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Showing posts with label ley en Alabama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ley en Alabama. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Washington State Leads effort on Comprehensive Immigration Reform
WA State Leads on Immigration Reform
Washington State has seen an extraordinary amount of public support of comprehensive immigration reform from various government officials and esteemed members of the Asian Pacific Islander community.1. Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell sent letters to President Obama stressing the importance and urgency of passing comprehensive immigration reform, making Washington State the first to have both Senators commit to pushing for reform.
2. The Seattle City Council voted unanimously to pass Resolution 31193 supporting comprehensive immigration reform. This resolution reiterates Washington State’s commitment to fully integrate immigrants into the community in a meaningful way.Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell Source: weareoneamerica.org
3. Members of the Washington State Legislature signed a letter directed to Senators Murray and Cantwell urging them to ask Senator Shumer to introduce a bill for comprehensive immigration reform as soon as possible.
4. King County Executive Dow Constantine wrote letters to both Senators Murray and Cantwell urging both to work toward a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate.
5. Members of the Asian Pacific Islander Coalition also sent a letter to Senators Murray and Cantwell stressing the importance of comprehensive immigration reform to the Asian American communities in Washington State.6. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn wrote letters to Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell as well.
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March 17, 2010
Dear Senator Murray:
Seattle has always been a city of immigrants. Immigration has been a driving force of economic growth throughout our history, and immigrants still play a key role in our economy today. With nearly 30 percent of all Seattle children in immigrant families and more than 100,000 foreign-born residents, Seattle’s history and growth have become even more strongly tied to immigration.
The impact of a failed immigration system is felt across Seattle, by immigrant families, service providers, businesses, city agencies and other entities. Over the years, the City of Seattle has adopted policies that promote the inclusion of immigrants, resolutions that call for comprehensive immigration reform, and ordinances ensuring that city employees and police do not ask about immigration status. But local action is not enough to fully address the many issues facing our immigrant communities.
That is why I write to you today to ask Congress to finally pass comprehensive immigration reform as soon as possible. Seattle needs immigration reform that:
- Provides a path toward earned legalization and citizenship
- Reforms visa programs to eliminate backlogs, keep families together, protect workers’ rights and ensure that future immigration is regulated and controlled
- Enables immigrants to pursue higher education
- Protects immigrants from employment abuse by enforcing immigration and labor laws and eliminating exploitation of immigrant workers
- Prioritizes immigrant integration into our communities and country
- Respects the due-process rights of all in the United States
- Provides local governments with financial and technical assistance to deliver social services, health care, education, language services and civic integration
Read more from this source: http://www.weareoneamerica.org/sites/weareoneamerica.org/files/404MurrayImmigrationReform20100317TMM.pdfSeattle — and the State of Washington — will be stronger when our nation tackles the tough issue of reforming our broken immigration system. I urge you to continue the leadership you have already shown on this issue and to work for introduction of a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate this March.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
Anti-Latino Racism Slams CNN National News Desk Editor
Nick Valencia is a national news desk editor and former head of the CNN Spanish Desk. He's a third-generation American citizen recently confronted by racist comments coming from a hate filled woman in Georgia:
Atlanta (CNN) -- "Go home!" she yelled at me. "Why don't you go back home to Mexico before you ruin this country like you ruined your own!"See more at: source
I was standing in a crowd at the Music Midtown festival in Atlanta, where I live. A few minutes earlier I'd met a group of five people who'd been standing in front of me -- here from Mexico City -- and I had begun speaking Spanish with them.
Atlanta has a growing Latino community, and I am actively involved. Whenever I get the chance to speak to someone in Spanish here, I introduce myself. My new acquaintances and I were talking about what a great time we were having and how remarkable the city of Atlanta was for bringing back the festival to Piedmont Park.
And that's when I heard the yelling woman next to me. As if "go home" wasn't clear enough, the woman -- a 20-something Caucasian -- repeated the words in Spanish.
"Vete!"
I froze. I didn't quite know what to say, and I didn't want to believe she was talking to me or the group of people I had just met.
As a third-generation Mexican-American growing up in Los Angeles, I had never encountered such overt racism. In fact, because my family was long since assimilated, among my Latino friends I was always considered the "pocho" or "white boy" of the group. (As I write this, a part of me knows somewhere in L.A., a friend of mine will be proud to know someone actually considered me Mexican enough to yell "go home" at me.)
Nick Valencia
My Mexican friends remind me that I am American first, Mexican second and that my English is better than my Spanish.
"Yes," I tell them. "But I can never walk into a room and be white."
Evidently, to some the brown color of my skin means I'm not even American. My friends and family tell me what I experienced that night is a microcosm of what is happening to Latinos across the country. You don't have to look hard to find it. In news stories, in political discourse, on talk radio, in everyday conversation it seems it has become OK to treat Latinos in a negative and antagonistic way -- whether they are new immigrants or longtime Americans. The anti-immigration legislation sweeping across the United States has made this plain. People in my Latino networks say they've noticed the change. And now I understand what they mean.
Like many Americans whose grandparents or parents came here from somewhere else, I live at the intersection of my two cultures. I eat tacos, but I love cheeseburgers. I go salsa dancing, and listen to rock n' roll. I speak Spanish and English, and depending on the crowd, sometimes Spanglish. I love my country and my cultural community. My duality is my reality, just like the 50 million other Latinos in the United States.
I have been luckier than many. Before this incident, the closest I'd ever come to blatant racism was in junior high. I was in the jazz band and played first trumpet. One day our jazz band teacher invited in his predecessor, a local legend who had made Eagle Rock High School's jazz program famous in the 1980s.
The visiting instructor pointed me out and asked me to play him 16 bars of music. I did, but he quickly interrupted.
"Stop, stop, stop. I don't want to hear any of that mariachi music. This is jazz."
I didn't think anything of it. Instead I felt terrible that the legend standing in front of me didn't think I was good enough. I went home that night, and like every night, at 6:30 p.m. my family sat down for dinner to talk about our day.
"How was your day, Nicky?" my dad asked.
So I told him. Outraged, the next day he went to my principal and filed a formal complaint. The legend didn't come back to visit the jazz program again. Weeks later we received a letter in the mail from him apologizing for his insensitive comments. My family saved the letter.
My father was hypersensitive to ethnic identity and deeply proud of his Latino heritage. The son of a naturalized immigrant from El Salvador and a Mexican mother from Texas, he grew up in Los Angeles during a time of racial tension. When I was young he would tell me stories of the race riots in his high school, violence against people of color, and awful accounts of the struggle he had to make it as a Mexican-American teen in the 1960s.
He died when I was 17 years old, but one of the phrases he implanted in my mind before he passed was a statement activist Cesar Chavez made famous:
"Si se puede" -- "Yes you can."
And now, here I was, at 28, with this stranger yelling at me to "leave." I stood there in the middle of a damp crowd on a late Atlanta evening, not comprehending, the wind still and the vibrations of Coldplay's "Yellow" filling the space in the air.
I didn't say a thing.
I didn't have to.
The crowd around us looked in amazement at this woman. Some of them spoke up to her, telling her she was wrong to talk to us like that. The group of people from Mexico City looked at her in disgust and, realizing from the look on my face that I must not be accustomed to what I was hearing, they turned toward me to offer support.
One of them, a young man, grabbed my hand and raised it high in the air.
"Estamos aqui," he said, which translates to "We are here."
It was the "Si se puede" moment.
The woman continued to taunt us for some minutes, but when we did not reciprocate her hatred, she stopped.
The band played a few more songs before ending the set, and the crowd dispersed across the park into the Saturday evening.
As I walked away, the woman and I locked eyes.
"I don't think you understand who you said that to," I told her. Thinking to myself, I am as American as you are.
"What," she said laughing. "Are you some kind of celebrity or something?"
No. But like the Mexicans I was standing with, I am a human being. And I am home.
Repeal of New Immigration Law in Alabama
MONTGOMERY -- Alabama Sen. Billy Beasley has filed a bill to repeal Alabama's sweeping immigration law, saying it is causing severe workforce shortages and problems in state courthouses and schools.Read more from this source:
"The people in the agriculture community are not happy with it because they can't get workers. The folks in the courthouses are not happy with it. The folks in the school business are not happy with it," said the Democrat from Clayton.
Beasley said three other Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors of the proposed repeal, and he hopes more legislators will support the measure.
"I think there is a large contingent of folks who didn't realize what it was going to do," Beasley said.
However, Sen. Scott Beason, who sponsored the immigration law in the Senate, said he will fight attempts to undo or weaken the law.
"I can't imagine that anyone would want to repeal the bill," said Beason, R-Gardendale.
Beasley voted against the bill when it was before Alabama lawmakers. He said the new law has caused a "world of fear" for people in the Hispanic community.
"It's kind of a mean-spirited law," Beasley said.
Beasley said the law has caused workforce shortages in many industries, as legal and illegal immigrants leave the state. He said it also is causing long lines at courthouse and is putting an unfunded mandate on county jails to hold suspected illegal immigrants.
The Clayton senator said he also was doubtful the law would open up jobs for Alabamians because many people don't want the labor-intensive jobs the immigrants are performing.
But Beason said he believes the law is working.
"It's doing what it is supposed to be doing overall," Beason said.
He said the immigration law appeared to be moving an illegal workforce out of the state, and an adjustment period is to be expected. He pointed out the law has been in effect only six days.
He said he believes getting rid of illegal workers will create jobs for Alabamians. "Apparently a lot of people were working an illegal workforce," Beason said.
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/10/state_sen_billy_beasley_files.html
Monday, September 12, 2011
Texas Republican, Rick Perry on Comprehensive Immigration Reform
On immigration, Rick Perry takes heat for Texas DREAM Act
See more on: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-debate-immigration-20110912,0,3903518.storyIn a debate that's already been fiery, the temperature rose further, even a little uncomfortably, when the subject of immigration came up.
The candidates on this stage have repeatedly said they won't elaborate on their plans for dealing with the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country until the border with Mexico is secured.
Perry, who signed a Texas version of the DREAM Act (which allows young people in the country illegally to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities) drew several rounds of boos when he defended the policy.
"If you've been in the state of Texas for three years, and working toward citizenship, you pay in-state tuition," said Perry. "It doesn't matter what the sound of your last name is. That's the American way."
The point, he said several times, is to allow immigrants to become "contributing members of our society, rather than be on the dole."
As he has often done, Perry reiterated this evening that he does not believe a fence along the entire border is feasible.
"The idea you're going to build a wall from Brownsville to El Paso and go left to Tijuana is not reality," said Perry to booing. "What you gotta have is boots on the ground … the aviation assets in the air. We understand and know how to secure that border, but the federal government needs to step up and do their constitutional duty and secure the border with Mexico."
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