Holiday Round-Up of the Pro-Migrant Blogosphere

With the last week spent in campaign mode, I surely missed covering a few items of interest that our readers might find interesting.

Victory! Immigration Clearinghouse reported on whining anti-immigrant William Gheen from ALICRAP losing the fight against undocumented students on his home turf. Apparently, the North Carolina Community Colleges system, which had banned undocumented students earlier in the year, realized that it was actually losing money by following the xenophobic policy, and reversed the policy this September. At a hearing for the policy, 51 out of 57 people spoke in favor of a new proposal to allow undocumented students into college and William Gheen went on his usual whining rampage.

Making it easy for you. The Reform Immigration for America Campaign provided a ‘summary‘ of the Luis Gutierrez CIRASAP House bill, which is honestly not expected to go anywhere with Rep. Lofgren working on another version and Senator Schumer-Graham writing a more draconian Senate version. Rep Gutierrez tried to sell his bill as progressive by stressing the nice DREAM Act components, but escalating military presence at the border–one of the stipulations of the bill–and throwing LGBT immigrants under the bus, are hardly progressive actions. Sadly, this might just be the ‘public option’ of immigration, with no ‘universal health care’ option in sight.

We knew this already but stay safe this holiday season. Greyhound is working with ICE to profile and detain Latino passengers. Stay tuned for an upcoming action regarding this. ICE is also dressing up as OSHA and religious workers while making house calls. It looks like Halloween for our immigration enforcement is all-year-round.

Hate is alive and thriving. Vivir Latino explores the partial justice of DOJ indictment in the Luis Ramirez case and how hate crimes sentencing laws don’t really deal with the root issue of crimes against Latinos and people of color. Longer sentences do little to thwart the actual crime and hatred against immigrants.

Flip-flops. Governor Schwarzenegger has done a 180 degree turn and the Terminator is now taking cues from anti-immigrant forces to incorrectly blame immigrants for the state budget crisis. Earlier this year, Schwarzenegger had declared that immigrants are not to blame for the state budget woes. I wonder if he has finally caught the nativist flu.

Point to ponder. News with Nezua this week, highlights a very real problem of the “white, professional anti-racist” gate-keeper. While I don’t necessarily agree with the character assassination, too often, people of color and women have been moderated and controlled in conferences and discussions in a way conducive to whiteness and bureaucratic privileging.

Finally! The Senate passed a health care bill that excludes undocumented immigrants and reproductive care for women, so now the bill goes to conference to hatch out a compromise between the House and Senate versions before the House votes on it again and sends the bill to President Obama.

(Flickr Photo Credit:noticelj’s photostream Creative Commons Attribute)