Open Borders Lobby

Blogging for change; blogeando por cambio; bloguant pour changment

So, I keep on saying "I'M BACK" like I actually mean it, but to be honest, I'm not going to be back until I get a different job. The heavy and mindless writing requirement at my current job has short circuited my brain, and leaves me unexcited about writing at the end of the day. Still, I'm currently applying for new jobs, and should have one within the next couple of weeks, so I'll place my real return to blogging at the OBL at about a month from now.

In the meantime, I haven't shut up. I'm still blogging about immigration, but for Brave New Films. You can read it here, at A Dream Deferred. The blog hasn't technically launched yet, but since many of the bloggers have already mentioned it on their own blogs, and many other pro-migrant bloggers have linked to it as well, I just figure to hell with it. Why not? My posts over there aren't quite as long and meandering as they are here, due to the medium, which is why I can't wait to be back at the OBL so that I can produce great walls o' text. Right now, in my spare time, I'm penning what will eventually become a post on here about the marketing of anti-migrant propaganda to working class communities, and why poor people around the world should stand together.

But now to what this post is really for. Migrant rights are not an American issue. The fight is going on all over the world, from Spain to South Africa to China to Mexico. I want to, occasionally, take a more international focus on this blog, and in order to do that I will need to be able to hear the voices of migrants and their allies in other countries. So, what I intend to do, is to make as thorough an international pro-migrant blogroll as I possibly can. To do that, though, I need help. I only speak English, Spanish, and French, and so those are the only languages I can find blogs in--and I've found many great blogs. So, I need your help in finding:

--Pro-migrant blogs in other languages
--Pro-migrant blogs from other countries, but in English
--Pro-migrant blogs in languages other than English, but located in the US

I am first and foremost interested in the last one, and secondly in pro-migrant blogs from Canada and Mexico, then after that from anywhere else in the world. If you know of any such blogs, or if you have such a blog, please post a link in the comments or email it to me. If you don't know of any such blog, but you speak a language other than French, Spanish, or English...do me a favor and spend a few minutes trying to google some up? I find it helps to use phrases (in that language, of course) such as "immigrant rights blog", "undocumented immigrants blog", "immigration reform blog", "migrant rights blog", and so on. You also get much better results if you use the Google site for that country, so if you are going to search for, say, blogs in South Africa, just type "google south africa" into...um...Google. And make sure to click the thing that says results only from that country.

Anyway, right now I'm having some technical difficulties and can't add anything to my blogroll, so while I'm getting that figured out, here are some of the international blogs I've found, along with a few others that have launched.

First of all, some of my buddies from the Dream Act Portal have started new pro-migrant blogs.

Dreams Unlimited, LLC.
Dream Grads
Deport Them All (calm down--it's tongue in cheek, like my blog title and Damn Mexicans)
Dreaming to Live

Some of these have just been put up and so don't have many posts on them, but keep an eye on them and watch them grow.

And this one isn't international, nor new, but I just found it and it has lovely photos.

Border Blog

Most of the Spanish language pro-migrant blogs I've found have been from Spain. Sorry, I'm too lazy for accents.

Blogs in Spanish

SPAIN.

Extranjero Sin Papeles
Diario de la Inmigracion
MigraMundo
Rancho Latino
Inmigracion Una Oportunidad
Inmigracion Sidi Ifni
De Vuelta Y Media
Puntos Suspensivos
Peruanos en Euskadi
Una Ventana Al Mundo
Uruguayos En Lanzarote
Peruanos en Espana
Inmigrantes en Espana
Empezar de Cero (there appears to be only one entry on this blog about immigration, but the blogger is undocumented and I thought this poem s/he wrote was pretty powerful)
Blog del Migrante
Blog Inmigrantes
Solange Tragadora
Blog Web de Extranjeria
Inmigracion

MEXICO.

Noticias Sin Fronteras
Frida Guerrera
Maquilas Que Matan (not about immigration, but in any case I think this subject is important for anyone trying to understand Mexican migration to the US and the part we play in it)
14 de Abril

U.S.A.

Blogs in French.

FRANCE.

CANADA.

Canada Immigration Blog (bilingual)
Solidarite sans Frontieres (bilingual)

Blogs in English.

CANADA.

U.K.

AUSTRALIA.

Mexico-Austalia Solidarity Network

SOUTH AFRICA.

Ismail Farouk: Urban Geographer
Thought Leader (since it is an open blog, this contains a variety of opinions, from pro-migrant to anti-migrant, but it seems to be mostly pro; I do want to point out something that I found in the comments to one entry by a Zimbabwean immigrant who was complaining about police brutality. Read it and tell me it doesn't sound familiar:

It goes without saying that the situation in your home country (Zimbabwe) is beyond dispair. Sadly for your countrymen, Zimbabwe is in the grasp of an arrogant, narcissistic old man and his cadre of ass kissers. Most thinking people sympathize with the plight of ordinary Zimbabwean people struggling to survive. But there is another side of the equation, although it does not in any way excuse the brutality that you write about.

Zimbabwean people (or any other peoples for that matter) are not ENTITLED to illegally migrate to South Africa. This may come as a surprise to you.

South Africa is frought with its own problems of crime, power outages, poverty, racisim and HIV. The massive influx of illegal immigrants only worsens the situation in South Africa and does nothing to resolve the root causes of the migration. The solution is to fix the problems in Zimbabwe, not run away from them. Until the people of Zimbabwe rise up and take back their country, everyone in Zimbabwe and South Africa loses.

While I first of all want to acknowledge that South Africa is a very different place from the U.S., and therefore I don't want to be so ignorant as to place anti-migrant South Africans on the same level as American Minutemen, it is really chilling that this rhetoric is exactly the same as that used by anti-migrant Americans against Latin American, especially Mexican, immigrants. All you have to do is change a few proper nouns, and you could be reading a comment straight out of ALIPAC (okay, they probably wouldn't have acknowledged racism). My eyes nearly fell out of my head when I saw this comment)

Blogs in Italian.

ITALY.

Blogs in German.

GERMANY.

Blogs in Portoguese.

PORTUGAL.

All for a glass of water.

With walls and thick Border Patrol presence in many areas along the border, many people who have no other way to cross into the United States are forced to travel through the deserts. Along the Arizona border alone, 237 people died last year and seven have died so far this year. The main reasons for this: heat, and lack of water.

Several humanitarian groups try to counteract this (because god forbid our government do anything to keep people from dying) by setting up water stations, handing out water to migrants they meet up with, and leaving water jugs and bottles at popular passing points so that people in need can pick them up. They also walk through the desert looking for people who have fallen behind, unable to continue because the heat or lack of water has made them sick--something that happens all too often.

So it was a pretty pathetic move by the officers at the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona to ticket the volunteers from No More Deaths for leaving water jugs out for migrants.

"We consider the action they did was littering so we're not going to authorize littering on the wildlife refuge," says Refuge Manager Sally Gall.

Officers gave Daniel a $175 citation and if he doesn't pay the ticket, he could face jail time and a hefty fine.

Gall says the water jugs are not the solution, but part of the problem.

"I understand that they are trying to help immigrants that are out there but by placing water jugs along the trail refuge, it is littering and we don't want to encourage littering. We have a tremendous problem with littering because of immigration problems.

I'm all for animal rights and environmentalism (though, granted, I'm not very devout), but littering? Seriously? The move seems to me to be more political than practical. If, as they say, they find a ton's worth of garbage on the preserve a day, then what difference do a few jugs of water make? Especially when you consider that the people from No More Deaths were doing the officers' jobs and picking up trash when they went along. They even saved a teenage girl's life that day. This blatant disregard for human life by the wildlife refuge is disgusting.

I understand where the Refuge is coming from with their concern for animals, but human beings are more important. There are plenty of things that they can do to both ensure the safety of the animals and the survival of the people passing through as well. They could set up a few water stations, or they could allow the No More Deaths team to leave the jugs around on the condition that they will pick up any trash they find (as they were doing) and come back at the end of the day for any discarded jugs. But that would be hard, right?

What is worse? Litter, or bodies?

I hope Daniel refuses to pay the ticket and continues helping migrants survive the terrible journey through the desert.

GET INVOLVED

If you leave close to the border, then you can join one of the many humanitarian groups that provides water for migrants passing through the desert.

Water Station--California
Border Angels--California
No More Deaths--Arizona
Samaritan Patrol--Arizona
Humane Borders--Arizona

If you know of any groups in New Mexico or Texas, please comment.

Here I come, here I come

Life, school, work, and other projects have kept me away from this blog, but now that I have a few of those cleared up, there's a new empty space that the OBL can slip back into. I gave it a make over, and though it still looks kind of tacky (it was free. What do you expect?), I like this new design from my friends over at Blog and Web.

A lot has been going on, so in my first return-from-hiatus post, I'd like to write up a sort of progress report of the year so far in the immigration movement. I'll try to do these periodically, basing my report on the goals I outlined in my new year resolutions last month.

Combat hate speech.

At the beginning of February, the NCLR launched a new website called We Can Stop the Hate, with the aim of calling out the hatemongers in press and politics and analyzing the veiled speech they often use to mask their lies, racism, and xenophobia. Janet Murgia, the site's creator and president of the NCLR, faced off with Lou Dobbs on his show.

The footage was not shown in its entirety, though, and here's Kyle from Citizen Orange's take on that.

In addition to that, another website showed up with video of Minutemen protesters in California. Minutemen Unvarnished addresses one aspect of defeating hatred--exposing it.

Organize an army.

The powerful force of an election year and an end to Bush's term has caused record levels of voters to turn out for party primaries and caucuses. Anti-migrant candidates dropped like flies, and the only viable ones we have left are advocates of fair immigration reform. Can these motivated voters be expected to do the same in congressional elections and referendums? It remains to be seen, but the tide seems to be changing. Or, in any case, people just don't see immigration as that important. Either way it is a lost for the anti-migrant side, but whether it can be interpreted as our victory remains to be seen.

Sue, Strike down, and Support.

Here is where we are suffering. Every week there is news of new anti-immigration legislation being fashioned on a state or local level, but efforts to counteract these have failed.

Demand change.

Whatever the defeats, they cannot corrupt the human will to survive and push forward, and so we have seen people moving against unjust laws and practices both in the U.S. and abroad. In January, hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers marched into Mexico City in protest of NAFTA, blocking the streets with their tractors. Late in the month, Flor Crisostomo, an undocumented woman from Mexico, took sanctuary in the Chicago church which had formerly housed Elvira Arellano to evade deportation. This week, a group of protesters will march along the Texas border in protest of the wall.

That's a lot to happen in just the space of two months, but it won't be enough to counteract the wave of anti-migrant actions which are pushing people out of their homes all across the country. Get involved with a local group, write letters, and counteract ignorance and hate speech when you hear it. We're just getting started.

Harris County Freezes Over

Mayor Bill White denies that Houston is a sanctuary city, but it is. There's an enormous community of undocumented immigrants here, with estimates reaching as much as 500,000, and those numbers only growing as surrounding states make force people out. There are around 90 languages spoken in Houston, so there's almost always someone you can relate to in your native tongue, and we have a lot of organizations aiding migrants in adjusting to life in Texas.

I was proud last week when our police chief, Harold Hurtt, said that "his department [wouldn't] be taking on ICE duties any time soon." According to Hurtt, the already slow response times of the HPD would be lengthened by around thirty minutes, and that the burden of checking immigrant status, especially among such a large population of immigrants, would be overwhelming and expensive and would take time and money away from the department's day job.

So you can guess how disappointed I was when our equally assonantly named Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas (seriously, what's up with that?) (and Houston is in Harris County, for all you furriners) announced that Harris County law enforcement would be the first department in Texas to begin the ICE training program used in Arizona and Oklahoma.

Guess we got some tickets to pay off...

"Sanctuary!" he cried.

When I was 14 I was in love with Victor Hugo. The first time I got drunk, really drunk, I threw up all over my copy of Les Miserables. Me and my best friend, in a tequila stupor (damn, where were our parents?), bathed the book in the bathtub and then set it out on the steps of her apartment to dry. I still have the same book. It reeks faintly, even seven years later, and it's fanned out from water damage to twice the thickness of its already Biblical girth. Next to it on my shelf is a copy of Notre Dame de Paris, by the same author. It also suffered, ripped in two when my mom crashed into a motionless car while I was reading it in the front passenger seat. It sits there on my shelf, two halves, with the frayed half eye of the hunchback Quasimodo peering out at me.

I guess, growing up as a poor girl in Houston, I liked the idea of sanctuary. Sanctuary from fathers, Rapture, poverty, occasional homelessness. And the idea that the hand of justice often fell unevenly, sweeping away people like Jean Valjean, a poor man who stole a loaf of bread out of desperation and suffered for it all his life. That law isn't always right, especially when it oppresses certain people for being who they are and then punishes them for doing what they must do to survive under that oppression. An excerpt from the musical based on Les Miserables:

[JAVERT]
Now bring me prisoner 24601
Your time is up
And your parole's begun
You know what that means.

[VALJEAN]
Yes, it means I'm free.

[JAVERT]
No!
It means you get
Your yellow ticket-of-leave
You are a thief

[VALJEAN]
I stole a loaf of bread.

[JAVERT]
You robbed a house.

[VALJEAN]
I broke a window pane.
My sister's child was close to death
And we were starving.

[JAVERT]
You will starve again
Unless you learn the meaning of the law.

[VALJEAN]
I know the meaning of those 19 years
A slave of the law

[JAVERT]
Five years for what you did
The rest because you tried to run
Yes, 24601.

[VALJEAN]
My name is Jean Valjean

Does it sound familiar? Denied a name (illegal!). Broken by the injustice of the law (is illegal!).

Last week, Flor Crisostomo cried, "sanctuary!" Filling the vacancy left by Elvira Arellano, Crisostomo took up her hiding place within the modest hole-in-the-wall Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago. Crisostomo is originally from Mexico. She is here illegally (she is not illegal). She came to the U.S. seven years ago when, jobless and with no prospects of finding a job, she had no way to feed her three children. She left them with her mother and paid a coyote to take her across the border, where he deposited her in the desert. She lives on a few hundred dollars a month, sending most of her salary home to her children.

Another poor girl seeking sanctuary, this time of the more real kind, made of brick and glass. Through her act of bravery, she can show that the migrant community cannot be menaced or removed as long as we're willing to protect those within it. If she can make it, she can be the next significant note struck in the song of this movement. The first, of course, being this. A pattern is slowly forming. I talked about patterns recently in a comment on Citizen Orange. One of the most discouraging things about fighting for something you believe in is that it is a process. An unknown process. We can look back at previous processes and watch how they fall together step by step, continuously progressing, and it's all very clear. But the perception is not the reality, and no fight has ever progressed neatly nor clearly, and least of all to those who are within it and don't have the privilege of hindsight. Something to remember, then, but even so we can look back in this short history and see something streaking along.

It being black history month, and with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday having just passed, this quote is making the rounds:

One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

This idea of civil disobedience is being played out at its purest among these two young women, Elvira and Flor, who are acting in defiance of the status quo. This is not a march, or a demonstration, but an act which poses an actual bodily risk to them. This is not a few days in jail, it is the possibility of a life behind walls. It's bravery.

I've been struggling with this bravery myself. Wondering what I would be willing to sacrifice. What I could lose. And it's something I'm terribly afraid of. The idea of losing what little I have and possibly achieving nothing, it terrifies me. I mean, I have a kid, I have a job...but don't they? This fear I have, I don't think it's just me that has it. It's something we all have. Something we need to overcome in order to hit the next note. Elvira and Flor, Flor and Elvira, they are strong, they are brilliant, they are fighters...but they are two. We need more.

So what to do?

Sorry ahead of time

Warning: within this post I discuss the book Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and some of my discussion borders on spoiling it. It's not so much a suspenseful book, and I don't think I give anything surprising away, but there it is.

I don't think you can see how easily interrelated everything in the world is until you are so consumed by something that you see connections to it everywhere. Sometimes they're weak, but more often they're so strong that even somebody outside of your circle of obsession would see it and say, "why yes, it does relate". I'm not sure where this falls on that map, whether I'm just so desperate for a solution that I would find hints of truth in a computer manual. All I know is that I'm weary. Sometimes on this blog I don't post for a week on end because I look at it and think, "what the hell am I doing? What am I changing?" I try to think of the Harlem renaissance and Langston Hughes, of James Baldwin. I try to think of Upton Sinclair. But who am I comparing myself to? I'm nowhere near these people obviously, and who am I to think that a blog can make the same change that a book can? I'm preaching to the choir, we all are. I don't want to talk to the choir. They'll nod their heads whether my mouth is open or not.

And then other times I think it's just important to get every voice out there, no matter who hears it, with the final expectation that one day our volume will be so strong and so high that it can't be ignored. I do nothing on an individual level, but as a group I am part of an uprising of the human and the unheard.

I don't know. Why do I do this? Which side of me is right? I'll keep doing it, anyhow, if only because a pencil falling amidst loud voices still does make a sound, heard or no, and in that way the universe is different than it would have been if there had been no sound at all.

The first passage in Ishiguro's book which took it from, for me, a strange coming of age story to a story that was relevant to me and to us and to this time was this:

I'll never forget the strange change that came over us the next instant. Until then, this whole thing about Madame had been, if not a joke exactly, very much a private thing we wanted to settle among ourselves. We hadn't much thought about how Madame herself, or anyone else, would come into it. What I mean is, until then, it had been a pretty light-hearted matter, with a bit of a dare element to it. And it wasn't even as though Madame did anything other than what we predicted she'd do: she just froze and waited for us to pass by. She didn't shriek, or even let out a gasp. But we were all so keenly tuned into picking up her response, and that's probably why it had such an effect on us. As she came to a halt, I glanced quickly at her face--as did the others, I'm sure. And I can still see it now, the shudder she seemed to be suppressing, the real dread that one of us would accidentally brush against her. And though we just kept on walking, we all felt it; it was like we'd walked from the sun right into the chilly shade. Ruth had been right: Madame was afraid of us. But she was afraid of us in the same way someone might be of spiders. We hadn't been ready for that. It had never occurred to us to wonder how we would feel, being seen like that, being the spiders.

I guess I was thinking as I read this how a lot of times we, like the girls in the story, make fun of the anti-migrant side and their barbs, but how despite the smiles there's a deeper punch, and even people like me feel it though it's not directed at us. What it's like to be the spider. I wonder what it was like for the DREAMers, all of whom were here legally, even if only briefly, who were told that they could not meet with Senator John Cornyn because they were illegal, while he accepted one of their citizen advocates into his office. Their illegality had tainted them so that it wasn't even a status distinction anymore, but something that stayed with you as a brand regardless of your paperwork.

I see the relationship between Tommy and Kathy as similar to the one I'm in, and I guess I'm Kathy. She was able, more easily than him, to treat their search for a deferral more casually, as a hobby, and less urgently because, unlike him, she wasn't yet expendable, she didn't face death. The idea of being expendable always comes to my mind when I hear from people who say things such as, "The immigration system is messed up, and more people in the situation undocumented immigrants were in should be able to come. So, let's reform the system and allow them to come. But the people who are already here, deport them, send them back." This is a thread which often makes its way into discussions about a guest worker program. Yes, let's reform and let people come to fulfill our labor needs. People, but not those people. There are, after all, plenty more where those people come from.

It doesn't matter how many roots you're tearing from the ground or what's behind the faces of the millions of students and workers you're exchanging for similar looking labor currency. The boat displaces the water, and as it moves on different water flows into the space it leaves in its wake. Same thing.

The book had more to say to me than just that passage, and the last couple of chapters were where I began to have to set it down and pace my living room every few pages. I don't need to say anything more. It speaks for itself. It's a very good book, whether you see what I see in it or not, and you should consider picking it up.

"Suddenly there were all these new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions. This was what the world noticed the most, wanted the most. And for a long time, people preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere...Yes, there were arguments. But by the time people became concerned about...about students, by the time they came to consider just how you were reared, whether you should have been brought into existence at all, well by then it was too late. There was no way to reverse the process...How can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was no going back. However comfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease. So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you. And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren't really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn't matter. And that was how things stood until our little movement came along. Don't you see what we were up against? We were virtually attempting to square the circle. Here was the world, requiring students to donate. While that remained the case, there would always be a barrier against seeing you as properly human.

"...But I suppose when it comes down to it, the central flaw was this. Our little movement, we were always too fragile, always too dependent on the whims of our supporters. So long as the climate was in our favor, so long as a corporation or a politician could see a benefit in supporting us, then we were able to keep afloat. But it had always been a struggle, and after Morningdale, after the climate changed, we had no chance. The world didn't want to be reminded how the donation programme really worked. They didn't want to think about you students, or about the conditions you were brought up in. In other words, my dear, they wanted you back in the shadows. Back in the shadows where you'd been before the likes of Marie-Claude and myself ever came along. And all those influential people who'd once been so keen to help us, well of course, they all vanished.

"I can see," Miss Emily said, "that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can certainly be looked at like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns. There was a certain climate and it's now gone. You have to accept that sometimes that's how things happen in this world. People's opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process."

"It might be just some trend that came and went," I said. "But for us, it's our life."

"Yes, that' true. But think of it. You were better off than many who came before you. And who knows what those who come after you will have to face."

Don't take this post as me being a defeatist. I'm not, at least not entirely. I think we are winning, or in any case, I think we will win. But things like these give me a shot of reality, and I start to have doubts, and I also wonder, if we do "win", what does that mean? Say 12 million people get their green cards, what changes for the millions more beyond the dotted line? This administration, whoever runs it, will not attempt to combat global poverty in realistic ways, nor will they stop corporations from doing what they do to foreign countries. So what will happen when, 20 years from now, there are another 20 million in the shadows? With Reagan, it was relatively easy, and now it's so hard...what next? I want this to happen, I want to see relief to the people here, but I wonder what the price is for the future. That's all.

Got a few bucks? Migrant students need your help!

I want to send a hat tip to a friend for leading me to this, but it appears that there is a fundraiser going on for scholarships, which will go to Latino students at the University of North Carolina. These scholarships are also open to undocumented students, who until recently weren't even allowed to attend NC colleges, and still must pay out-of-state tuition if they want to go. They're trying to raise $50,000, but have so far only raised around $4,000--extremely short of the mark. Even if you only have $10 to donate, please head over to their website and help a DREAMer go to college. Or you can just scroll past my blogroll to the left and click on the graphic which says "GIVE NOW".

Another scholarship fund which you might be interested in donating your money to is the Bay Area Gardeners' Fund. Started by a migrant farmer, the group has raised thousands of dollars to send undocumented California kids on to college.

If you're a DREAMer looking for options yourself, here's a list of scholarships you might qualify for, even without papers:

Geneseo Migrant Center

Get Ready for College

MALDEF

This Is America and the future of the migrant multimedia movement

Saturday night, Vi and I headed down to the Angelika Theatre in downtown Houston to attend the screening of a new film. The film would be about an undocumented student who struggles against the obstacles of being "illegal" as he waits for the tide to change and the Dream Act to past. You can check out the trailer below.

There was a very warm feeling in the movie theater as we watched it, and both the jokes cracked by the characters and the occasional whoops from the back of the audience by cast and crew kept the mood light, even during some of the most depressing parts of the film. The movie held together the awkward balance of normalcy and disruption that every DREAMer exists in--one second you see the main character, clever college student José, joking with friends about getting their asses kicked, or snaking his arm around the waist of a pretty girl, or giving a speech about affirmative action--all so normal--and the next second he's lying face down on the ground, reduced from human to "illegal".

This movie is not Hollywood fare. If you're looking for something which switches scenes gracefully or has sharp pictures and incredible sets, then you're in the wrong place. This movie doesn't have any of the forced trappings of Tinseltown nor the ironic cynicism of most indie movies. It's just real life, right in your backyard, and that's its saving grace. It rises above its low budget and introduces the viewer to a world which some will find familiar while others incredible.

For those who are DREAMers or who are in the know, there will be a constant, "Yes, yes, I've been there" running through your head as the movie goes on, and the director/writer/actor, Jesse Salmeron, has dropped in many details that are incredibly insignificant in the grand scheme of things but which accentuate or soften the hardship in a migrant student's life--the password to José's school computer is 1403, named after H.B. 1403, the Texas bill passed in 2001 which allowed DREAMers the benefit of in-state tuition and financial aid to public Texas colleges and universities; in another scene, he sweats as he sits in a car and a police officer approaches, and says he left his license at home--there's an excruciating moment as he waits for the officer to believe him or arrest him, the former which would lead to the same old questions of "why don't you have a license? But you're [age]! Why are you so lazy?", the latter which would lead to his deportation.

For those who have a limited understanding, or none of all, of the hardships that young people like José face, This Is America provides an excellent introduction. Its conflation of above and underground America create the perfect dual view of migrant life. The viewer is pulled into the movie on the assumption that the characters are all "American", but only later presented with the fact that some lack paperwork, and by that time it's too late to draw back.

Still, it's premiering small--it will only go as far as its viewers allow. Keep an eye on the movie's website for showings near you, keep an eye for when you can purchase the movie, and when it comes to your town, talk about it, bring your friends and your family, buy the film and pass it around, give it away, whatever you need to do. People need to know what's going on, and This Is America tells them.

I'm also obligated to tell you to vote for Rick Noriega if you're a Texas voter. Hey, but don't just listen to me--check out his website and see where he stands. You'll like him whatever I tell you. And remember--if you're an American citizen over the age of 18, I don't want to hear your bullshit. You vote, that's it. There are millions who wait by and silence for you to act on their behalf because they don't have the rights. By remaining indifferent or apathetic, you are betraying every single one of them. Manuel at I Am A Shadow posted a great quote by Elie Wiesel yesterday:

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

It's true. Vote or die or something.

This is America isn't the only film about migrant students which has come out recently. There seems to be a soft trickle of movies slowly eroding the boundaries and weaving into the world of film. One documentary, Los Invezivlez, showed recently in Houston. Here's a clip.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

A couple of years ago, a mainstream movie came out which treated the situation in passing. Me and Vi went and saw it, pretty soon after I found out about his status. I felt horrible because I had no idea about that part of the movie, but it was still a good movie. Here's the trailer.

The movie even goes so far as to show the family slipping through a break in the border fence when Santiago is a kid. Santiago runs back for his soccer ball, which rolls back into Mexico as he crosses. In the end, he makes the terrible decision which I've seen several DREAMers make since the failure of CIR and the DREAM Act in July and October: he left, with no guarantee that he would ever be able to come back. I never say the other two movies, so I'm not sure how it turned out.

Anyhow, that isn't all. There are several more in the working. Something from Brave New Films; somebody from the DREAM Act Portal mentioned that a documentary was being made about him; and a few of us...well, we have our own plans. But the migrant multimedia is breaking the surface.

In-state tuition update

The hive mind is buzzing!

California is jumping on the bandwagon to repeal the state's AB-540 law, which allows undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates at colleges and universities if they meet the same qualifications of other California residents, aside from being undocumented. This action was probably prompted by last year's attempt to pass the California Dream Act, which would have made Cali the second state in the country (after Texas) to provide financial aid to undocumented students. If you're interested in helping out, contact CHIRLA.

As for Virginia, it looks like state legislators have had a lot of time on their hands. This session brings 80 new immigration-related bills, many redundant, insane, or just plain confusing, but the one relevant to this post is right here:

HB 14, five patrons; Bars any illegal immigrant from attending a public college or university in Virginia.

If you know of an immigrant advocacy group in Virginia, please comment. Or, you could contact the 9500 Liberty Project and see if they're willing to take it on.

Right now, though, the major battleground states are Massachusetts and North Carolina. Check out my last post on this matter to see what you can do.

Red rover, red rover, send Cuba right over!

In an earlier post, I responded to Wyclef Jean's musical question, "If my Cubans get to stay, why turn my Haitians away?" with eager agreement. While I acknowledged the hardships Cubans face under Castro's regime, I questioned the policy that recognized this hardship by supposedly laying out the welcoming mat while other immigrants coming from similarly bad conditions, such as Haiti, were given the opposite treatment, and in some cases even sent back to be tortured by a corrupt government. Like many people, I viewed the "Wet Foot, Dry Foot" policy with distaste because it discriminated against many refugees from Haiti and other countries. Today, however, after reading an article by Circles Robinson in a Cuban newspaper, I came away with a different perspective.

The problem with the Wet Foot, Dry Foot policy is not that it applies only to Cubans, but that it only applies to them once they have made it through the same dangerous obstacle course that undocumented immigrants from other countries go through. Our government is essentially playing an inhuman game of Red Rover with Cuba. Rather than offering a safe visa program which would allow potential Cuban refugees to voyage to the United States as other permanent residents do, they have to trek through the Mexican desert, cross the ocean on overcrowded boats and rafts, place their lives in the hands of untrustworthy coyotes, and whoever doesn't die, wins.

While I was unable to find any clear statistics on how many Cuban lives were lost last year in the struggle to reach U.S. soil, some articles from the last two months of 2007 are disturbing. During that period, at least 70 Cuban migrants were lost at sea, most since late November, and are presumed dead. If those numbers hold true for the whole year, that amounts to almost 900 deaths. In addition to that, 3,200 migrants were turned back by the Coast Guard while still on their way.

Why do we treat human lives so blithely? The immigration policy towards Cubans has been called lenient, but it is anything but. Instead, it is an indirect massacre, which is able to persist because we see nothing wrong with treating humans like they're characters in a TV show. Expendable, but good for a tearjerker--we get to look at the Cuban migrants and feel good about ourselves for treating foreigners so graciously, while ignoring the ghosts that crowd around them.

Weekly dreamer: Wilber Prada

For the most part, Wilber Prada's story is a typical one for Dreamers: he arrived illegally in the United States with his mother at the age of seven. His father was already here--he had come first, so that he could work to save money and bring his wife and child across. He worked three jobs to do this, and not too much later, Wilber and his mother arrived from their native Peru.

In one area, though, the story of Wilber and his family's struggle to arrive and survive in the United States diverges from the popular image of the undocumented immigrant. His parents were not farmers, nor had they come to a halt in their educations before hitting high school. Instead, his mother taught literature and his father was a biology major in college. They traded lives and professions which most of us consider tickets to a comfortable existence in order to travel to the United States and become dishwashers and gardeners.

When discussing immigration, it's often a struggle to defend the many migrants who come here illegally against the suggestion that they should have just gotten in line and come here the right way. There is no line for most migrants. For Wilber's family, there was. So what does it mean that they chose to take the route that millions of others with fewer skills and years of education had taken before them? They came, most likely, because while there is a line, it is long--very long, and as the economy in Peru worsened throughout the 90s, they needed an escape valve. This is, of course, speculation, but it's a story I've heard many times. I know at least two dreamers born in Peru, who spent the first few years of their lives in upper class society until the economy came crashing down and they lost everything.

It is not too rare that skilled workers immigrate illegally to the U.S., either. I know two people, one is my brother in law, from Mexico, and the other is a man I used to work with, from El Salvador. Both hold engineering degrees and speak fluent English. Both are here illegally. One is a manager at a barbecue restaurant, and the other does maintenance for an apartment complex. Another woman I know was a high level secretary when she lived in Mexico. She now washes dishes.

As for Wilber, he's 20 years old right now, attending UCLA and doing what he can to raise awareness while he waits for the Dream Act. Two years away from graduation, he dreams of going to law school and becoming a civil rights lawyer. California offers in state tuition, but will he be able to afford even those rates in law school , with only the help of his parents and a low level job? Hopefully he won't have to worry--by 2010, he'll have his papers.

If you think you can make a statement about a group of people, look again. It is more complex than you think.

Oklahoma's 1804 gets child support notice

A month ago, I blogged on Oklahoma State Representative Randy Terrill's idea of introducing further anti-migrant legislation, which he called "son of 1804", named after the stringent immigration bill passed months before. That new bill would keep the state from giving birth certificates to newborn citizen children of undocumented immigrants, essentially defying the constitution. Well, it looks like daddy 1804 is suffering some growing pains.

State Senator Harry Coates is going to put up some more legislation which would repeal some of 1804, including the part which made it a felony to transport or attempt to transport an undocumented immigrant, which resulted in the prosecution of a woman who was driving her boyfriend around. So, Coates wants to weaken 1804, while Terrill wants to strengthen it. Who will win?

This is going to get interesting.

Films Beyond Borders -- January 16th @ Rice University

Hey Houstonians,

Houston Independent Media Center is hosting a film series at Rice Cinema. For this installment of the series, they will show five short films having to do with immigration. Here's a breakdown from the Houston Indy Media website.

Houston Indymedia is proud to continue our series of progressive documentary films at Rice Cinema this January the 16th at 8pm, with 5 short films on struggles for human dignity and freedom of movement. From Indiana, California and Texas, the experiences of immigrant youth, anti-border activists and detained migrants tell stories that can break through the systems of exclusion and give a glimpse of our common humanity.

Rice Cinema is located on Rice University Campus at Entrance #8, University and Stockton Ave

Loz Invenzivlez/Our Invincible Youth
30 minutes, 2007, FIRME productions, English and Spanish, USA

Elementary, high school and college students from Indianapolis, Indiana have created a documentary, Loz Invenzivlez/Our Invincible Youth, exploring the educational dreams, realities, and sometimes nightmares of Latin@ children who immigrated to Indianapolis. The film explores issues of education, immigration and identity through the eyes of youth, who rarely speak and are seldom heard on such issues important to Indiana and our nation.

The film was created to be more than a documentary, but with the goal of raising consciousness and moving the audience from Empathy to Solidarity. “Like all of us, immigrant youth are just trying to make a good life for themselves,” says IUPUI Professor José Rosario, director of El Puente Project, a partner in the event. “And like all of us, they long to share what that means to them. So it is fitting that we be generous of heart and listen to their story. “

Hutto: Americas Family Prison
15 minutes, 2007, Matthew Gossage & Lily Keber, English and Spanish, USA

"Hutto: America's Family Prison," details the prison-like conditions at the T. Don Hutto "residential facility" in Taylor, TX. About 500 immigrants and asylum-seekers from around the world, more than half of them children, are detained at the prison. This film explores this troubling dynamic of incarcerating families of immigrants and asylum seekers from the eyes of lawyers, human rights activists, and formerly detained families.

The Wall and the River
9 minutes, 2007, Arizona Indymedia & Indymedia Newsreal, English, USA

The US Border Wall being built in Arizona is about to cut off the San Pedro Riparian Natural Corridor, The only river on the Arizona-Mexico border that flows all year long. The plans of the Department of Homeland Security to cut off this river will have permanent impacts on the wildlife and water in this very fragile ecosystem, and will be a limited deterent for people trying to cross. This production for Indymedia Newsreal looks at the battle to save this ecological area from the current hysteria over immigration.

And More!

We will be screening a number of short video pieces on the No Border Camp that took place in Calexico/Mexicali in late 2007, and hopefully a piece on the Houston Sin Fronteras Action of June 2007

I'd love to go, but I have a class, so please go so I can live vicariously through you. And report back, soldier.

1,000,000 children left behind and counting

"The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life."

--Plato, The Republic

Education. It's something a lot of us struggle to afford after high school. Most people don't get it handed to them, and American citizens from low income families often have to work their asses off just to make it through school, even with government grants, loans, and scholarships. So how much more difficult must it be to go through school for someone who cannot legally work, does not qualify for any scholarships or financial aid, cannot get a student loan (because how will they pay it back if they can't work?), and whose parents are forced to work low paying jobs because they can't legally work either? For some in situations like this, they manage to qualify for the rare scholarship, or advance through their classes bit by bit while paying every dime of their tuition with the sweat off their back. It's made easier in several states which have policies of offering in state tuition (often four times cheaper than out of state) to migrant students, but most states don't do this.

It's true that many undocumented students do manage to go to college, but without the privileges afforded even to the poorest citizen students, they must be extraordinarily lucky, persevering, and intelligent to do so whereas those without the same road blocks must only be ordinary. The key component here is luck, though--lucky enough to find a scholarship which will award to them, lucky enough to have enough support from their parents, lucky enough to graduate in a state which offers in state tuition, lucky enough to find a citizen co-signer for a loan.

Should access to higher education be about luck? Especially in a world where 32% of new jobs created in the next four years will require an associate's degree or higher, and that number is only set to grow?

According to a report by the National Immigration Law Center, 80,000 undocumented migrants reach the age of 18 every year; 65,000 actually manage to graduate from high school. Another report, this one by the American Immigration Law Foundation, states that 1,000,000 undocumented migrant young people would have benefited from the failed Dream Act legislation. Of the current undocumented population, around 1.8 million (16%) are children, according to research by Pew Hispanic Center. Of course, all of these estimates are incomplete. The undocumented population has fluctuated since the last major immigration reform in the 80s, which applied only to immigrants who had arrived before 1982, so it's unlikely that 80,000 young people reached 18 without status in the 80s and 90s, and probably many more have since that study was done 5 years ago. The estimates of the number of people eligible for the Dream Act also leave out many migrants brought here as children, such as those who have not yet been here for five years, those who did not graduate from high school, and those who have passed the age of thirty. It's impossible to say how many migrants have grown up and live here without papers, but I think I can safely estimate that there are more than 1,000,000.

The issue of whether or not to allow them in state tuition has been gearing up in several states over the last month. One million is a lot of people to leave in a dead end after 12 years of education, after all. Even so, not all states who are addressing the issue are going down the straight and narrow.

In Massachusetts, the governor, Deval Patrick, is looking for a way to push through a regulation allowing students to pay in state tuition without having to pass any legislation. Right now, undocumented students are paying over $8,000 a year just to attend community college. Even though in state rates would discount their tuition by thousands of dollars, the Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation estimates that allowing these rates would enable the state to bring in $3 million dollars more revenue because more students would enroll.

In South Carolina, House and Senate leaders are focusing on passing one of the harshest sets of anti-migrant laws in the nation. Among the provisions of that bill is one which would ban undocumented migrants from enrolling in any public college or university.

In New Jersey, legislation is being discussed in committee which would "offer a solution" to the problems undocumented students and immigrants on temporary visas have with affording college. The bill will be introduced sometime this month.

A couple of months ago, undocumented students had few options when it came to attending school in North Carolina. Colleges formed their policies individually, and while some allowed migrants to attend, most did not. After the president of NC's community college system sent out a message saying that all colleges must do so, opportunities have increased for some--but for most education is still out of reach, as the cost at community colleges is around $8,000 and at universities around $20,000 per year. North Carolina is considering offering in state tuition to undocumented students.

Up in Kansas, several anti-migrant bills are on the platter for 2008. Kansas already offers in-state tuition to undocumented students, and one proposed bill would challenge that. (and, on an unrelated note, another proposed bill would require people to prove they are a citizen or legally present before sending money out of the country. Kansas, PLEASE.)

Representative Glenn Donnelson is once again trying to repeal a Utah law which allows undocumented students to pay in state tuition. Last year's attempt went down in a vote so close it tied.

Missouri (come on, are there any immigrants there?) is licking the legs of the pack with its own conflicting proposals. One would ban migrants from enrolling in public colleges, and another would allow them to enroll, but deny them the ability to get public financial aid, scholarships, and loans (which ability they don't have anyway).

Finally, in the increasingly scary state of Arizona, in state tuition allowances have already been repealed by Proposition 300. So far, 4000 Arizona students have been affected, although there are probably many more.

Arguments against providing in state tuition come in all shapes in sizes. Let's play some dominos.

"Giving illegal immigrants in state tuition is a violation of federal law."

Not so. The law referenced, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, denies a state the ability to offer undocumented immigrants educational benefits if it denies those same benefits to non residents in the same circumstances. The states involved do not do this.

"They'll take seats away from Americans and legal immigrants!"

The number of undocumented students in college is small, and in some states numbers only a couple thousand or even a couple hundred. While in cases of colleges which have a very competitive pool, an undocumented student may indeed get in while a citizen student is denied, this is a rare outcome.

"People who don't pay taxes shouldn't be given breaks./In-state tuition will cost taxpayers too much."

One's immigration status does not indicate that they do not pay taxes. All migrants pay taxes in the form of sales and property taxes, and most have taxes deducted from their paychecks. Millions also file income taxes. As for the second point, this hasn't been the case in states which already offer in state tuition to undocumented students. Instead, they are receiving more revenue because students who would otherwise have skipped out on college are now enrolling.

So what are you going to do about it?

Life won't change while you sleep, which is why as pro-migrant activists, we have an obligation to put our hands against the clay and force the mold. Here are some organizations you can contact to find out what you can do to support in-state tuition measures in the above states.

Student Immigrant Movement -- Massachusetts

Padres & Jovenes Unidos -- Kansas

CHISPA -- North Carolina

New Jersey Immigration Policy Network -- New Jersey

Cadena -- Arizona

(if you know of any groups in South Carolina, Missouri or Utah, please comment!)

Even if you don't have the time to join an organization and lobby state legislatures, you can still do something. If you live in an affected state, write an op-ed for your town/city newspaper. On an even smaller scale, write letters to your state politicians, to your newspapers. Leave comments on news articles. Kyle at Citizen Orange has some great links here. Make your voice heard.

digg

Migrant women and citizen men

Neither of these are exclusively issues concerning migrant women, but they do affect them at a much greater degree than they do men, and so...

No concept of equality exists in a vacuum, and so both our views on the state of feminism in the US and of immigrant rights can be informed by the way that migrant women are treated. However, US immigration law itself can't seem to figure out how that will be. One area where it is especially confused is on the issue of what to do with women (and often men as well) whose citizen or permanent resident spouses have filed immigration petitions for them, but whose spouses die before they have been married two years and can adjust from conditional to permanent residency. Yave at Citizen Orange did an excellent post on this awhile ago. Most notably, we see the cases of women like Carla Freeman, whose husband died in a car accident after she received her conditional residency card; even though the 9th Circuit of Appeals ruled to allow her to stay, USCIS denied her application anyway. In fact, a string of women in her situation have gone through the appeals courts and been ruled in favor of, most recently Nelly Lockhart. Even so, the law which punishes widows in immigration limbo has not been changed.

A much more disturbing reality about female migrants' rights in the US is exposed by a recent trend among immigration officials who deny undocumented migrants who are victims of domestic a

Past Ravings

Tags