Advocacy and Activism
Herta: Three Days to Deportation
Published August 16, 2009 @ 09:35PM PT
Dream Act-eligible student Herta Llusho enlisted some strong allies through the efforts of Prerna, Kyle, and others at Netroots Nation last week--Herta's guest post was frontpaged at firedoglake on Thursday.
As heartening as that was, DHS has still not budged, and Herta is set to present herself for deportation on August 19.
Kyle had, on a recent visit to Michigan, taped Herta providing some context to her story (above). He wrote about how Herta's commitment to the national community of which she is now a part by language, long residence, education, and culture restored his faith in this country. I have little faith in any nation-state to protect those who fall through the cracks between borders, but I have faith in Herta's faith in her community.
Help her validate and justify that faith by signing the petition asking DHS Secretary Napolitano, Senators Levin and Stabenow, and Representative Kilpatrick to take action to stop the deportation of Herta. Use the SEIU Call Action Tool to contact DHS to request that Herta not be deported.
And if you have any ideas about additional action, if you are connected to any organizations in Michigan, or have any insight into how best to approach the Senators or DHS, please leave a note in comments or send me a private message.
LGBT Rights Are Immigrant Rights
Published August 11, 2009 @ 08:18PM PT
I am blogging from a Motel 6 outside of Pittsburgh tonight in advance of the New Organizing Institute's pre-Netroots Nation blogger summit tomorrow on online advocacy and the intersection of immigration/LGBT issues. It looks to be a good group of bloggers and activists in attendance.
As I have learned through my immigration legal work over the past few years, LGBT immigrants tend to fall through the cracks of the immigration system much more frequently than hetero immigrants. Many of the available immigration remedies and defenses against deportation are predicated on traditional hetero nuclear family relationships. Under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal government is bound by law not to recognize gay families for the purpose of legal obligations or benefits, and immigration is almost entirely a federal body of law. LGBT asylum law has come a long way since the '90s, but still leaves too many in the shadows. A while back, I had the unpleasant experience of advising a gay would-be asylum seeker that his chances of experiencing the thing he feared most--deportation to his homophobic home country--would actually significantly increase if he applied for asylum.
The first U.S. immigration case I ever worked on was a pro bono asylum case during my first year as an associate attorney at a corporate firm in New York. The basis for the claim was my client's transgender identity. Her predicament opened my eyes to the struggles undocumented immigrants face, but also to the harassment and persecution that trans people endure right here in the States. At one point in the course of representing her, I had my first "Oh my god, I can't believe I am in the United States" moment that every nonprofit immigration attorney has experienced. I was horrified.
Getting recognized legal status didn't solve my client's problems in getting decent health care, a place to live free from harassment, an employer that would hire her, or law enforcement that offered her protection. The immigration judge believed my client would be attacked or killed in her home country on the basis of her gender and sexual orientation--I firmly believed it as well. But what was not discussed at any hearing or in discussions with opposing counsel was the risk of serious injury or death that trans people face in the U.S. as victims of hate crimes.
I hope tomorrow's NOI meeting advances the conversation about LGBT rights and immigrant rights, two areas in which the U.S. falls far short of its stated ideals.
(I'll take this opportunity to make a pitch for readers to support the excellent work Immigration Equality continues to do on LGBT immigrants' rights. Thanks to their efforts, the HIV travel/immigration ban is entering its final days.)
[Image: murder victim Angie Zapata]
Netroots Nation: Going to Pittsburgh
Published August 11, 2009 @ 12:17AM PT
I have the opportunity this week not only to attend Netroots Nation in Pittsburgh, but I'll also be part of a panel discussing social change and the pro-migrant blogosphere (Friday at 4:30 p.m.--stop by if you are able). My co-panelists are Kety Esquivel of NCLR, Edmundo Rocha (a.k.a. XP), Dee from Immigration Talk with a Mexican-American, and the ubiquitous Prerna. I'm looking forward to finally meeting people I've known online for what seems like forever (but is certainly far shorter).
I'm also stoked at the prospect of getting to know my co-bloggers at change.org better, as some of them will be in attendance. I am continually impressed by their awesomeness. Case in point: Gay Rights blogger Mike Jones got another international corporation to confirm its commitment to LGBT rights.
Perhaps, though, Netroots Nation won't be the place to air my emerging doubts about the moniker "progressive" in light of Aristide Zolberg's indispensable history of immigration in the U.S., which I'm slowly working my way through. As it turns out, early 20th-century progressives were at the forefront of the growing restrictionist movement, figuring they could utilize immigration policy to purify the nation, ridding the body politic of unhealthy influences like its Jewish and Chinese communities. Hopefully I'll be able to firmly distinguish modern progressivism from its historical antecedents and my mind will be at peace once again.
But given the current state of the nation, I have a few doubts.
Shades of Gray in Trafficking, But It's Still Slavery
Published August 09, 2009 @ 11:02PM PT
From time to time, my office represents victims of trafficking in their immigration matters. In the U.S., the T Visa is available to victims of trafficking who meet certain conditions. The government estimates that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked to the U.S. annually.
Amanda Kloer covers this issue daily at change.org's Human Trafficking blog. She is very good--I encourage readers of this blog to check out Amanda's blog when you get the chance. Here is a basic primer on the topic.
Recently she wrote about the common misconception that trafficking victims must have been coerced at every step of the process or they have not been trafficked.
It's also important to note that many women who are trafficked knowingly and willingly enter prostitution. While the most publicized stories are about women who thought they would be waitresses or nannies, some take a job in the Netherlands or Germany in what they expect will be legal, safe prostitution on their own terms. Even after making that choice, women can be trafficked one their freedom is removed or their labor stolen and exploited. A woman who took a job as a prostitute and one who took a job as a waitress are equally trafficked once they loose their ability to leave or control their situation. The women from Eastern Europe thought they were taking a number of different kids of jobs, jobs that all turned into slavery.
It is simply not always the case that trafficking victims are always coerced, and this misconception frequently leads to further punishment of trafficked individuals by the governments that are supposedly committed to protecting them.
[Image: humantraffickingproject.blogspot.com]
America's Voice Reimagines DHS Threat Advisory Scale
Published August 07, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Visiting Latina Lista yesterday, I saw this great internet ad from America's Voice.
It captures in a nutshell the bipartisan tendency to conflate immigrants with terrorists for political gain and highlights the the hypocrisy of the InSecure Communities initiative.
Check out the ad and let me know what you think. I've been impressed with the work America's Voice has been doing lately.
'Mrs. Goundo's Daughter' Explores FGM Asylum Case
Published July 30, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Last night I went to a screening of the film Mrs. Goundo's Daughter, which follows the story of a mother from Mali as she fights for asylum so that her U.S. citizen daughter, Djenebou, will not be circumcised upon return to Mali.
Filmmakers Barbara Attie and Janet Goldwater follow Mrs. Goundo's immigration case in Philadelphia but also track a circumcision ceremony in Mali where 62 young girls are circumcised. The filmmakers interview several people, including expatriate Malian women who underwent FGM, Malian activists working to stop the practice, imams in Mali and the U.S. who have differing views on the practice's relation to Islam, female supporters of FGM in Mali, and the woman who was paid to circumcise the girls.
Several people interviewed, whether pro or anti-FGM, said the principle justification of the practice is to control women's supposedly insatiable sexual desire. Paraphrasing one young Malian imam in the film, "They are jumping over the walls to get sex as it is, imagine if they weren't circumcised."
Those who support the practice attribute it to divine will. In Mali, the great majority of women undergo FGM. The health effects of FGM can be severe, including infection or death from blood loss at the time of the cutting, and later ulcers, scar tissue, cysts, complications in pregnancy, incontinence, repeated urinary infections, obstruction in menstrual flow, infertility, chronic pelvic pain. The practice may also facilitate the transmission of HIV.
FGM is so prevalent in Mali, and cultural pressure to do it are so strong, that mothers cannot trust their own families not to send their daughters to be circumcised at the first opportunity. Uncircumcised women in Mali are undesirable and ostracized, so the family views FGM as in the best interest of the child.
Immigration judges in Philly are familiar with FGM asylum law because of the sizable West African community here. From the film's website:
To stay in the U.S., Mrs. Goundo must persuade an immigration judge that her two-year old daughter Djenebou, born in the U.S., will almost certainly suffer clitoral excision if Goundo is deported. In Mali, where up to 85% of women and girls are excised, Mrs. Goundo and her husband are convinced they would be powerless to protect their daughter from her well-intentioned grandparents, who believe all girls should be excised.
The filmmakers got the court tapes (presumably through a FOIA request made by Mrs. Goundo) and at one point in the film the government attorney argues that Djenebou is not being deported, that as a U.S. citizen she could simply stay in the U.S. to avoid her fate. At the age of two! This is a specious argument. Clearly if the mother is deported, a two-year-old child will go with the mother.
This is a film I recommend to anyone interested in learning about asylum law or the practice of FGM (or female genital cutting). At the end of the film, the filmmakers were asked what the audience could do to get involved with this issue, and they recommended supporting the work of Tostan, an NGO based in Senegal that works with local organizations throughout Africa to halt the practice of FGM. I would also say you could support local or national immigrant rights organizations who represent asylum-seekers on a daily basis (ACLU, NILC, AILF, and any number of local organizations).
Five Questions with R Jay Pearson
Published July 28, 2009 @ 08:00AM PT
Ed.: I got in touch with blogger and activist Robb "R Jay" Pearson a while back after he spoke to 9500 Liberty about how his views on immigration had radically changed and Chris blogged about it at Citizen Orange. Recently, I asked R Jay four questions and left the fifth for him to ask and answer (an idea I borrowed from Nezua).
Q: What initially led you to get involved in immigration activism?
A: In late 2006 the Daily Record, a major daily newspaper serving northern New Jersey, brought me on as a blogger to blog about national political and social issues. The name of my blog was "Life & Liberty" and I mostly took a moderately conservative position on most issues. Among those issues was illegal immigration, and my position was typically conservative, i.e., "rule of law" must be inflexibly upheld and people who come here illegally (and who I always referred to as "illegal aliens" with intentional contempt) should be identified and deported, without regard to their life circumstances (which I often described as "not our problem").
As the immigration issue reached yet another boiling point in May of 2007, my readers (who had the ability to comment on my blog) were becoming noticeably more fervent in their positions against illegal immigration. Then, in June of 2007, after I wrote a rather anger-filled blog post (which was colorfully titled "Round 'em up, send 'em home") denouncing a newspaper quote of a local undocumented day laborer who felt the United States had no right to deny him residence, my readers went ballistic. And with essentially all my readers up in arms about "illegals" always coming together to demonstrate, they were all asking one consistent question: where are the groups of CITIZEN protestors? It was at this point that I began to organize and plan a rally in Morristown, New Jersey, using my blog's popularity to help spread the word. And six weeks later, on July 28, 2007, the "ProAmerica Rally on Morristown Protesting Illegal Immigration" took place, gathering over five hundred people, including about one hundred counter-protestors, and with a presence of nearly one hundred regular, undercover, and riot police to maintain order.
Q: What caused you to part ways with the "anti-illegal" movement in New Jersey?
Ironically, my rally is what actually sparked my reversal of position on the issue and which inspired me to cease my activism against "illegal immigration" and disassociate from the movement altogether.
I had carefully and painstakingly planned the rally as a peaceful and respectful protest against an issue -- as well as to advocate for the 287(g) program which the mayor of Morristown had applied for -- but instead it became a disgustingly hateful and disrespectful display of irrational and contemptuous intolerance toward a certain group of people (i.e., immigrants who are slightly more tan than the average white American and who don't speak English), whom several of my speakers derided and degraded. Additionally I discovered a number of my speakers cared little about the issue at all but were merely using it to promote their election campaigns, business objectives, or increase their own activist visibility. With perhaps one or two exceptions, it was clear my speakers' intentions were illegitimate to the purpose of my rally, and their rhetoric useful only for fanning the flames of intolerance among the hundreds assembled. I was ultimately ashamed for being a central part of all that, and felt compelled by my own conscience to change.
What eventually completed my reversal on the issue of immigration, though, was a series of severe personal crises, both economic and medical, which I suffered in late 2007 and early 2008 and which resulted in the loss of my job of many years, the loss of my savings, the loss of my home, and the need to take refuge at my parents' home in Pennsylvania.
It was the type of situation that causes one to seriously reevaluate life, and that's what I did. Where my former position on illegal immigration was concerned, I realized I had blindly objectified an entire group of people whom I had never encountered, whose situations I never conscientiously considered, and not one of whom I had actually ever personally met or spoken to. Furthermore, in realizing my own circumstances at this point, I had to confess that I had now in a very similar way become that which I had once spoken against without qualification: a man in suffering circumstances whose only recourse was to migrate away from his home and seek refuge in order to rebuild his life.
I found my former position to be grossly unfair and hypocritical, and endeavored to make appropriate changes in my approach. By mid-2008 I had made massive changes to my life and my viewpoints, and began embracing the powerfully motivating notion of our "common humanity" and utterly rejecting divisive nationalism and the irrational deification of "rule of law" which I had once heralded.
Q: The U.S. Government Accountability Office and Justice Strategies recently released reports questioning the efficacy of 287(g) programs that give local law enforcement officers the authority to enforce federal immigration law. How do you believe these programs impact local communities?
Firstly, let's not kid ourselves. Removing criminal elements from our communities is extremely important. No reasonable individual will argue that. But when considering the acknowledged lack of federal oversight upon local law enforcement agencies who participate in 287(g), and the misapplication (if not outright abuse) of specified authority by some of those same agencies, the potential for racial profiling per 287(g) is immense and as a result invites tremendous negative impact upon local communities (and in fact has already negatively impacted certain communities, such as Prince William County, Virginia for example). This is completely counterproductive to any effort aimed at addressing the serious crime for which 287(g) was supposedly intended.
