From: AP

The U.S. Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, saying the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics.
The lawsuit calls Arpaio and his office’s defiance “unprecedented,” and said the federal government has been trying since March 2009 to get officials to comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and having English-only policies in his jails that discriminates against people with limited English skills.
Arpaio had been given until Aug. 17 to hand over documents it first asked for 15 months ago.
Arpaio’s attorney, Robert Driscoll, declined immediate comment on the lawsuit, saying he had just received it and hadn’t yet conferred with his client.
Arpaio’s office had said it has fully cooperated in the jail inquiry but won’t hand over additional documents into the examination of the alleged unconstitutional searches because federal authorities haven’t said exactly what they were investigating.
It’s the latest action against Arizona by the federal government, which earlier sued the state to stop its strict new immigration law that requires police officers to question people about their immigration status.
“The actions of the sheriff’s office are unprecedented,” said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division. “It is unfortunate that the department was forced to resort to litigation to gain access to public documents and facilities.”
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix and names Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the county.
Arizona’s new law — most of which a federal judge has put on hold — mirrors many of the policies Arpaio has put into place in the greater Phoenix area, where he set up a hot line for the public to report immigration violations, conducts crime and immigration sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods and frequently raids workplaces for people in the U.S. illegally.
Arpaio believes the inquiry is focused on his immigration sweeps, patrols where deputies flood an area of a city — in some cases heavily Latino areas — to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders.
Critics say his deputies pull people over for minor traffic infractions because of the color of their skin so they can ask them for their proof of citizenship.
Arpaio denies allegations of racial profiling, saying people are stopped if deputies have probable cause to believe they’ve committed crimes and that it’s only afterward that deputies find many of them are illegal immigrants.
The sheriff’s office has said half of the 1,032 people arrested in the sweeps have been illegal immigrants.
Last year, the federal government stripped Arpaio of his special power to enforce federal immigration law. The sheriff continued his sweeps through the enforcement of state immigration laws.
Last year, the nearly $113 million that the county received from the federal government accounted for about 5 percent of the county’s $2 billion budget. Arpaio’s office said it receives $3 million to $4 million each year in federal funds.
In a separate investigation, a federal grand jury in Phoenix is examining allegations that Arpaio has abused his powers with actions such as intimidating county workers by showing up at their homes at nights and on weekends.

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From: Huffington Post

Students should be focused on getting back to school right now, not worrying about whether their parents will be targeted because they look Latino. Policies that target immigrants and their families have left Latino youth feeling anxious and frustrated, yet motivated to defend traditional American values such as fairness, freedom, and respect for diversity.

Today, NCLR released A Wake-Up Call: Latino Youth Speak Out About Arizona SB 1070, the findings from a forum held in July with 150 Latino youth leaders about Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, which is under temporary injunction but has been widely criticized by civil rights groups for attempting to legitimize and legalize racial profiling. Young people are our future leaders, workers, and voters. Raising them in an environment where Latinos are vilified and face discrimination is detrimental to our nation.

SB 1070 took effect as of July 29, but a U.S. District Court judge enjoined some of the most controversial elements of the law, including those that would have legitimized racial profiling and preempted federal authority over immigration laws.

The temporary injunction is expected to be reviewed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on November 2. Despite concerns over the constitutionality and consequences of this law, similar legislation has been floated in 22 other states. NCLR is among leading civil rights, labor, and faith organizations that have organized to boycott Arizona until the law is permanently repealed, overturned by the courts, or superseded by federal comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

NCLR researchers spoke with the Hispanic teenagers–most of whom are college students and second-generation Americans from across the nation–at its youth leadership convening, the Líderes Summit, during the 2010 NCLR Annual Conference in San Antonio in July. Their comments reveal the impact that anti-immigrant rhetoric, policies, and sentiment have on the everyday lives of Latino youth. One participant said that discrimination “is unjust and makes me as a Latino feel like less of a person.”

The youth spoke about their worries for family and friends, their alarm over racial profiling and discrimination, and growing concern over the disintegration of equality and respect for diversity. They expressed concern about the current collapse of American values, with one student saying: “It makes people lose hope for justice being served in the U.S.A.” They also spoke about their resolve to overcome these challenges by taking action and getting more engaged in their communities.

We will see more and more young Hispanics registering to vote and playing a larger role in determining our country’s political landscape. Rather than bashing immigrants and Latinos, politicians should focus on educating this next generation of leaders so they can in turn strengthen our economy and champion cherished American values such as fairness and justice.

Latino youth represent 22% of the U.S. population under the age of 18, and 92% are U.S. citizens. They are a potentially powerful voting bloc. According to Democracia U.S.A.’s analysis of U.S. Census data, 500,000 Hispanics will turn 18–making them eligible to vote– every year for the next 20 years. It would not be smart for our leaders to continue to ignore injustices against the Hispanic community. Now, more than ever, legislators must turn a deaf ear to the loud, divisive rhetoric of the immigration debate and work to find real solutions. Now, more than ever, Americans must take action and voice their disgust with SB1070. Make a personal pledge to boycott intolerance and send a message that enough is enough.

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From: Imagine 2050

The following article is one of a series of accounts from students who recently returned from Arizona. They were part of a delegation that spent a week touring the state amid the enactment of controversial law SB 1070. The Center for New Community, a national civil rights organization based in Chicago, sponsored the trip, which included nine students from Washington D.C., New York, Chicago and Colorado.

Imagine if an imagination was all you needed: to begin, to finish, to follow through.
What if all your tomorrow consisted of was your development in thought from today?
That’s where dreams come from…
You think it in your head, you see it through your eyes, then show others through your action.
And just like that, history repeats itself.
Today is a good day to dream. If you don’t agree, try asking someone who can’t.
Success only occurs when preparation meets opportunity, but NOTHING can birth without being conceived first.
Dreams in Arizona have been swept away: not only from the undocumented, but the youth that follow.
Not because dreams were never conceived, but because they have been aborted.
What if your skin’s pigment had everything to do with your way of life?
Imagine living each day like it’s your last.
Imagine having to risk your life crossing a desert just to create one for your children.
What if your ethnicity/culture just wasn’t good enough to be considered the “American Way?”
Imagine having a racist Sheriff endorse the slaying of your people, who have committed no wrong; amnesty was null and void.
Imagine being denied your ethnic history in schools and chastised only to be underpaid.
Everything begins with just a thought. Have you thought about it?
Can you imagine? You don’t have to, all of these things are going on.
Right here in America!
Taisha Hawkins is a Howard University Accounting Major, mogul in the making, aspiring to inspire

Popularity: 2% [?]

From: Ponte Al Dia

A story lost from history books prompted an evening coffee house mix of three dozen college students and curious capital professionals — nearly all females — to listen intently as author Philippa Strum revisited the events behind Méndez v. Westminster, a California Ninth Judicial Circuit Court decision that preceded Topeka’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education by eight years.

Strum’s PowerPoint presentation was a revelation for several Latino students unaware of the Mexican-American family that ended California’s schoolhouse segregation in 1946.

Gonzalo and Felícitas Méndez were farmers who tried to enroll their children in a “white” school just over 100 miles north of the Mexican border. The children were turned away and told to attend a nearby school for Mexican Americans. As Strum describes in her book, Méndez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican-American Rights, the children were seen as “visibly darker,” as the admissions advisor noticed their last names were “all too clearly Mexican.”

Judge Paul McCormick concluded that Spanish-speaking students are unable to learn English if segregated, a paralleled opinion during the Brown case..

At Q&A time, a Latina law student rose to the mike and admitted she never heard about the case. She asked Strum if she would consider bringing the historic trial to the attention of lecturers at law schools.

Strum, national secretary of the American Civil Liberties Union and a teacher of constitutional law for 35 years in New York City, added that the case isn’t even mentioned in constitutional law books.

Strum, there to promote and sign copies of her book, published this year by the University Press of Kansas, said she discovered the case by accident.

“One day in 2007, I read an article about a postage stamp that had just been issued called Méndez v. Westminster, Having taught constitutional law for all those years, I said, ‘Something is wrong here,’ I had never heard of this case. How is this possible?”

While engaged in research, she found it “a very important part of American history.”

It set legal precedent at the California Supreme Court level by ruling segregation in California’s schools was unlawful.

California Governor Earl Warren agreed with the court’s decision that “separate but equal” wasn’t really equal. He pushed for state desegregation statutes in 1947. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1953, a year before the Brown decision.

The California case provided a test run for lawyers in the Topeka case.

Aside from legal language, Strum brought the Méndezes’ struggle to life, highlighting facts and photos that depicted their school environment and living conditions.

“I was really impressed by the vibrancy of these maltreated communities,…homes they build themselves out of wood lacked refrigeration and flush toilets…There was lots of labor organizing in Latino communities…These were not people who would be satisfied being treated as second-class citizens, and that was a wonderful thing to see.”

TeachingforChange executive director Deborah Menkart found the lecture inspiring. “When students learn from this and other cases about the role ordinary people can play, it gives them a sense they can, too,” she reacted. “They don’t have to wait for a hero to come along.”

Sylvia Méndez, 74, one of the family’s daughters who was turned away from the segregated school, remembered how it marked her life.

She didn’t want to pursue college, but her mother Felícitas reminded her of significance of their struggle.

Twelve years ago, Sylvia promised her mom she would promote the story into California‘s history. Now, as she accepts speaking engagements in public schools, she notices a surprising enthusiasm, “The students — especially Latinos — are so excited, they ask, “Why don’t we know about this history? Why don’t we know it was Latinos who desegregated California?”

Sylvia introduced legislation in Sacramento to include the Méndez case into California’s school textbooks, but it was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. With a different governor in November, she hopes the lost story that shattered California’s segregated past will inspire all children.

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From: Washington Post

Hector Ortega stumbled across the body of a fellow migrant as he walked across Arizona’s harsh desert in the searing summer heat. He tried not to look too closely.

With nothing to be done for the deceased, Ortega and the others trudged on, guided by a smuggler across the U.S. border, determined to complete their illegal odyssey even as they endured record-high temperatures and fever-pitch resentment.

At 64, the farm laborer with a weathered face, strong hands and silver hair protruding from his baseball cap was stoic about the body - someone’s journey cut short near a stand of scrub bush and cactus.

“What can you do about it in the desert?” he asked.

Deaths of illegal immigrants in Arizona have soared this summer toward their highest levels since 2005 - a fact that has surprised many who thought that the furor over the state’s new immigration law and the 100-plus degree heat would draw them elsewhere along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

But at the Pima County morgue in Tucson, Ariz., the body bags are stacked on stainless-steel shelves from floor to ceiling. A refrigerated truck has been brought in to handle the overflow at the multimillion dollar facility.

In July, 59 people died - 40 in the first two weeks when nighttime temperatures were the hottest in recorded history, hovering around the low 90s. The single-month death count is second only to July 2005, when 68 bodies were found.

Of this July’s deaths, 44 were on the Tohono O’Odham Nation, a reservation the size of Connecticut that shares 75 miles of Arizona’s border with Mexico. The tribe is opposed to humanitarian aid on its lands, believing it invites violence.

Eighteen more people died in the first 23 days of August.

Even with the prospect of a torturous death, and the bitter wrath they face in Arizona, immigrants, including Ortega, say the state’s vast, sparsely populated terrain is still the best place for border jumpers.

“In Tijuana, you have two walls that you have to get over,” said Ortega, who first came across in 1976 to work in West Coast agricultural fields. “This is much easier here. You just have to watch out for the snakes. That’s why I prefer to walk in the daytime and not at night.”

He admits he’s afraid when he crosses, but states flatly, “It’s worth the risk.”

Even though - after two days of traversing the desert - he and his group were caught by U.S. Border Patrol agents when they reached a freeway and their ride wasn’t there.

Resting at a shelter for failed border crossers that sets atop a steep hill in Mexico overlooking the city of Nogales, Ortega expanded on his motives. “It’s the only way to make a little money to support my family,” he said.

The shelter is a simple but large home with warnings about the dangers of the crossing posted on its walls. It gives those who’ve been sent back across a hot meal of tortillas, rice and beans, and bunk beds stacked three high.

One room has been converted into a chapel. On a recent night, a woman sobbed quietly while another migrant tried to comfort her.

Ortega knows risks. He is from Apatzingan in Michoacan, where drug gangs have shot up federal agents and terrorized the impoverished farm town.

Roberto Hernandez de Rosas, a quiet 18-year-old with a quick smile, said his family paid a smuggler $1,500 to take him and his brother across the Arizona desert and on to Los Angeles.

Hernandez’s brother had already made the trip three times and the smuggler told them Arizona was still the easiest place to cross.

He was told it would cost twice as much to cross from Tijuana, where smugglers sell immigrants fake documents to walk through the port of entry.

“The town where I’m from, it’s like being in jail, it’s like a death,” said Hernandez, who is from a mountain village in the impoverished southern state of Puebla. “You have to think twice about crossing the desert, but when you don’t have any money, you need to look for a better life.”

Hernandez and his brother were spotted by a Border Patrol helicopter in the morning after walking through the desert during the night. Authorities returned Hernandez to Mexico but his brother was jailed because he’d been deported before.

Hernandez had been at the shelter for a few days waiting for his brother to be released from custody because he had all his documents. After that, Hernandez said he wanted to go back home rather than attempt another crossing.

But he expected his brother to try again because his 2-year-old son is in Los Angeles.

Most of those who trickled into the shelter planned to try again, shrugging off Arizona’s new law giving local authorities the power to arrest them - currently stayed by a federal court order. They are also unfazed by the Mexican government’s warning to its citizens to avoid the state.

Sofia Gomez, of an aid group called Humane Borders, said crossers are traveling through even more remote areas than in previous years. At the same time, anger over illegal immigration has led to people shooting up the water stations her group has placed in the desert.

“They’re taking a higher risk and they’re not making it,” Gomez said.

So far this year, the body count is at 171, the same number the Pima County Medical Examiner’s Office had seen at this time in 2007, the year the office saw a record 217 deaths.

Most of the deceased were young, healthy men - at least at the outset of their trips. By the time they reach the morgue, many are in advanced stages of decomposition and beyond recognition. Bag after bag is tagged with “John Doe” or “Jane Doe” as officials wait for families to come forward to report loved ones missing.

But often the relatives of the deceased are waiting back home to hear from them, believing they are busy working in the United States.

“We thought the political climate in Arizona would be a significant deterrent to people crossing but as far as the deaths are concerned, they certainly have been what looks like is going to be the highest they’ve ever been,” said the morgue’s Dr. Eric Peters.

That doesn’t surprise Border Patrol Agent Colleen Agle, who works in the agency’s Tucson sector.

“Smugglers are the ones who determine where to take people, where they’re going to be walking, and they’re the ones deciding that certain areas are preferable,” Agle said. “They know they’re remote and they know we have difficulty accessing them, so they’re taking people through those areas. Unfortunately they’re just putting people’s lives at risk.”

Worried about their profits, smugglers will leave behind people who are injured or fall ill, she said.

The Border Patrol often comes to the rescue.

Agency statistics show that agents helped 1,281 people last fiscal year. That’s up from 1,264 rescues the previous fiscal year, but down from the all-time high of 2,845 rescues in fiscal year 2006.

Agle said smugglers often lie to immigrants, telling them they’ll only walk a couple of hours when they actually walk for days. Even so, the agency discourages water stations for crossers becauseauthorities say it encourages people to risk the journey.

Kevin Riley, 28, of Hopewell, N.J., came to the desert a year ago to volunteer for No More Deaths, a humanitarian group. He spends most of his time at the group’s remote, desert camp east of Arivaca, 13 miles north of Mexico.

Riley and other mostly 20-something volunteers from across the country hike up to 12 miles a day to fill desert water tanks stationed along popular migrant paths that cross unforgiving terrain dotted with palo verdes, mesquites and Saguaro.

Riley recently found a 34-year-old man who had been vomiting for days and was curled up with cramps, no longer able to walk. The man was rescued and hospitalized for four days.

He was one of the lucky ones.

In February, Riley found a body. The volunteers called the sheriff’s department and then helped the officer carry out the body bag.

“We have some maps printed out actually showing us where people are dying,” said Riley, thin and bearded, “and one big frustrating point is the majority are in areas that we can’t go to.”

That would be the vast and treacherous Tohono O’Odham Nation that has barred water stations and has banned members of Humane Borders and No More Deaths from stepping foot on the reservation.

Tribal leaders blame illegal immigrants and smugglers for crimes on their land. Two years ago, the tribe dismantled four, 55-gallon tanks being filled up by one of its members, Mike Wilson.

Wilson, with the help of another tribal member and funding from Humane Borders, still makes a symbolic gesture each week. He puts out one-gallon jugs, forming the shape of a cross on the ground, at the former stations. He says it’s not enough.

The Tohono O’Odham Nation declined repeated requests for comment.

Omar Velasquez died on the reservation last month. He was with his 22-year-old wife, who survived the trip but declined to talk about what she or her husband experienced. According to an autopsy report, Velasquez was a healthy, 25-year-old. He was found wearing a blue baseball cap embroidered with “New York.”

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From: The Plum Line

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is indignant that the State Department submitted a report to the United Nations Council on Human Rights with a paragraph on her state’s new immigration law. She’s accusing the administration of “submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations” and of “internationalism run amok.” And she’s charging that it’s hypocritical to single out the law while at the same time taking credit for “sophistication and breath of [the United States'] anti-trafficking efforts.”

It’s a stretch to characterize the report as seeking international approval of domestic law. It merely acknowledges that the Arizona law “has generated significant attention and debate” and that it “is being addressed in court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law.”

Brewer suggests that the administration’s enforcement effort has fallen short. Actually, the administration deserves credit for stepped up enforcement. It just hasn’t been able to do much else.

The administration signaling concern over whether the Arizona law violates human rights standards is somewhat at odds with its own record of strict enforcement. During Obama’s presidency, the number of deportations has grown to higher levels than those seen during the Bush administration. The administration has also expanded the “Secure Communities” program to every county along the Southwest border, much to the frustration of immigration-rights advocates. “Secure Communities” resembles the Arizona law in that it mandates that anyone arrested — not convicted, but arrested — by police have their identifying information forwarded to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, where their immigration status can be checked. According to immigration rights activists working with the federal government’s own numbers, most of the immigrants deported through the “Secure Communities” program were either non-criminals or low-level offenders. Critics complain that the law contains the same incentives for racial profiling and potential for dissuading undocumented immigrants from cooperating with police as SB 1070 in Arizona.

All of this makes clear that the administration isn’t anywhere near as squeamish about deporting illegal immigrants as it is about pushing through some kind of comprehensive immigration reform package. The federal government opposes SB 1070 not because of a concern about human rights, but because the Arizona law unconstitutionally preempts the federal mandate to set immigration laws. That’s probably partly why, when the administration filed its lawsuit against SB 1070, it alluded to potential problems with racial profiling without arguing that the law would be unconstitutional for that reason. (The other reason is that those lawsuits are hard to prove in advance of a law actually being enforced.)

If anyone should be angry, it’s not Brewer, but the immigration reform advocates who thought the administration’s emphasis on enforcement would coincide with a similarly rigorous effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

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The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Saad Nabeel and I am writing to you from Bangladesh. Prior to my arrival in this nation, I lived in the United States for 15 years. My parents brought me to America at age three. It is the only home I know. I used to attend the University of Texas at Arlington with a full scholarship in Electrical Engineering. Through no fault of my own I was forced to leave my home, friends, possessions, and most importantly, my education behind.

November 3rd 2009 is a day I will never forget. My mother called me and told me that my father had been detained by ICE and that we needed to leave immediately to Canada to seek refugee status. Being an only child, I had to take care of my mother and go with her.

My mother and I were denied entrance into Canada and sent back to the USA as if we were common criminals. I was separated from my mother and sent to a detention facility where I was forced to live with 60 men, many of whom were hardened criminals. There was no privacy and I was forced to use the facilities and showers while fully exposed. I lived in constant fear of being abused. I was without food for upwards of 14 hours a day and received little to no medical attention. When I asked for legal counsel I was threatened with criminal charges and jail time in a Federal Penitentiary. To this day I still have nightmares about being detained. Everything my parents taught me about human decency was replaced with humiliation. Mr. President I hope you are as outraged as I am hurt by this ordeal.

Bangladesh is extremely hot and humid. We have no air conditioning as the power goes out every day. These power outages can last twelve hours or more. The air is heavily polluted and I get food poisoning every week from the poor quality of food here. Raw sewage flows in open drains in front of our apartment. I see people outside with mangled bodies dying on the street because of the heat and starvation. I see mothers practically giving their children away because they are unable to feed them.

I do not know the language and I fear going outside because I am different from everyone else. Speaking in English is an easy way to be targeted here. We cannot afford to live in a safer area. I have not left the apartment for 8 months. It simply is too dangerous for me to leave the apartment unless my parents go with me. I cannot attend school due to the language barrier. I do not know anyone in Bangladesh.

On top of all this, my parents are both ill and have been for months. My father suffers severe asthma attacks that make him bedridden on most days. My mother has post traumatic stress and cannot accept the fact that she is not at our home in Texas.

These events transpired after we were approved to receive our Green Cards. ICE forced my family to leave knowing that Green Cards were available to us. We have been waiting for our Green Cards for 15 years now.

Mr. President, you are the most powerful man in the world, all I ask from you is to bring me home. All I ever wanted was an education so I could become an engineer. I just want to go home and go back to college. Please don’t keep me exiled any longer. Please bring me home.

Sincerely,
Saad Nabeel

The “DREAM Now” letter series is inspired by a similar campaign started by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  The letters are produced by Kyle de Beausset at Citizen Orange with the assistance of America’s Voice.  Every Monday and Wednesday DREAM-eligible youth will publish letters to the President, and each Friday there will be a DREAM Now recap. 

1. Sign the DREAM Act Petition
2. Join the DREAM Act Facebook Cause
3. Send a fax in support of the DREAM Act
4. Call your Senator and ask them to pass the DREAM Act now.
5. Email kyle at citizenorange dot com to get more involved

Below is a list of previous entries in the DREAM Now Series:

Mohammad Abdollahi (19 July 2010)
Yahaira Carrillo (21 July 2010)
Weekly Recap - Tell Harry Reid You Want the DREAM Act Now (23 July 2010)
Wendy (26 July 2010)
Matias Ramos (28 July 2010)
Weekly Recap - The CHC Has To Stand With Migrant Youth Not Against Us (30 July 2010)
Tania Unzueta (2 August 2010)
Marlen Moreno (4 August 2010)
Weekly Recap - The Ghost of Virgil Goode Possesses the Republican Party (9 August 2010)
David Cho (9 August 2010)
Ivan Nikolov (11 August 2010)
Yves Gomes (16 August 2010)
Selvin Arevalo (18 August 2010)
Weekly Recap - Latino, LGBT, Migrant Youth, and Progressive Bloggers Lead For the DREAM Act (20 August 2010)
Carlos A. Roa, Jr. (23 August 2010)
Myrna Orozco (25 August 2010)
Lizbeth Mateo (30 August 2010)

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From: AZ Central

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Maricopa County Community College District on Monday, accusing it of discrimination for requiring extra paperwork from new employees who were not U.S. citizens.

The suit claims that at least 247 newly hired employees who were not citizens were required to present additional work-authorization documents beyond those required by law between July 2008 and January 2010.

The district, which did not require the extra documents from U.S. citizens, stopped the practice in January, during a Justice Department investigation.

The Immigration and Nationality Act requires employers to treat authorized workers in the same manner as U.S. citizens, according to Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division.

The suit says that Glendale Community College offered a part-time math teaching position to Zainul Singaporewalla in August 2008. He accepted and produced a Department of Homeland Security form proving his permanent legal status as well as a California driver’s license and Social Security card.The college then asked Singaporewalla to fill out a non-U.S. citizen employee tax data form, and to provide a permanent resident card, which staff told him was a federal requirement. When he questioned the validity of the request and was unable to produce the card, the job offer was rescinded.

The suit, filed after a yearlong investigation by the Justice Department, calls for the community college district to pay a penalty of $1,100 for each non-U.S. citizen who was authorized to work but was required to supply additional documentation.

Tom Gariepy, spokesman for the community colleges, said Monday the district would have no comment on the suit.

Singaporewalla could not be reached for comment. He is listed on the faculty of the College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin.

Popularity: 3% [?]

From: MariaElenaSalinas.com

“If the level of violence in some Latin American cities were measured by the standards used by the World Health Organization, it would be considered an epidemic.” That is how Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, describes the rampant violence in Latin America.

A region that has a long history of armed conflicts and struggles for social justice is now being taken over by thugs, drug dealers, leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries, gangs and common criminals. Insulza said in a recent speech that of the top 10 countries in which most crimes are committed, more than half are Latin American.

The discovery of 72 bodies at a ranch in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, is a grim reminder of the on-going violence in that country as a result of the drug war. The bodies were found after the sole survivor of a deadly attack on immigrants was able to escape and reported the incident to marines at a nearby checkpoint. The navy raided the area, had a shootout with the alleged assailants and found the bodies of 58 men and 14 women inside a structure, some piled on top of each other.

It’s still unclear how long they had been there or if they all were shot at the same time. The survivor, who had been shot in the neck, according to media reports told authorities that he was with a group of immigrants from Ecuador, Brazil, El Salvador and Honduras. They apparently were trying to make their way to the border to enter the United States when they were ambushed by members of the Zetas drug cartel. When they rejected demands for money and collaboration, the assailants opened fire, the Ecuadoran survivor said.

The massacre in Tamaulipas is one of several that have occurred in recent months. Mass graves with dozens of bodies have been discovered in North and Central Mexico. Since President Felipe Calderon launched his war on drug cartels in 2006, more than 28,000 people have been killed.

As bad as the crime rate is in Mexico, it’s even worse in Venezuela. A recent New York Times article highlighted the gravity of the situation: 43,792 murders have been committed in Venezuela since 2007. According to the National Statistics Institute, in 2009 alone there were 19,133 homicides; that is one every 30 minutes. Most are attributed to social, economic and political tensions. More than 90 percent of the crimes go unsolved, without a single arrest. It is three times more dangerous to live in Venezuela than in Iraq, the Times article points out.

Colombia has had its share of violence, with an internal war between government forces supported by right-wing paramilitaries and leftist guerilla groups. But the most recent acts of violence are worrisome. Two separate hit lists appeared on Facebook, warning the young people on the list to leave the town of Puerto Asis in less than three days. Three of those on the hit lists, ages 16, 17 and 19, were killed in different incidents. A fourth was injured.

Colombian federal officials and Internet forensic experts were trying to determine who is behind the lists, which included 69 boys’ names and 31 girls’ names.

Youth also are the main protagonists in the ongoing violence in Central America, especially in El Salvador and Honduras. Rival gangs are killing each other off. Drug dealers are infiltrating the gangs. And although the government denies it, there are reports of death squads doing social cleansing. The archbishop of El Salvador recently called upon authorities in that country to stop the violence after a 6-year-old girl was found decapitated.

These are just a few examples of the violence that is ravaging many Latin American countries. The OAS secretary-general is right — violence in Latin America is reaching epidemic proportions. The symptoms are visible, and the causes are many: poverty, lack of opportunities, corruption, impunity and a breakdown in values. It seems as if some members of society have no respect for life and no fear of death. Let’s hope a cure is found soon. The bloodshed has to stop.

Popularity: 3% [?]

From: NY Daily News

Unencumbered by any moral imperative to be truthful, some anti-immigration activists and politicians have no qualms about demonizing immigrants with half-truths and outright lies.

One of their favorite myths is that the U.S. is the only country in the world that grants citizenship to every person born here. The U.S. is outdated in providing birthright citizenship, they say, adding that no one else does it and that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution - which guarantees that right - should be revised.

Right-wing propaganda purveyors like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, and even politicians like South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham - who should know better - throw around despicable terms like “anchor babies,” and feign outrage at the fact that, according to them, the 14th Amendment wrongly protects the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.

Of course, it is nothing but a ruse, a gigantic myth whose only purpose is to stoke anti-immigrant fires. The truth: More than 30 countries - including Canada, Argentina and Brazil - grant birthright citizenship.

To hear this stream of lies and over-the-top rhetoric from the likes of Beck and O’Reilly is no surprise: We know who they are.

It is different when you hear it from political figures like Graham or John (Immigrants are God’s children, too) McCain (R-Ariz.), who not long ago were champions of comprehensive reform. Theirs is just a cynical vote-getting game.

Their sheer opportunism stands in stark contrast to Mayor Bloomberg’s principled defense of the right to build a cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero, his swift condemnation of the hate attack against a Muslim cabdriver and his long-standing position welcoming immigrants to the city. New York is definitely not Arizona.

“As an election nears, we always hear increasingly extreme rhetoric from the Republican Party on immigration,” said Rep. José Serrano (D-N.Y.). “But this time around, their fire has turned on the most vulnerable among us: the children.”

Fortunately, the majority of the American people do not share their extreme views.

“A number of recent polls show that public opinion clearly supports comprehensive immigration reform,” writes Anthony Weigel, a Kansas immigration attorney in the last issue of Immigration Daily. These are the polls he was referring to:

The CNN Opinion Research Poll, released July 2, shows an astounding 81% favoring the creation of a program allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the country to apply for legal status, subject to having a job and paying back taxes.

It’s interesting that the same poll also shows that while 55% favor Arizona’s SB 1070, 50% believe it will not reduce illegal immigration and 54% believe it will lead to discrimination against Hispanics.

“Finally,” Weigel writes, “Fox News’ August 13 Opinion Dynamics poll indicates that, by a margin of 68% to 27%, respondents favored giving illegal immigrants who pay taxes and obey the law a second chance and allowing them to stay in the U.S.”

The Fox News poll also indicates that 68% believe the federal government’s top priority should be to simultaneously pass new immigration legislation and secure the border, over 21% who believe in securing the border first.

No one would accuse Fox News of being sympathetic to undocumented immigrants, which makes its findings much more significant.

Whatever they may think, the news is not good for the hatemongers and demagogues who have made a career of demonizing immigrants and their children.

Just wait until the November elections.

Popularity: 2% [?]