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ACLU Report Details how U.S. Has Failed Deported Veterans

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July 8 action at San Diego US Border to recognize non-citizen veterans

By ACLU of California

The federal government’s failure to help naturalize immigrants serving in the U.S. military has led to the deportation of untold numbers of veterans, all of whom were entitled to become citizens because of their service, according to a report released on July 6 by the ACLU of California.

The report, “Discharged, Then Discarded,” found that deported veterans were in the U.S. legally and sustained physical wounds and emotional trauma in conflicts as far back as the war in Vietnam. Once they returned from service, however, they were subject to draconian immigration laws that reclassified many minor offenses as deportable crimes, and were effectively banished from this country.   [Read more…]

Refugee Planet: There Have Never Been This Many Displaced People on Earth

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Half of refugees worldwide are children, new United Nations report finds.

By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

An unprecedented 65.3 million people have been displaced around the world due to war and persecution, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported on Monday.

The new figure is not only a 21st century record, it is also the first time that the numbers have surpassed 60 million—which means one in every 113 people worldwide is now either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced, or a refugee, the UN said. Half of them are children.   [Read more…]

Crossing the Line: A Marriage Across Borders

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This immigration love story does it the ‘right way’

By Sharon Kha

“It’s not that we don’t want Mexicans to come to America,” the woman in the coffee shop said. “It’s just that we want them to do it the right way.”

The right way? And what would that be? Should we advise them to do exactly as we did?

When we were the ones on the other side of the fence wanting to settle in this new country, we cheated the people who were living there at the time — the Indians. We herded them into reservations and broke every treaty we made with them. When all else failed, we gave them disease-infected blankets that killed them off.
  [Read more…]

Burmese Family’s 20 Year Journey to US Citizenship

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By Nile Sisters

In 1996, memories of a recently passed high school examination quickly faded as San San N., seven family members, and 35 others fled to the Burmese jungle to escape government troops. With their food supplies exhausted after 22 days, they quickly learned to forage for edibles in the jungle.

Approaching the Thai border, they slid down a mountainside to the river’s edge only to set off buried land mines along the shore, one exploding near San San. The terrified group had never before experienced such deadly weapons, which killed two members and injured several others with shrapnel. Miraculously, San San and her family crossed the river by boat and arrived alive in Thailand.   [Read more…]

Did San Diego Police “Overreact” During Anti-Trump Protests or Did They Simply Follow “The Zimmerman Plan”

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Police presence at San Diego Trump rally, May 27, 2016

Is it true that San Diego Police overreacted during the anti-Trump protests in downtown last Friday, May 27th, or did they simply follow Chief Zimmerman’s plan to corral demonstrators and push them into Barrio Logan where they could make arrests – arrests made out of the lens of the national media?

I attended the protests and was downtown for about 6 hours that day a week ago. The following observations and opinions are my own. What I did see and experience has led me to believe that the police manipulated the anti-Trump protesters in order to declare an illegal assembly – which then gave them the authority to make mass arrests – arrests police made largely out of sight – and in the ethnic Chicano- Mexican-American community of Barrio Logan.
  [Read more…]

Mr. Trump Gets Fired In San Diego

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By Brett Warnke

With their motorcycles stacked like dominoes beneath the shade of the bright art in Chicano Park, SDPD grimly lined the streets in absurd riot gear in an enormous overreaction to a brief, spirited and peaceful march held on Friday May 26.

Unión del Barrio planned the protest—“Donald Trump: Fuera de San Diego”—which drew over a 1,000 marchers who rallied in the park and walked to the city’s Convention Center. Five or six other groups planned similar rallies. In the merry crush, there were loud and sometimes obscene chants in Spanish and English as bullhorns, posters, and groups vied for a break in the din.   [Read more…]

When Students Stand Against Border Patrol Presence at Career Fairs, Administrators Should Take Their Direction

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By Pedro Rios

In late April at San Diego City College over two-dozen students quickly mobilized after learning that Border Patrol agents would have a booth at the career fair. The students solicited support from their professors, who also reached out to community organizations, and planned a public demonstration at the Quad where the career fair would be held. On the morning of the career fair, several students reported seeing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials setting up a booth at the Quad – (CBP is the Border Patrol’s parent agency). By midday, however, Macy’s store representatives occupied the booth originally assigned to the CBP officials. Border Patrol and Customs recruitment agents were nowhere to be seen.   [Read more…]

A Mother’s Courage: The Struggle of an Asylum-Seeker in San Diego

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By Jaime Rodriguez-Sosa

The California State Refugee Service Bureau states that since 1975 California has provided refuge to 700,000 people with San Diego County being the most notable recipient of refugees in the whole state.

On average San Diego resettles 2,500 refugees per year, with areas such as City Heights being some of the most prominent areas for resettlement.

These numbers are expected to increase in the coming years with refugees from Syria being accepted to resettle in the United States. Yet numbers are often deceptive because they are abstract and difficult to grasp. As such it becomes necessary to understand individuals on a personal level, taking into account where they come from and the struggles they face in search of a new life.   [Read more…]

Whose University? UCSD’s Racial Climate and the Making of Student Minorities

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By the Lumumba- Zapata Collective

On the night of Friday April 8th, the University of California, San Diego campus was covered with anti-Mexican slogans chalked by supporters of presidential candidate, Donald Trump. Following a string of similar events throughout the country (including incidents at UC Berkeley, Santa Barbara, and Riverside), slogans supporting Trump have persistently coincided with xenophobic attacks against underrepresented communities, specifically Latino, Black, Arab and Muslim students.

The recent chalking incident at UCSD specifically targeted incoming admitted students of Mexican descent.   [Read more…]

Now They’re Coming After the Librarians

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By looty / Daily Kos

The British burned down the first Library of Congress in 1814. Two hundred years later and some Republicans seem to want to do it again.

Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) is, as I suspect most people know, a Teahadist moron. But it takes a special kind of moron to piss off librarians. That’s exactly what she did this morning, with the announcement that she would introduce a bill in Congress, mandating that,

“The Librarian of Congress shall continue to use the terms ‘Alien’ and ‘Illegal aliens’ in the Library of Congress Subject Headings in the same manner as they were in effect during 2015.”

  [Read more…]

Progressive Politics Don’t Feel So Inclusive When You’re Latino

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Failing to understand the interests of 55 million Latinos has been one of the greatest political failures of our time. Latinos want to be heard on more than just immigration issues.

By Roberto Lovato / YES! Magazine

Locals say angels quietly protect the dead buried beneath the live oak trees of Sacred Heart Burial Park in Falfurrias, Texas. Since the oil bust decimated the fracking economy in recent years, Falfurrias and other towns dotting the coastal plains of southeast Texas have taken on a ghostly quiet, a quiet so encompassing you can hear at a distance the hissing and flapping of big white owls.

Juan Manuel Villarreal, a 66-year-old groundskeeper, tends the oaks and other flora in the cemetery. And he sometimes also tends to the dead.

“Look,” he says in Spanish, pointing to a gravesite. “Those are truck tire marks. Someone just drove over these graves.” The graves are one of Sacred Heart’s many unmarked mass graves dug over the course of more than a decade. In addition to the families buried here since the founding of Falfurrias in the early 20th century, Sacred Heart also has corners and holes reserved for its newest group: immigrants found dead on the giant ranches farther south.   [Read more…]

A Democratic Spring: Thousands March on Washington Demanding Fixes to a Broken Political System

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By Steven Rosenfeld / Alternet

Thousands of protesters from across America descended on the U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court on Monday, where hundreds of pro-democracy activists were arrested for blocking Congress’ doorstep and loud crowds of young people, undocumented familes and immigration advocates rallied at the Court.

The action was a stunning display of a growing and vibrant progressive spectrum, reflecting a determination to work together on a range of justice issues that define much of what’s wrong with America’s political system.

The day began together, with thousands filling a nearby park for early morning speeches, prayers and pledges to protest non-violently. They then marched toward the citadel of political and legal power, the Capitol and Supreme Court, where hundreds of democracy protesters broke off to get arrested and highlight their agenda—driven by the recent loss of voting rights and the reach of big money in politics. The immigrant rights advocates, including teenagers and children whose parents have been deported, gathered and rallied for hours before the Supreme Court, which was hearing a Republican-led lawsuit challenging President Obama’s executive orders to suspend immigration enforcement.   [Read more…]

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