Originally posted at In These Times

A member of the NLIRH's Texas Latina Advocacy Network, which has mobilized around issues such as access to transportation to reproductive healthcare in rural communities. (National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health / Flickr)

Last week, two issues highlighted at the Democratic National Convention represented a notable departure from the talk of jobs and economic growth. There was a classic striving immigrant narrative, embodied in the poetic if oversimplified family story of San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro. And there was a passionate defense of reproductive rights delivered by Sandra Fluke, who famously incurred ultra-conservative wrath for speaking out on contraceptive access. Both speeches showed the double-edged power of political storytelling: to inspire while masking the deeper issues that the mainstream political realm deftly obscures every four years.

Pivoting to Latino and women voters, the Democrats were capitalizing on ideological divisions in Washington on reproductive choice and immigration. But while the party repackaged those issues into slickly marketed talking points, the messaging spoke to messier unrest at the grassroots. Responding to years of grassroots pressure (from the sit-ins staged by so-called Dream Activists to the bold protest-on-wheels of the Undocubus, which rolled defiantly outside the convention), Obama has offered temporary reprieve to undocumented youth and promised to ease mass deportations for many immigrants with clean records. Meanwhile, the White House has cautiously pushed back against right-wing assaults on women’s health in the Affordable Care Act. But the response to the war of attrition on women’s rights comes amid rising frustration among pro-choice advocates who’ve witnessed Democrats’ repeated capitulations to anti-choice forces that have monopolized the abortion debate. Read the rest of this entry →

Undocumented youth hold banner in support of the DREAM Act. (Edward Kimmel/Flickr)

Originally posted at In These Times.

This week the White House rolled out its “Deferred Action” policy, cracking open the door to legal status for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants without papers. Many see the promise of temporary protection from deportation as a first step toward genuine immigration reform. But the future is unclear: What exactly in it for these these youth, when all they’re being offered is temporary protection?

The Obama administration’s new policy, aimed at pleasing the Latino electorate, initially set off a flurry of celebration among immigrant youth activists who had long pushed for the DREAM Act. But skepticism persists. Legal protection derived from a directive from the Department of Homeland Security is, by nature, tenuous. The fate of the program could depend on who is in the White House next year. And unlike the DREAM Act, the Deferred Action policy allows people to work and study, but does not offer a direct path to long-term legalization.

On the other hand, Deferred Action offers some youth at least a modicum of security and could galvanize the broader movement to resist dysfunctional immigration policies.

Essentially, youth who came to the United States as children are now eligible for a two-year, renewable stay and a work permit, if they meet various criteria including  being 30 or younger, possessing a clean criminal record and having arrived before age 16. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo: Shiho Fukada, Coalition of Immokalee Workers (ciw-online.org)

Originally posted on In These Times

Last month public health advocates and researchers from around the world convened at the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. to discuss the state of the crisis. But many of the communities most affected were not in the room. Some, like sex workers, were explicitly barred from entering the country. Others were excluded by their economic and political circumstances. Far from the conference, the country’s farms are quietly stalked by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but struggling migrant farmworkers may not realize they’re at risk until it’s too late.

HIV is one of a myriad of health issues facing migrant farmworkers, but it’s unique in that so little is known about the scope of the problem. Farmworkers are typically cut off from regular social welfare programs and lack insurance, and there are deep gaps in research about HIV prevalence in this population.

Access to healthcare is virtually out of reach for workers tied down by systemic exploitation. The most marginalized farmworkers, the vast majority of them Latino, face high risks of job-related illnesses and injury, abusive working conditions and, frequently, sexual violence against women.

The most recent research that focuses specifically on farmworkers and HIV is alarming, but sparse. A Centers for Disease Control investigation of about 300 farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida, (an area notorious for labor exploitation on tomato farming operations), found a prevalence rate of 5 percent. Other studies have found rates ranging from less than half a percent to 13 percent. Overall, the new HIV infection rates for Latino men and women are especially high compared to those for the white population. The bottom line is that there is a dire need for more in-depth research. Read the rest of this entry →

Julio Salgado

Cross-posted from CultureStrike

The hardships of being an undocumented immigrant go beyond the threats of deportation, xenphobic racism, or economic exploitation. Those issues are undoubtedly pervasive, but a more subtle undercurrent of the struggle is the constant feeling that you’re not free to just be, the unrelenting pressure to hide. And for many immigrants, the indignity of having to live underground is compounded by other forms of alienation, especially at the intersection of queerness and undocumented status.

CultureStrike’s Julio Salgado, an undocuqueer artist who’s come out twice–as undocumented and gay–has made a point of exposing the cross-cutting barriers he’s encountered. And he uses art to break through them with his incisive poster art and mini-dramas at Dreamers Adrift, a media project for and by immigrant youth.

The challenges facing LGBT immigrant activists tie into discrimination within immigrant communities as well as in “mainstream” U.S. culture and politics. So how do you deal with a fellow activist who’s progressive on immigrant rights but regressive on queer issues? As Dreamers Adrift explains, it can be pretty damn awkward.

The dilemma has spawned an offshoot of immigrant youth activism, the Undocuqueer Project. At America’s Voice, project co-founder Alex Aldana reflected on revelations he experienced on the 3000-mile Campaign for the American Dream Walk:

Read the rest of this entry →

Dianne Ovalle

Cross-posted from Culture/Strike:

Was it a DREAM fulfilled, or nothing more than a dream? The morning after Obama announced the halting of deportations of young immigrants, activists are trying to grasp what, if anything, they’ve won.

We have a promise from the White House that it will not deport an estimated several hundred thousand undocumented youth who have completed high school education or the equivalent, have clean records, and fulfill other criteria.  At the very least, DREAMers have less reason to fear being rounded up and deported en masse. But the gingerly worded announcement strikes more skeptical activists as a kind of rhetorical rorschach: is it one step toward full legalization? Is it simply, as Obama himself admitted, a stopgap until Congress acts–and therefore a way to punt the issue to a political black hole?  In the wake of Obama’s previous disappointing initiatives to ease up on deportations, some say the “new” White House position on DREAMers is just restating business as usual.

While the move was clearly a political calculation, many DREAMers are determined to read between Obama’s lines hope for more systemic reforms in the future. It’s a positive and heartening announcement, no doubt. But halting deportations for some does not even begin to answer the demand that DREAMers were pushing all along: an immigration system that redefines citizenship in a way that is humane, equitable, and conscious of the realities of a globalized world. Read the rest of this entry →