Read full newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/54a069d44665/urgent-call-for-governor-newsom-to-help-mexico-respond-to-covid-19
Urgent call upon Governor Newsom to help Mexico respond to COVID-19
By Prof. Armando Vazquez-Ramos, President and CEO
The California-Mexico Studies Center, Inc. ~ April 14, 2020
Given Governor Gavin Newsom’s commendable "Nation State" response to President Trump’s intransigence and failure to provide California with critical federal government assistance, the governor emerges as a novel international moral leader to abate the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
Last week, during an interview on MSNBC, the Governor stated that he would use California’s massive purchasing power “as a nation-state” to secure the medical supplies that Trump’s government has failed to provide. In fact, the governor expressed that “California might even export some of those supplies to other states in need”.
This is the fundamental reason why the California-Mexico Studies Center is calling upon Governor Newsom and California’s legislative leaders to immediately respond to Mexico’s emerging COVID-19 crisis, at our neighboring state of Baja California.
As the world’s fifth largest economy with $3.14-trillion GDP, California’s foremost economic partner is Mexico, ranked as the 13th largest global economy. Ironically, the exploding pandemic crisis in Tijuana and Mexico City creates an opportunity to contain the Coronavirus and save thousands of lives, with its recently acquired $1.4-billion contract for 200 million respiratory systems and surgical masks.
Undoubtedly, the crisis in Tijuana has been exacerbated by Trump’s massive deportations of more than 10,000 ICE detainees since mid-March 2020, including children separated from their parents, at Mexico’s border towns like human dumping grounds, due to the fear of contamination by U.S. border enforcement and detention center personnel.
In particular, as reported last week by the San Diego Tribune, Tijuana hospitals have been overwhelmed and doctors describe the city as a “war zone”where there’s a major outbreak of COVID-19 cases amongst physicians, nurses and other medical staff exposed to the virus without protection.
According to the San Diego Tribune, “Hospital General’s chief of internal medicine, Dr. Francisco Alejandro Gutiérrez Manjarrez, sent an urgent letter Thursday (April 9, 2020) to state health officials highlighting the hospital’s need for more personal protection equipment, including gloves, N95 masks and shoe covers.”
Moreover, “Gutiérrez’s letter said the personal protection equipment would be ‘used to care for patients with atypical pneumonia, suspicion and confirmation of SARS-COV2 infection’. The phrasing is significant because Gutiérrez is the first local doctor to officially link atypical pneumonia cases with coronavirus infections.”
This assessment is even more alarming when you consider that “Hugo López-Gatell, who serves in Mexico’s Ministry of Health as an undersecretary for health promotion and prevention, said Wednesday (April 8, 2020) that the number of actual coronavirus cases is ‘almost certainly’ 8.3 times more than the number of confirmed cases. López-Gatell said he based his estimates on the same modeling and extrapolation health officials already use to track cases of influenza”.
Thus, we call upon Governor Newsom to exercise his leadership in response to the predictable COVID-19 explosion in the San Diego-Tijuana region, and apply his “nation-state” doctrine across the border with the support of California’s legislative leaders and Latino Caucus.
While we consider this critical situation to require the governor’s urgent response, we also recognize that this collaboration must be engaged with the governments of Baja California and the federal government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Moreover, this call to action needs to involve the leadership of higher education institutions and the governments of Mexico City and the City of Los Angeles.
May the leadership of Governor Newsom and California’s “Nation-State” doctrinerespond to the menace of COVID-19’s pandemic across the California-Mexico border.
CMSC's Letter to Governor Newsom
Read and download the letter here or click on the image below.
Gavin Newsom Declares California a 'Nation-state'
By: Francis Wilkinson ~ Bloomberg News ~ April 9, 2020
California this week declared its independence from the federal government’s feeble efforts to fight Covid-19 — and perhaps from a bit more. The consequences for the fight against the pandemic are almost certainly positive. The implications for the brewing civil war between Trumpism and America’s budding 21st-century majority, embodied by California’s multiracial liberal electorate, are less clear.
Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California “as a nation-state” to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even “export some of those supplies to states in need.” Read full article here
'A war zone': Tijuana hospitals overwhelmed by coronavirus patients
By: Wendy Fry, Alexandria Mendoza ~ San Diego Tribune ~ April 10, 2020
Inside Tijuana emergency rooms and hospitals, defeated health care professionals are working double and triple shifts, without the equipment they need, as their colleagues fall sick, one after another.
Patients are being treated in receiving areas and lobbies while doctors and nurses say they lack the staffing, ventilators and testing to properly care for them.
At least 14 health care professionals have tested positive for COVID-19 and two are in intensive care across the state, Baja California officials confirmed Thursday. Read Full Article Here
Trump Administration citing coronavirus, expels 10,000 migrants in less than 3 weeks
By: Mooley O'Toole ~ Los Angeles Times ~ April 9, 2020
The Trump administration has quickly expelled roughly 10,000 migrants to Mexico and other countries in less than three weeks since imposing its most severe immigration restrictions yet in response to the coronavirus outbreak, officials said Thursday.
After the United States and Mexico last month closed their border to “nonessential travel,” U.S. officials began rapidly removing almost all migrants arriving at the border, with minimal processing. For the first time, those turned away en masse include people seeking asylum as well as hundreds of lone migrant children, both groups that are protected by U.S. law.
The actions reflect how the administration — in response to the pandemic — is taking steps toward achieving some of President Trump’s long-sought goals restricting immigration, in this instance barring asylum seekers and unaccompanied children from entry into the United States, and with an end-run around the laws and bureaucratic requirements. Read Full Article Here
Deportan a casi 10,000 inmigrantes bajo emergencia por coronavirus
Por: Redacción ~ La Opinion ~ 09 de Abril, 2020
El Gobierno del presidente Donald Trump ha deportado a casi 10,000 inmigrantes desde el 21 de marzo, es decir a 500 indocumentados por día.
Las autoridades han utilizado las medidas de salud pública de emergencia por coronavirusque han otorgado a la oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza (CBP) una amplia autoridad para eludir las leyes de inmigración, reconocieron funcionarios.
Los inmigrantes que ingresan por la frontera con México son deportados en 96 minutos, ya sea a ese país o sus naciones de origen, principalmente Centroamérica.
“Los movimientos han reducido drásticamente la cantidad de detenidos en las estaciones fronterizas, donde temen que el coronavirus se propague”, dijeron los funcionarios citados por The Washington Post. Leer mas aqui
Op-Ed: California’s farm workers desperately need PPE and coronavirus tests
BY: MARCELA CELORIO, LOS ANGELES TIMES – APRIL 14, 2020
The COVID-19 epidemic has made clear how much our society depends on essential services we too often take for granted. Among these is agricultural work and the people who plant and harvest our food.
For the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles, this is a critical issue because most women and men — documented and undocumented — who work in the fields of this state are Mexican. They are tenacious and tireless workers who make possible the supply of farm products that we consume in California, throughout the United States, and even in Mexico. Yet despite their strategic importance, agricultural workers are among the least protected against the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the U.S. government, there are 20,000 Mexican agricultural workers in California covered by the H2A visa, which allows them to work temporarily in agricultural activities in this country. A quarter of them work in three counties — Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo — which are overseen by the Consulate of Mexico in Oxnard and within the jurisdiction of the consulate general in Los Angeles. We have been working closely with state and local health authorities to verify that farms in these counties comply with safety regulations and provide adequate responses and treatment in case a COVID-19 incident is identified... Read Full Article
COVID-19 isn't the only threat facing these DACA health care workers on the front line
By: Chris Kenning, Courier Journal, April 11, 2020
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Noemi Lara-Rojo is a medical assistant at a Lexington, Kentucky, clinic, taking swabs of suspected COVID-19 patients from behind her mask, praying she doesn’t bring the virus home to her son.
Maria Hernandez is a certified nurse’s assistant in a nearby hospital’s emergency room, which sees patients worried about coughs and fevers as the pandemic sweeps the country.
But facing them is another, unseen worry: That the U.S. Supreme Court will soon side with the Trump administration’s push to repeal the program that allows them and other undocumented immigrants who came here as children to avoid deportation.
"Not only are we scared like everybody else in the public right now, but also in the back of our minds, we’re thinking … what if we’re no longer able to work for the community?” Lara-Rojo said. Read full article here
COVID-19 Resources for Undocumented Immigrants
Given that not all of us can take paid time off, and that we have limited health access for undocumented people, especially those detained, we are sharing the following resources: Read more about all resources available
As COVID-19, more commonly referred to as the “coronavirus,” begins to make its impact in the United States, we want to take this moment to remind undocumented youth and their families to prioritize their health to the best of their abilities.
- Immigrants Rising: Tangible support for immigrant communities during COVID-19
- COVID-19 and Freelance Artists
- New York State Leadership Council Resources for Undocumented folks
- Relief funds for Undocumented Workers in CA
- Nationwide Resources for Undocumented immigrants in time of COVID-19 (Google Sheet)
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CMSC initiative to provide mental health services to all immigrant communities
The CMSC's initiative to create awareness about the need for immigrants’ mental health services is more critical than ever !!! This initiative intends to inform and educate the public regarding the psychological crisis affecting the immigrant population throughout the U.S., due to a pervasive state of fear generated by the Trump administration since coming into office in 2017, the targeted acts of violence as the August 3, 2019 El Paso, Texas mass shooting at a Walt Mart store, and the hate-crimes aimed against immigrants, Mexicans and Latinos.
Please watch this short explainer video about our initiative, available in English and Spanish. Learn more here
The CMSC is in dire need of funding support !!!
Please support the CMSC's 2020 projects, initiatives, and campaigns, including our advocacy to provide and facilitate immigrants' mental health services, our National Campaign to Restore DACA's Advance Parole the Help Mexico Abate COVID-19 and the Ethnic Studies for All initiatives.
BREAKING NEWS: California to provide more help for the unemployed, independent contractors and immigrants amid COVI-19
SACRAMENTO—California is expanding hours at its call center that handles unemployment insurance and preparing to expedite benefits to independent contractors in response to a record number of people who are out of work and seeking government help as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Gavin Newsom discussed the efforts on Wednesday and noted that 2.7 million Californians had filed for unemployment benefits in the last month after businesses across the state shuttered under his stay-at-home order. Newsom also announced a $125-million relief effort to help Californians without legal immigration status.
“We are in the process, right now, of dealing with an unprecedented number of people making phone calls to our Employment Development Department,” Newsom said. “We’re trying to process these applications and we’re trying to turn around those applications in real-time.” Read full article here
Read full newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/54a069d44665/urgent-call-for-governor-newsom-to-help-mexico-respond-to-covid-19
