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Our first book "Anthology of Dreams from an Impossible Journey” has arrived!
This glossy, 380-page, bilingual tome is jam-packed with photos and stories from the essays of our Dreamers Study Abroad Program participants.
We want to ensure that as many people as possible can get a FREE copy. We ask only for a donation of $20 (USD) or 400 Pesos to cover shipping and handling.
To receive your free copy, please fill out the order form found at www.california-mexicocenter.org/book-launch/
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Column by Michael Smolens | The San Diego Union-Tribune
FEB. 15, 2023 | Photo by Lynne Sladky
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Bills to give legal residency to immigrants brought to U.S. as children have been floating around Congress for more than two decades.
You have to give backers of the Dream Act this: They don’t quit.
They’ve been unsuccessful for more than two decades at gaining protections for immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.
Further, prospects do not appear good for any major immigration-related legislation getting out of both the House of Representatives, with its new Republican majority, and the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Republicans even stumbled on their own border security measures that GOP leaders were confident they could rush through the House in the first couple of weeks of the new Congress.
Nevertheless, another version of the Dream Act was introduced late last week by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who have teamed up on this before. Neither sounded very optimistic they would achieve a different result.
Actually, it was a bit surprising that the bill was put forward at all. In an end-of-session move, lawmakers in December circulated a proposal for the so-called “dreamers” as sort of a Hail Mary, the thinking being chances were at least a little better then with Democrats holding slim majorities in the House and Senate.
But there’s always pragmatic and perhaps inspirational value in keeping the proposal alive. While it’s hard to imagine, political dynamics could always change in the Dream Act’s favor. It also never hurts to keep the popular proposal in the public eye, given it’s widely believed to be in the best interests of the country, according to polls and economic research.
Not to be lost in all of this is the fate of the nearly 2 million people who could get on the road to citizenship under the Dream Act. For many of them, the U.S. is the only home they’ve known. A subset of some 600,000 of these people have temporary legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which appears to be on borrowed time. A federal appellate court in October ruled the program is illegal and must have authorization by Congress... READ MORE
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By Jacob Bogage | The Washington Post | FEB. 11, 2023
Photo by Charlie Neibergall
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Bills advancing in the Iowa and Minnesota state legislatures would roll back child workplace protections to address worker shortages.
As local economies grapple with a tightening labor market, some state legislatures are looking to relax child labor protections to help employers meet hiring needs.
It’s part of a persistent trend in labor economics, experts say. When employers struggle to find talent, many prefer to hire younger, cheaper workers rather than increase pay and benefits to attract adults.
“Because of the high demand for workers, where there are holes in the system, unfortunately child laborers can get caught up in staffing some of those holes,” said David Weil, a professor of social policy and management at Brandeis University, and a former wage and hour administrator in the Labor Department.
Legislators in Iowa and Minnesota introduced bills in January to loosen child labor law regulations around age and workplace safety protections in some of the country’s most dangerous workplaces. Minnesota’s bill would permit 16- and 17-year-olds to work construction jobs. The Iowa measure would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work certain jobs in meatpacking plants.
The Iowa bill, introduced by state Sen. Jason Schultz (R), would permit children as young as 14 to work in industrial freezers and meat coolers, provided they are separate from where meat is prepared, and work in industrial laundry.
At 15, they would be able to work as lifeguards and swimming instructors, perform light assembly-line work after obtaining a waiver from state officials, and load and unload up to 50 pounds of products from vehicles and store shelves with a waiver “depending on the strength and ability of the fifteen-year-old.”
The Iowa proposal would also expand hours teenagers can work during the school year, and would shield businesses from civil liability if a youth worker is sickened, injured or killed on the job... READ MORE
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Opinion by Eric Holcomb & Spencer Cox | The Washington Post
FEB. 21, 2023 | Photo by Jose Luis Gonzalez
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Eric Holcomb, a Republican, is governor of Indiana. Spencer Cox, a Republican, is governor of Utah.
Indiana has about 220,000 open jobs right now and Utah has 107,000, according to the most recent federal data — more than 6 percent of all jobs in both states. With strong business and tax environments, we like our chances in the competition for job-seekers moving from other states. But they won’t be enough to fill all of those vacancies. We also need immigrants who are ready to work and help build strong communities.
To help us do our jobs as governors, we call on Congress to end its two-decade standoff on setting immigration policy — one of its most basic duties. And, as leaders of states, we pledge to share the accountability. Though border security is a national concern, and a nonnegotiable requirement of national security in a world with drug cartels and terrorists, we believe that states should be able to sponsor whatever immigrants serve the needs of their communities. As it is, the standstill on immigration hobbles both parties and, more seriously, endangers America’s long-term well-being.
A growing, bipartisan group of senators appears to share our sense of urgency. But voices on one side call for an overly liberal national immigration policy that overlooks the toll on border states and encourages too many people to take dangerous journeys that can end in legal limbo. Meanwhile, voices on the other side call immigrants a burden, against all the evidence from economics and history.
The United States became prosperous because many immigrants saw our beacon and seized the freedoms and opportunities offered here. That formula has not changed. As of 2021, for example, nearly half of America’s Fortune 500 companies had been founded by an immigrantor the child of one.
At home, we see more ordinary stories of immigrants contributing to our state economies. Julian Diaz entered the United States in search of work in the 1990s. His son Juan now employs four other Hoosiers in a successful landscaping business, while Juan’s son studies computer science in college. Bassam Salem, born in Egypt, came to the United States more than 30 years ago with his parents and grew up in Utah. He eventually secured permanent residency, became a U.S. citizen and founded two successful technology start-ups that have contributed millions to the economy.
Rapidly declining birthrates and accelerating retirements across the United States mean that our states’ already wide job gaps will grow to crisis proportions without more families such as these — causing our growth engines to sputter. Many of these jobs require high-level skills and entrepreneurship. But states are also awash in unfilled entry-level, low-skill roles — essential in agriculture, health care and the service industries... READ MORE
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By Miriam Jordan | The New York Times | FEB. 21, 2023
Photo by Ilana Panich-Linsman
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A tough new immigration measure could disqualify the vast majority of migrants from being able to seek asylum at the southern border.
In a bid to prevent a surge of migrants at the southern border when a pandemic measure is lifted in May, the Biden administration on Tuesday announced its toughest policy yet to crack down on unlawful entries.
The proposed rule, which has been opened for 30 days of public comment before taking effect, would presume that migrants are ineligible for asylum if they entered the country unlawfully, a significant rollback in the country’s traditional policy toward those fleeing persecution in other countries.
It would allow rapid deportation of anyone who had failed to request protection from another country while en route to the United States or who did not notify border authorities through a mobile app of their plans to seek asylum.
Administration officials said the policy would take effect on May 11 with the expected termination that day of Title 42, a Trump-era health emergency rule that has allowed border authorities to swiftly expel migrants back to Mexico. The new rule would then remain in place for two years.
President Biden took office vowing to restore a humane approach to the border crisis after his predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump, introduced a series of harsh immigration policies, including the separation of migrant children from their parents. But as the Biden administration has struggled to quell a surge of migrants fleeing economic ruin in their countries, including Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, it has turned to more restrictive measures.
The decision, announced jointly by the Homeland Security and Justice Departments, was sharply rebuked by human rights advocates who said the policy mirrored an earlier, much-criticized restriction under Mr. Trump that denied asylum to most migrants who had not first applied for it in Mexico or another country along their way. That policy had been struck down by several federal courts... READ MORE
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Opinion by Dr. Gonzalo Santos | FEB. 12, 2023
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To 'Latinx' or not to 'Latinx' - A modest proposal.
The news today is that U.S. politicians - white and Latino, who communicate mostly or exclusively in English and represent both sides of the political spectrum -, are actively trying to "ban" the term "Latinx" from official use in places like Florida, Connecticut, and Arkansas.
Aside of such a ridiculous (and quite predictable) display of “performative politics,” it bears reviewing the origins and significance of this term in the context of today’s highly contested cultural landscapes. It is a fascinating example of how identity-construction originates, evolves, and intersects with ethnicity, nationality, gender, and language - and even cultural imperialism, as we shall see.
The term "Latinx" first appeared in the American English vernacular around 2004 as a neologism used to denote people of Latin American national origin, cultural heritage, or ethnic identity living in the United States. Its plural is "Latinxs." Words used for similar purposes include “Latino/a,” "Latin@" and "Latine." (People living in Latin America have continued to be generically referred to in U.S. English as Latin Americans.)
The gender-neutral ⟨-x⟩ suffix was specifically launched by non-binary or gender fluid English-speaking U.S. Latinos and Latinas to replace the gendered-ending <-o> and <-a> of their pan ethnic labels, which are typical of grammatical gender in Spanish and which, in the euphoria and aftermath of the U.S. ethnic movements of the Civil Rights Era, were incorporated into the U.S. English lexicon in the 1980s. The suffixes <-o/a> and <-@> were introduced earlier, meant to make the generic “Latino” more inclusive of women.
These terms - Latino and Latina - were once linguistically innovative terms themselves, embraced as more inclusive, progressive pan ethnic labels in direct rejection of the officially endorsed, politically milder, and commercially ubiquitous term "Hispanic." Latino spoke more of Latin American republican heritage, Hispanic more of colonial subjugation by Spain... READ MORE
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By Erin Snodgrass | Business Insider | FEB. 21, 2023
Photo by Yarianna Martinez
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After a family secret upended his immigration interview, the fight to secure his status in the US is not over yet.
Nearly six months to the day since he last stepped foot in the United States, Jaime Avalos received a hero's welcome at the Southern border this week where his young wife and infant son were among a cadre of supporters anxiously awaiting his return.
The Houston husband and father spent the last half a year stuck in Ciudad Juárez after an immigration interview-gone-wrong left him stranded in Mexico and strapped with a 10-year ban on reentering the US, tearing Avalos away from his life in Houston where his wife and son remained.
Avalos, 28, was born in Mexico, but spent nearly his entire life in Texas after his mother brought him to the US when he was just a year old. In August 2022, he traveled to the US Consulate in Juárez to begin the process of trying to secure US citizenship after a decade shielded by his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, or DACA, status, which prevented him from being deported despite being undocumented.
The meeting quickly deteriorated into a nightmare, however, when Avalos learned his mother had briefly taken him back to Mexico when he was just 7 years old — a trip he says he doesn't remember — before he was able to establish permanent residency in the US. The revelation that he had illegally re-entered the country not once, but twice, not only dashed his immediate dreams of becoming a resident, but saddled him with a 10-year ban on returning to the US.
The devastating discovery set off a months-long campaignspearheaded by Avalos' wife, Yarianna Martinez, who secured the help of a new immigration attorney, Naimeh Salem, as well as the couple's US congressman, Rep. Al Green of Texas, in the effort to bring her husband home.
Their combined efforts culminated in a happy ending on Monday when, after a nerve-wracking walk across the Paso del Norte International Bridge, Avalos was finally able to embrace his family on American soil... READ MORE
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By Andrew Kreighbaum | Bloomberg Law | FEB. 15, 2023
Photo by Jewel Samad
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Young people at risk of losing status while green card is pending as USCIS freezes age earlier in application process.
A policy update by US Citizenship and Immigration Services will add protections for children of temporary visa holders from losing their legal status while their parents’ green card applications are pending.
The update will allow children and young adults with a dependent visa to lock in their age earlier in the application process for a green card. There are more than 200,000 so-called “documented dreamers” in the US at risk of aging out of legal status at age 21 while waiting for permanent residency based on their parents’ employment-based green card application.
Most of those young people are nationals of India and China, who face especially long wait times because of green card backlogs. Foreign workers from those countries, which are the biggest sources of employees on high-skill visas, can spend decades on temporary status because of annual caps on the number of green cards that can be issued to nationals of a given country.
Congress passed the Child Status Protection Act in 2002 to protect the legal status of children with dependent visas, allowing them to “freeze” their age while a parent’s green card application is pending based on when a green card is deemed available. USCIS previously calculated a young person’s age under the law based on the “final action date” of a visa bulletin, when green card numbers become available for a specific visa category and country. The policy change will base age calculations on the earlier filing date when applicants are allowed to submit green card applications.
Groups that included the American Immigration Lawyers Association had argued the previous policy still left many documented dreamers vulnerable to aging out... READ MORE
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By Nick Ciletti | ABC-15 Phoenix | FEB. 20, 2023
Photo by Jose Luis Magana
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PHOENIX — When it comes to immigration, Title 42 is grabbing all the headlines, but there is another topic affecting hundreds of thousands of people that Congress has yet to act on, and that is what to do with Dreamers in this country.
"I received perfect grades and perfect attendance," explains Angel, who is now a junior at Arizona State University. Even at a young age, he was a model student.
"I remembered thinking I did everything right in high school. I graduated with a 4.7 GPA, top of my class, and I joined all the AP and honors classes."
But Angel would soon find out it wasn't about how good his grades were, how many activities he did, or how many hours he spent studying.
"I did everything I needed to do but nothing ever felt like it was enough," he explains.
Angel says that's because he is undocumented.
When he was 5 years old, his mom moved to the U.S. from Mexico, bringing him and his brother. As a single mother, Angel says, she was trying to provide her boys with a better life.
"Despite everything I did, it was just rejection after rejection because of my status. That was the thing about me that was wrong. That was the thing about me that society viewed as broken."
No matter what party was in control, Congress, for years, has struggled to pass bipartisan immigration reform. In 2012, President Barack Obama created the DACA - or Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program. It grants protection from deportation for hundreds of thousands of people brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
In 2017, the Trump Administration would move to terminate the program, but in 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court would step in, keeping it in place, although currently, no new applications are being processed.
Right now, there are an estimated 600,000 DACA recipients in the U.S. with 23,000 living in Arizona alone.
From the start, Republicans would argue it was an overreach over the Obama administration.
"This case concerned Obama's executive amnesty," said Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, in 2020. "Amnesty that he decreed directly contrary to federal law. he did so with no legal authority. he did so in open defiance with federal statutes."
Supporters argue Dreamers have the right to stay and support the economy. Angel says Dreamers like him contribute more than just money.
"All of my memories are here and my family is here," Angel explains. "The place where I want to build my future. The place where I want to contribute to is here."
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Protesting against Unpaid Labor and Inhumane Conditions, strikers demand immediate release and the closure of both ICE facilities.
BAKERSFIELD AND MCFARLAND, CALIF. – Today, 77 individuals detained at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield and the Golden State Annex in McFarland launched a joint hunger strike demanding the immediate release of all individuals detained at the facilities and the shutdown of both detention centers, owned and operated by the private prison contractor GEO Group. Detained people have described living conditions in both facilities as “abhorrent” and “soul-crushing.”
The hunger strike is an escalation of a 10-month-long, ongoing labor strike protesting $1-a-day pay for work performed by detained individuals inside the facilities, including janitorial services. Facility administration retaliated against the strikers by placing them in solitary confinement. Advocates filed a federal complaint to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties calling attention to the retaliation.
The scathing complaint prompted sixteen members of the California Congressional Delegation to send a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, urging ICE to conduct a full review of the reports of disturbing conditions and retaliatory behavior towards people in custody at both facilities. Members of Congress also called on DHS to shut down both facilities if the allegations prove to be true.
The dangerous working conditions, including exposure to black mold, prompted California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health to step in and conduct an inspection that resulted in six violations, and fines against GEO Group totaling $104,000. GEO Group was also cited for repeatedly failing to provide records to investigators in a timely manner... READ MORE
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By Fidel Martinez | Los Angeles Times | FEB. 23, 2023 | Photo by Martina Ibanez-Baldor
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The Latin Grammys are moving to Spain. People had thoughts.
Every week, I’m briefly paralyzed by the panic that I won’t have anything to write about for the newsletter. Despite my obvious lack of faith, the content gods always bestow me with a topic.
And boy, was I blessed this week!
On Tuesday morning, Andalusia board President Juanma Moreno announced that the regional government had struck a sponsorship deal with the Latin Academy of Recording Arts. As part of the arrangement, Moreno said, the 2023 Latin Grammy Awards will take place in Spain.
In a statement to Billboard, Latin Academy CEO Manuel Abud said the Andalusian capital of Sevilla will likely host, but the organization is “still working through the logistics with [their] partners TelevisaUnivision.”
The announcement fell on my lap like Maná—winners of nine Latin Grammys and four “Gringo Grammys”— from heaven. I instinctively headed to Twitter to see how folks were taking the news.
People had jokes on deck.
“Pique to host or we riot,” quipped a follower, a premise so funny I legitimately spent 10 minutes trying to envision the thick tension in the room as the Spanish footballer awkwardly presented his ex-partner Shakira with the Latin Grammy Award for “Best Diss Track.” (That’s a real category, right? I don’t know. I don’t watch.)
But the most common response seemed to come from people who took issue with something with the word “Latin” being used in the same sentence as Spain. After all, as any geography buff can tell you, the European country isn’t part of Latin America. It didn’t help that the announcement came on the heels of Rosalia, who is Hispanic but not Latina, making history and collecting ample hardware at last year’s award show.
Suffice it to say, the Latinks are salty... READ MORE
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Please consider sponsoring our program today!!!
To be a sponsor contact Professor Armando Vazquez-Ramos at: armando@calmexcenter.org or 562-972-0986
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Disclaimer: The California-Mexico Studies Center is a community-based California non-profit educational and cultural organization, established in 2010 and registered with the IRS as a tax-exempt charitable institution (ID: #27-4994817) and never affiliated with the California State University System or California State University Long Beach.
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