero.”

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