Immigration – Page 5

NY Bans Most Shackling During Childbirth

A bill that bans most instances of shackling inmates during childbirth has finally been signed by NY Governor David Paterson. Shackling during childbirth — which can mean being handcuffed to the bed at the wrists, shackled to the bed at the ankles, and/or even being restrained around the stomach — is a much more routine procedure for inmates giving birth than most people would imagine. And in addition to the inhumane and degrading nature of the treatment, the emotional trauma it inflicts, and the physical discomfort, it’s a practice that can even cause physical injury.

Though there was a federal ban on shackling enacted in 2008, a) it’s impossible to know whether it’s always followed, since inmates rarely file complaints until after being released, b) it doesn’t apply to state-run incarceration facilities, and c) as very few laws seem to, it also doesn’t apply to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In fact, ICE is one of the biggest offenders, and particularly disturbingly so as a disproportionate number of the pregnant women in ICE detention are pregnant as the result of rape (committed when they were crossing the border), inflicting a unique and especially horrific type of trauma. Indeed, as women of color are disproportionately incarcerated compared to white women, thanks to a racist prison system, this is also an issue that undoubtedly disproportionately affects women of color overall.

The reason, of course, that shackling has been able to continue for so long is the same reason that so many other prisoner abuses take place: racism, classism, mixed ignorance and apathy, and a general attitude that anyone who breaks the law (any law!) is disposable and deserves whatever abuse the government sees fit to heap upon them. It’s majorly disappointing that this new law includes exceptions that may easily be abused, but this is definitely a right step forward. In fact, the saddest thing of all is that according to Mother Jones, New York is only the sixth U.S. state to have legally prohibited the practice at all.

For more on the practice of shackling during childbirth and why it’s a hugely important reproductive justice issue, check out this article from RH Reality Check.

The Human Diaspora

Well it’s been good chillin in these parts for a bit and catching the action these past couple weeks, but the time has come to respectfully bow out with a bittersweet smile, with a warm embrace to our hosts and the new friends I’ve made. And maybe one more tequila shot before hitting the after-party. Tequila distilled from the blue agave pulp of the soul. Perhaps a few parting sentiments, befitting a return to the road.

What I’m feeling, at this particular time, at this point in my life, is the familiar recognition that there’s no real home for me in this earthly sphere, only criss-crossed paths across the surface of this spinning planet. It’s often said that life is a journey; all of us are in transition, marching side-by-side from unknown into unknown. I do understand that folks sometimes experience a different feeling of home, of bodily belonging, of sitting still and satiated atop ancestral roots pushed deep into the earth. I’ve had moments, now and then, here and there, where the hunger and the restlessness and the winding road melt from my being and all that’s left is wholeness. Maybe that’s what we’re all after.

But I think many of us who are children of diaspora, children of the displaced and the unwelcome, tend not to expect so much. We grow up with constant reminders that we’re a long way from home, surrounded by hostile strangers, barred from the center of the public square, shoved into the shadows. They don’t much like our kind round here, we are told in a million large and small ways, we are the ugly ones, the inadequate and intrusive ones, the spoilers of the pristine landscape. For such children of diaspora, there can be no homecoming. Locals in our adopted homes yell at us to “go home”. And our ancestral homes have been taken from us — by invaders and colonizers, by wars and circumstances and decisions, by distance, by time.

~ ~ ~

Every diasporic community is, of course, unique. Every people, indeed every family and every individual, has a unique story. I enjoy learning about all those stories. I like contemplating both the differences and similarities between the experiences of all the variegated groups that have ended up bouncing off each other like billiard balls here in the so-called New World. Understanding how we got here helps me understand where we are.

Understanding where we are, for me, began as a teenager, with a headlong plunge into my mom’s bookshelf of African American literature. My mother had been an anti-war and civil rights activist in the 1960s, when she first arrived in this country, literally fresh off a cargo boat from China after 3 months of lashing waves, tumultuous weather, and unwanted advances by seamen. Arriving on these golden shores, my mother had been troubled by the racism she discovered and had hit the books to try to understand the forces that were tearing her new country apart. She accumulated writings by James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, among others. She marched with progressive activists. In the 1980s, in my teens, I followed those footsteps. Her dusty dog-eared collection of Black literature opened the doors. It was my formal entry into anti-racism. I never turned back.

It’s been crucial for my journey as an Asian American citizen and activist to seriously, studiously, steadily explore and contemplate African American and Native American history and experience. I believe that it’s impossible for Americans of any stripe to grasp our own existence on this continent without first grasping those foundations. Obviously I’m steeped in Asian American history and culture, but the unique centrality of Native American and African American stories are not lost on me. To me, those are stories which bring us to both the vital spiritual source and the bleeding soul wound at the heart of US society. That’s how we got here. That’s who we are. That’s the electrical signal within our own heartbeat. Whiteness may attempt to negate this reality, or twist it into metallic square-brained convolutions devoid of visceral meaning, or set communities of color against each other by overplaying the gulfs between us and underplaying what we share; but the truths of our genocidal past, the Door of No Return, the Trail of Broken Treaties, as well as the bounty of gifts we’ve been given by all the forgotten, burn in my chest and in my eyes every day that I look upon the world.

~ ~ ~

In 1963, my father made the journey from Taiwan to the United States by way of East Africa. You could say that he took the long way here. My father’s family had ended up on the Kuomingtang-controlled island of Taiwan in the 1940s, after having been displaced from the mainland by the traumatic convulsions of the Japanese invasion in World War II and the Chinese civil war.

Both of my paternal grandparents were doctors, and in the early 1960s they took jobs working for the World Health Organization in Ethiopia. They gradually maneuvered their family toward a new life in the US, like moving chess pieces, one slip of paper at a time, one family member at a time. Being the eldest son, my father stayed behind in Taiwan the longest and took care of family business. All three of his younger siblings were already in the US by the time it was his turn to make a move. It was a big move. He made his way through Hong Kong, Bangkok, Bombay, Beirut, and Cairo, before arriving in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. From there, he traveled northwest to the ancient city of Gonder, where he met up with his parents.

Reflecting on it now, I realize what a profound impact this voyage must have had on my father, and consequently on me. It was an experience which shattered the horizons of his 22-year-old mind and opened his eyes to the grand scale and spectacular diversity of humanity — a vision which he passed on to me. In his memoir, my father writes:

Ethiopia is an ancient country with three thousand years of history. It looks over the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula, and is connected to Egypt by the Nile. The kings of this country had always claimed that they were descendants of Queen Sheba and King Solomon. Legend has it that the beautiful Queen Sheba went to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem, and later bore him a son, who became the founder of Ethiopia. Gonder is not far from the source of the Blue Nile, one of two major tributaries of the Nile. I once took a car to the hilly country nearby and looked down at the source of this world-famous river. You could say that I revered or even worshipped the Nile, but I had actually learned only isolated facts and lacked a historical sense to comprehend what I was seeing; it was as if I was able to mumble a few lines of poetry but knew not what they signified. I can only recall that when I looked at the source of the Nile, I murmured lines of Confucius, “It passes on just like this, not ceasing day or night,” and the poem, “I live by one end of the Long River, and you by the other end. I think of you day by day. I long to see you, but in vain. We drink by the same river.”

During his time in Gonder, my father met Ethiopian Christians and Ethiopian Jews, Israelis, Russians, Iranians. They were doctors, students, and patients at the medical center where my grandparents worked. He eventually managed to obtain a student visa from the US consulate, as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 finally got rid of racist quotas imposed during the Chinese Exclusion era, which had essentially barred Chinese folks from US citizenship and public life since they began arriving in the 1850s. So my father said goodbye to his parents in Ethiopia and set off on the second leg of his journey, through Asmara (which was then part of Ethiopia but is now the capital of Eritrea) and on to Khartoum in the Sudan, where he boarded a flight to Athens. He passed through Zurich, Rome, and Paris, before flying to New York and setting foot on the continent where he would meet up with my mother and raise children, my sister and me. That’s how I got here.

~ ~ ~

In 2001 I made a pilgrimmage back to ancestral lands. My great-grandfather’s house, where he made burlap sacks for a living, is still standing in a small village with mud roads where literally everyone shares the same surname. I visited the Japanese prison camps where the Chinese had been subjected to human experimentation for the development of biological and chemical weapons, as well as slave labor for industrial development of the Japanese imperial army which the US faced in the Pacific theater. Approximately 10 million Chinese people died during World War II, yet this isn’t even worth a footnote in the US. Most US Americans have no idea that the Chinese land war against Japan had at least as much to do with their defeat as the US naval war.

That’s how these journeys oftentimes go: we unearth geologies of bloodshed, tectonic plates of pain. We can’t imagine the cruelty and horror which our forebearers endured. Yet somehow we made it, and here we stand, upon the blood-soaked earth, under the aura of our ancestors.

My pilgrimmage ended at a remote mountain lake known as Tian Chi, which is usually translated as “Lake of Heaven” but which I prefer to call simply The Sky Pool. It’s a sacred spot draped in legend and mist and shimmering light. I sat on the shore meditating and gazing into the dark waters. That’s where I saw with definitive clarity that I could never go home, neither in China where my grandparents fled invading armies, nor in the US where my mind and body were formed. I would always be a child of diaspora. Gazing into those misty depths, I saw that ultimately we are all children of diaspora, scattered across the planet over eons of exodus like stars strewn across the sky. We are all migrants. We are all members of the Human Diaspora. Our only home is a bottomless Sky Pool where endless visions of countless tragi-comedies gather and dissolve. “I live by one end of the Long River, and you by the other end. I think of you day by day. I long to see you, but in vain. We drink by the same river.”

~ ~ ~

And that’s my light-hearted parting thought, O Feministe readers! Stop by my pad over at Zuky and say hello some time; you can even click on the Alms Bowl in my sidebar if you’re moved to do so by what you’ve seen of my stuff! I’ll try to have some hot tea or cold beer ready to go. I’ll see ya round.

Peace.

Rejecting the Language of the Leviathan

The ugly history of enforcement rhetoric in modern US politics winds its way from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, by way of Bill Clinton. It’s a history of cynical deception and manipulation based on racist fear and violent lust for domination and subjugation, conceived and championed by Republicans but all too often embraced by the slide-rule triangulations of Beltway Democrats preoccupied more with the engineerings of government power than the lives and struggles of the governed.

Richard Nixon knew exactly what he was doing when he ran his 1968 presidential campaign on the two philosophically inconsistent promises of enforcing law and order and stopping big government. Those tenets were never meant to be substantive or even rational. In fact, it was better for them to be jarringly irrational, because that was part of their acid-gut appeal, a Colbertian anti-intellectual assertion of primal fear over reason. In the midst of the 60s urban uprisings and race riots, these were smashface calls for white identity politics, explicitly designed to mobilize an emotionally volatile backlash against the Civil Rights movement and the imagined derailing of the 1950s White American Dream.

Nixon’s enforcement rhetoric (“tough on crime”, “law and order”) implicitly promised to crack down on brown people and put them back in their place at the bottom of society; while the attacks on “big government” generated false narratives that white magnanimity had gone too far and had resulted in dangerous hoardes of ungrateful welfare leeches who soaked up tax dollars, benefited from racial quotas, and gave nothing back to society. These constructs were, of course, not grounded in any sort of measurable reality. They were strictly drawn from the deep well of racism, built into the very foundation of this nation, seared into the psyche of every US American as solidly as the opening words of the Constitution.

As the renowned Republican strategist Lee Atwater put it in a 1981 interview with Bob Herbert on the so-called “Southern Strategy”:

By 1968 you can’t say “n—-r”. That hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now […] because obviously sitting around saying “We want to cut this” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N—-r, n—-r!”

Not a particulary refined or elevated political strategy. But Nixon rode it to victory in 1968, as did Ronald Reagan in 1980 (“welfare queens”) and George H. W. Bush in 1988 (Willie Horton). The lesson that Washington DC’s professional class of electoral manipulators drew from these outcomes was that national politicians could always count on the racism of white America.

Thus the rise of Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council in the 1980s and 90s. Rather than confront and expose the GOP’s debased demagoguery; rather than elevate national discourse by aggressively defending the strides of the Civil Rights movement and attacking racist fearmongering using a principled grown-up language based on human rights; rather than expand the dwindling electorate by reaching into disenfranchised communities who would respond well to a message of progressive populism, the Democratic Party ceded the debate to the most reactionary forces in US politics and adopted the discourse of coded racist narratives.

Bill Clinton won the presidency, ended “welfare as we know it”, ended “the era of big government”, doubled the prison population with mandatory minimums and an explosion of privatized prison construction, slapped NAFTA onto the continent unleashing new levels of unemployment, homelessness, and cross-border migration, and generally devastated countless communities of color.

~ ~ ~

Today, the Obama administration and the Democratic Party are apparently on the verge of tackling “comprehensive immigration reform” (CIR) once and for all. How will the debate play out? Exactly which policies will and will not constitute CIR? What political ploys and marketing schemes are DC consultants, motivated primarily by the desire to notch a “win” on their resumes, whispering into the ears of Democratic politicians and mass media lackeys? What legislative package will eventually be passed into law? And what tangible effects will that law have on the lives and struggles of both worthy and “unworthy” members of our communities?

Those questions remain up in the air, and the answers that eventually fall into place will depend in part on the strength and adamancy with which people of conscience assert the voice and power of a mobilized and progressive civic society on the public debate as it unfolds.

As I see it, a fundamental starting point for embarking upon the path to CIR is rejecting the racially-coded enforcement rhetoric which has characterized a great deal of the xenophobic hysteria and racial hatred of our country’s reactionary anti-immigrant forces. I describe this rhetoric as the language of the Leviathan, in reference to Hobbesian political theory, because it reduces the rule of law to the most base human impulses of domination and subjugation, promulgating the submission of individual liberty to the draconian sovereignty of ruler and state by means of a unilateral monopoly on coercive violence.

Obviously every society requires laws, ethical norms, rules of social conduct. But law should elevate society rather than debase it, and the sleight of hand inherent in Nixonian enforcement rhetoric is the manner in which it truncates democratic dialogue and social progress by falsely representing a corrupt and outdated legal, intellectual, and moral framework as a legitimate foundation for reform, when in fact reform must begin with a new, revitalized framework. As the Clinton years demonstrated, liberals cannot adopt reactionary rhetoric as a political tactic and then expect anything other than reactionary social results.

Unfortunately, DC Dems are showing seedy signs of supineness, with “leading” liberal figures such as Senator Charles Schumer resorting to cartoonishly-cynical “get tough” posturing and even President Obama blurting loaded exhortations to “get to the back of the line”. What line? There’s no line, there’s never been one; it’s always been a rigged game. The first folks to be singled out to “get in line” were the Chinese. The vast majority of European folks who came to this country, whether in pursuit of genocidal land grabs or as penniless workers or both, faced no line. Only certain groups are berated with that barked order. Now descendants of those Europeans actually think they have a stronger claim to this continent than the indigenous people themselves.

~ ~ ~

As Nezua wrote in an op-ed for The Commonweal Institute entitled “The Power of Truth and The Weakness of Tough Talk”:

When Democrats concede that the proper starting point is fear and revulsion of the Alien Other, they adopt the lens of xenophobia and feed the toxic environment in which race-based violence is bred. This stance is not productive nor is it rooted in truth. […]

“Go to the back of the line” is an intentionally punitive and domineering phrase. But instead of stroking our desire to dominate the new outsiders, we would benefit from a discussion on the many ways in which “the line” has broken down. From human trafficking rings in which foreign nationals are lured into exploitative US jobs, to foreign-born soldiers denied earned citizenship, the system is overwhelmed with a backlog of over 200,000 cases.

Even if rationalized as standard political posturing, any validation of language and ideas promoted by fringe elements that act violently to defend a “disappearing culture” from “illegals” cannot be excused. […] Who will give the Democrats a tough talk? Who will tell them that in order to rise above the well-entrenched practices of the Right, they will need to be daring, intelligent, and original? Who will assure them they possess the ability to be both honest and victorious?

Indeed those who spout the language of the Leviathan can never serve the cause of social progress, because their tongues are tied to the rigid despotism of the state rather than the rising aspirations of downtrodden communities.

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, he was disobeying a federal court injunction; his mainstream critics decried this “illegal” march and a majority of US public opinion disapproved of the action. But something strange happened after that march. The winds shifted. Hardened positions became more fluid. Even in white America, a flicker of self-doubt flashed across social consciousness. Openings appeared in the fabric of society and the impossible suddenly became possible. Addressing a nationally televised joint session of Congress two days after the first Selma march, President Lyndon Johnson famously declared:

What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause, too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.

It is said that a single tear rolled down Dr. King’s cheek when he heard that line on TV.

The Voting Rights Act passed 5 months later, not because Washington insiders hatched the right marketing scheme with the correct compromises, but because people grounded in a moral vision of social justice stood up, walked forward with heads held high, and didn’t back down in the face of the Leviathan.

Cirila Baltazar Cruz and The Plight Of The Unworthy

In recent weeks, the startling story of Cirila Baltazar Cruz has been stirring outrage and splitting spleens in certain corners of blogland, though it has yet to receive mainstream attention. Some details remain fuzzy, and we have yet to hear directly from the person at the center of the story, Ms. Cruz herself; and indeed we aren’t likely to hear from her anytime soon because her case is currently under a court gag order.

Here’s what we have so far: Cirila Baltazar Cruz gave birth to a baby girl, Rubi Juana, on November 16, 2008, at the Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula, Mississippi. It is, as you might imagine, a predominantly white area. The hospital provided Cruz with a Spanish interpreter. However, Cruz doesn’t speak Spanish; she speaks Chatino, an indigenous language from the Oaxaca region of Mexico. Two days after the birth, the hospital reported the baby as a neglected child to the Department of Human Services, after which Rubi Juana Cruz was promptly taken from her mother and placed in the custody of an affluent couple in Ocean Springs.

According to court records obtained by The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger, the child was deemed neglected in part because Cruz “has failed to learn the English language” which “placed her unborn child in danger and will place the baby in danger in the future”. In addition, the hospital report noted that Cruz “was an illegal immigrant” who was “exchanging living arrangements for sex”.

Of course, it’s a bit of a mystery how they were able to establish these facts when there were apparently no Chatino-speakers on hand. More to the point: it’s irrelevant. I’m no legal expert, but in my understanding, immigration status, language skills, and highly-questionable allegations of sex work are not grounds for snatching a baby from her mother and initiating adoption proceedings. But that’s exactly what’s happening. The case is currently in the Jackson County Youth Court, where Cruz is being represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center. As mentioned, the case is under gag order so it’s been difficult to get updates on the situation and the fate of Rubi Juana remains unknown.

Unfortunately, the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform’s Child Welfare Blog notes:

The case is not unique. In 2005, the Lebanon (Tenn.) Democrat, revealed that, at least twice, a local judge ordered Mexican mothers to learn English — or lose their children forever. […] In one case the child still lived with the mother, in the other the child was in foster care. In both cases, the mothers spoke an indigenous language rather than Spanish.

Over at Vivir Latino, Maegan La Mamita Mala places the story in the larger context of the “good immigrant vs. bad immigrant” narrative which has come to dominate mainstream liberal discourse in the immigration debate:

Quick. Choose. The house is burning and you have to choose. Your mother or your child? Who do you save?

Your mother, Maegan writes, “didn’t make it like Sonia Sotomayor. Didn’t graduate from college and in fact can’t even speak English”. On the other hand, your child has assimilated, can speak English, has received a formal education, and “won’t be a burden on the system”.

Is it the correct choice to abandon your unassimilated mother?

This is the morally untenable dead-end into which liberals propel themselves when they adopt tactical discourse which appeases the xenophobic forces of the right-wing for the sake of electoral expediency, rather than a discourse fundamentally grounded in universal human rights.

Now I’m not suggesting any less respect for the remarkable achievements of someone like Sonia Sotomayor. But when liberals hold her up as the shining example of The American Story — a model minority, a false compliment with which Asian Americans are all too familiar — they are actually Othering the majority of immigrants, ordinary hard-working people who have never had the opportunities or life situations or sheer good fortune to rise to such societal heights. The implication is that those less-accomplished immigrant stories are somehow less American, and therefore those other immigrants are unworthy of the magnanimous acceptance extended by the mainstream to a select few.

What is the plight of the unworthy? Ask Cirila Baltazar Cruz.

Please consider writing, faxing, or calling the presiding judge in this case and asking that (1) Rubi Juana be re-united with her mother, and (2) all adoption proceedings against the will of the mother be stopped. Here’s the contact info:

Honorable Judge Sharon Sigalas
Youth Justice Court of Jackson County
4903 Telephone Rd.
Pascagoula, MS 39567
Call (228) 762-7370
Fax (228) 762-7385

ETA: Thanks to Maegan for sending me this radio interview, recorded on June 1, in which we hear from Cirila Baltazar Cruz herself (in Spanish and Chatino).

Cruz says she doesn’t know why they took her daughter, though she calls herself “ignorant” for not being able to speak Spanish or English (though she does speak some Spanish, as you can hear in the interview). She’s a homeowner in Oaxaca with two other children being cared for by her family there. She works at a Chinese restaurant in Biloxi and lives in an apartment owned by her employer — an arrangement which the hospital interpreter either misunderstood or misrepresented. Cirila says that the interpreter told her that she must leave her Chinese employer or lose her baby; furthermore, the interpreter offered her a job with a wealthy family who would take care of the child. When she refused the offer, the interpreter became irritated with her, and we know the rest.

Cruz says she wants her daughter back. All the information she receives from the court is in English. It was her cousin Esteban who implored the Mississippi Immigrants’ Rights Alliance (MIRA) to get involved, which is how we now know about this case. Vicky Cintra of MIRA (also interviewed) says red flags went up at the organization when they learned that Esteban had been barred from serving as an interpreter for Cirila at the hospital, even though he repeatedly offered; he was told he would be arrested if he didn’t leave. MIRA claims that the family that took custody of Rubi Juana are lawyers with connections to the judge; they threw a baby shower to greet Rubi’s arrival.

November 18 is the next court date. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this story.

Right-Wing Hate Apparently Knows No Bounds

The family of Ana Fernandez, one of the people killed in the DC Metro crash, has been receiving harassing phone calls about their immigration status. The whole post:

Well this is the most disturbing thing I’ve run across today, and I watched that entire Mark Sanford press conference debacle. WTOP reports that the family of Ana Fernandez, one of the victims of Monday’s fatal Metro crash, has been getting hate-filled phone calls from people questioning whether she and her family are legal immigrants. No one has ever questioned Fernandez’s immigration status, and a family member has already told the media that all six of her now motherless children were born in the United States and full U.S. citizens, but still, the sort of people who watch Lou Dobbs are calling their home and harassing them, just because their last name is Hispanic. Here’s hoping the people making those calls never have to deal with a terrible family tragedy. Jackals.

“Jackals” is a nicer word than I would have used.

Napolitano Gives Widowed Spouses a Two-Year Deportation Reprieve

Via Feministing, this doesn’t sound so much to me like “good news” as it does basic decency:

Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, gave a two-year reprieve on Tuesday to immigrants whose applications for permanent residency have been denied because their American spouses died during the application process.

Under United States law, a foreign spouse of an American citizen is eligible for residency, but the couple is required to be married for at least two years first, in part as a safeguard against fraudulent marriages.

The government has argued that if the American spouse dies before the two-year mark, the foreign spouse becomes a widow or widower, effectively annulling the right to be considered for residency, and thereby opening the door to deportation.

While Ms. Napolitano’s order does not change or abolish the law, as its opponents have sought, it suspends action, including deportation proceedings, in cases involving widows and widowers who reside in the United States and were married for fewer than two years before their spouses died.

I’m really just shocked and appalled that this policy was in place at all. My husband is actually an immigrant who entered the United States under these rules. Just yesterday, in fact, he passed his naturalization exam, and he will be taking his oath of citizenship in a little over a month (congratulations, love!). In fact, I remember on all of the many forms we had to fill out showing evidence of our marriage at various points, there was a statement about producing a death certificate if the sponsoring spouse had died. The way it was worded, we always assumed it was so that they could allow you to stay in the country under an exception despite the fact that you were no longer married to a U.S. citizen, not so that they could more easily kick you out.

Quite obviously I’m still alive, and under the hypothetical misfortune that I wasn’t, I don’t know whether my husband would have wanted to stay here or not. But the idea that he wouldn’t have been given a choice and in fact could have been deported under such circumstances absolutely enrages me. And the fact that so many people actually have been placed in this circumstance and been forced to leave the country, and their life, not to mention in a time of grieving, both repulses me and breaks my heart.

So, good on Napolitano for using her power to put in a suspension. Hell, we can even go ahead and cross our fingers really, really tight that this might bode well for the countless other immigration injustices we’re currently dealing with.

But the advocates quoted in the above article are right that this is a band aid. Real change is going to have to happen legislatively. So I hope that you’ll take a moment to contact Congress. Also, check out Surviving Spouses Against Deportation for more information.

Boy Scouts teaches kids to run the new police state

Feministe commenter Tom Foolery sent me this article, with the comment that, “I feel like the reporter here could’ve asked some harder questions. Like “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING?!” For example.”

That pretty much sums up my reaction, too. From the article:

Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

It will probably shock no one to learn that the kids are being trained to focus on Mexicans and people in “Middle Eastern dress.”

The degree to which young people in this country are brought up to accept extreme policing and social control is deeply disturbing. The ACLU has done some great work on the school-to-prison pipeline, which they describe as “a disturbing national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” The children who are funneled from schools into prisons are largely low-income and of color. On the other hand, we have children who are targeted by the Explorer Scouts being trained to police, often forcefully. It’s a recipe for another generation of incarceration, social and economic devastation in policed communities, and violence.

What the fuck are these people thinking?

En Lucha, In Gerangl: On Edens and Utopias

The Garden by Scott Hamilton Kennedy
(Black Valley Films)

At Home In Utopia by Michal Goldman
(Filmmakers Collaborative)

Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s The Garden opens with aerial shots of South Central Farm, the 14-acre community garden founded by Latin@ immigrants and other citizens of Los Angeles; against the backdrop of gray warehouses and the L.A. skyline, we see a rectangle of green, bursting with nopales, corn, vegetables, herbs, and trees. South Central Farm has been compared to Eden probably a million times – hell, the allusion is right there in the title of the documentary – but it’s with good reason. To see land being used in a healthy, loving way in an urban environment really does feel like a return to Eden.

By now, the story of South Central Farm is (or should be) legendary among American activists. The land was originally supposed to be used for a garbage incinerator – a move that would be rightly horrifying in wealthy parts of town, but seems to be considered only natural in poor and working class neighborhoods – but, after Concerned Citizens of South Central L.A. successfully fought it, and after the 1992 L.A. Riots galvanized the citizens of South Central to revitalize their community space, it was transformed into a cooperative collection of garden plots. It was more than just a place to grow food; SCF grew into a tight-knit community, a haven amidst the blight of L.A. But racism and greed ensure that good things never last, and SCF was destroyed in 2006.

Housewives, Babymakers, and Sex Partners

Today on Here and Now, Robin Young featured Meghna Damani, the maker of a new documentary about being made a “dependent spouse” by virtue of a U.S. immigration visa, Hearts Suspended. Damani, while living in India, was an accomplished executive with a master’s degree in marketing, and history in journalism and modeling. Having always been able to earn her own way, she thought nothing of following her husband to the United States while he worked, and she did so on an H-4 visa, a visa that allows immediate family members of the H-1B visa holders to lawfully come and stay in the U.S. What is doesn’t allow H-4 status women to do is get a social security number or work. In Damani’s artist’s statement, she says:

This film is a piece of my life that I hope will tell the story of the thousands of educated women like myself who come here every year as doctors, lawyers, architects, business professionals, artists, etc. and are forced to stay at home for an indefinite period of time. Many are abused, exploited or in just plain denial that they have lost the most precious years of their lives – irrevocably.

One of the biggest obstacles, because H-4 visas can be upgraded to working visas, is that the visa holder has to find a company that is not only willing to hire them but is also willing to go through the trouble of also legally sponsoring the women as immigrant workers. Jobs, because the women are generally highly educated, are easy to find — sponsorship is not. And because sponsorhip is so difficult to find, essentially, as Shivali Shah says in the trailer, these women are “being brought in[to the United States] only in the most base functions as women: housewives, babymakers, and sex partners.”

Listening to the radio show, it was easy to see why these women are so isolated. Their social lives revolve around their husbands’ work contacts, their independence is dependent on their husbands’ good graces, their education and work experience is for nothing. It’s hard to explain why it’s so difficult to friends and family back home because their husbands are national golden boys, and because of the opportunity narratives the U.S. cultivates worldwide.

Admittedly, I’m rather ignorant of legalities when it comes to immigration to the United States, but this segment spoke to me because of the kinds of gender divides it promotes by legal limitations. Is there anyone with H-4 immigration status in the house?

Sheriff Arpaio Under Investigation By U.S. Justice Department

Almost a week ago, I shared a petition that demanded an investigation in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign of terror in Maricopa County, Arizona. I am now both absolutely thrilled and admittedly really shocked to share the news that an investigation is now underway!

The U.S. Justice Department has launched a civil-rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office after months of mounting complaints that deputies are discriminating in their enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Officials from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division notified Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Tuesday that they had begun the investigation, which will focus on whether deputies are engaging in “patterns or practices of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures.”

An expert said it is the department’s first civil-rights probe related to immigration enforcement.

I’d actually argue that this is only the tip of the iceberg of what Arpaio needs to be investigated for, but the news is excellent nonetheless. Here’s to hoping that this is a legitimate investigation, which will end in some real results — preferably, Arpaio’s removal or retirement from his position.

h/t Veronica’s Twitter