El Magonista | Vol. 11, no. 15 | May 15, 2023

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, was put into effect by executive order more than ten years ago. Since then, it hasn’t lived up to its potential due to numerous court districts threatening to end the program and have stopped accepting new applicants which has led to many people being concerned about the program’s future.  

Luis, who requested to be anonymous, is a current DACA recipient, who was able to take advantage of the program by receiving assistance in finding stable work and funding for his college education.  

Luis was born in México in Zacapu, Michoacán. He was only one year old when his parents brought him to the United States in search of a better life.  

Luis is one of the 600,000 DACA recipients that were brought to the United States by their parents, according to the National Immigration Forum.  

DACA is a program that was implemented by the Obama Administration in 2012. It provides undocumented immigrants with a two-year renewal of work authorization and protection from deportation, according to Mariela Gomez the Coordinator for the Dreamers Resource Center at California State University, Bakersfield that provides resources to undocumented students or people with mixed-status families.   

According to Luis, if it wasn’t for DACA, it would have been very discouraging for him to complete his college degree because without having a proper work permit, he would have had problems finding employment after college. He graduated from CSUB in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in supply chain logistics... READ MORE

The Covid-era policy has ended, but Biden’s border policy woes have not.

President Joe Biden is getting pummeled on immigration — from both sides of the political spectrum.

Lawsuits rolled in late Thursday night from the left and the right, amid a torrent of criticism already pouring in over his lifting of the public health order known as Title 42.

“You’re gonna have tens of thousands of people pouring into our country,” Donald Trump said at his CNN town hall this week. “We don’t want them being in our country. We have enough problems right now.”

Trump’s rebuke may have been predictable, but Biden is taking incoming from progressives, too: They say the president’s new rule — similar to a Trump-era policy referred to as the “transit ban” — is too harsh, and will further limit access to the country’s asylum system.

“It’s evident that there’s been an unmistakable shift in the president’s immigration policy,” said Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.), pointing to Biden administration officials floating family detention, sending troops to the border, and making it harder for some migrants to apply for asylum. “I know that the administration is in a tough spot, but it’s beyond disappointing to see them trying to appease Republicans on immigration.”

How Biden’s administration handles the upheaval could determine whether immigration will be a typical, second-tier campaign issue that fires up the MAGA base but moves few votes — or a topic that rattles voters across the political spectrum and casts doubt on Biden’s competency, like the pullout from Afghanistan... READ MORE

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has extended her lead over Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard as the preferred candidate for the ruling Morena party at the 2024 presidential election.

An El Financiero newspaper poll also shows that the alliance of Morena, the Labor Party (PT) and the Green Party (PVEM) has a 20-point lead over the three-party Va por México opposition bloc, made up of the National Action Party (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

Sheinbaum is the preferred candidate of many Morena voters.The party has a 20-point lead over its nearest rivals, with a little more than year before the presidential elections. (Graciela López/Cuartoscuro)
Sheinbaum, who declared late last year that she is ready to take on the nation’s top job, was the preferred Morena candidate of 34% of 900 people polled by El Financiero in late April.

Support for the mayor was up three points compared to March, while the percentage of respondents who nominated Ebrard as their preferred candidate declined one point to 18%.

Interior Minister Adán Augusto López Hernández was chosen by 10% of those polled as their preferred candidate for Morena and its allies, while Gerardo Fernández Noroña, a deputy with the PT, and Senator Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s leader in the upper house, received 7% and 6% support, respectively.

Almost a quarter of the respondents didn’t nominate a preferred Morena candidate... READ MORE

This is about what you'd expect from a state that would ban dictionaries.

You’ve got to give it to Liz Dye, it is hard to refer to SB 1718 as anything other than “an anti-immigrant bill chock full of new and creative modes of state-sponsored cruelty and ways for Governor DeSantis to burnish his Republican bona fides for a presidential run.” For the folks who were preoccupied with yesterday’s billables and didn’t have the chance to catch up on Florida’s shenanigans, here is a brief summary of what’s going on.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is poised to sign tough penalties and restrictions that aims to obstruct the flow of illegal immigration to the state after the House approved the measure, (CS/SB 1718), in a mostly party line, 83-36 vote on Tuesday.

The new legislation strengthens employment requirements, bans local governments from contributing money to organizations creating identification cards for undocumented immigrants, bars driver’s licenses issued to non-citizens in other states from use in Florida.

The old standby is that they are taking the jobs no one wants — which is the bad take. It paints immigrants as being the scrap workers… which is why Kelly Osborne rightly faced criticism for her “who will clean toilets?” question. The part that gets much less air time is how these laws also prevent immigrants from taking the jobs we aren’t qualified for. For example, SB 1718 even has a special little section that targets attorneys... READ MORE

Los mexicanos que trabajan en aquel país contarán por primera vez con una cuenta bancaria; la comisión por envío, 10 dólares menos que la cobrada por las firmas privadas, se va directo al ingreso de la familia. "No buscamos ganancia."

Es un acto de justicia social. Así define Rocío Mejía Flores, directora de Financiera para el Bienestar (FB), la decisión del gobierno federal de ofrecer por primera vez un instrumento financiero para que los trabajadores migrantes en Estados Unidos envíen dinero a sus familias en México.

Este mes entró en operación la tarjeta de la FB, antes Telecomm, que permite enviar recursos desde Estados Unidos a México por hasta 2 mil 500 dólares, con una comisión de 3.99 dólares, 10 dólares menos del promedio cobrado por las firmas privadas.

Es también la primera vez que se ofrece a los migrantes mexicanos una cuenta bancaria –operada por una firma, Broxel, que cuenta con autorización en Estados Unidos– para hacer sus envíos, aunque el instrumento va más allá de ser el medio para una transacción financiera, aclara Mejía Flores, en una entrevista con La Jornada.

Apoyo directo

El objetivo más importante es la justicia social. Nuestros paisanos hacen mucho cuando deciden irse, buscan el empleo, un ingreso; padecen marginación, segregación, discriminación, todo lo que les pasa allá. Con este programa de la Tarjeta de la Financiera para el Bienestar se atiende una asignatura pendiente de un gobierno democrático que busca justicia social para ellos y darles un apoyo directo, explicó... READ MORE

When President Biden announced his intent to run for re-election, a collective groan could be heard from immigration advocates. President Biden’s record so far on immigration has been, in a word, disappointing.

It’s not that we never had hope for this administration’s immigration policy — it’s that we did.

As Biden’s reelection campaign begins in earnest, rather than hue toward the political center, the president should embrace a compassionate, common sense and lawful approach to immigration policy that deemphasizes enforcement and mass incarceration, and delivers on the unfulfilled promises from his previous campaign.

As a candidate in 2020, Biden’s immigration platform was progressive — a welcome response to years of President Trump’s relentless attacks on noncitizens, drastic enforcement measures and rollbacks of essential asylum protections. On the campaign trail nearly four years ago, Biden spoke with great promise and passion about “restor[ing] our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers.”

Specifically, then-candidate Biden promised to hold ICE accountable for inhumane treatment in jails and detention centers, halt construction of the border wall, end border restrictions and the separation of immigrant families, and make the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program permanent. President Biden has — at best — under-delivered on these campaign promises.

More than 25,000  people are held every day in immigration jails and prisons across the United States, where they continue to face medical abuse, negligent mental health care, solitary confinement and physical and sexual abuse.

Though oversight mechanisms have proven ineffective, Biden has not taken meaningful action to stop these harms. Moreover, additional barriers, including concrete walls topped with steel bollards, have been put in place at the U.S.-Mexico border during Biden’s tenure. Children are still being separated from their parents at the border and DACA recipients remain in more legal limbo than ever, still without a path to permanent status... READ MORE

The football player on the vintage Sports Illustrated cover looks beat.

He’s framed from the chest up, the No. 11 on his rumpled purple Minnesota Vikings jersey barely visible. The sky behind him is blue, but the midday sun is blasting down on his face. The player is squinting, he has sweaty, shaggy hair with a couple of strands of gray, and his mouth is open and gasping. Scars decorate his chin.

Beat, but still standing. Still looking for a shot to win.

“The Toughest Chicano: Viking Quarterback Joe Kapp” reads the front of the July 20, 1970, issue. Nothing else.

I first saw it in the late 1990s while trying to find out more about Kapp, who died Monday at 85 after a 15-year battle with dementia. Even back then, I knew my place in sports: on the sidelines. While my favorite cousins Vic and Plas and our best friend Art ruled neighborhood pigskin games and “Madden,” my noodle arm and butterfingers read books and articles about the sport’s past.

One of them must’ve mentioned Kapp, because the brief sketches about his career that I came across stuck with me. His short, punchy name, of course. The general impression I got that while he wasn’t the most talented of players, he remained a fierce competitor. The trademark Kapp move that all the write-ups seemed to include: While most quarterbacks of his era tried to evade tacklers when they scrambled for some yards, he put down his shoulder and smashed into them — and always got the better of it... READ MORE

Mostly white servicemen and police rode to East LA and beat Mexican American youth wearing Zoot Suits.

High-waisted trousers of generous proportions pegged at the ankle. Shoulder-padded jackets draped at knee-length. Outfits accessorized by wide-brimmed hats with feathers, long watch chains and shiny shoes.

The zoot suit, worn in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s by Black and Mexican American men, prompted a violent racial attack against a minority population.

In June 1943, 80 years ago, roving bands of white Navy seamen and other enlisted soldiers stationed in L.A. during WWII used sticks, clubs and fists to beat Mexican American youth wearing the hip suits, leaving them bloodied and stripped of their clothes on the streets of downtown L.A. and East Los Angeles.

The attacks became known as the Zoot Suit Riots. They began on May 31 with a street scuffle and escalated on June 3, June 4 and June 20 of 1943, according to historical articles and records.

The Zoot Suit Riots are described as a “dark chapter in Los Angeles County history” in a motion to be heard by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, May 16. In marking the 80th anniversary, the board asks that the violent display of racism against Mexican American, African American and Filipino American men living in L.A. at that time not be forgotten.

In the motion by First District Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, the attacks are denounced as devastating reminders of a black mark on the county’s history. The motion includes historic details of the attacks as a way for county residents to not just remember, but to fight against racial and ethnic discrimination.

“The Zoot Suit Riots have been one of Los Angeles’ most shameful moments in history,” read the motion.

To keep the attacks in the forefront and not let them get lost in history, and to celebrate Mexican American heritage in L.A., Manny Alcaraz, 74. of Paramount, a historian and classic car owner, is planning a classic car show and cruising event on June 3. It starts at 8 a.m. at Lorena Street and Whittier Boulevard in Boyle Heights, with cars cruising on Main Street, Broadway and over the new Sixth Street Bridge. The event is entitled: “80th Anniversary of the Zoot Suit Riots Historical Cruise... READ MORE