Happy New Year!

One of my new year's resolutions is to start blogging more, so here I am! After a lovely and relaxing Christmas and New Year, I am back in the swing of things at work, and nearly all my roommates have returned home.

I was in charge of planning spirituality night this evening. I love Christmas for many reasons, but one is this: when you think about it, this is a holiday celebrating a newborn baby who was conceived outside of marriage, born to a teen mom. This savior, God incarnate, was born into a poor family, rejected by those around him even before he was born. For my community's spirituality night, I read this quote by Thomas Merton:

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet He must be in it, His place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.

On another Christmas-y social justice theme, this week is National Migration Week. As my friend Stephanie said, "Be nice to immigrants." Don't forget, young Jesus was a migrant too.

immigration

It's always easier to feel passionate about something when it directly affects you or someone you care about.

On Wednesday I got an email from my friend saying that her boyfriend, who is from England and has been in the U.S. this last year on a volunteer visa, had his application for another volunteer visa denied. His ties in the U.K. aren't strong enough to convince the U.S. government that he'll want to go back. Their plans for this coming year were torn apart. Now he'll try to get a work permit, and if that doesn't work, they might just get married (the fiance visa can take many months and lots of money, though). If he tries to come as a tourist during this time and they decide not to let him in, he could be banned from the country for 10 years.

This morning I got a text from my now former coworker saying that one of the people whose case I had worked on (someone I had spent quite a bit of time with) just got deported. He had been living here for years, spoke very good English, and held a steady job. He got picked up by county police for outstanding traffic tickets, handed over to ICE, and shipped back to Mexico. All of his belongings are in the U.S. He's staying in a shelter and all he has is the money that was in his pocket. He called to see if we could talk to a lawyer and see if there's a way he can come to the U.S. legally. I know the answer already - no way. He'll probably cross illegally again, which will most likely cost thousands of dollars and/or put him in great danger.

The harshness of the immigration system is much clearer when you know the people whose lives are being disrupted and destroyed by it. When you hear abstract talk of immigration reform, remember that these are real people whose fates are being discussed, and we need to do something so that the human rights and dignity of every person are respected.

DREAM Act

You can kind of see me in the background here...



Hamilton is a coworker of mine, and Sara is an awesome intern at HIWJ.

Please contact your members of Congress and ask them to support the DREAM Act! It gives undocumented students who have been in the U.S. for at least a few years and graduated from a U.S. high school a legal status and path to citizenship if they go to at least 2 years of college or serve in the military. This could make a huge difference in a lot of people's lives.

"Our Town" Story

For a recent JVC retreat, each community put together an "Our Town" presentation, to share with the other communities a bit about the places we live. Each of us in my community wrote a brief story from the perspective of someone with whom we would interact through our work. This is what I wrote (this is not a real person's story, but it includes the typical problems we hear):

My name is José Valenzuela, and I came from Mexico to Houston three years ago. I had to leave because I couldn't earn enough money to support my family. The job that I had in Mexico didn't even pay enough for us to buy tortillas. I tried to find work that paid more, but it was impossible. Coming to this country was my only option. I came to the U.S. without papers, and I am always afraid that I will be caught and deported. My wife and three children still live in Mexico, and I send money back as often as I can – they depend on me. I miss them very much. Because I don't have a social security number, it's difficult to find a steady job, so I work as a day laborer. I go to the Woodridge Home Depot every morning at 5:30 a.m. Some days I get paid well, and other days I don't get picked up and don't get any money at all. Three weeks ago, a man hired a group of us to work on an apartment building that was damaged in the hurricane. It had flooded, and the carpet was soaking wet and smelled like mold. When he hired us, he said he would pay us $15 an hour. There were five of us, and we worked very hard. We worked ten hours a day, six days a week, for three whole weeks. He told us he would pay us when the job was finished and he saw that we had done well. After a few days, I started coughing a lot, and I got a rash on my arms. I asked for gloves and a mask, but he said no, and that if I wanted to leave I could because he would just find someone else to do the job. We all kept working, and we did everything he asked us to do. One week into the job, I was ripping up floorboards and got a really bad cut on my hand. The boss took me to the hospital, and he said their insurance would pay for it. At the end of the three weeks, we had finished the job, and he handed us checks for $500 each. I said that he owed us a lot more money, but he told me I had worked too slowly, and that's all I deserved. I told him he was breaking the law, but he said that since I was undocumented he didn't have to pay minimum wage, and if I did anything he would call the migra, and they would deport me. He also refused to pay my medical bills from my hand injury. I didn't know what to do, and I was afraid. What am I going to tell my family?

Note that if someone does a job, all labor laws (including minimum wage) apply, regardless of immigration status.

Let's Waive Some Laws 'Cause we Feel Like it

I have this problem when I haven't blogged for a really long time that then when I want to blog I feel like I have to write about everything I've wanted to write about since the last time I blogged. But every time I see something that makes me mad, I get a little closer to finally blogging. Here's what pushed me over the edge today:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a plea by environmental groups to rein in the Bush administration's power to waive laws and regulations to speed construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has used authority given to him by Congress in 2005 to ignore environmental and other laws and regulations to move forward with hundreds of miles of fencing in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

The case rejected by the court involved a two-mile section of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The section has since been built.

"I am extremely disappointed in the court's decision," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said. "This waiver will only prolong the department from addressing the real issue: their lack of a comprehensive border security plan."

Thompson chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. He and 13 other House democrats — including six other committee chairs — filed a brief in support of the environmentalists' appeal.

Earlier this year, Chertoff waived more than 30 laws and regulations in an effort to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest border. Administration officials have said that invoking the legal waivers — which Congress authorized in 1996 and 2005 laws — will cut through bureaucratic red tape and sidestep environmental laws that currently stand in the way of fence construction.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080623/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_border_fence

*sigh*

I had read about this before, but I forgot about it. How did this government happen?

Immigration Facts

This afternoon, our Amnesty International group is doing an immigration thing in Harney during dead hour, in conjunction with SOA Watch's series of events (Not For Sale will have something too, so it will be a big ol' social justice party). I volunteered to make handouts, so I thought I'd share them here. They could be better, but they're all right (the info is mainly copied and pasted from a paper I wrote last semester).

Immigration Facts:

• There are over 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, over half of whom are from Mexico.(1)
• In 1993, at least 205 immigrants died crossing the border into the U.S., and in 2005 the number was over 460.(2) As more border fences go up and security increases (such as with the 1994 Operation Gatekeeper), immigrants must go through very dangerous places, like the desert, to reach the U.S.(3) People die from suffocation, dehydration, hypothermia, and hyperthermia, among other things.
• 94% of adult male undocumented immigrants work, in contrast with 86% of legal immigrants and 83% of natives. Undocumented immigrants made up about 4.9% of the workforce in 2005.(4)
• In the last five years, Mexican immigrants in the U.S. have sent over $90 billion to Mexico. Mexico receives more money from remittances than tourism, and remittances are Mexico’s second largest source of foreign income, after oil.(5) These remesas help sustain families suffering from poverty.
• Immigrants are HUMAN BEINGS.

1. Hoefer, Michael, Nancy Rytina, and Christopher Campbell. “Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2006.” Immigration Statistics. Department of Homeland Security. http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ill_pe_2006.pdf.
2. Hill, Jacob. “Free Trade and Immigration: Cause and Effect.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs. 18 July 2007. http://www.coha.org/2007/07/18/free-trade-and-immigration-cause-and-effect/.
3. Romellón, Jorge Santibáñez. “Migration and Borders: The Space for Contradiction, page 2.” Border Battles. 31 Aug. 2006. Social Science Research Council. http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Santibanez/index1.html.
4. Passel, Jeffrey S. “The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized Migrant Population in the U.S.” Pew Hispanic Center. 7 Mar. 2006. http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/61.pdf.
5. "Finance And Economics: Counting the Cash; Remittances to Latin America." The Economist 6 Oct. 2007: 102.