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Immigration

Organizations Call For An End To AI Use In Immigration Decisions

September 6, 2024 Hannah Zhao and Matthew Guariglia, Electronic Frontier Foundation. , , , ,
EFF, Just Futures Law, and 140 other groups have sent a letter to Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must stop using artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the immigration system. For years, EFF has been monitoring and warning about the dangers of automated and so-called “AI-enhanced” surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico border. As we’ve made clear, algorithmic decision-making should never get the final say on whether a person should be policed, arrested, denied freedom, or, in this case, are worthy of a safe haven in the United States. The letter is signed by a wide range of organizations, from civil liberties nonprofits to immigrant rights groups, to government accountability watchdogs, to civil society organizations.

Worker Coops Bring Undocumented Workers Into The Labor Movement

August 28, 2024 Tareq Saghie, Labor Notes. , , , ,
How can immigrants without work authorization avoid being hyper-exploited, and instead find work where they have some autonomy and collective power to raise standards? A movement that has been incubating in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, might offer some answers. Sunset Park boasts one of the highest concentrations of worker cooperatives in the United States. This business model, brought to the neighborhood by the Center for Family Life, guarantees all members standard and legal wages, a voice in their company’s governance, and control over their schedules. Since members are business owners, not employees, they also do not need work authorization.

Victory For Immigrant Rights Organization In Houston

August 28, 2024 Gloria Rubac, Workers' World. , , ,
Activists with a longtime immigrant rights organization in Houston celebrated a victory on Aug. 23 after a judge dismissed a lawsuit that tried to revoke the group’s nonprofit status and shut it down. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Familias Inmigrantes y Estudiantes en la Lucha (Immigrant Families and Students in struggle, FIEL) in July asking Harris County Civil Court Judge Ravi K. Sandill to shut down the organization. The lawsuit charged FIEL with violating federal rules governing nonprofits’ political involvement, because FIEL criticized former President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, as well as a new immigration law passed by the Texas legislature.

Borders And The Exchange Of Humans For Debt

August 13, 2024 Heba Gowayed, In These Times. , , , ,
The jagged shoreline of the island of Lesbos, Greece, which runs into the Aegean Sea just miles from the Turkish coastline, is a site of the macabre and systemic practice of ​“border externalization,” where wealthy states enlist less wealthy states — often indebted ones — to intercept and brutalize human beings destined for their borders. It is here that 23-year-old Ahmed — who left Gaza in 2021 to find refuge from a life behind Israel’s Iron Wall and violence, which promised ​“no future, no work, no possibilities” — was beaten by Greek border patrol and left adrift on a dinghy with a broken engine. It would take five attempts, full of terror and humiliation, for Ahmed to reach Greece, which was just one stop on a longer journey to Germany to reunite with cousins.

Towards A Degrowth Border Perspective

August 10, 2024 Jenny Ufer, Resilience. , , , ,
What do we do with our borders? The right-wing shift in the European political climate in recent years has meant a higher degree of securitisation. At the same time, some are calling for border controls to be reduced or even abolished. Perhaps the answer lies in a change of perspective; a new outlook free from the shackles of capitalism and inspired by degrowth. Recent national and European elections have marked a shift to the right in European politics. While the far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) failed to win a majority in France’s parliamentary election, it will still be the most represented party in the French Parliament. In other European countries, such as Italy, Finland, and the Netherlands, radical right forces have formed coalition governments.

Recognizing The Economic Need For Undocumented Immigrants

August 5, 2024 Mark Kreidler, Scheer Post. , , ,
The conversation around undocumented immigrants in California is inherently political, tied up in dogma and imagery. And because the state has more undocumented people than any other, it often functions as a surrogate for the national debate. To some researchers studying it, that’s too bad — not because the human and political components of the discussion should be ignored, but because there’s a bigger picture at play in California: The state simply wouldn’t function without the work of undocumented immigrants. Quietly, in the spaces beyond rhetoric, a host of different industries understand that truth. Their profits depend on it.

Grassroots Mobilizations To Challenge Surge Of Far-Right Violence In Britain

August 4, 2024 Ana Vračar, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Anti-fascist groups in Britain are preparing for a weekend of mobilizations against the far-right. For the past week, far-right groups have incited a series of violent rallies across England, exploiting the public discourse after three children were tragically killed in a stabbing in Southport, northwest England. Exploiting the towns mourning, far-right groups have cynically manipulated the narrative surrounding the event into their hate-driven, racist, and Islamophobic discourse. Hundreds traveled to Southport and other towns in the north following vigils held for the killed children, only to spark violent riots. The rioters surrounded and attacked mosques with people inside, set police vehicles ablaze, and vandalized local shops.

Capital Has No Borders; Why Should We?

July 21, 2024 Maurizio Guerrero, In These Times. , , , ,
Elia Velásquez fled the violence and poverty that plagued her native El Salvador in the 1990s. “I saw how my family was suffering, so I said to myself, ​‘If I leave, I can work and help them,’ ” the 55-year-old hotel worker in Washington, D.C, tells In These Times during a phone interview in Spanish. ​“That would be better for them.” El Salvador was deep into a fratricidal civil war, partially instigated and funded by the United States, that left the country in shambles when it ended in 1992. Velásquez came to the United States and initially worked in a packaging facility in the Washington, D.C., area. There, workers did not even get ​“a glass of water” from the managers, she says.

Trump/Biden Debate Immigration: US Foreign Policy As A Driver Is Ignored

June 30, 2024 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. , , , , ,
The contestants squared off in the first of the US presidential debates of 2024. Both wore identical white shirts and navy suits with American flag lapel pins. One wore a red tie; the other a blue one. There were other differences, but none quite so substantive. The immigration issue dominated the debate. The challenger claimed that the country was being menaced by immigrants – marauding hordes of rapists, murders, and mentally ill. They were the ruination of the nation. Social Security and Medicare were jeopardized by the alien element. Immigrants endangered the jobs of blacks and Hispanics.

The Sanctuary Movement Put US Foreign Policy On Trial

June 10, 2024 Natascha Elena Uhlmann, In These Times. , , , , ,
Forty-two years ago, a Tucson congregation changed the landscape of immigration politics when what started with a legal clinic for Central American asylum seekers quickly grew into a nationwide movement. Now, some immigration scholars who have tracked the Sanctuary Movement for many years say the spirit of the movement is alive and well in student organizing for Gaza. The Sanctuary Movement was born in the ​‘80s against the backdrop of repression, death squads, and massacres in El Salvador and Guatemala. Refugees were arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in desperate search of safety, but few would find the refuge they sought.

Doctors Demand Biden End Solitary Confinement In Immigration Prisons

June 7, 2024 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. , , , , ,
Hundreds of physicians and other health professionals are demanding the Biden administration end the use of solitary confinement in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prisons. The letter comes after reports of multiple suicide attempts by immigrants incarcerated at a privately run ICE facility made national headlines. President Joe Biden pledged on the 2020 campaign trail to end solitary confinement in federal prisons “with very limited exceptions,” and time for change could be running out. Reliance on solitary confinement in ICE jails and prisons — the extremely dangerous and potentially deadly practice of isolating people in tiny cells for weeks, months and even years at time — would likely explode in scope if former President Trump wins the November election and attempts to implement an unprecedented crackdown on undocumented families.

How Europe Outsourced Border Enforcement To Africa

June 7, 2024 Andrei Popoviciu, In These Times. , , ,
When Cornelia Ernst and her delegation arrived at the Rosso border station on a scorching February day, it wasn’t the bustling artisanal marketplace, the thick smog from trucks waiting to cross, or the vibrantly painted pirogues bobbing in the Senegal River that caught their eye. It was the slender black briefcase on the table before the station chief. When the official unlatched the hard plastic carrier, proudly unveiling dozens of cables meticulously arranged beside a touchscreen tablet, soft gasps filled the room.

Shifting Policies Led To One Of The Deadliest Incidents For Immigrants

May 2, 2024 Perla Trevizo, ProPublica. , , , ,
Stefan Arango, a 31-year-old Venezuelan husband and father, felt immediately nauseated by the smells of sweat, urine and feces when Mexican guards ordered him into the cinder block cell in the border city of Ciudad Juárez. The tile floor was strewn with trash, and several men inside lay on flimsy mats that were incongruously covered in rainbow-colored vinyl. The windows were so small that they didn’t allow in much light or air. And, perhaps mercifully, they were so high that the men couldn’t see they were just a short stroll from El Paso, Texas, the destination they had risked everything to reach.

A Mobile Food Pantry Meets Refugees Where They Are

April 7, 2024 Marielle Argueza, Next City. , , , ,
It started at a kitchen table more than 15 years ago. In 2008, Greensboro mother of two Kristy Milholin noticed signs of food insecurity among her daughters’ classmates at Morehead Elementary School. She and her husband, Don Milholin, took it upon themselves to pack up bags of free food for several local families every Friday. “She went into mom mode. She couldn’t see kids go hungry,” says Beth Crise, who is the president and executive director of Out of the Garden project, the nonprofit that the Milholins founded after receiving increased requests from families in need.

Real-Time Video Offers A Glimpse Of America’s Deportation Flights

March 11, 2024 McKenzie Funk, ProPublica. , , ,
A closed-circuit video camera zoomed in on the tarmac of Seattle's Boeing Field one recent afternoon, buffeted by 30-mile-an-hour gusts as it captured the arrival of a charter jet. The jet rolled to a stop alongside two buses. Behind their tinted windows, still invisible to the camera, were people waiting to be deported from the United States. "Windy," muttered a woman watching the video feed on a projector screen. Struggling to make out the plane’s tail number from the shaky image, she stood up for a closer look. On the screen, a stairway was wheeled over, and a cluster of men in bright yellow jackets descended from the plane.
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