A round up of stories today about opportunity in America, pulled from a variety of nonprofits, race and immigration blogs, and mainstream media outlets. Cross posted at State of Opportunity, a blog about human rights and the American Dream.
- Immigration Equality notified us of today's hearing in the House Immigration Subcommittee on health conditions in ICE detention centers. Following recent deaths in the centers, the organization spoke and asked questions about the treatment of HIV-positive and LGBT detainees, who are often held without medicine and other necessary support by prison corporations who have no accountability for the lives of the detained.
- An Arizona Appeals Court has ruled that it is legal to hold immigrants without bail. At issue was Arizona's new Proposition 100, which mandates that undocumented immigrants charged with felonies are not eligible for bail. Despite the contention that the measure denies the constitutional right of due process to those immigrants being held, the court upheld the legislation, arguing that its intentionis to ensure that defendents are present for their trials.
- Immigration raids are intensifying to the point that 1327 people were apprehended in Los Angeles in the past two weeks. Although the ICE agents were on a hunt for immigrants with criminal records or those who had been previously deported, 146 of the arrests were "collateral" in that people were encountered in the process of the raids who were not able to prove their legal status.
- CNN has just reported on a sailor in the US Navy whose wife is facing deportation proceedings. Eduardo Gonzalez's story is a wrenching one, another narrative of families torn apart, even families who have made significant personal sacrifices for the good of our country. Latina Lista has written a great post questioning the "experts" that CNN has interviewed in their article. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, is quoted by CNN as saying:
"What you're talking about is amnesty for illegal immigrants who have a relative in the armed forces, and that's just outrageous," he said. "What we're talking about here is letting lawbreakers get away with their actions just because they have a relative in the military. ... There's no justification for that kind of policy."
Author Treviño complains that the CNN article is "a perfect vehicle for Krikorian to deliver to a wide audience his brand of immigration reform," continuing,
For CNN and other news media, there must be more vigilance exercised in using and quoting sources when writing articles about featuring immigration issues. The use of Krikorian as an "expert" and others like him, just because they may be associated with an organization with the term "immigration" in its title, misleads the public into thinking that what is being presented are factual statements devoid of influence.
Unfortunately, the average public who are busy with their lives and don't take the time to really analyze what they read or hear, absorb the information — and repeat it. The overriding fallacy that exists among people is that if it is printed or broadcast, a story must be true.
This is a great illustration of the need to examine mainstream (and all) media for bias and the frames at use. Because many Americans don't consume the news media with a critical lens, it is crucial that we continue to counter Krikorian's depiction of disrespect for an ever-changing body of law, along with unfair access to what he views as limited resources, essentially the privileges that many Americans have been granted. We can change the terms of the immigration debate to reflect the human right to mobility, migration in order to maximize our potential, be it geographic or related to social class. We're all familiar with the 'rags to riches' paradigm; it's one our most prized American narratives. Like Gonzalez and his wife and son, many immigrants have risked coming to US because they hope to succeed.
And, finally, there has been a ton of impassioned discussion about President Bush's veto of the SCHIP legislation on funding for children's health care. Here's a selection: