El Magonista | Vol. 10, No. 39 | October 27, 2022

By Julia Ainsley, Sahil Kapur and Julie Tsirkin | MSNBC
OCT. 20, 2022 | Photo by Camille Fine

An ad running in The Wall Street Journal, The Dallas Morning News and The Charlotte Observer warns congressional leaders that ending DACA would hurt the economy.

Microsoft, Apple, Meta and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies launched an ad campaign Thursday to push Congress to pass a new law that would secure the fate of migrants known as “Dreamers,” part of a last-ditch effort to save the protections as federal courts seem likely to end the executive order that has protected them since 2012.

But both Republican and Democratic Senate aides say the effort has a slim chance of working and predict that Dreamers will most likely begin to lose their work authorization and security from deportation sometime early next year. Republicans, who are expected to increase their numbers in Congress in November’s midterm elections, largely oppose protecting Dreamers unless Democrats make significant concessions to beef up border security and turn away asylum-seekers, which they are unlikely to do. 

More than 600,000 Dreamers — migrants brought to the U.S. as children but who lack legal status — are protected under the 2012 executive order known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and advocates say hundreds of thousands more are eligible.

The ad, running in The Wall Street Journal, The Dallas Morning News and The Charlotte Observer, warns congressional leaders that ending DACA would hurt the economy... READ MORE

We no longer live in the Los Angeles that is depicted in the leaked recordings of city leaders engaging in a casually racist and nakedly corrupt conversation.

Our City Council politics may be tribal and divisive, but all Angelenos lead lives that are in some way multicultural, intentionally or not. 

Cambodians, Thais and Filipinos shop in Chinatown. Central Americans and Nicaraguans celebrate special occasions at a Thai restaurant in Koreatown. Quinceañeras and weddings take place at Armenian-owned banquet halls. Black people shop in swap meets, at shops run by Latinos and owned by Koreans. At a stoplight in any given neighborhood in L.A., you can hear someone blasting Nipsey Hussle, Kendrick Lamar or Tyler, the Creator. 

But as the leaked recordings show, City Hall isn’t listening.

Angelenos of all races and backgrounds have marched at one another’s protests, shouting “Black Lives Matter!” or “Stop AAPI hate!” or “Protect essential workers!”

But on redistricting priorities, Councilmember Kevin de León said, “Protect me.”

We eat one another’s food, work together, marry and, over time, learn to share neighborhoods. Sometimes, in our own messy, imperfect way, we come together and recognize a common cause.

But on slicing up Councilmember Nithya Raman’s district through gerrymandering, Councilmember Gil Cedillo said, “She’s not going to help us.... Yeah, why not... READ MORE

Do Republican Party officials believe Latino immigrants are coming to “replace” Americans, or do they think Latinos are the party’s future? The answer affects whether there will be a legislative solution for young people brought to America by their parents. 

Republican lawmakers claiming immigrants are part of a “great replacement” of White voters has been in the news for months. “Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the No. 3 House Republican, and other GOP lawmakers came under scrutiny . . . for previously echoing the racist ‘great replacement’ theory that apparently inspired an 18-year-old who allegedly killed 10 people while targeting Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo,” reported the Washington Post (May 16, 2022). “The baseless conspiracy theory claims that politicians are attempting to wipe out White Americans and their influence by replacing them with non-White immigrants.”

The immigration group America’s Voice has tracked election-year ads and found inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants from Republican candidates. “Almost all the Republicans running statewide in Arizona have made ‘replacement’ and ‘invasion’ conspiracies a central part of their campaigns,” according to an America’s Voice report... READ MORE

By Zach Schonfeld | The Hill | OCT. 20, 2022 | Photo by J. Scott Applewhite

More than 80 major businesses and trade associations sent a letter to congressional leaders on Thursday urging them to pass legislation protecting the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program as it faces an uncertain future in the courts.

The program, which was established by the Obama administration in 2012 to prevent deportations of those brought into the U.S. illegally as children, has long been the subject of legal battles, with the case widely expected to land at the Supreme Court again.

“The worker shortage will get worse for the United States if hundreds of thousands of critical workers are stripped of their legal ability to support themselves and their families,” the companies wrote in the letter. “That is the situation we currently face if this ruling becomes final, and it is the reason for our request today.”

The letter — first reported by NBC News and endorsed by major firms like Apple, Amazon, Target and Chipotle — was addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

The letter suggests an end to DACA would mean 1,000 job losses per business day for two years, with business leaders suggesting such a decline would exacerbate struggles to maintain staffing levels in the tight labor market... READ MORE

After months of waiting for decisions on the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth are back to where they started—waiting for a legislative fix to their ongoing legal limbo.

The Biden administration and the states suing to end DACA continue to fight it out in court. But the Biden administration doesn’t seem to be fighting as hard as some immigrant advocates might like.

What is the latest in the DACA litigation?

After the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision finding the 2012 version of DACA to be illegal, it once again sent the case back to Texas federal district court Judge Andrew Hanen. Then last Friday, the federal government agreed with the states that the Texas court’s 2021 injunction halting DHS from enrolling new people in DACA would cover the new rule announced in August, which was set to take effect on October 31, 2022.

The Biden administration did not explain why it conceded that the Texas federal district court’s 2021 order applies to the new DACA regulation that the administration issued after that ruling. But there are several reasons it might have done so. Despite being over 450 pages, the new rule changes little about the eligibility criteria or operation of DACA. And Judge Hanen already found the similar 2012 version of DACA to be substantively unlawfulfor a variety of reasons. The chance of changing his mind about the new rule was low.

Perhaps most importantly, Judge Hanen’s partial pause of his 2021 order and the decisionfrom a federal district court in New York in favor of DACA recipients mean that the status quo will continue... READ MORE

By Robert Santos, Director of the Census Office | La Opinion
OCT. 5, 2022 | Photo by IMPREMEDIA

"Los latinos pueden ser católicos, evangélicos o musulmanes; hombres, mujeres o de algún otro género; pobres, clase media, ricos; y sí, monolingües, bilingües o multilingües", expone Robert Santos, director de la Oficina del Censo en el Mes de la Herencia Hispana.

Durante este Mes de la Herencia Hispana, he estado reflexionando sobre mi recorrido de identidad. Todos nosotros tenemos historias que deben contarse para que podamos comprendernos mejor entre todos. 

Mi búsqueda comenzó antes de que yo naciera, con mis abuelos. Al igual que muchas familias de su generación, mis abuelos huyeron del norte de México para evitar la violencia de la Revolución mexicana de 1910. Mis abuelos llegaron a San Antonio simplemente cruzando la frontera entre Texas y México sin papeles. Eran refugiados. Mis padres fueron la segunda generación de inmigrantes, y los dos nacieron en San Antonio. Esto me convierte a mí en un inmigrante de tercera generación.

Investigaciones indican lo que tal vez ustedes ya sospechan: el porcentaje de hogares en los que se habla español en el hogar disminuye en cada siguiente generación. La encuesta del Pew Research Center en el 2015 sugiere que virtualmente en todos los hogares latinos de primera generación se habla español en el hogar, mientras que las cifras disminuyen a cerca de la mitad en la tercera generación... READ MORE

A few months ago, several employees of an upscale Mexico City steakhouse came forward with a damning allegation: The restaurant had a policy of segregation in which the best tables were reserved for the customers with the lightest skin.

The notion of whiter Mexicans getting preferential treatment was not surprising in a country where darker-skinned people have long earned less money, received less schooling and been all but invisible in the media. But the ensuing public outrage was. 

Within days, activists mounted a boycott and the city launched an investigation into the restaurant, Sonora Grill Prime, which denied the accusations. Multiple public figures highlighted the scandal as evidence of pervasive bigotry. “Racism is real,” Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters, using a word long regarded as taboo. “We have to accept that it exists and fight it.”

For the vast stretch of Mexico’s modern history, many denied that racism existed here at all. 

They embraced the nation’s foundational myth that its people are mestizos, a single blended race of indigenous and Spanish blood, insisting that there could be no prejudice if all Mexicans were the same.

But a growing social movement is challenging that thinking, thrusting discussions of discrimination based on skin color to the fore... READ MORE

By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel | The Washington Post
OCT. 21, 2022 | Photo by Demetrius Freeman

Six GOP-led states said the Biden administration overstepped its authority in its plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student-loan debt.

A federal judge on Thursday denied a bid by six Republican-led states to block the Biden administration from moving forward with plans to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student-loan debt for more than 40 million people, days after borrowers began signing up for relief.

The states filed a lawsuit last month, saying that the administration has overstepped its authority by creating the forgiveness program without going through Congress. They also claimed the plan would threaten the revenue of state entities that profit from federal student loan, and they requested the court stop the federal government from canceling any debt as the case proceeds.

U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey of the Eastern District of Missouri issued a 19-page order concluding that the states lacked the standing to bring the lawsuit to stop one of the administration’s signature economic policies. “While plaintiffs present important and significant challenges to the debt relief plan, the current Plaintiffs are unable to proceed to the resolution of these challenges,” he wrote.

The ruling by Autrey, a George W. Bush appointee, was one of two victories Thursday for the administration’s plan. In a separate case, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett denied a request by the conservative legal outfit Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, working on behalf of a taxpayer’s association, to pause the program... READ MORE

José Albornoz has only been in the U.S. for a few weeks, but things have been happening fast.

He's already traveled across the country twice, landing in Montana, where a friend got him a job in construction. And he's learned a few things about the immigration system along the way.

"I'm undocumented," he says in Spanish, "but I'm not illegal."

The 40-year-old Venezuelan crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in September near Eagle Pass, Texas on foot and with few possessions: His passport, a cellphone and a change of clothes. He turned himself in to the United States Border Patrol, and was released into the U.S. a few days later.

Albornoz doesn't have a work permit. But he does have permission to be in the U.S. temporarily, which protects him from deportation.

This immigration purgatory – legally present, but unable to work lawfully – is where many Venezuelan migrants now find themselves. Hundreds of thousands have been released into the U.S. with a notice to appear in immigration court, or instructions to check in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they get to their destinations. 

But the next steps are not so clear.

Migrants In New York Are "Desperate" To Work

"They're not getting the things that they need, the information that they need," says Jay Alfaro, manager of social services and partnerships at the Church of the Holy Apostles in New York. "They don't know their rights, you know, they don't even know how to get around the city... READ MORE

 

La salida de Nury Martínez del concilio de Los Ángeles no calmó el enojo de la comunidad, luego de conocerse la conversación donde se vertieron comentarios racistas que ella sostuvo en el 2021 con los concejales Kevin de León y Gil Cedillo junto al líder sindical Ron Herrera, según lo publicado por Los Angeles Times.

Desde que surgió el escándalo, en la primera entrevista que otorgó De León dijo que no iba a dejar el cargo, algo que le han exigido en protestas diferentes organizaciones y miembros de la comunidad.

“No renunciaré porque hay mucho trabajo por encima”, dijo el concejal a la cadena Univision.

De León se enfrenta a un camino espinoso, no solo en el ayuntamiento sino también entre las bases que lo han apoyado en las campañas políticas desde el 2006, cuando llegó a la Asamblea de California, en donde inició su periplo por Sacramento, hasta convertirse en presidente del Senado estatal.

Entre las organizaciones comunitarias mexicanas existe una fragmentación de opiniones. Sin embargo, las organizaciones y empresarios oaxaqueños han hecho un frente común, realizando diferentes protestas en la alcaldía de Los Ángeles y marchando en las calles con un solo objetivo en la mira.

“Tiene que dejar el cargo, no hay vuelta atrás”, indicó Gabriel Cruz, propietario del restaurante El Rincón Oaxaqueño.

Cruz, de 54 años, conoció a De León en 1994 cuando ambos coincidieron en las marchas y protestas en contra de la proposición 187 que promovió el entonces gobernador de California, Pete Wilson, con la que buscaba eliminar los servicios de salud y educación a los inmigrantes indocumentados... READ MORE