tag:newamericamedia.org,2009-04-06://19 2013-05-20T02:45:06Z New America Media is a nationwide association of over 3000 ethnic media organizations representing the development of a more inclusive journalism. Founded in 1996 by Pacific News Service, New America Media promotes ethnic media by strengthening the editorial and economic viability of this increasingly influential segment of America's communications industry. tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11452 2013-05-21T08:00:00Z 2013-05-20T02:45:06Z

Image: Domestic workers, many of them female immigrants, are rallying at capitols across America to urge legislators to pass laws that improve their labor conditions. (Photo: National Domestic Workers Alliance) Ed. Note: It is sometimes called the world’s largest...

Odette Yousef ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Image: Domestic workers, many of them female immigrants, are rallying at capitols across America to urge legislators to pass laws that improve their labor conditions. (Photo: National Domestic Workers Alliance)



Ed. Note: It is sometimes called the world’s largest invisible workforce and it’s expanding in the United States as our population ages. In this piece, the second in a series on domestic workers, we hear about nationwide efforts to improve the working conditions for these workers. Many are female immigrants who face special challenges as they try and improve their work life.

Myrla Baldonado left the Philippines for Chicago six years ago. Most of her time here, she cared for elderly people in their homes, attending to their round-the-clock needs. She made their beds, fixed meals, and monitored them for symptoms of stroke or illness. Baldonado worked like this for years—putting in 96-hour weeks—at $4 an hour.

“Like most immigrants, I tried not to pay attention to it,” says Baldonado.

She said that wage was standard, what other caregivers got, too. And she needed a job.

“But then when I started being shouted at and I felt being discriminated for not being an original English speaker, I felt so bad,” says Baldonado.

Baldonado recalls how the son of one client bullied her on the job. She asked her staffing agency for help. They told her to be more assertive, so she quit.

Now, Baldonado is an organizer pushing for legislation in Illinois to give other domestic workers more firepower in similar situations, especially newcomers to the US who might not realize their basic rights. Baldonado says it’s hard because people don’t think of domestic workers as … workers.

“It’s considered invisible, it’s not real work,” she says. “And it’s women’s work. So there’s so much cultural difficulty into asserting this kind of work.”

Many of the people involved in this movement use the word “invisible” when they describe domestic workers. One reason? Many of them are undocumented immigrants. A survey by the University of Illinois at Chicago found more than a third of domestic workers are here illegally. And of domestic workers: they are the most exploited and abused. Often, they earn less than their peers, are more likely to be injured on the job and less likely to quit or complain.

Ai-jen Poo says they do the work that Americans won’t do. “We often call it the work that makes all other work possible,” says Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, an advocacy group based in New York.

The group helped New York and Hawaii adopt Domestic Workers Bills of Rights. The proposed legislation would give domestic workers the right to overtime pay, paid time off, and freedom from sexual harassment.

The bills are also designed to protect domestic workers, with or without papers. Poo says that is crucial because federal laws make it difficult for domestic workers to unionize. So those without legal status have the least leverage to negotiate their working conditions.

“Often times, people will get fired for asking for a sick day,” says Poo.

In New York, domestic workers can now file complaints about mistreatment with the state’s labor department. Other states are considering similar measures. But there are new concerns now that Congress is debating new immigration laws.

So far, the proposals favor immigrants who can prove they have worked continuously in the US. They would also have employers tap into a verification system to check a worker’s status. That worries Maureen Purtill, an immigrant organizer with the Graton Day Labor Center in California. She says the proposal ignores cases where the employer’s just a family looking for a nanny. They might not be plugged into a verification system like a big business is.

“So women and families are especially vulnerable to being excluded from the immigration reform process,” says Purtill.

The National Domestic Workers Alliance is lobbying to clarify language in an immigration bill now making its way through the Senate. They want to make sure it gives low-wage women like domestic workers the chance to achieve legal status.

Meanwhile, Myrla Baldonado, from the Philippines, says organizing her fellow domestic workers is tough. Many have battered self-esteem and fear being reported to immigration officials and deported, but she is noticing that more are getting involved-for the same reason she did.

“I don’t want to live that way,” Baldonado says. “I don’t want to just live for the money and not get any respect, or… not get any dignity or respect for the work I’m doing.”

Baldonado is confident that domestic workers won’t be invisible much longer. And there’s good reason to believe that. Baby boomers are aging, and more immigrants are fulfilling the need for home caregivers—now projected to be among the fastest-growing occupations of the decade.

]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11449 2013-05-18T08:50:00Z 2013-05-17T20:33:16Z

Pelenise Faataui, a native of San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood, recently began teaching Polynesian dance to friends and neighbors in the area. The daughter of one of the first Samoans to settle in the largely African American community,...

Jean Melesaine ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Pelenise Faataui, a native of San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood, recently began teaching Polynesian dance to friends and neighbors in the area. The daughter of one of the first Samoans to settle in the largely African American community, Faataui has seen her share of violence, having lost a 14-year-old brother and several relatives to gang-related shootings. Her dance, she says, brings a sense of community and culture to residents struggling to cope with the violence plaguing their neighborhood. For now classes are held in front of her house in the West Point housing projects, despite the very real danger of catching a stray bullet. Faataui says she has begun reaching out to local community centers in the hopes of finding a safer place to continue her work.



Jean Melesaine is a native of San Francisco and grew up in Hunters Point. She is a writer and videographer with Silicon Valley DeBug, a project of New America Media. Her work focuses on the issues and concerns of the Pacific Islander community.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11445 2013-05-17T08:10:00Z 2013-05-17T20:51:11Z

Nannies, housecleaners, caregivers—they are sometimes called the world’s most invisible workforce. In the US alone, it’s estimated that more than 2 million people do this type of work. Most are women and many are immigrants. And pressure is growing...

Monica Campbell ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Nannies, housecleaners, caregivers—they are sometimes called the world’s most invisible workforce. In the US alone, it’s estimated that more than 2 million people do this type of work. Most are women and many are immigrants. And pressure is growing to address their working conditions. As part of our Global Nation coverage, The World’s Monica Campbell has our first piece in a series about domestic workers. It looks at a home aide from Fiji, her elderly employer, and a short documentary called “The Caretaker” highlighting these intimate partnerships.



A few years ago, Florence Tratar fell down. In her 80s, it was enough of a spill to change her life drastically and leave her bound to a wheelchair. And with no family nearby, she needed someone to move in and care for her immediately.

But nobody she hired clicked, until she found Joesy Gerrish, a caregiver from Fiji.

“I liked her right away,” says Tratar. So once Gerrish’s references checked out, she was hired and moved in to help Tratar full time. It’s easy to see why Tratar picked Gerrish. In her early 40s, she is energetic, has a quick laugh, and says she treats her employers like family.

Now, Gerrish gets up early every morning, makes Tratar’s meals, drives her to appointments.

“I do everything!” Gerrish says.

“Everything!” Tratar agrees. “I mean, whatever I have to do, Joesy does.”

I met Tratar and Gerrish in Sebastopol, California, north of San Francisco. The two women had ventured out to see a short documentary about Gerrish. The film, by San Francisco-based director Theo Rigby, shows how immigrant caregivers increasingly fill a demand in the United States to attend to the disabled and elderly.

The documentary shows Gerrish cooking and shopping for a previous employer, an ailing Japanese woman. She feeds her, turns her over so she won’t get bed sores. It’s non-stop work.

After the film, Tratar realized how little she knew about Gerrish’s life: How she misses Fiji—and how she’s in the US without legal authorization.

“This is a shock to me because I just didn’t know,” Tratar says.

She’s against hiring people without papers, she says. But she also can’t say why she never asked Gerrish for documentation. Maybe because she didn’t want to know, she says, because Gerrish was a good fit.

Meanwhile, Gerrish says she doesn’t worry about stepping out of the shadows so publicly. She tells Tratar how she’s hoping immigration reform might grant her legal status.

“It’s getting there,” Gerrish tells Tratar. “It’s a long journey but we’ll get there.”

Gerrish also tells Tratar how, in her off time, she is working to improve labor conditions for other caregivers, nannies and housekeepers. In California, it’s estimated that some 200,000 people do this type of work, many without papers.

She talks about women from Mexico she knows, along with other immigrants from elsewhere, who live in the US illegally and worry about getting deported on their way to work. Also, Gerrish says, she hears about women worried about getting paid, since they are off the books. If there is a dispute with an employer, wages can be held back and undocumented workers can be aware that they still have the right to claim wages.

“Oh, there’s a lot of that, getting paid under the table. A lot!” Tratar exclaims.

“Yes,” Gerrish says, “but that’s the only kind of work that we can do. We would like to do other stuff. But we’re stuck with that.”

Gerrish says she has felt mistreated by other employers.

“Oh, you’re like a slave,” she says. “Do this. Do that. Do that. I say, ‘Wait a minute, I only have two hands.’ But they want you right there, right there, right there. Otherwise, I’ll kick you out. But you have to do it. Otherwise what else can you do? You need to survive.”

Gerrish is working with labor advocate Maureen Purtill, who organizes immigrant women at the Graton Day Labor Center nearby, in Sonoma. Purtill remembers Gerrish’s reaction when she told her that, among other demands like overtime and vacation, they’d push for workers to get uninterrupted sleep.

“She burst into laughter, in this uncomfortable laughter, like, ‘Oh, I would love that. That would be amazing. I’ve never had the right to sleep five hours in a row, or eight hours in a row,” says Purtill. “Caregiving requires sometimes, you know, care every two hours if you’re caring for elderly people.”

It’s the case with Gerrish, who wakes up with Florence Tratar at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. every day.

“Oh my goodness gracious, you need domestic help,” says Tratar. “I don’t know what I would do without Joesy. I couldn’t survive.”

Tratar hopes that Gerrish will legalize her status in the US soon. She understands now that deportation is a constant worry for her caretaker.

“Everyday you live in fear, just looking behind your shoulder every day,” Gerrish says.

The question now is whether new legislation would let both women rest a little easier.]]> 47149832 tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11432 2013-05-15T15:14:39Z 2013-05-15T16:18:04Z

Ngoc Nguyen ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=70 SAN FRANCISCO -- For months, hundreds of community members and advocates participated in workshops throughout California to figure out how to spend millions generated through the state’s cap-and-trade program. Just when the groups finally hammered out an investment plan that would start to pump money back to communities, Gov. Brown proposed Tuesday to divert that money to the general fund.

Part of Brown’s May budget revise, advocates say the move is a setback for communities facing the greatest health threats from climate change.

“Communities of color were the ones that defeated Prop 23 [the so-called Dirty Energy Prop], carried margins electing Gov. Brown. This is the wrong time to not be making good on the promise of improving environment, health and job creation in these communities,” said Ryan Young, legal counsel for the Greenlining Institute, which sponsored legislation (SB 535) that directs a quarter of the cap-and-trade auction proceeds to disadvantaged communities.

The governor is proposing a one-time loan of $500 million from a greenhouse gas reduction (GHG) fund – where auction money is deposited – to the general fund. The figure is the projected auction revenues for 2012 to 2014. So far, the first two auctions – one last November and one in February – generated about $140 million.

Gov. Brown’s office deferred questions to the state Dept. of Finance and the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA).

In a statement, the Dept. of Finance called the loan “appropriate” and “fiscally prudent,” saying the agencies need more time “to design and develop their programs to ensure that … [they] maximize long term greenhouse gas reductions.”

“We felt it was premature,” said CalEPA spokesperson Jim Marxen. “We don’t know how much money we’re going to have. [The $500 million] is a projection … plus three additional auctions. As [the money] comes into [the GHG reduction fund] it will be loaned to the general fund.”

He added that the Air Resources Board (ARB), the agency tasked with implementing A.B. 32, will update the “Scoping Plan” by the end of the year.

“We can make a better decision with that info,” he said.

Mari Rose Taruc, state organizing director for the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), said she was “heavily disappointed” by the governor’s move.

“I don’t know what more vetting they could have done,” said Taruc, referring to the ARB’s process to craft an investment plan. “[They held] three workshops across the state … multiple hearings on this issue. [There were] lots of opportunities for public comment. It doesn’t make sense.”

APEN advocates on behalf of Southeast Asians and other residents in Richmond, Calif. who live near the Chevron oil refinery and face health impacts from pollution. Taruc said community members were very “excited about” and engaged in the ARB’s workshops to craft an investment plan, because they want healthy and prosperous communities.

She said the governor is diverting funds that are specifically intended to address climate change and “toward pollution reduction.” The impact of those funds would be diluted in the general fund, she said.

The state says it will pay back the loan with interest, but has not specified when it would do so.

“There were some win-win programs [in the investment plan],” said Young, the lawyer for the Greenlining Institute, including “low income energy efficiency…[and] restoring transit options for low income communities.”

Young said the governor’s decision isn’t necessary, pointing to the state’s budget surplus of $2.8 billion this fiscal year, and he called it “the wrong move.”

“We want to see tangible benefits starting now when the program is starting off. It’s precedent setting to do that,” he said. “Buy loaning these monies out, it really shortchanges these communities.”
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11412 2013-05-12T08:00:00Z 2013-05-17T19:53:07Z

Traducción al español Ed. Note: In August, University of California President Mark Yudof will step down after a five-year tenure that coincided with one of the worst economic downturns in recent memory and a historic demographic shift that continues...

Peter Schurmann/Video by Josue Rojas ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Traducción al español

Ed. Note: In August, University of California President Mark Yudof will step down after a five-year tenure that coincided with one of the worst economic downturns in recent memory and a historic demographic shift that continues to play out across the social and political landscape, as well as in higher education. Yudof spoke with New America Media editor Peter Schurmann about how the University of California has met these challenges and its plans for the road ahead.

New America Media: President Yudof, you took over as head of the UC system in 2008. What was the biggest challenge you faced at the time?

President Yudof: I think the major challenges hit almost immediately in 2008 or by the following year. I knew we were in an economic downturn but I didn’t know it was the greatest economic downturn since the 1930s. I figured our budgets were in trouble but I wasn’t anticipating cuts over the next few years of $800 plus million.

I would say admissions [policy] was another immediate challenge. My first few weeks in office, there was a faculty proposal to change the admissions system. I’m very avid for access, I’ve supported affirmative action and I’m very avid for diversity. But I also have a rule that I don’t sign anything that I don’t understand. It took me a while to understand the faculty’s proposal, and ultimately I endorsed it. It carried the Board of Regents and … led a few years later to a holistic admissions policy that said it’s not just numbers or your ranking in high school, but that you had to look at the whole student and if the person had overcome poverty or other challenging circumstances, or had particular talents.

NAM: You mention affirmative action. What’s your take on reports that show college diversity has in fact increased in its absence?

Yudof: I’ve been for affirmative action for a very long time, probably since the mid-to-late 70s. It’s something I’ve had a passion for. I’m very proud of the fact that we have a high degree of socioeconomic diversity. Over 40 percent of our students are Pell grant eligible. A place like Berkeley or UCLA or Davis has more Pell-eligible students than the whole Ivy League combined.

So I think we do a very good job of reaching out to low-income students. But it is not a substitute for one additional tool, which is affirmative action. If you actually look at the numbers, they’ve recovered some but African American enrollment is relatively flat - up just slightly from the time of Prop 209 [passed in 1997, prohibiting race-based admissions policies in California colleges and universities]. And while Hispanic enrollment is up, it really reflects the fact that Hispanics make up a greater share of the population of California. It’s not really a quantum leap in terms of our young Latinos and Latinas being able to gain access to the university. I think we could do a lot better if we had that additional tool.

NAM: Putting aside the question of affirmative action, what is the biggest obstacle to reaching young people who don’t see UC as a viable option?

Yudof: There are many obstacles. One is that mom and dad sit down with their kids at the kitchen table and decide they can’t afford it. So we created the Blue and Gold Program. Today, if you make under $80,000 a year [then] you don’t pay any tuition. That simple. You have to apply for your Pell grant and Cal grant, but if you don’t get everything you need, we guarantee that you will pay no tuition. And in fact we contribute toward the living costs and all that.

So one thing is you need financial aid. The second thing you need is clarity about financial aid. That’s very important. You can’t just say, “Trust me, come see us after you’re admitted.” A third thing is that high school graduation rates just aren’t what they should be. And college preparation just isn’t what it used to be. We can’t admit you and graduate you if you never got out of high school.

NAM: Now that you are leaving, what do you see as being the major challenges facing your successor?

Yudof: Well, there are a lot of challenges [and] money is big part of it. I mean, we should be taking 30,000 more students, but the state isn’t paying for the students we have. So money is a big problem. Expanding enrollment would help, but there’s no money to expand enrollment. That’s a major, major challenge here.

The second challenge is tuition. What we have is a highly differentiated system. And it’s highly redistributive. Roughly 30 percent of every dollar we take in from tuition we reinvest back in financial aid. So the nominal tuition is $12,000 but the real tuition is probably about $8500. It’s like the sticker price on an automobile: 62 percent of our students don’t pay the sticker price, [which is] income adjusted. But it’s still a problem, and particularly for the middle class because the higher your income, the less eligible you are for financial aid.

Another big challenge is that the [state] financial model is broken. The state isn’t likely to come up with a whole lot more money. Over the years we’ve lost about $800 million. We’re back about $150 million but we’re nowhere near the funding levels we had in 2007. I mean we’re way far away. We probably won’t approach those levels for another five or six years.

NAM: To what extent are the financial challenges facing the university a bigger question about public values?

Yudof: It does involve public values. And sometimes it’s public neglect. To some extent, the shifting values represent the shifting demographics. America as a whole is aging. People ask where their retirement income will come from, or how they will pay for their drug costs. It’s not to say they hate higher education, but there is a lot of competition for resources.

I [also] think there’s a loss of the sense of a common purpose, or the common wealth in this country. We build more toll roads today than ever because state governments find it so difficult to come up with the money to build freeways. We have more gated communities. We have more private than public police officers. There aren’t enough judges, and there’s not enough money to support the legal system. I see higher education like that. Too often it’s treated as a private good rather than a public good that has an impact on all of us.

NAM: The UC schools have long been the leader in higher education in California. How can they better serve the new majority of minority students in the state?

Yudof: That’s a key thing. We have higher graduation rates than just about any public university in the country. If you look at Nobel laureates, we have 60 of them, more than whole countries. We have very good graduation rates, including among minority students. So it’s a good place.

But that is the key question for the next 25 years. How can we be sure that we are serving California? And to serve California, it means you have to serve Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, whites and other groups. I think it’s an open question and I think we’re not where we need to be.

I think we need to be bigger than we are, with more students and more undergraduates. We also need to continue to be an open door for community college transfer students. Applications from community colleges are down because community colleges are being starved. They have 400,000 fewer students.

I think we need to do more on the e-learning side. I think we need an e-learning access to the university. We should have a curriculum online with specified for-credit courses that are open to potential transfer students. This would be an additional level that would allow for greater access.

NAM: How is the growing emphasis on technology impacting the curriculum? How useful, for example, are humanities?

Yudof: I’m worried about the humanities. Most of what I took in college was the humanities. If someone told me it was relevant, I didn’t take it. I took Greek thought and I took astronomy and I took philosophy and psychology. I was very good at abnormal psychology; it just came natural to me.

All these national efforts … that say if it doesn’t help in the physical sense or if it doesn’t put food on the table then it isn’t worth while, I don’t believe that for a moment. The corporations can do wonders teaching engineering or business principles, but I haven’t come across one yet that teaches Wallace Stevens or T.S. Elliot. I’m deeply worried that in this quest where the only education that matters is one that produces a very specific job outcome or product that humanities is going to get squeezed out. But students still pick the humanities and social sciences in very significant numbers. They’re carrying the banner.

NAM: The biggest issue for students who come to a UC school or any other university is employment. Where do you see the connection between higher education and jobs?

Yudof: I think we’re here to educate. I mean, we’re also here to help with the jobs but primarily to educate. And to me, the most important skills in a university setting are cognitive skills. Can you solve a problem? Can you synthesize ideas? Can you express yourself? I don’t believe you’re a good engineer if you just memorize the principles. You have to be able to apply them, and manipulate the concepts. My view of life is, no matter what you are - a neurosurgeon, or a postal employee - a person who can solve problems, and hold ideas in his or her head is extremely valuable. Our obligation, then, is to educate the students … [to ensure] that they learn to learn, that they’re creative, reflective. If we’re not doing that then we’re not educating.]]> 65979028 tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11334 2013-04-29T08:05:00Z 2013-04-29T16:38:41Z

SAN FRANCISCO--As the debate over immigration reform tugs predictably back in Washington, an undercurrent of ageism and disability bias has been flowing beneath more obvious racial and class implications.Take, for instance, the recent USA Today op-ed co-authored by former U.S....

Paul Kleyman ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=104 SAN FRANCISCO--As the debate over immigration reform tugs predictably back in Washington, an undercurrent of ageism and disability bias has been flowing beneath more obvious racial and class implications.

Take, for instance, the recent USA Today op-ed co-authored by former U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., now president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, which warned, “The truly enormous costs come when unauthorized immigrants start collecting retirement benefits.”

DeMint and his colleague continued, “Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and other entitlement programs already impose huge, unfunded liabilities on taxpayers.” The op-ed goes on to declare that “an amnesty” proposed for 11 million unauthorized immigrants will add significant taxpayer costs because unauthorized immigrants average only a 10th-grade education.

Doing the Right Thing

Rather than being a burden, however, according to the Social Security Administration’s chief actuary, those presumed drains on the system have been a boon. They add $15 billion a year to Social Security in payroll taxes, only taking out $1billion annually in benefits. In the long term, immigration reform would modestly cut Social Security’s deficit, not worsen it.

According to Pew Research, that’s partly because of future rising income and home ownership levels for those immigrants’ children.

“Those opposed to immigration reform have attempted to use vital programs, like Social Security, as an economic excuse to avoid doing the right thing,” said Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM).

In a policy brief last week, NCPSSM cited Edward Alden of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has said that immigration reform would actually lead to higher wages and allow immigrants to pay more towards Social Security.

"They’re going to pay more into the Social Security system. The CBO has run these numbers in the past, in the short-run there’s a big boost for the Social Security system," Alden said

White House and Senate ‘Roadmaps’

According to a new policy analysis by the National Hispanic Council on Aging (NHCOA) and National Council on Aging (NCOA), today’s approximately 11 million unauthorized immigrants include 1.3 million individuals ages 45-54, and another half million who are 55 and older.

NHCOA’s Jason Coates and NCOA policy analyst Joe Caldwell examined “roadmaps” to citizenship outlined so far by the White House and the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Eight,” with legislation to come in a few months.

Both proposals signal long waits before eligible immigrants could even apply for lawful permanent resident status (green cards) and citizenship. And their access to health care and economic security benefits, especially important to elders and those with disabilities, is in doubt.

Under the current proposals, unauthorized immigrants could end up waiting a decade or more to qualify for health care and other safety-net programs.

While the Senate plan would link the waiting period for being able to apply for green cards to some assurance of border security, the White House has proposed allowing undocumented immigrants provisional status for six-to-eight years before they could become permanent residents. (Both the administration and Senate frameworks would expedite the process for “DREAMers,” agricultural workers, and highly skilled immigrants with advanced degrees in such areas as science and technology.)

Once an immigrant waited through those years on provisional, or temporary status and qualified for a permanent status (the green card), he or she would begin the five-year process toward naturalization. During that time, the White House and Senate proposals would deny them access to federal benefits, such as Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps). President Obama’s proposal would deny access to subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. People could have to wait more than a decade for assistance.

Older adults would also have to wait that long to access Medicaid, which is the primary payer of long-term care in the U.S. States can waive the five-year waiting period normally required once someone becomes a permanent resident, but only for pregnant women and children, not for individuals with disabilities or seniors.

Statistics show that six-in-ten undocumented Hispanics is without health insurance.

They would also have to wait another five years -- that is about a decade after starting on the path to citizenship -- to qualify for federal Medicare.

Many of those 11 million undocumented people are overrepresented in low-paying and often physically demanding occupations, frequently incurring high rates of work-related injuries, and contributing to high rates of disability and chronic conditions over time.

Looming Shortage of Care Workers

The NHCOA-NCOA report also calls on the government to strengthen and stabilize the shrinking direct-care workforce, such as the nursing aides who assist patients with such crucial daily activities as getting dressed, taking medication, preparing meals and managing money.

The advocacy groups say reforms should afford these workers the same streamlined and expedited visa process as those proposed for scientists, engineers and workers in other high-need areas, because the nation is facing a looming shortage of care workers.

The paper explains that as the U.S. population ages, U.S. demand for long-term care will leap from today’s 12 million to 27 million by 2050. The country will need 1.6 million additional direct-care workers by 2020 and 3 million by 2030.

Immigration reform is vital for meeting that projected need, say NHCOA and NCOA, because almost one in four current direct-care workers is foreign born. About half today are naturalized citizens and others have legal status, “but a significant portion is estimated to be unauthorized.”

Policy changes offering these workers authorized immigration status would improve the quality of care, says the paper, by allowing for improved background checks, providing workers opportunities for training and career advancement, building registries to assist individuals and find workers, and enabling workers to legally drive.

“Comprehensive immigration reform will help millions come out of the shadows. Many of the half million older adult immigrants [among them] have worked for decades and contributed millions to Social Security,” said NHCOA’s Jason Coates. Rather than begrudging them income and health security protections they have earned, he added, “We should reward their contributions to the to the United States.”
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11316 2013-04-24T13:55:20Z 2013-04-24T19:06:58Z

Andrew Lam ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=8 SAN FRANCISCO -- As the story of the Tsarnaev brothers unfolds – from asylum, to attempts at assimilation and finally to terrorism -- I hear echoes of another set of brothers from my own country, Vietnam.
 
On April 4, 1991 three Vietnamese brothers and a friend – all teenagers – took over an electronics store in Sacramento, California. The group held forty-one people hostage, garnering national attention as journalists flocked outside the store. Inside, the boys prowled about with their guns, the hostages tied up.
 
What did the Nguyen brothers want?
 
They wanted $4 million dollars, 1000-year-old ginseng roots (thought to make one invincible in battle), helicopters and bulletproof jackets. Their plan: To fly back to Vietnam and take on the Vietcong.
 
Negotiators on the scene were baffled, and when talks broke down the four began to wound hostages as a means of showing they were serious. The SWAT team ultimately stormed the grounds, killing three of the four hostage takers and critically wounding the oldest of the three brothers. Three hostages were killed before the siege ended.
 
Today, the eldest brother, Loi Nguyen, is serving three consecutive life sentences for the crime.
 
Tamarlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, are the alleged perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings of last week, which claimed three lives and injured hundreds more.
 
Tamarlan was killed in a manhunt after the attack. His brother is now in custody and faces a possible death sentence.
 
Like the Tsarnaev’s, the Nguyen brothers were described by those who knew them as decent, even obedient children. They attended church regularly. There was little hint at the barbarism they would later commit. Their parents, too, in the aftermath of the bloodshed were left to wonder: Why?
 
Alas, not everyone who comes to America really manages to enter America. The late UC Berkeley sociologist Franz Schurmann once noted that the two paths for children of immigrants to become American once lay either through education or the military. But there’s no longer a draft, and the other institution, the American education system, is failing our kids.
 
The Tsarnaev brothers, though reportedly well-adjusted and well-liked, too, failed school. One of their uncles, when asked for an explanation of their actions, described them as “losers” who harbored a hatred of those who were able to settle into life in America. “These are the only reasons I can imagine. Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam, it's a fraud, it's a fake," he said.
 
Often the successful border crosser will use language to overcome shame by refusing silence. He will find ways to articulate and redefine himself; his revenge over his ignominious past is his successful transition in America, his newfound status. But when access to America’s grandeur is blocked or denied, especially for children from war-torn lands, old memories have a way of reaching out. Inherited trauma, ever-present in refugee homes, becomes seductive, something to latch one’s identity to.

Unable to move forward, they reach back to the wars of their homeland. Lacking imagination, violence by default becomes their game.
 
Though I have moved far from my own refugee past -- I’ve become an American writer and journalist -- I never underestimate the speed with which an immigrant boy can go off track, and how his vision of America as a land of milk and honey can quickly shift to that of a bona fide Waste Land with something as simple as a failing grade.
 
For children from strife-torn lands, the Old World, though distant and forsaken by the years, sometimes calls out for blood. The war, the humiliation, the subsequent exodus, life in exile, poverty, the continual subjugation of our people back home, our invisible refugee life in America – all are compounded into a kind of unshaped angst.  
 
The Tsarnaev brothers once again proved T.S. Eliot prophetic—in the bloody footsteps of the Nguyen brothers, the Virginia Tech Shooting, Oklahoma bombing, Columbine Massacre, and Waco – April seems indeed the cruelest month.  


Andrew Lam is the author of two books of essays, "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora," and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His latest book, a collection of stories about Vietnamese immigrants struggling to remake in America's west coast, "Birds of Paradise Lost," was published in march of 2013.  
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11308 2013-04-23T08:40:00Z 2013-04-23T16:23:22Z

Valeria Fernandez ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Luz Ruiz Rascón is a determined woman, the kind who can hold back her tears while she talks about one of the most difficult choices she’s had to make: to stay in jail and fight for her innocence.

Her son’s leukemia diagnosis was one of the biggest challenges for her entire family, up until she was arrested eight months ago at her workplace and incarcerated.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office accused her of several counts of identity theft and forgery for allegedly working with false documents. But Rascón, an undocumented immigrant, claims she’s never provided false paperwork.

Her case exposes the situation of hundreds of undocumented workers in Arizona who could face charges that would deny them a path to citizenship under immigration reform.

Proposed Reforms and the ‘Gang of Eight’

Proposed reforms would force the deportation of those with a record showing a felony or three misdemeanors. Immigrant advocates believe authorities are inflating minor charges for otherwise law-abiding immigrants to unfairly drive them out of the United States.

In Washington, D.C., a bipartisan group of senators called the “Gang of Eight” introduced an immigration reform package that has renewed hope for many but according to immigration experts will leave people like Luz outside. Conservative members of the bipartisan group are now calling for even tougher restrictions in the wake of last week’s Boston bombing.

The proposed “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” would grant a work permit to undocumented immigrants provided that they don’t have a criminal record.

In most of these cases, undocumented immigrants such as Rascón, age 38, take a guilty plea for the felony identity theft charge so they can be released from jail. Many don’t know the dire consequences that decision will have for them.

But not Rascón. She decided to take her case all the way to trial, if necessary, and has already spent eight months in jail. Her trial is set to begin on May 3. By a state law, known as Proposition 100, undocumented immigrants with serious charges--in her case six felony counts--don’t have a right to bail.

“I had my moments of frustration, desperation,” said Rascón in an interview in Spanish at Estrella jail, the Maricopa County facility that houses women.

Prosecutors have offered her a guilty plea to a lower-level felony, but this is considered under immigration law a crime of “moral turpitude,” which would make her deportable.

Delia Salvatierra took on Rascón’s case almost eight months ago, and decided to defend her pro bono. She had a stake in her fight too.

In recent years she started getting more and more cases where immigrants had a specific type of identity theft felony charge on their record that would make them deportable in the eyes of an immigration judge.

When she met Rascón she advised her that taking the plea could not only mean her automatic deportation but also hurt her changes to be eligible for immigration reform.

Staying in jail since her arrest last Aug. 9 hasn’t been easy for Rascón. She and four co-workers were caught in an immigration raid of her employer by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, under Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In jail, she found, there is no privacy, and there are frequent lock ups that require her to spend the entire day in her bed.

Maricopa County Jails have been scrutinized by the federal government resulting from a recent lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The suit contends that some Latino inmates are discriminated against due to their inability to speak English.

DOJ also alleges that in some instances the Sheriff’s immigration raids have discriminated against Latino workers.

This is one reason Salvatierra believes the federal government could provide an exception to these Arizona workers if immigration reform passes.

‘My Children Are Above Everything’

Rascón has had her moments of doubt. “I say, ‘I’ll leave if they don’t want me in this country, nevermind,’” she admitted. “But at the same time, I say, ‘No, no, no.’ I can’t throw away 20 years of my life here.

She took a job at the GNC vitamin supply company 11 years ago, eventually being put in charge of packaging the product for shipping. She starting her shift at 5 a.m., and usually worked eight to 10 hours at the $14-an-hour job. “It was a heavy job, but I liked it,” she said.

Mainly, she said, “My children are above anything. They are the ones that move me to wait and keep fighting.”

Her children, Irving and Litzzy--both U.S. citizens--visit their mother in jail as much as twice a week.

Irving, 18, drives his younger sister to school every morning, after his dad is long gone to work as a day laborer. Irving goes to a community college in the evening to study computer science.

“I know I’m my mother’s son,” he said, alluding to her care when he was diagnosed with leukemia. He’s proud of her choice to fight the charges in jail.

Rascón is concerned about making sure that Irving takes care of his health.

“Sometimes I don’t want them to come and see me,” she said in Spanish. “It is sad to see them and watch them walk away, and then wait for another visit.”

County Attorney Won’t Change Plea Offers

Since 2008, Arpaio’s office has conducted worksite raids under a state civil law aimed at cracking down on unlawful employers. But the Sheriff focused on arresting workers on felony charges of identity theft.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery asserts this charge is not immigration related but responds to an effort to fight the high volume of identity-theft crimes committed in the state.

Rascón’s attorney, Salvatierra, counters, “I don’t believe they’ve committed the kind of offense that requires nine or 10 months in pretrial incarceration.”

Montgomery said his agency won’t modify the type of pleas he offers to people arrested in the raids. “We’re going to handle these cases the way we handle every other case, and I’m not going to pick out one group of people for special treatment. I’m not supposed to do that. That’s actually unconstitutional,” he stated in an interview.

The county attorney has come under fire by several pro-immigrant groups for claiming to support comprehensive immigration reform while continuing to prosecute undocumented workers on charges of identity theft.

“I feel he’s really after our folks and to me it's not really a criminal act--although the state has made it that,” said Rosie Lopez, founder of the Hispanic Community Forum. “These people are hard working people, they’re honest. They’ve never done anything wrong, and this is simply because they wanted to feed their families.”

Montgomery joined the Real Arizona Coalition, a bipartisan group including businesses, religious leaders and others to craft a platform for immigration reform that was released last December.

The platform, called the Solution to Federal Immigration Reform (SANE), recommends that undocumented immigrants have a path to citizenship provided that they don’t have a criminal record “other than individual identity violations.”

During a public panel at Arizona State University (ASU) last week, civil rights attorney Daniel Ortega recognized people with this type of charge won’t be able to be part of immigration reform unless groups lobby on their behalf.

Montgomery, who was on the panel, said he has “already provided all the support that I can” by contributing ideas for the SANE platform as far as who should qualify.

He said that his stance on the platform was that you “may necessarily have to look at exempting employment-related offenses to encourage enough people to come forward and make it worthwhile.”

Salvatierra, Rascón’s attorney, said she was encouraged that there was more dialogue with the county attorney’s office and that he came out in support of comprehensive immigration reform.

She noted that prosecutors have a choice. For instance, they could offer a plea of solicitation of taking the identity of another, or solicitation to commit forgery.

“The Supreme Court is saying that you can take [immigration consequences] into consideration,” she said, when it comes to offering a plea.

She cited a 2010, U.S. Supreme Court decision, Padilla v. Kentucky, which determined that immigrants facing criminal charges have a right to be told of the immigration consequences if they decide to accept a plea.

The decision also says, “… informed consideration of possible deportation can only benefit both the State and noncitizen defendants during the plea-bargaining process. By bringing deportation consequences into this process, the defense and prosecution may well be able to reach agreements that better satisfy the interests of both parties.”

A Narrow Chance

Nationally groups like the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) have the joined CAMBIO campaign – to lobby for comprehensive immigration reform that would include, among many issues, due process for undocumented immigrants.

They advocate for immigration judges to be allowed to take into consideration different factors before deporting someone who has a crime on his or her record.

But the current proposal from the congressional “Gang of Eight” offers little flexibility when it comes to being inclusive of people who might not have spent a day in jail, said Kamal Essaheb, an immigration attorney at NILC.

“DREAMers” (undocumented youth brought to the U.S. in childhood) would have a faster path to a green card under the current proposal. But they also would be subject to the same type of criminal barriers, Essaheb added.

“We’re going to fight to make sure as many people as possible are included,” he said.

Essaheb said it was true that the eight senators included provisions to exclude barring people with a crime on their record in connection with state immigration laws, such as Arizona’s SB 1070.

But he said it is likely that wouldn’t extend to other enforcement, such as the case of people charged with identity theft.

Essaheb said that the lack of federal immigration reform has led to a proliferation of state laws that would exclude people depending on where they live.

“We don’t want Sheriff Arpaio deciding who should get legalized or who shouldn’t,” he said. “We want to make legalization accessible regardless of where you are or whether you live in a state that heavily criminalizes undocumented immigrants because of discriminatory policies.”



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Colorlines ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
It’s trendy to praise the democratization of media via the Internet as harnessing “the wisdom of crowds.” But this time, the crowds were dumb. Clouded by biases, CSI-wannabes deluged the Internet with pictures from the marathon marked up with theories about suspects. Those theories were too often based on pernicious assumptions about race and ethnicity. In one of the most widely circulated collection of images, a young man was singled out as a suspect because he was wearing a backpack, alone and brown. On the image, posted on 4chan, “alone” and “brown” were written in all caps. Subsequently, the website Reddit wrongly fingered a missing South Asian student from Brown University as the suspect—for which they, rightfully, later apologized.

We Americans all swim in centuries of racial bias only made more acute by 9/11 and its aftermath. Unchecked, such bias can take over. This is why we have public servants in the professional news media, to resist the rushing crowds of assumptions, to swim upstream by responding to biases and fear with context and insight. But in the wake of the Boston bombings, far too often, news media got caught downstream. Read more here.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11287 2013-04-17T21:00:00Z 2013-04-17T21:19:12Z

Ponte Al Día Editorial Staff ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 If there are any winners in the immigration reforms set out by the bipartisan Senate “Gang of 8” in the 844-page bill they released Tuesday night, it would have to be big business — which will see a significant increase in visas allotted to high-skilled workers and a new system of temporary visas for agricultural workers and low-skill laborers — and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — which not only is entrusted with all aspects of border security but gets a hefty chunk of the bill’s $17 billion price tag to do it.

The bill satisfies few on the left or the right. Republican Rep. Lamar Smith has already slammed the legislation, and hours after the bill was released anti-immigration activists were already protesting outside Sen. Marco Rubio’s office. The conservative Republican and Tea Party favorite quickly released a statement saying the legislation will implement the toughest border security and immigration law enforcement in U.S. history before “a single” undocumented immigrant is able to apply for permanent residence in the U.S.

And that is one of the concessions of the bill that concerns immigration advocates. The bill requires DHS to submit (within six months) a “Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy” to achieve the agreed effectiveness rate (90 percent of entries at high risk border sections are apprehended or turned back). Presumably the enhanced security measures would include double-layer fencing, use of unmanned drones and deployment of thousands of new border patrol agents. No undocumented immigrant already resident in the U.S. will be able to file for registered provisional status until this security strategy is approved.

After that, provided the undocumented immigrant has a clean legal record, can pay a $500 fee and the assessed taxes, he or she can register for the provisional status (which does not permit access to any of the benefits of permanent residency but does prevent summary deportation).

Provisional status can be renewed after six years, with payment of another fee. After 10 years, those with provisional status should be able to pay a $1,000 penalty and apply for permanent resident status, which would not be accorded until all existing family and employment green cards have cleared the system.

All of which means undocumented immigrants would have close to a 15 year wait for the possibility of permanent resident status. (DREAM-Act eligible young immigrants and agricultural workers would have an expedited 5-year wait until they can apply for permanent residence.)

And that’s in the ideal.

If the DHS were unable to complete the security strategy to Congress’ satisfaction within the allotted 180-day period, however, a “Southern Border Security Commission” would be appointed (consisting of the governors of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and border security experts designated by the President, the Speaker of the House, the House minority leader, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Senate Minority leader) and registry for provisional status would start only after this body could agree on a security strategy for the border. Right now that would mean Jan Brewer, Rick Perry, Susana Martinez and Jerry Brown would play a huge part in whether undocumented immigrants ever see the possibility of a green card.

The Gang of 8’s bill has satisfied neither LGBT advocates (it does not include same-sex spouses in family visas) nor faith-based advocates (who decry the exclusion of siblings and adult children). But the switch from family-reunification priority to skills-based merit visas fits the Gang of 8‘s materialistic approach to reforming immigration. There are benefits to extending the length of time undocumented immigrants stay at provisional status — namely, they continue to generate revenue (rent, food, sales tax and automatic payments into social security, among others) without any access to social security benefits, or government-assisted health care or educational aid. Moreover, the fees, penalties and back taxes to be levied on the road to a green card, no less citizenship, would provide a revenue stream of its own.

Low-skill guest workers also generate income for the municipalities that host them, and under this plan (which creates a new bureau to administrate the W-visas) they would conveniently be sent home after a three-year stint.

In many ways, the practical proposals in the bill are fitted to what we’ve learned from Georgia, Alabama and Arizona: economies are devastated when we institute punitive immigration measures.

But the Gang of 8’s approach is hard to love. And the message it projects couldn’t be more different than the one we are fond of quoting from the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty. No huddled masses for us, thanks, unless they’re temporary and go home after three years. And breathing free? That’s got to wait another 15 years.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11283 2013-04-17T00:15:00Z 2013-04-17T00:06:52Z

A trial date for a civil rights case involving the hotly-contested yoga curriculum offered to students at the Encinitas Union School District has been scheduled for May 20. The existing lawsuit, Sedlock vs. Baird, was filed by concerned parents of...

India-West ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
The existing lawsuit, Sedlock vs. Baird, was filed by concerned parents of EUSD on behalf of attorney Dean Broyles from the National Center for Law and Policy. The suit alleges that the district had incorporated Ashtanga yoga into the school’s curriculum, which “unlawfully promotes religious beliefs” and violates the U.S. Constitution, it says (I-W, March 8).

UT San Diego recently reported that San Diego Superior Court Judge John Meyer admitted in court that he also practices yoga. Broyles explained that he would not have an issue with the judge presiding over the case, as long as he would be able to “keep an open mind about the plaintiff’s argument regarding spiritual connections to yoga,” reported the paper

The yoga curriculum was implemented last year as part of a larger health and wellness initiative after EUSD received a $533,000 grant from the K.P. Jois Foundation.

David A. Peck, an attorney from Coast Law Group representing the association “Yes! Yoga for Encinitas Students,” recently filed an ex parte application March 28 to intervene in the case. Over 100 students from nine of the schools at EUSD and their parents are represented by the association, and support the school district’s decision to uphold the yoga curriculum.



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Andrew Lam, Helen Zia and Chitra Divakaruni ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Ed. Note: In early April the Associated Press announced that it would no longer use the word “illegal” when referring to undocumented immigrants. The decision has been hailed by immigrant rights groups and others, who say the term is a pejorative that dehumanizes large swaths of the U.S. population, immigrant and native-born alike. Below, authors Andrew Lam, Helen Zia and Chitra Divakaruni offer their own views on the term “illegal” through the lens of the immigrant experience.

My Americanization, A Love Story
Andrew Lam

When the Cold War ended and refugees from Vietnam fled en masse, western countries agreed on a cutoff date for hopeful entries. Up until then, anyone who escaped from communist Vietnam was given automatic political refugee status.

After July 2, 1989, however, most were deemed “economic” migrants – or what we refer to as “illegal” -- and forcefully repatriated.

For one family, the sudden shift proved a cruel twist of fate.

They came in two boats. One – carrying the father and two sons -- reached Hong Kong before the cutoff date. The other – with the mother and two more sons -- came a few days after. They became “illegal immigrants” and were sent back to Vietnam.

That experience showed me how labels can hold out the promise of a future, or rob you of it. In America, the two boys grew to become an engineer and a doctor. The mother and her two sons in Vietnam, however, were forced to depend on relatives to get by. Neither boy went to school.

I think of them when I hear the word “illegal.” And I think of my own experience.

My family left Vietnam in the aftermath of war. We fled without passports, entering the Philippines illegally, without entry permits or visas. We later arrived in America.

My Americanization story is a love story, a success story. Had I not been granted a place here, I cannot think of where I might have ended up. Perhaps sent back to Vietnam to toil in the new economic zone set up for children of the bourgeois class.

I certainly would not be on a book tour around the United States, speaking of the Vietnamese American experience and the transformational power that comes with giving immigrants in this country a fighting chance.

All Criminals from Mars Report to the INS!
Helen Zia

There's a TV commercial I remember from my early childhood, more than half a century ago. It was a US government public service announcement, of all things -- a grainy, black-and-white cartoon ordering "aliens" to report their whereabouts or face dire consequences.

The faces of the cartoon figures were featureless, almost inhuman, making it clear that an alien had more in common with a Martian than an American. That PSA appeared every year for most of my childhood, popping up while I watched Star Trek or the Three Stooges -- and I hated it.

There was something creepy, even shameful about the ad. Still, I didn't connect the faceless cartoon aliens to my mother and father, who were immigrants from China.

I was born in the US and therefore an American, thanks to Wong Kim Ark's lawsuit that was decided by the Supreme Court in 1898. But not my parents, they had not yet become naturalized Americans. It took me several years before I realized that the creepy "aliens" in the PSA were people like my mom and dad.

My parents never talked about this PSA with their children, nor did they ever tell us that they had once been threatened with deportation for overstaying their visas at the time of China's Communist revolution. Because they had some American-born infants, including this writer, the INS allowed them to stay.

But the stain of being "aliens" never washed away, especially during the austerity years of the Reagan administration in the 1980s. Suddenly the issue of "aliens" turned even uglier. An extremist, histrionic wind stuck the word "illegal" onto the word "alien," turning my Martian parents into something worse: "illegal aliens," criminals from Mars.

For the last three decades, these dehumanizing words have been applied to people like my parents. It's about time to call out this degrading language for what it is, and to return humanity back to those people, who, for whatever reason, are without documents. Now maybe some reasonable immigration policies can be made for human beings, not Martians.

The Words That Hurt Us
Chitra Divakaruni

I came to this country in the 1970s as the holder of a coveted “green card,” the official name of which was (and still remains) the Alien Registration Card. For years, every time I looked at that card, it made me cringe. I felt strange and un-American, of a different species. It took years of living around kind, helpful Americans for that term to stop stinging.

Thus it is with pleasure that I read of the Associated Press’s decision to drop the term “illegal immigrant” from its stylebook.

The term had several technical problems associated with it. It was an oxymoron (since an immigrant is a person who has entered a country legally); it was inaccurate (an action is illegal, not a person). But most of all, it was a term rife with prejudice. It lumped thousands of people into a single, negative category and made it easy for us to judge them as some kind of parasite feeding stealthily upon America’s bounty. It allowed us, through two brief words, to de-humanize them.

The term “illegal immigrant” harmed the people to whom it was applied, yes, but it harmed the rest of us, too, by promoting attitudes of superiority -- and racism. It is easy to turn such attitudes -- once condoned by law -- on anyone who looks different from us, by whom we feel threatened. It is easy to blame them for the troubles of the nation. Ultimately, this can only weaken America.

Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and the author of three books, including his latest, Birds of Paradise Lost. Helen Zia, author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, is an American journalist and scholar who has covered Asian American communities and social and political movements. Chitra Divakaruni is an award-winning author, poet and teacher. Her books include The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11257 2013-04-13T08:55:00Z 2013-04-12T23:21:06Z

Christie Thompson ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 In several men’s prisons across California, colored signs hang above cell doors: blue for black inmates, white for white, red, green or pink for Hispanic, yellow for everyone else.

Although it’s not an official policy, at least five California state prisons have a color-coding system.

On any given day, the color of a sign could mean the difference between inmates exercising in the prison yard or being confined to their cell. When prisoners attack guards or other inmates, California allows its corrections officers to restrict all prisoners of that same race or ethnicity to prevent further violence.

Prison officials have said such moves can be necessary in a system plagued by some of the worst race-based gang violence in the country. On April 1, at least four inmates were taken to the hospital after a fight broke out between over 60 black and Hispanic inmates in a Los Angeles jail.

Lawsuits

The labels “provide visual cues that allow prison officials to prevent race-based victimization, reduce race-based violence, and prevent thefts and assaults,” wrote the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in response to a lawsuit.

But legal advocates say such practices are deeply problematic. “I haven’t seen anything like it since the days of segregation, when you had colored drinking fountains,” said Rebekah Evenson, an attorney with the nonprofit Prison Law Office.

A federal class-action lawsuit  filed in 2011 by the Prison Law Office says race-based restrictions are an ineffective and unjust way of keeping prisoners safe.

“Rather than targeting actual gang members, they assume every person is a gang member based on the color of their skin,” said Evenson, one of the lead lawyers in the case. According to the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, California is the only state known to use race-based lockdowns.

State and federal courts have ruled against the practice multiple times. One state court judge concluded in 2002 that “managing inmates on the basis of ethnicity” was counterproductive, and instead increased hostilities among prisoners.

A recent review of corrections department reports, done for the Prison Law Office, suggests it’s still common practice. The analysis found that nearly half the 1,445 security-based lockdowns between January 2010 and November 2012 affected specific racial or ethnic groups. Inmates labeled as Hispanic were the most common targets, while inmates identified as “other,” (anyone not labeled black, white or Hispanic) were the least likely to be restricted.

Rejecting an inmate’s complaint in 2010, one prison’s inmate appeals reviewer noted that the department’s “policy is that when there is an incident involving any race, all inmates of that race are locked up.” Another review cited the same policy.

California’s corrections department spokesperson Terry Thornton said that's not department policy. Thornton said policy dictates that restrictions will not “target a specific racial or ethnic group unless there is a legitimate penological interest in doing so."

“A legitimate penological interest is safety, security,” Thornton said. “It’s protecting people’s lives.”

Prison Crowding Crisis

Prisoner advocates say race-based lockdowns may be yet another consequence of California’s crowding crisis. In 2011, the Supreme Court upheld a federal court ruling that crowding in the state’s prisons was severe enough to constitute cruel and unusual punishment, and required the state to cut its prison population.

Prison officials have blamed crowding for contributing to “an increase in riots and disturbances.” And the more inmates there are, the more likely it is that prison officials will respond to violence with broad-brush security measures, legal experts said.

The state prison’s population has dropped recently, though it’s still at nearly 150 percent of its designed capacity.

The state’s corrections officer union sided with plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case, claiming overcrowding compromised their ability to effectively run a prison. "Overcrowding in California’s prisons substantially increases the use of lockdowns," the organization wrote in a legal brief.

Certain security situations might require inmates to be kept from the prison yard, prohibited from receiving visitors, or blocked from classes and drug rehabilitation meetings — restrictions the department refers to as “modified programming." Analysis of corrections department reports found that nearly all of security lockdowns last year restricted outdoor exercise.

Hanif Abdullah is one of the inmates suing the state. Currently at California State Prison, Solano, Abdullah asserts he was placed on “modified programming” multiple times solely because he is black. A devout Muslim, he says he was kept from attending religious services as well as receiving adequate health care.

Another prisoner in the suit, Robert Mitchell, claims he was locked down “nearly continuously” for a year and a half at High Desert State Prison, because the sign outside his cell marked him as black. Mitchell testified that he suffered "muscular atrophy … and severe pain" when he was kept from exercising a leg injury.

The state denies that the lockdowns were race-based or unnecessarily long.

Identifying Gang ‘Enforcers’

Race-based lockdowns may end up being used simply because it’s not always clear-cut who’s in a gang and who’s not. Inmates may side with members of their own race or ethnicity for protection during a fight, without being a member of a race-based gang like the Aryan Brotherhood.

Law professor Sharon Dolovich, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who has testified against race-based lockdowns, said identifying the "enforcers" of such gangs would be a more effective deterrent to violence than locking down entire racial or ethnic groups.

Thornton, the prisons’ spokesperson, said the violence of a few inmates has a large impact on the entire prison. "A lot of inmates come to prison and they just want to do their time and go home," she said.

Identifying “enforcers” has challenges. A more targeted approach requires more trained personnel, which may be a tall order for California’s overburdened system. And another lawsuit brought on behalf of California prisoners claims that despite recent changes, prison officials still rely on questionable evidence, such as tattoos or certain books, to determine which inmates are gang members.

Beyond discrimination claims, the Prison Law Office lawsuit alleges lockdowns often last longer than necessary. Forty percent of security restrictions lasted less than a week, the analysis found, and more than 15 percent lasted more than a month. The complaint alleges some have lasted up to 10 years.

In a legal response filed last August, the state denied any lockdowns lasted longer than needed to secure the facility. Corrections spokeswoman Thornton said the department’s policy dictates restrictions “last no longer than necessary to restore institutional safety and security or to investigate the triggering event.”

“Prison administrators are not going to return a yard to regular programming until they know that people aren't going to try and kill each other again,” Thornton said.

Race-Based Punishment

After a state appeals court upheld a 2002 state ruling against raced-based punishment at maximum-security Pelican Bay prison in Northern California, officers took a different tack. They began assessing the risk posed by individual inmates to determine restrictions. A prison spokesperson at the time told the Sacramento Bee that violence had decreased as result of the new policy.

The decision was reinforced by a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held any use of racial classifications must be “narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest.” California prisons were ordered to stop segregating reception centers, where inmates stay for up to two months when they first arrive.

In the majority opinion, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote: “When government officials are permitted to use race as a proxy for gang membership and violence ... society as a whole suffers.”

But Pelican Bay returned to race-based restrictions in 2009, according to court testimony from two prison officials. Both testified an unnamed deputy director ordered them “to discontinue this [new] system, as it was ‘against Department policy.’”

The reinstated policy was struck down again in January when a state appeals court in Northern California upheld the trial court’s original ruling. “There are more narrowly tailored means of controlling violence than to restrict entire ethnic groups,” the trial judge wrote.

“Prison staff doesn’t have to impose race-based lockdowns in order to ensure security,” said the Prison Law Office’s Evenson. The group is pushing for an injunction to halt the practice across the state.
“They’ve gotten used to using it as a convenient shortcut, and prisoners continue to suffer just because of the color of their skin."




]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11258 2013-04-12T22:58:00Z 2013-04-12T23:05:26Z

SAN FRANCISCO -- With a draft immigration reform bill expected as soon as next week, advocates are calling on Congress to make sure any pathway to citizenship includes a sizable -- and often overlooked -- sector of the U.S. immigrant...

Elena Shore ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=7 SAN FRANCISCO -- With a draft immigration reform bill expected as soon as next week, advocates are calling on Congress to make sure any pathway to citizenship includes a sizable -- and often overlooked -- sector of the U.S. immigrant population: women.

As of 2011, 51.1 percent of all foreign-born people in the United States were women, a trend that has been building since the 1970s.

Yet they receive less than one-third of work visas, according to Miriam Yeung, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. That means a majority are denied employment, ostensibly excluding them from any reform that attaches citizenship to proof of work.

“When we’re talking about building a roadmap to citizenship, we need to include women,” Yeung told reporters during a national telebriefing on Thursday hosted by New America Media. Yeung also noted the inability to work leaves women financially dependent on a male spouse. It’s “a grave imbalance of power” in the home, she said, and one that makes women more vulnerable to problems like domestic violence.

The vast majority of immigrant women (70 percent) gain permanent residence in the United States through family-based visas, according to a report by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. Yet there is such a backlog in the system that many end up waiting years, even decades, to join their relatives in the United States.

Yeung is calling for an immigration reform bill that includes work visas for professions largely populated by women, such as domestic workers. She is also pushing for clearing backlogs in the family-based visa system that prevent relatives from joining their families here; making the United States a safe haven for survivors of trafficking; and due process rights.

She noted American women – who have outnumbered male voters in recent elections – could be a game changer in the movement for immigration reform.

NAPAWF has partnered with the National Domestic Workers Alliance to create a campaign aimed at bringing American women into the conversation about immigration reform. The campaign, called We Belong Together, organized a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in March on the effect of immigration reform on women and families. It also rallied hundreds of women for an April 10 march in Washington in support of immigration reform.

Other groups, including the Internet site MomsRising, have used social media and online activism to highlight the role of women in immigration reform.

“For the first time in my experience, immigration reform is being understood as a women’s issue,” observed Frank Sharry, who served as director of the National Immigration Forum for 17 years before founding the advocacy group America’s Voice.

As for Washington, Sharry noted, “both parties have a political incentive” to pass immigration reform. “The only thing that can screw it up is if Congress gets in their own way and they trip over each other on the their way to the finish line.”

The Race to the Finish Line

Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Washington, D.C. think tank Center for American Progress, said she was “optimistic that we’ll have a bill by this time next week.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee would then likely debate and make amendments to the bill during the month of May. It would then head to the Senate floor in early-mid June, Kelley estimates.

But what happens in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is a different story.

Kelley laid out three possible scenarios.

First, the House could wait to see what happens in the Senate; if the bill passes by a large majority, the House could decide to vote on the Senate bill. This is probably unlikely, especially if House Republicans perceive the Senate bill as being too lenient in its pathway to citizenship and too light on enforcement.

Second, the House could produce its own bill through the work of their own “Gang of Eight” – a bipartisan group of legislators who, like the group in the Senate of the same name, has been working on its own version of an immigration reform bill. Kelley notes that the bill being drafted in the House reportedly also has a legalization program.

The third scenario is that the House would give up on a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and instead opt for piecemeal legislation that tackles specific immigration-related issues separately.

Whatever emerges, Kelley estimates that with a majority of House Democrat votes and a handful of Republicans, the final bill would likely pass. “It’s possible we could be done by August,” Kelley said. “But there’s no certainty.”

Key Issues to Watch

When it comes to legalization, the question isn’t just how long an undocumented immigrant will have to wait before gaining residency and eventual citizenship, but also “how wide the path will be,” said Kelley.

Will legalization really be open to the 11 million undocumented immigrants already living in the United States or will some be left out, such as those with prior deportation orders, or those who have already been deported and have re-entered the country illegally? Will same-sex bi-national couples be able to apply for a green card through their spouse the way other married couples can?

The question of enforcement could be another stumbling block. Republicans have long touted enforcement and “border security” as a prerequisite to any kind of legalization program. Democrats, meanwhile, want to make sure that legalization is not dependent on an unattainable goal.

“We don’t want the status of 11 million people to be contingent on something happening at the border that’s hard to control and isn’t measurable,” said Kelley. She stressed instead the importance of concrete steps like producing an analysis or report on the border, or dispatching additional agents, resources and infrastructure.

Finally, the plight of families is another major consideration with any immigration reform bill. There are currently at least 4 to 5 million people waiting in a backlog for family-based visas, and advocates worry about who might be cut off if certain categories are eliminated.

Down the line, Kelley wonders if the requirements will be too onerous for people to meet. “Does the path maintain its width, or get narrower, and harder for people to stay on?”

Cashing In on Immigration Reform

With hope of reform also comes the opportunity for unscrupulous attorneys and notarios (notaries public), who could take advantage of the situation for their own financial gain, promising to help people apply for citizenship and then pocketing the money.

“I’m even worried that when the bill is announced next week, there will be notarios advertising – and that will be a rip-off,” said Frank Sharry of America’s Voice.

“The ethnic media,” he said, “has an important role to play to steer people to low-cost or no-cost attorneys and reputable attorneys.”

But, Sharry added, “the most important factor in the immigration debate isn’t money like in so many other issues – it’s votes.”

For Miriam Yeung of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, the question of how America treats immigrants comes down to how Americans see themselves.

“We know that families [in these communities] are really important,” she said. “I think this is a moment in our country to grapple with core values and who we value as family members.”
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11250 2013-04-12T08:20:00Z 2013-04-11T22:25:48Z

OAKLAND, Calif.--We are at a pivotal moment for the future of juvenile justice in this country. Youth crime is at historic lows throughout the nation and juvenile incarceration rates are also down. Many states have begun implementing or are considering...

David Muhammad ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 OAKLAND, Calif.--We are at a pivotal moment for the future of juvenile justice in this country. Youth crime is at historic lows throughout the nation and juvenile incarceration rates are also down. Many states have begun implementing or are considering significant juvenile-justice reform initiatives that can further reduce juvenile incarceration and improve the level of support and services for youth in their neighborhoods.

Nowhere is this more critical than in California. Over the past 15 years, California has experienced an astronomical 92 percent reduction in incarceration of the state's juvenile facilities.

At the same time, juvenile crime rates have also plummeted. According to Department of Justice statistics, in the past 10 years there has been a 32 percent decline in juvenile crime in California.

Improved State Budget Creates Challenge

But youth justice in California is at a crossroads now that the state is shifting more responsibility for administering juvenile justice to counties. The state is also considering closing down its juvenile system.

In a series of interviews I conducted recently with juvenile-justice experts, I asked, “What are the greatest challenges facing youth in the state today?” One foremost leader in the field gave a surprising response: "The state's improving budget situation."

One would think that an improved state-government budget would be a good development. But this leader explained that by having more money, the state may just return to massive incarceration--because it may not need to cut corrections budgets further. Unfortunately he is right.

There has been a long-standing lack of creativity and a reliance on ineffective practices when it comes to juvenile justice. Thankfully, though, there is a huge opportunity to fundamentally transform the system, invest in communities, further reduce youth crime rates--all without expending any additional resources.

I’m among those who envision a new way (some may argue, a very old way) of administering juvenile justice. Traditionally, village councils or tribal commissions were responsible for overseeing justice. Not strangers in sterile downtown buildings handing out punishments that make the lives of youth and their families worse, not better.

Imagine a system that has established Neighborhood Opportunity and Accountability Boards in each city. These locally controlled and operated boards include neighborhood residents--youth and families, clergy, professionals—who represent the entire community.

Then resource these boards with the same amount of funds that the government currently spends on that community.

Smarter Use of Same Millions

Say there is such a board every 20-30 square blocks. What about public costs in the most impoverished areas? Say, conservatively, there are high-concentration neighborhoods with 50 youth in the system. Multiplying that number by the average current amount of $150,000 spent on each youth per year in the juvenile justice system comes to a $7.5 million bill for that neighborhood annually.

That $7.5 million a year per low-income neighborhood is money already being spent, but with what results? If we lived by the correct and effective principle that incarceration should only be used for young people who truly pose a legitimate risk to the public safety, then the vast majority of those millions could be used to develop the neighborhood, to provide vital services and supports to young people and their family.

With that approach we could create a system of justice that builds and supports community, not destabilizes it, as happens now.

There is much discussion and interest in “restorative justice” in many juvenile-justice circles. But instead of just having a restorative justice program, cities could actually implement a system that restores youth, victims, family and community.

The Neighborhood Opportunity and Accountability Board would be responsible for working with youth who have engaged in delinquency, having them engage with any victim of their acts and providing needed services and supports to the youth and their family. The board would determine and mandate that the young person perform some community service in their own neighborhood and engage in a restorative process with any victim.

We are a long way away from such a system. But with vision, leadership and courage -- and without any new money – American society can build a system that develops community, supports youth and family and reduces crime.

David Muhammad is the CEO of Solutions, Inc., which provides consultation to government agencies and philanthropic foundations. He was formally the Chief Probation Officer of Alameda County in California and before that served as Deputy Commission of Probation for New York City.




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