VAWA and the far-right GOP
I’m writing in Al Jazeera today about how the fight over the Violence Against Women Act exemplifies the increased extremism of the Republican party. A bit:
...read moreOn Being A Good Lebanese Girl
Or a good Greek girl. Or a good Indian girl. Or a good Mexican girl. Or a good any-ethnicity-that-has-ever-been-shoved-down-your-throat-ever girl. I want you to meet Charlie. Charlie and I met each other just a little over a year ago—but I can’t believe it’s only been that short. He was holding an appletini and talking about [...]
...read moreImmigration Good + Bad
The good news is that Obama announced an initiative that would stop the deportation of immigrants who came here as children and have either completed high school or served in the military. The bad news is that by many measures, children in immigrant families — 9 out of 10 of whom are U.S. citizens — aren’t doing as well as children of U.S.-born parents. Children of immigrant parents are less likely to complete high school, more likely to live in poverty, less likely to have health insurance and significantly less likely to become proficient in English by the 4th grade (and if a child isn’t proficient in English by the 4th grade, it’s unlikely they’ll ever catch up).
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Filming Against Odds: Undocumented Youth “Come Out” With Their Dreams
By Anne Galisky, cross-posted at On The Issues Magazine.
“Papers”is the story of undocumented youth and the challenges they face as they turn 18 without legal status. More than two million undocumented children live in the U.S. today, most with no path to obtain citizenship. These are youth who were born outside the U.S. and yet know only the U.S. as home. The film highlights five undocumented youth who are “American” in every sense but their legal paperwork.
...read moreThere Are No Perfect Accusers.
The big story in the news today is the release on Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the sexual assault case against him teeters. The New York Times features a breathtakingly victim-blamey article about the accuser’s credibility, detailing the ways in which she is not a perfect human being: The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on [...]
...read moreMy Life as an Undocumented Immigrant
A must-read this morning. I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it. I’ve tried. Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high [...]
...read moreJayaben Desai, 1933-2010
Jayaben Desai has died at 77 years of age. From The Hindu: The diminutive India-born Ms. Desai, who moved to Britain from Tanzania in 1969, came to be known as a “lioness” for her role in leading the two-year long strike at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories, north London, in the 1970s to demand union [...]
...read moreTaking Babies from Undocumented Immigrants
Encarnación Romero was an undocumented immigrant working at a poultry plant in Missouri when she was arrested in 2007 during a raid by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She was jailed for two years for federal identity theft, because she used a fake name and Social Security number when applying for her job (those charges, [...]
...read moreYes, I’m sure immigrants are crossing the desert by foot for the free water
I can’t believe that this is even a dispute, or that there are people who seriously think it should be illegal to leave jugs of water out for desperate immigrants walking across the Arizona desert. Two years ago, Daniel J. Millis was ticketed for littering after he was caught by a federal Fish and Wildlife [...]
...read moreOne of my favourite bits of cognitive dissonance
There’s something that always gets me about white people who want to restrict immigration so as to preserve their cultural and racial dominance, which is supposedly under threat, in a given country. Who want to ban, for instance, Muslim women from wearing clothing of religious, cultural and social importance because they feel uncomfortable encountering the [...]
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