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Last week, a small group of immigrants met in a classroom at the Tomlinson Adult Learning Center for a Project Prosper financial literacy class. Over the past weeks, the students in the school’s English for Speakers of Other Languages have been learning about checking accounts, budgeting, saving, credit reports and protecting themselves against identity theft and fraud.
Besides financial literacy, Project Prosper provides small no-interest loans of up to $1,500 to eligible applicants in South or mid-Pinellas County who have lived in the United States for eight years or less. Borrowers also are required to save a certain amount of money, equivalent to 10 percent of their monthly payments, each month.
“Provided that they have made timely payments on their loan and they’ve taken a financial literacy class, then we’ll match their savings,” said Warren, president of Project Prosper.
“One of the beauties of this, as each person pays back their loan, they are making funds available for the next person to borrow. So far, we’ve not had to turn down anyone because of lack of funds,” Warren said.
We need more programs like this that help immigrants succeed in our country, rather than pushing them into the shadows.
While John McCain and Barack Obama continue to earnestly court Latino voters, both candidates also continue to be vague when it comes to immigration.
As I posted yesterday, mainstream media certainly isn’t helping to further clarify either candidates’ view on immigration policy. So, last month, The Sanctuary stepped up to the plate and sent McCain and Obama a detailed survey, asking the questions that the media refuses to address. Last week, after no response, the Sanctuary re-sent the survey. They have yet to receive any answers.
Yesterday, Kety Esquivel, editor ar the Sanctuary, appeared on CNN to ask both candidates to stop the pandering and start addressing the tough questions.
Last week, Tim Chavez at Political Salsa broke the story of a pregnant woman, Juana Villegas DeLaPaz pulled over by police in Nashville, who was forced to give birth while shackled to a hospital bed.
What she did wrong:
“She was pulled over by the Berry Hill Police Department as she left a prenatal clinic. She had her three other children with her. She showed a current car registration but had no license. She also showed a matricular card.”
She was arrested.
Some of the details:
* Her water broke while she was in jail; she was transported to Metro General Hospital.
* When the nurse asked her to undress to get into hospital clothes, the sheriff’s guard was asked to leave for the moment. He — yes, he — refused. So she had to undress in front of him. I don’t know about your culture, but in the Mexican culture and Mexican-American culture, that is a highly offensive affront to our women, no to mention our mothers.
* Then, while in labor, she was handcuffed by her wrist and ankle to the bed. I’ve seen women in labor, and they constantly are shifting positions to try and get some sense of relief, if that is even possible. Now consider the pain if handcuffs prevented your movement.
* Thankfully, the handcuffs were taken off two hours before she delivered. But then she was restrained again in bed a day later. And every trip to the bathroom required leg shackles. When the nurse strongly objected, the sherrif’s department stayed absolute. The nurse said the new mother would not be able to clean herself properly with shackles. The sheriff’s guard said it didn’t matter; he was doing his job.
Didn’t we hear that excuse before at Nuremberg? Never forget; we still hardly remember. Our Jewish brothers and sisters deserve better from us.
* It also didn’t matter if the baby received the critical mother’s milk in its first days of life. The child was removed from its mother, and Ms. DeLaPaz was returned to jail.
* The final injury inflicted upon this CIVIL/MISDEMEANOR offender was the denial of her use of a breast pump to express her milk for the baby and her own comfort. The nurse again strongly objected, but the sheriff’s department again played law enforcer, physician and God.
* Ms. DeLaPaz returned to her jail cell in great pain from her swollen breasts. She could not sleep due to the agony.
* Meanwhile, her infant son was taken to a pediatrican. There he was tested and found to have a blood level containing a high measurement of a dangerous chemical that produces jaundice, a yellowing of the skin. My father had jaundice before he died of cancer, so the condition denotes the medical seriousness of the moment. The jaundice was from a lack of breastmilk.
…In Mrs. DeLaPaz’s case, it is a mother of three AMERICAN children who was giving birth to her fourth young one. Surely, this area’s and nation’s supposed “pro-life” forces should be up in arms.
Her crime was being illegally in this nation — a civil MISDEMEANOR — and driving without a license — a TRAFFIC OFFENSE.
So now you know why Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have come to Nashville. It happened in your own backyard. And there is no reason that it won’t happen again, next time to another very expectant mother stopped for a traffic offense in the Berry Hill section of Nashville.
From DMI Blog: A brief, but good post by Cristina Jimenez about the lack of factual and sensible coverage of immigration in the mainstream media.
Last month I wrote about a Media Mattersreport that revealed that when it comes to immigration and undocumented immigrants, instead of news and/or facts, we are getting a bunch of lies and misinformation. Cable news anchors like CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly use their “news shows” to promote a message of fear and anger, creating and encouraging hate and a strong sense of resentment against undocumented immigrants.
FL: MIAMI HERALD: Deportations jump by almost 50 percent in Florida - Federal immigration authorities deported 5,889 illegal immigrants in the first six months of 2008 to their home countries, including Colombia, Haiti, Jamaica and the Philippines.During the same period last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 3,942 immigrants.
MA: BOSTON GLOBE: Initiative seeks to aid immigrants - Governor Deval Patrick launched a statewide initiative yesterday to find ways to integrate immigrants into Massachusetts “as quickly as possible” at a time when their numbers are booming. The New Americans Initiative, modeled after a similar approach in Illinois, calls on state officials, policy advisers, and advocates to hold a series of public meetings across the state and draft a report with policy recommendations by July 1, 2009.
AZ: Arizona Star: Ballot Measure May Modify Hiring Law - Arizona voters will likely get a chance to do what lawmakers and a federal judge have so far refused to do - ease the state’s new law imposing sanctions on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. A business-financed group filed about 284,000 signatures Tuesday for its own version of a statute. Backers say their version provides “tough, enforceable, fair” laws. Only 153,365 signatures must be valid to qualify for the Nov. 4 ballot.
NE: Proposed ban on illegal immigrants stirs uproar in Fremont - A proposed law aimed at banishing illegal immigrants from Fremont, Neb., would require every renter -whether they were born in the United States or immigrated here - to obtain an occupancy license through the city.The proposal has sparked an outcry among advocates for Latinos.
More proof that we need comprehensive immigration reform, rather than the current “enforcement only” or state-by-state piecemeal approach. Everyone suffers at the hands of the broken system.
HINTON, Va. — Every morning, 26,000 white tom turkeys arrive at the Virginia Poultry Growers Cooperative plant in the Shenandoah Valley, where they are killed, gutted, cleaned, chilled, cut up and prepared for shipment by the end of the day. The work is hard and cold and messy, and few local residents are willing to do it.
So the cooperative relies heavily on immigrant workers. Its owners say that they do their best to weed out applicants who are in the country illegally but that their industry is increasingly squeezed by federal pressure on employers who hire illegal immigrants and criminal networks that sell false or stolen identity documents.
Now, poultry processors in Virginia and across the country are taking their case to Congress. Last week, several hundred industry leaders met in Washington to lobby for immigration changes and an improved document-checking system as well as relief from environmental rules that have doubled the price of the feed corn they buy for their birds.
“We depend on immigrants. If they all went away today, people like us couldn’t operate,” said Jim Mason, president of the cooperative, who visited a half-dozen congressional offices. “People think we hire Hispanics because we can get them cheaper, but it is absolutely false. We do everything the government asks and more to make sure our workers are legal, and we turn a lot of people away. But if an ID is stolen, there is nothing we can do.”
Last week, Governer Deval Patrick announced a new Massachusetts initiative to integrate immigrants “as quickly as possible” in the state.
Called “The New Americans Initiative”, the measure was modeled on a similar intiative in Illinois in 2005, which resulted in expanded services for immigrants - including english classes and citizenship assistance.
“The New Americans Initiative is a huge step from Governor Patrick proving that Massachusetts is a state founded, built and dependent of the immigrant community. The roles played by the Commonwealth’s current immigrants, who comprise, over 14 percent of the population and 17 percent of the workforce are important to show the importance of this executive order. We applaud the governor and affirm that we will continue to advocate for the rights and opportunities of all immigrants in Massachusetts.”
At a time when many states are pursuing anti-immigrant measures, following in the path of the federal government’s “enforcement only” policy, initiatives like this one in Massachusetts are a breath of fresh air in immigration policy.
Says Governor Patrick:
“Massachusetts is and has always been a Commonwealth of immigrants. Although immigration reform and enforcement is a federal issue, today’s reality is that states can and must find creative ways to better integrate immigrant and refugee populations through more coordinated services, including English language classes, job training, and citizenship assistance.”
Thanks to all of you who commented on last week’s post “The Truth About Postville”. I believe that that Dr. Camayd-Freixas’s report could represent a true turning-point in our country’s immigration debate - it will open people’s eyes to the injustice being carried out in the name of “homeland security”.
However, to those who posted stating things like:
They deserve even more punishment than they received…
What about those immigrants who play by the rules? And the rest of us who do, too?
And…
These people are ILLEGAL - send them back to where they came from. If they go through the proper channels and become legal immigrants BEFORE they cross our borders then they are welcome. Since they did not follow proper procedures - they are ILLEGAL and should be arrested, tried and impisoned!
I feel that I must remind you that many of the so called “illegals” you feel such strong hatred for are people who DID come through the legal channels, and were victims of increasing backlogs who then overstayed their visas.
In addition, ICE’s policy of “enforcement only” seems to not make any clear distinction between those who have proper documents and those who do not. Take for example, this story, of a woman who had all of the proper paperwork entitling her to work in the U.S., but was arrested in her home by ICE agents at 4:30am.
And to those of you who posted stating things like:
we are faced not with “hard working immigrants trying to feed their families” but with an outright invasion. I’ve seen police statistics that show Mexican gangs with over 100,000 members (collectively), the K13 group nationwide, the norteños and sureños in California and, most recently, a pocket of K13’s centered around Virginia. These are not just simple people trying to make a living; they are vicious criminals who take what they want and kill remorselessly. It’s very hard to take the comments of this well-known interpreter seriously when there is much deliberate criminality associated with illegal immigrants.
I ask you if our country is now safer because nearly 400 obviously hard-working people, who put in day after day, working in slave labor conditions, were arrested and shuffled unfairly through our “justice system”? It is a well-known fact that cable-news personalities like Lou Dobbs have extremely overstated the association of immigrants with criminality. I’m all for making public safey a priority, but when you are arresting and targeting the wrong people, how are you increasing the safety of the public?
There is no evidence to indicate that undocumented immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than American citizens; indeed, the evidence strongly suggests that immigrants in general are less likely to commit crimes.2 For instance, a 2005 study3 conducted by researchers from Harvard University and the University of Michigan revealed both that immigrants committed fewer crimes than native-born citizens, and that a greater proportion of immigrants in a neighborhood was associated with lower rates of crime.
Make sure to do your research - you will find that your automatic association of immigrants with criminals is not only statistically unsound, it is very thinly veiled prejudice against “the other”.
The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently released the number of migrants believed to have died in in their journey towards a better life over the U.S.-Mexican border.
117 people, with histories, families and dreams have died so far in 2008.
Immigration Agents have recently stepped up arrests of undocumented immigrants aboard Amtrak trains and Greyhound Buses in the New York City area. Although the practice has been in place for some time, its increasing frequency and scope smacks of racial profiling.
The patrols have sparked protests in the city as well as upstate, most recently last weekend in Syracuse, where a group said that agents have even targeted U.S. citizens who look “foreign”. Immigration attorneys say witnesses have said that agents sometimes question only people of color.
Additionally, its seems as though the Department of Homeland Security is allocating more resources and money towards this endeavor, instead of going after real criminals who jeopardize public safety.
We are a nation of law, but is their enforcement money better spent going after criminals and youth gangs?” asked the Rev. Brian Jordan, of the Franciscan Immigration Center in Manhattan, who has counseled one Irish and 12 Mexican and Central American undocumented immigrants who were taken off Greyhound buses and Amtrak trains in the past year.
