Posts Tagged Immigration reform

By Verónica Bayetti Flores • 10 years ago

Immigrant women and allies risk arrest to demand humane immigration reform

Leisha Carrasquillo is a U.S. citizen, but her husband is an undocumented immigrant from Honduras. In June, her husband was detained and has been in ICE custody since, having devastating effects on her health and her family. Today, she is prepared to take part in an act of civil disobedience to demand an immigration reform that takes into account the needs of women and families.

In a historic action, today approximately 100 women will risk arrest by blockading the intersection outside the House of Representatives to send a message: inaction on comprehensive immigration reform that treats women and families humanely is unacceptable. The action is being organized through We Belong Together, a national campaign to bring forward the priorities of ...

Leisha Carrasquillo is a U.S. citizen, but her husband is an undocumented immigrant from Honduras. In June, her husband was detained and has been in ICE custody since, having devastating effects on her health and her family. ...
By Verónica Bayetti Flores • 10 years ago

House members cashing in on immigration reform

A few weeks back, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and it’s now time for the House to pass its own version.  Just in time for this, Grassroots Leadership has put out a list of the members of the House who are cashing in on  immigration reform from the private detention lobby:

1. Hal Rogers (R-KY), who chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, and his Help America’s Leaders PAC received a total of $34,500 from CCA, GEO, and MTC.  The number is fitting — 34,000 is the number of immigrant detention beds Rogers’ committee mandates that Immigration and Customs Enforcement fill every single day.  With more than half of all detention beds operated by private prison corporations, that means 

A few weeks back, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill, and it’s now time for the House to pass its own version.  Just in time for this, Grassroots Leadership has put out

By Verónica Bayetti Flores • 10 years ago

Immigration reform bill clears Senate, but is it a feminist win?

Yesterday, in a 68-32 vote, the comprehensive immigration reform bill that we’ve been hearing so much about cleared the Senate. It’s a pretty big deal – it’s been a long time since an effort to comprehensively reform our immigration system got this far. But while some are hailing this as a major success, there are a lot of reasons to be concerned, particularly if we care about immigrant women and LGBTQ folks.

First, the bill passed with significant restrictions to health care access for low-income immigrants, meaning that folks who are eligible to begin the process toward citizenship will have to wait 15 years once that process is under way to be eligible for public benefits programs like Medicaid. This ...

Yesterday, in a 68-32 vote, the comprehensive immigration reform bill that we’ve been hearing so much about cleared the Senate. It’s a pretty big deal – it’s been a long time since an effort to comprehensively ...
By Juliana Britto Schwartz • 10 years ago

Hats Off to Immigrant Women

We here at Feministing know that women wear many hats. Women are caretakers, students, workers, bloggers or activists. They may also be immigrants.

These women all deserve to be included within our government’s social safety net, to benefit from the resources they are already investing in, and to be brought out of the shadows of undocumentation. They deserve fair wages and just working conditions. They deserve to be kept together with their families without fearing deportation every time they leave the house.

This is why We Belong Together has started the campaign Fedoras for Fairness, using the symbol of the fedora–a hat worn by early women’s rights activists–to symbolize the many hats women wear each day. ...

We here at Feministing know that women wear many hats. Women are caretakers, students, workers, bloggers or activists. They may also be immigrants.

These women all deserve to be included within our government’s social safety net, ...
By Maya Dusenbery • 10 years ago

Migration is beautiful. Tell your lawmakers.

Ed. note: This is a guest post by Juliana Britto Schwartz. By day, Juliana is a student at University of California, Santa Cruz. By night, she is a Latina feminist blogger at Julianabritto.com, where she writes about reproductive health justice, immigration, and feminist movements in Latin America.

Human beings have been migrating for the entirety of our existence. It’s natural and inevitable and removing the immigration debate from its historical context is manipulative and misleading.

This is the basis of Migration is Beautiful, a movement of artists and activists fighting for humane immigration reform. So far, the movement has collected the signatures of over 100 artists who support it, including Alice Walker, Margaret Cho, Chuck D, Rosario Dawson, Junot Diaz, the Roots and ...

Ed. note: This is a guest post by Juliana Britto Schwartz. By day, Juliana is a student at University of California, Santa Cruz. By night, she is a Latina feminist blogger at Julianabritto.com, where she writes about reproductive ...
By Maya Dusenbery • 11 years ago

Tell Congress that 15 years is way too long for immigrant women to wait for affordable health care

Ed. note: This is a guest post by Juliana Britto Schwartz. By day, Juliana is a student at University of California, Santa Cruz. By night, she is a Latina feminist blogger at Julianabritto.com, where she writes about reproductive health justice, immigration, and feminist movements in Latin America.

By now you’ve probably heard a bit about the immigration reform bill that the Senate has proposed. You’ve probably heard about the increased spending on border security it contains (regardless of the fact that our border is the most secure it’s ever been), as well as the proposed increase in employment-based visas, particularly for skilled workers. You may also know that the bill allows DREAMers (immigrants who were brought to the U.S. before the age of ...

Ed. note: This is a guest post by Juliana Britto Schwartz. By day, Juliana is a student at University of California, Santa Cruz. By night, she is a Latina feminist blogger at Julianabritto.com, where she writes about reproductive ...
By Maya Dusenbery • 11 years ago

New report shows immigrants are about twice as likely to be uninsured

Ed. note: This is a guest post from Verónica Bayetti Flores. Verónica is the Assistant Director of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program (CLPP) at Hampshire College. She has worked to increase access to contraception and abortion, fought for paid sick leave, demanded access to safe public space for queer youth of color, and helped to lead social justice efforts in Wisconsin, New York City, and Texas.

 

Last week, the Guttmacher Institute published a history and overview of policies that impact immigrants’ access to health care, and in particular reproductive and sexual health care. It’s definitely a piece for the policy nerds, but it makes some critical points about the ways anti-immigrant sentiment has shaped access ...

Ed. note: This is a guest post from Verónica Bayetti Flores. Verónica is the Assistant Director of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program (CLPP) at Hampshire College. She has worked to increase access to contraception and ...
By Maya Dusenbery • 11 years ago

What happens when women are “illegal”?

Ed. note: This is a guest post by Juliana Britto Schwartz. By day, Juliana is a student at University of California, Santa Cruz. By night, she is a Latina feminist blogger at Julianabritto.com, where she writes about reproductive health justice, immigration, and feminist movements in Latin America.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press made the decision to drop the term “illegal immigrant” from its style guide. This is a huge step forward for immigrant rights, but the fact that such a small act is such a huge victory says a lot about how much further our country has to go to achieve even basic human rights for undocumented people. The AP may have dropped the I-Word, but plenty of major ...

Ed. note: This is a guest post by Juliana Britto Schwartz. By day, Juliana is a student at University of California, Santa Cruz. By night, she is a Latina feminist blogger at Julianabritto.com, where she writes about reproductive ...

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