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Presidential primary candidates on US‑Mexico immigration reform

Anonymous — Mon, 09 May 2016 23:00:15 +0000

Presidential primary candidates on US‑Mexico immigration reform Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/09/2016 - 17:00

U.S. Presidential Candidates on Immigration (May, 2016)
✓ indicates support ✗ indicates opposition ~ indicates ambiguity	Hillary Clinton	Bernie Sanders	Donald J. Trump
“The Wall”	✗	✗	✓
Increasing Deportations	✗	✗	✓
Amnesty	✓	✓	✗
Citizenship	✓	✓	~
Health Care	✓	✓	~
Expanding Legal Immigration	✓	✓	✗

From left to right, photos courtesy of Kamil Kryzaczynski, EPA; Alex Wong, Getty Images; and Gage Skidmore. Table by Max Levy.

With the end of primary season in sight, voters in undecided states should be thinking about where each of the candidates stands on issues like immigration.

It may not be the same stance they had several months ago.

Since the Iowa caucuses in February, the field has narrowed considerably, especially in the Republican Party, where a nominee was selected just this week. Meanwhile, those leading the polls have had time to develop their policy platforms in response to public scrutiny.

From the wall-rhetoric of Trump to the pro-DREAM Act promises of Clinton and Sanders, finding a "solution" to America's immigration problems has become the hot-button issue in the 2016 race for the White House.

Here's where the remaining candidates stand on immigration:

Hillary Clinton

Clinton has been widely favored to emerge as the Democratic nominee since she first announced her campaign in April of last year. As of now, she holds a lead of 290 pledged delegates and 484 superdelegates.

Many pundits attribute her success to the Clinton name and it's salience among minority voters, but she's also seen as more politically savvy than her opponent, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Conservative Democrats are more likely to support her as well, which may explain her sweep of Southern states in March.

Despite the Obama administration's checkered history of immigration enforcement, Hillary Clinton has been an outspoken supporter of both DACA and DAPA, which would allow the government to grant de facto legal status to certain classes of undocumented immigrants, as well as the DREAM Act, which would offer a path to legal residency and has yet to pass the Senate.

As the Clinton campaign has developed, her views on immigration have curved left to approach those of Sanders and Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, who suspended his presidential bid in February.

A notable example of this came last month, when she reversed her stance on deporting child migrants. Previously, Clinton had indicated that she would use deportation as a way to dissuade Central and South American children from attempting the dangerous journey north.

In response to questions from moderator Jorge Ramos at the May 9 Democratic debate, Clinton claimed that she would not deport undocumented children. She added that she would only deport those immigrants with criminal backgrounds.

Clinton is unapologetic about voting "Yea" on the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which called for 700 miles of fencing to be constructed along the U.S.-Mexico border. The barrier was never completed, much to the chagrin of Senate Republicans.

Clinton, however, claims that the border has been sufficiently secured, and that it is time to shift national focus towards comprehensive immigration reform.

Extending services such as health care to undocumented immigrants, especially children, is another one of Clinton's stated presidential objectives.

During a CNN interview in late March, Clinton said that undocumented immigrants should be able to access plans under the Affordable Care Act, though she stopped short of proposing eligibility for taxpayer-funded subsidies.

At the first Democratic debate in October, she stated that she wanted to make sure all children had access to health care, including those without documentation.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, affected in 1994, is often blamed for the decline of Mexican agriculture and the rise of undocumented immigration from Mexico to the United States. While Clinton voiced support for NAFTA during her husband's presidency, she has since criticized the agreement and its Central American analogue, CAFTA.

The positions of Clinton and Sanders on immigration in general and the consequences of undocumented immigration in particular are very similar. But, while Sanders has been relatively consistent with his policy platform during his tenure as a politician, Clinton has become more liberal over time.

What impact this would have on a Clinton presidency is open to interpretation.

Potent Quotables

"We could add hundreds of billions of dollars to our GDP by passing comprehensive immigration reform."
Speech at National Immigration Integration Conference — Dec. 14, 2015

Bernie Sanders

Sanders has been polling neck and neck with Clinton for most of the 2016 primary season, at times even edging out his rival, though his viability as a candidate took a wallop on Apr. 19 with a wide loss in his birth state of New York.

The senator began his campaign on Apr. 30 of last year and has since seen unprecedented success among working-class whites and youth voters. However, his lack of support among blacks and the elderly have dogged his numbers throughout the race, much to Sanders' bafflement.

According to a recent Gallup poll, the Hispanic vote could swing either way.

Sanders has stated that he does not think a border fence is necessary for border security, voting against the Secure Fence Act of 2006. Instead, he advocates for the allocation of funds towards border surveillance and amnesty programs. He also co-sponsored the DREAM Act when it was reintroduced in the Senate in 2011.

When asked during the Mar. 9 debate, Sanders said that he would not deport undocumented immigrants unless they had criminal records.

Along with his opponent, Sanders would support "sanctuary city" laws, which prevent municipal workers and police from asking after immigration status in places like Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C.

Sanders stated that, in the likely event of immigration reform stalling in Congress, he would use executive actions to advance his objectives, much like Obama did with DACA and DAPA, which Sanders vows to expand.

Clarifying a path to citizenship could be one of the issues Sanders chooses to enforce using his executive powers as president. He has pushed for citizenship since the start of his campaign, laying the groundwork for his reputation as the most liberal of the Democratic candidates.

After releasing his health care proposal in January, Sanders' senior policy adviser Warren Gunnels confirmed that undocumented immigrants would be given access to plans in the ACA marketplace.

One issue where the policies of Clinton and Sanders diverge is work visas. Sanders has voted down immigration reform proposals in the past for their failure to include protections for guest-workers. Notably, in 2007, Sanders voted to block the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, which would have codified a path to citizenship while expanding certain visa programs.

Clinton criticized Sanders' rejection of the bill at a Feb. 11 debate, prior to Super Tuesday.

"Yeah, I did vote against it," he answered. "I voted against it because the Southern Poverty Law Center said that the guest-worker programs that were embedded in this agreement were akin to slavery."

The programs in question included the H-2 and proposed Y visas. Sanders has faced criticism for siding with labor unions to restrict immigration in the past, arguing that guest worker programs depress wages for Americans.

In a 2007 interview with CNN's Lou Dobbs, he insisted that an influx of guest workers would "drive wages down even lower than they are now."

Sanders proposes increasing the wages for H-1B visa holders in his immigration platform.

One program put forth by Sanders is the so-called "whistleblower visa," which would be granted to guest-workers who report employer abuse.

In a primary race where the Democratic candidates have such similar stances on immigration, work visas could be a deciding issue for concerned voters.

Potent Quotables

"Senator Sanders rejects the argument that the border must be further militarized before the implementation of a roadmap to citizenship."
"A Fair and Humane Immigration Policy" — Accessed May 6, 2016
"What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them."
Interview w/ Vox's Ezra Klein — Jul. 16, 2015

Donald J. Trump

The extensive coverage given to Trump's campaign by major media outlets may explain why immigration has become such an issue in the 2016 presidential race, especially among Republican voters.

76 percent of Republicans say that a candidate's stance on immigration is very or extremely important to them, compared to 62 percent of Democrats, according to a February Gallup poll.

Trump's characterization of undocumented immigrants as drug runners, rapists and undesirables foisted upon the American people by the Mexican government began when he first announced his bid for president in June 2015.

His in-your-face campaign style and image as a Washington outsider have garnered him support among blue-collar voters, and helped propel him to the nomination in early May.

Trump has voiced support for completing and reinforcing a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border since the publication of his 2011 book, "Time to Get Tough," in which he advocates for a triple-layered border fence, surveilled by Predator drones and 25,000 additional Border Patrol agents.

In his campaign announcement speech, Trump reiterated this point and added that he would force Mexico pay for the wall.

Trump was initially hesitant to discuss how he would force Mexico to pay for the wall, but has since said that he would stop undocumented immigrants from sending their wages south. Remittances, as these payments are called, make up about 1.9 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product, according to a 2014 estimate by World Bank.

The payments are a vital source of income for many Mexican families living in poor agrarian communities.

Trump has said that he is committed to increasing deportations and ending birthright citizenship. However, he has been unclear on whether he would target all U.S. residents lacking proper documentation, or exclusively those who entered the country without permission.

In a February debate, Trump said that he would deport the "11 million people that came in illegally."

The likely source of this figure, a 2012 estimate by the Department of Homeland Security, accounts for all unauthorized U.S. residents, including U.S.-born children whose parents failed to register them as citizens and guest-workers who have overstayed the terms of their visas.

Trump has said that he would deport all "criminal aliens," as well as individuals apprehended at unauthorized border crossings.

He has also said that he would allow certain deportees to return to the U.S. after a lengthy processing period.

In his earlier book, "The America We Deserve," Trump has this to say on the legal immigration process: "Legal immigrants do not and should not enter easily. It’s a long, costly, draining, and often frustrating experience by design. I say to legal immigrants: welcome, and good luck."

Although Trump has not spoken specifically about the prospect of supplying health care to undocumented immigrants, his stance on deportations and adamant opposition to the ACA make any extension of public health programs to immigrants under his presidency unlikely.

Trump has argued for restrictions on visa programs like H-1B. On his campaign's website, he argues that base wages for H-1B visa holders need to be increased to protect Americans working in STEM fields.

He also says that he will implement an electronic visa monitoring system and impose criminal penalties on those who overstay their visas.

This and his planned requirement for companies to hire unemployed Americans before looking outside of the country for work contrast with his own utilization of H1-B labor, which he admitted to at a debate in March.

"It's something that I frankly use and I shouldn't be allowed to use it," he said. "We shouldn't have it. Very, very bad for workers."

"Second of all, I think it's very important to say, 'Well, I'm a businessman and I have to do what I have to do,'" he added.

Potent Quotables

"I declare: I'm not gonna pay for that f‐‐‐‐‐‐ wall."
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Interview w/ Jorge Ramos — Feb. 25, 2016
"The wall just got 10 feet taller."
10th Republican Presidential Debate, Trump in re Fox — Feb. 25, 2016

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Mixed green (cards): Agriculture and immigration’s strained relationship

Anonymous — Mon, 09 May 2016 18:09:07 +0000

Mixed green (cards): Agriculture and immigration’s strained relationship Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/09/2016 - 12:09 Michael Preston

Large cutout paintings dot the landscape of farmland in the Salinas Valley. Photo by Debra Jane Seltzer (www.RoadsideArchitecture.com)

In the fertile lands of central California lies the Salinas Valley, where 369,000 acres of land provide the country with $8.1 billion worth of fruits and vegetables annually. Nicknamed “The Salad Bowl of the World,” the area is one of the biggest producers of lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and strawberries – among others – in the United States and helps fulfill the country’s massive demand for fresh food, especially in today’s health-conscious landscape.

For all the talk of California’s water crisis and the impact the drought is having on agricultural production, immigration is an equally critical issue that is affecting the output of fruits and vegetables from this lush land.

With a sizable increase in American produce consumption, the agriculture industry is finding it hard to keep up with the demand. According to a study by The Chicago Council of Global Affairs, the consumption of fresh produce in the United States increased by 10.5 percent from 2000 to 2012, while domestic production increased by only 1.4 percent. The result is a heavier reliance on imported produce, leaving the domestic economy with billions in lost income.

In order to ramp up production, farms need more workers to plant, harvest and process produce. These labor-intensive aspects of agriculture employ the largest number of workers in the industry, and approximately 78 percent of this population consists of foreign-born workers, overwhelmingly from Mexico.

But as immigration reform remains stalled in Congress, and debate rages on in the presidential campaign, the agriculture industry can’t afford to wait for help. And the promise of help is bleak.

With complicated government immigration programs and opposition from a majority of Congress, the industry leaders in the area are instead taking it upon themselves to introduce new means of attracting and retaining foreign workers.

Tanimura & Antle (T&A) was recently approved to construct an affordable housing project near their headquarters that will be able to support up to 800 migrant workers. The company is one of the largest in the area, with nearly 30,000 acres of farmland and upwards of $675 million in annual revenue. County officials unanimously approved the project, despite opposition from the small town that will surround the complex.

“We’re still a little short on labor, but we’re in a lot better shape than last year,” said Gary Tanimura, executive vice president of production for T&A.

Workers harvest celery in the Salinas Valley. The area is one of the most productive agricultural places in the world, but a labor shortage makes it difficult to realize its full output.

Permanent worker housing allows T&A to work around the complex process to acquire seasonal agricultural work visas, otherwise known as the H-2A program, which deters many immigrants from finding work because of the long bureaucratic procedures associated with it. 2015 was the first year that T&A did not have a wait list for this program. Government inaction to simplify the process ensures that the difficulty will continue.

“After we got all the permits and started building the houses, we got feedback from workers and we realized we don’t have to have H-2A workers,” said Tanimura. “Since we have housing here we were able to attract more people that historically didn’t fall in the circuit.” The circuit Tanimura is referring to is the seasonal rotation of farmers on the H-2 system.

Other companies in the area are planning similar projects, according to Tanimura, but it is a long, difficult and layered process. Employers must receive approval from planning departments, the board of supervisors, local government and finally the vote of the people. T&A has a unique situation where their farmland and housing project share the same property as the company headquarters, which made it easier to begin building.

In the long run, permanent housing may prove to be more cost effective when compared to the H-2A program. As it stands now, H-2A requires employers to provide free housing, meals and transportation from workers’ native countries. On the other hand, with affordable housing for permanent workers, employers can collect rent and workers can use more of their wages for things like food, or to send back to their families.

“I have a labor camp in Arizona that I pay $150,000 a year for, and people don’t even use it,” said Dennis Caprara, owner and manager of R.C. Farms in Salinas. “They go back across the border to live with relatives or their own house, but I have to have it because it’s a government regulation.”

Dennis Caprara’s likeness adorns this cutout painting in the farmland of the Salinas Valley. Photo by Debra Jane Seltzer (www.RoadsideArchitecture.com)

Caprara owns and manages land throughout California and Arizona, and supplies vegetables to businesses like Dole Food Company, which is the largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world. He finds the H-2A program arduous and overly complicated.

“Our representatives have to make it easier for us. They’ve got to do some kind of reforming for that program,” said Caprara. “Right now there’s people with crops that have been lost because there’s not enough people to pick the crops.”

Caprara suggests a compromise between permanent worker residency and the H-2A program, similar to the Bracero program. The Bracero program was a series of laws and agreements with the Mexican government and was the precursor to H-2. It guaranteed basic human rights and a respectable minimum wage to migrant workers who came to the United States during the labor shortage that stemmed from World War II. Before it ended in 1964, it sponsored around 4.6 million labor contracts for Mexican workers.

The program was more flexible for hiring qualifications, while also discouraging welfare and unemployment abuse, according to Caprara. H-2A encourages illegal immigration, and taxpayers are footing the bill for health care, welfare and education for these undocumented workers, he added. Workers are also staying out-of-season, further driving up costs.

“That’s the kind of program that’s got to be done. That’s what wrecked the state of California when they did away with (the Bracero program),” said Caprara.

Machinery and other automated technologies can help reduce labor needs. But the demand for workers will always be present.

With stubborn Congressional partisanship and a new president set to be elected, it could be a long time before this vicious cycle sees any improvement

In the meantime, other efforts to combat the labor shortage are being developed. T&A recently acquired Plant Tape, a system that reduces the number of workers needed for harvesting from 15 to three, while also greatly reducing the number of seedlings that would normally be “thinned out” to make room for larger, healthier seeds. The system is set for commercial production by early 2017.

But even with these technology advancements, manual labor remains the driver of agriculture production. It is paramount to enable more opportunities for workers in order to keep the industry flowing.

“We need the people,” said Caprara. “A lot of people are against reform because back in the Midwest, they have grains, corn belts, soybeans – and they use machines for all that stuff. People don’t realize that the Salinas Valley or Arizona have the vegetables, the grapes, the strawberries that have to be done by hand.”

A sign posted in the fields reads “strawberry pickers needed.”

Should immigration reform become stricter, look no further than Arizona’s controversial SB1070 legislation, passed in 2010, to see the potential effects.

After the passage of the act, which imposed ultra-strict laws regarding possession of immigration documents and even harsher penalties, Arizona lost approximately 200,000 immigrants and experienced a net loss of $1 billion in tax revenue.

Proponents of the act argued that native-born job seekers at low skill levels received more opportunities and higher wages, especially in an agriculture-heavy economy like Arizona where jobs are plentiful.

And yet, only 10 percent of jobs previously held by immigrants were filled, with total employment in Arizona decreasing by 2.5 percent annually after 2010 (Moody’s Analytics, University of Arizona).

This sobering statistic is a representation of the dire need for immigrants in the industry and the economy. H-2A requires employers to prove they have exhausted the local unemployed population, but it seems native-born Americans are mostly averse to taking these thankless, menial jobs.

“We had H-2A in Texas a few years ago, and they took all the people that were unemployed and kind of shoved it to us to do our onions in the field,” said Tanimura. “We went through about 1500 employees, but shoot, all these guys would only work about one or two days, ‘Oh, this is too hard, I can’t do it, I quit,’ so you have this horrendous turnover that costs us money and on top of that we don’t get the job done.”

Improving technology and permanent worker housing can only go so far to alleviate this problem. It is up to the government to mitigate the labor crisis.

A storm brews over the fields of Salinas. California’s water shortage is only one of the problems facing the agriculture business.

“The fields are always looking for workers, and immigrants have proved to provide hard, honest work,” said Trace Hart, a field scout with Crop Production Services in Salinas. “Even with advancements in technology there will always be a demand for labor.”

President Barack Obama’s Immigration Accountability Executive Order is a starting point for streamlining legal immigration. The order, which was introduced in late 2014, created two programs (an expansion of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA) aimed at granting quasi-legal status and work permits to nearly 5 million immigrants who illegally entered the country, of which up to 400,000 are workers in the agriculture sector.

But these actions remain in limbo to this day. After the announcement of the order, a federal judge blocked the programs nationwide after Texas and 19 other states sued the Obama administration for failing to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. The Supreme Court case reviewing the legality of the actions is still ongoing.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told the Washington Post that Obama’s executive order will help the industry, but “it still isn’t what is necessary,” adding that the lack of Congressional action on immigration reform is “unbelievable.”

“Congress needs to act,” said Vilsack. “If we’re to maximize the ability of the U.S. to produce food, we’re going to have to have immigration reform.

“Comprehensive immigration reform will reduce the budget deficit, will shore up the Social Security system, will provide border security and will meet the needs of many industries,” said Vilsack. “It is unbelievable to me that Congress cannot find the will or the way to get this done. It’s an outrage.”

Further troubling to the agriculture industry is the strength and influence of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a 250,000-member organization that “seeks a moratorium on net immigration by anyone other than refugees and the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens, until it can be shown that higher immigration levels are needed.” This same organization also advocates against mass guest-worker programs and whose legal expert helped write the aforementioned SB1070 act.

While the principles laid out by FAIR advocate stabilizing the population and aiding native workers, many supporters of strict immigration laws argue that national security should be considered in immigration reform, citing high violent crime rates of illegal immigrants and a global uneasiness about terrorism.

And yet, more numbers and statistics refute that idea. USA Today found that there is no evidence supporting higher crime rates of illegal immigrants compared to the rest of the population. This argument appears even more flawed when considering the experiences of those working in the fields.

“I see great communication and camaraderie between natives and immigrants because of how tough the work is and how tough everyone works,” said Hart. “Everyone I’ve seen has given them (immigrants) the respect and recognition they deserve.”

Anecdotal evidence can only go so far, but considering that crime and violence are a quick way to get deported from the country, immigrants who come to the United States looking for a better life are generally not looking to stir up conflict.

“These people came here looking for a stable job so they can provide a better life for themselves and their family,” said Hart. “They wouldn’t throw away that opportunity.”

As such, the clear and continuing detrimental effects to the economy that have arisen from current immigration laws seem to indicate that immigration reform has become a cultural issue rather than an economic one.

Workers harvest in the Salinas Valley. This back-breaking work typically attracts many migrant workers for its entry-level qualifications.

“Historically, the people who come here are usually low-class people and the upper-class always looked down upon them,” said Tanimura. “Unfortunately, there’s still that prejudice out there, I believe.”

Perhaps reform of the unemployment and welfare programs in conjunction with new immigration policies should be a more intense area of focus to help solve the labor shortage and improve the public’s perception of immigrants.

“The general people out here are tired of seeing all these people getting food stamps and getting everything for nothing,” said Caprara. “That’s what the taxpayers are mad about, and you can’t blame them. If you’re out here paying taxes, and your tax money is going to feed these people, unemployment, this and that, then they’re blaming the Mexican people. But it’s the government’s own fault for not screening the people who really need it.

“There are people that know the system and work it to get more unemployment money. There are too many lazy people who don’t want to work. My old guys are working and they’re in their 50s and 60s now. But the new generation, they don’t want to do this kind of work.”

This problem is not localized to immigrant workers either. Tanimura described it as a fallacy where “there are all these people that are unemployed, but realistically the way the system has worked, they’d just rather stay home and collect welfare.”

T&A has spearheaded the effort to end the labor crisis, mainly because they know the importance of these workers and the impact they have on their business. The Tanimuras are intimately intertwined with the topic of immigration, as the family can trace its roots to Japanese immigrants who sailed to California in the early 20th century. The dedication and hard work of co-founder George Tanimura helped make the company the leader it is today.

Without immigration reform, companies like Tanimura & Antle or R.C. Farms will struggle to meet labor needs, and in turn struggle to meet the American consumer demand for fresh produce. The longer this debate goes on, the more uncertain the agriculture industry becomes about their future. Companies cannot extend jobs to their largest source of workers, production is hampered, expansion is curtailed and billions of dollars that help the domestic economy are lost to foreign markets.

And thousands of hard-working immigrants are denied the opportunity to provide a better life for themselves and their families.

Whoever is elected president in the 2016 election needs to address this problem with a sense of urgency, as it is too important to ignore. Without the help of migrant workers, the salad bar may start to look a little sparse by the time the polls open again in 2020.

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Eastern dreams meet Western realities: Portraits of Bangladeshi immigrants

Anonymous — Mon, 09 May 2016 18:09:07 +0000

Eastern dreams meet Western realities: Portraits of Bangladeshi immigrants Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/09/2016 - 12:09 Deepan Dutta

More than 277,000 immigrants from Bangladesh live in the United States. That number may grow if the country's 'descent into lawlessness' continues.

Stock image

In 1974, Kayes Ahmed got on a one-way flight out of Bangladesh to begin an indefinite self-imposed exile from the country he fought to free. All he had was a little money, a lot of ambition, and a keen survival instinct.

In 1987, Ahmed made his fortune by programming a billing system for AT&T, helping solve issues they were having linking up the “last mile” for telephone exchange networks in California. Along with two fellow immigrants, he lived and worked in a switch room to develop the system. After months of work, his huge gamble paid off when they connected the system to AT&T.

“We were making $400,000 from day one, every day. We went from nothing to an $80 million company.” Ahmed snaps his fingers. “Just like that.”

Twenty years later Ahmed returned to the country of his birth, a millionaire many times over, with the hope that he could bring a little bit of the American dream back with him.

Ahmed’s story is not one you expect to hear about someone from Bangladesh, if the media’s coverage of the country is anything to go by. Journalists frequently describe Bangladesh with words like “poverty,” “violence,” “disaster,” and “corruption.” A recent editorial by The New York Times describes the country’s “descent into lawlessness,” highlighting the recent killings of a prominent LGBT activist and others who have spoken out against Islamic extremism.

The instability of the region may very well lead to an increase in Bangladeshis making the long, dangerous journey to claim asylum in the U.S. The exodus may also lead to more calls by politicians like Donald Trump to “build a wall” to keep migrants out, particularly migrants from the Middle East and South Asia who are fleeing from war zones, political persecution or crippling poverty.

But for Ahmed and other Bangladeshi-Americans, immigrants from their homeland inspire words like “hard-working,” “entrepreneurial,” “humble,” and “generous.” Salt-of-the-earth people who work hard and complain rarely, who raise their children to do well in school and become productive members of society.

Bangladesh is a South Asian country with a population of about 169 million as of 2015. The country is bordered on three sides by India and by the Bay of Bengal to the South. It was previously known as East Pakistan until 1971, when the nation won its independence after a bloody war with West Pakistan (now simply known as Pakistan). Bangladesh is a majority Muslim nation – 90 percent of the population is Muslim, with Hindus comprising the largest minority religion. Bengali is the national language, and is now the seventh-most spoken language in the world.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, around 277,000 Bangladeshi immigrants and their children live in the United States. In 1980, only about 5,000 Bangladeshi immigrants lived in the U.S., and almost half (48 percent) of Bangladeshi immigrants arrived in the U.S. after 2000. Bangladeshi-Americans tend to be better educated than the national average (in terms of holding Bachelor’s degrees) and have a higher median income ($54,000 vs. $50,000 nationally). In 2012, Bangladeshi-Americans sent back $14.1 billion in remittances back to family in Bangladesh, which represented 12.2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. This makes Bangladesh the third most remittance-dependent nation in the world, behind Haiti and El Salvador.

CU News Corps spoke to three Bangladeshi immigrants living in Colorado to hear their own stories of coming to America, adapting to American society, and to gain their insights on the immigration process and the situation in Bangladesh.

‘They will essentially be killed’

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Trump has stoked fears among Americans that Muslim terrorists are flooding into the U.S. through the porous Mexican border. While there is no evidence to support the claim, Shirin Chowdhury, an interpreter for Bangladeshi migrants who have been detained by U.S. government, is able to provide insight about Bangladeshis who have been trying to cross the border illegally.

Chowdhury is a 66-year-old insurance claims adjuster who resides in Highlands Ranch. She has been a Colorado resident since 1969, when she immigrated to the United States as the spouse of a legal permanent resident. Shirin also works as an interpreter for a company providing translation services to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Several times a month, she is called on to interpret for Bangladeshi detainees being held at detention centers in Colorado, Arizona, California, Texas, and Washington D.C. Over the past few years, she has noticed a considerable increase in detainees who are claiming political asylum because they are supporters of the main opposition political party in Bangladesh — the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP — which is aligned with a radical Islamist group, Jamaat-e-Islami.

She says the story they tell her is usually the same – the detainee claims to have been harassed and threatened by members of the ruling party, the Awami League, for supporting the BNP, and so they were forced to flee Bangladesh and seek asylum in the U.S.

“They say that if they don’t get asylum and get deported back to Bangladesh,” Chowdhury says, “they will essentially be killed.”

They usually describe the same journey in reaching America: the detainee first contacts a smuggler in Dhaka, who promises safe passage to the U.S. border for the hefty fee of $15,000 to $20,000. After the money is paid, the smuggler gives them forged documents and puts them on a flight out of Bangladesh, usually to Dubai or other hubs in the Middle East. They are then transferred from port to port via a “chain of smugglers,” each passing the detainee off to another mule for each leg of the journey.

She charts the journey one detainee claimed he travelled to get to America — from Dhaka, to Dubai, to South America, where he was smuggled by ground vehicles through Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, until he was finally “dumped” in Mexico and left to find his own way over the U.S.-Mexico border. At each stop in the journey, he was locked in motel rooms, up to 10 days at a time, until it was safe to make the next border crossing.

When the detainees reach Mexico, they are usually apprehended by the police, who confiscate their paperwork and give them 30 days to leave the country or face imprisonment. Fearing torturous conditions in Mexican prisons, they attempt the long journey to the U.S. border, and by the time they reach their destination, Chowdhury says many are “almost starving to death.”

Those who make it to the border either give themselves up and try to claim asylum at an immigration checkpoint, or get arrested by American Border Patrol while trying to enter illegally. They are then placed in detention centers, where Shirin translates for them during their asylum and removal hearings.

One problem these detainees face is their claims of affiliation to the BNP, which was recently designated by the Department of Homeland Security as a Tier III/Undesignated terrorist organization. The designation was applied because of the BNP’s past affiliations with Jamaat and other fundamentalist Islamist groups who have held responsible for a wave of terrorist attacks in Bangladesh, including an attack involving almost 500 small bombs which were set off simultaneously across the country.

The effect of this designation is those who claim affiliation with the BNP will be denied asylum, and can be deported back to their country of origin or held indefinitely in detention centers. Advocacy groups have expressed alarm about the treatment of these detainees, and last Thanksgiving more than 100 Bangladeshi and South Asian detainees went on hunger strikes at several ICE detention centers. Many of these detainees have been held for up to two years without any change in their status.

However, a recent federal court ruling may begin to change the government’s policy towards Bangladeshi detainees. In July, 2015, an immigration court judge ruled that the BNP is not a terrorist organization, and allowed a Bangladeshi detainee to apply for asylum. While the ruling is not binding for all cases, it has put more pressure on the DHS to justify the terrorist designation label.

Still, the political situation in Bangladesh itself remains very volatile. Minorities, particularly Hindus and atheists, have been subject to oppression and violence by fundamentalist Islamic groups for decades, with a heavy escalation in attacks over the past few years.

The country has been rocked by a series of grisly hacking murders mainly targeting atheist and secularist bloggers who have spoken out against Islamic extremism. At least six such murders have been carried out over the past year with two of the latest victims being gay rights activists, one of whom was the editor of the nation’s first LGBT magazine. Militant groups related to al Qaeda and ISIS have claimed responsibility for the attacks, while Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, has dismissed the notion of terrorist groups operating in the country, instead blaming opposition terrorist groups.

Ahmed believes that the best qualities of Bangladeshi immigrants are that they are “humble, modest, and have a great desire to succeed.” He says that Bangladeshis have an innate “survival instinct” borne out of the specter of crippling poverty that all Bangladeshis have seen or experienced.

However, he does believe that many Bangladeshi immigrants fail to properly assimilate into American society, choosing not to socialize or network with their American neighbors and instead “stick to their own” enclaves and communities. This alienation from American society is, he believes, a reason why some second generation immigrants face an identity crisis when they essentially live in separate worlds; Bangladesh when they are at home with their family, and America on the outside.

As a result, he says, some of these young people become radicalized by fundamentalist Islam. They desire an identity and purpose and they feel they can find in that particular brand of Islamism, which he describes as having a “dark, violent, core.” He says this is how terrorists are born, and why it is important for the Bengali community to try to do more to integrate into American society instead of being suppressed by their religion.

‘I was going to do something’

Ahmed is a 58-year-old businessman and entrepreneur who resides in Boulder. He was born in Sylhet, a city in the northeast of the country then known as East Pakistan, the son of a grocery store owner. His father made “just barely enough to survive” while also raising his five sisters and one brother in a home that had no electricity or other luxuries of modern life.

With little in the way of wealth as a child, and not much to do besides school, Ahmed used to go into town to read and check out books for free from the local outpost of the United States Information Service (USIS, later known as the United States Information Agency). USIS was a U.S. government-funded agency which provided libraries of American books, radio broadcasts, movies and other media in other nations to spread American culture around the world, and to counter Soviet propaganda.

“I started reading in English because of the USIS,” he says, recalling how he used to read works by Mark Twain and Hemingway by the light of a kerosene lamp. He enjoyed illustrations of the prairies and vistas of the American West, and it became his first exposure to this part of the world.

Kayes Ahmed on a rickshaw in Kathmandu, Nepal. Photo courtesy of Kayes Ahmed.

In 1971, war broke out between East and West Pakistan. Ahmed, then a teenager, fled the violence with his family to a remote part of the country. They were among millions of refugees who would eventually become displaced during the war. Once his family was safe, Ahmed left them to join the local militia, who would later become known as the Mukthi Bahini (Freedom Fighters).

“I didn’t know I was joining the freedom fighters,” he recalls with a laugh. “I was going to do something, because these people were killing our people. It was not a sustained political thought… and when you’re 15, you do things that may or may not be the brightest things in your life, but that is what I was doing.”

Ahmed wound up crossing the border and arriving at a large refugee camp in Assam, a province in Northeast India, where the Indian military was training volunteers to fight the Pakistani military.

Ahmed stood out among the other irregular fighters for his fearlessness and recklessness, participating in deadly ambushes against Pakistani Army units. He was willing to do anything asked of him and he quickly gained a reputation as an effective guerilla fighter.

After a few months, his reputation had reached the attention of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s foreign intelligence agency, who recruited him and a few others to be part of a special unit. The unit was put through six weeks of “quick reaction weapons and demolition training,” which included training on how to create and set off Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs. After training was over, the RAW gave the irregular band of sappers a simple mission: “Go into Sylhet and try to blow up things.”

And that, Ahmed did. From the summer of ‘71 until the end of the war six months later, his unit wreaked havoc for Pakistan’s military. They set off car bombs, destroyed rail tracks and severely disrupted supply lines, resulting in disarray among the Pakistani forces. The freedom fighters wound up putting up a sustained resistance for eight months, to the complete surprise of their enemy.

As the Pakistani military grew more desperate, it resorted to deadlier and more indiscriminate atrocities. Some have accused of Pakistan of being complicit in one worst genocides in the post-World War II era. Though it may never be possible to have an accurate casualty toll from the war, it is estimated that at least 500,000 were killed (with the Bangladesh government claiming up to three million) and at least 200,000 women were victims of genocidal rape. Tens of millions were internally displaced or became refugees.

Eventually, the collective efforts of the freedom fighters and assistance from the Indian military steadily decimated the Pakistani forces until independence became all but inevitable. On December 16, 1971, Pakistan surrendered unconditionally. Bangladesh was born.

Though he had fought to help free Bangladesh, Ahmed no longer felt at home there. The ruling party (the Awami League) became more and more autocratic and intolerant of dissent after the war. This disillusionment, along with numerous run-ins with the law, led him to make the decision to leave Bangladesh behind and move to London. He had an uncle there who sponsored him for a short-term tourist visa. In 1974, after having a birth certificate forged (unlike the West, birth certificates were not commonly issued in Bangladesh until relatively recently), he was granted a visa to visit London and left Bangladesh for the first time in his life.

During his time in the UK, Ahmed studied computer science at the University of Manchester and became very active in student politics. He participated in protests against the Awami League, including an occupation of the Bangladesh Embassy. The Bangladesh government subsequently revoked his citizenship, leaving him with no statehood and no way to travel across borders. The United Nations granted him a Displaced Person’s Identity Card, a document that allows refugees and others who lives are endangered to travel freely. This enabled Ahmed to apply for, and receive, a student visa to pursue his MBA in the United States.

The process was easy, he says, because the U.S. values immigrants “who are educated or skilled” and feels that it is a fair system. In 1978, he made his way to America, the place he would finally call home.

Ahmed’s first port of call was New York City, which is home to the largest Bengali community in America. On the very first night after arriving, he started a job driving a cab at night from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. After saving enough money to pursue his graduate degree, he got a full scholarship to pursue a MBA at Indiana University. He received his MBA in 1981, and then he spent years hopping around the country, getting hired and fired from job after job. He readily admits he was not a model employee.

“I used to never take calls, even from my bosses, and that used to drive them up the wall.”

During this time, he received his “Green Card” to become a legal permanent resident, and in 1987 became a naturalized American citizen.

That same year, 1987, Ahmed made his fortune by programming that billing system for AT&T.

Ahmed lived the big life for years, but “the money got to [his] head.” He bought cars and planes, rode the roller coaster rises of the U.S. economy. Today, he is living a comfortable, much more modest life as the chief operations officer of a designer outerwear company based in Longmont. He visits Bangladesh every six months or so to create new business ventures and opportunities, including a garment factory. He has a daughter, Alex, whom he considers his pride and joy, and the product of his many years struggling to survive and succeed.

‘Immigration law was not as tough’

Taufiq Raihan is a 53-year-old small business owner in Aurora who came to the U.S. from Bangladesh about 30 years ago.

Taufiq Raihan in his home office in Aurora, CO.

He began his journey out of Bangladesh in the early ’80s as a merchant marine, traveling the high seas as a sailor and engineer on commercial vessels between ports all over the world. His journeys took him all over Europe — from Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Bulgaria, to the Mideast – Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Iran. After four years working as a sailor, Raihan decided to make the U.S. his final port of call.

In April, 1986, he arrived in Charleston, North Carolina on a freighter hauling iron ore. Instead of using the plane ticket he was given to go back home after the crew change, he wound up going to New York City and staying in the U.S., becoming an undocumented immigrant.

While trying to figure out ways to obtain legal status, Raihan met an American woman at an immigration office. They hit it off, and eventually married. After she helped guide him through the process, he applied for permanent residency as the husband of an American citizen. His paperwork was expedited with help from the Department of Defense, which had hired him for his specific engineering skill set.

Less than a year later, he left the United States and legally re-entered the country through an immigration checkpoint on the Canadian border, where he was able to obtain his Green Card. The way he sees it, “at the time, immigration law was not as tough as now.”

Having gained legal status, Raihan went in search of a career, seeking to end a life of random odd-jobs. He had already received certification in “Toxic Waste and Hazardous Materials Dispose and Decontamination” from a technical school in Connecticut. This training, along with his experience as an engineer working in hazardous areas, allowed him to get the job at the Department of Defense. They needed him for a major project going on in Colorado – the clean-up of hazardous materials from Rocky Flats and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, two of the most contaminated Superfund sites in the country.

In July, 1990, Raihan first arrived in Denver and began work cleaning up the sites. His work involved the disposal and decontamination of radioactive material in both facilities, where nuclear and chemical weapons had been produced for decades. Working with protective suits and equipment, he assumed he was safe.

“Even with all the training, precautions, and equipment there, sometimes you get exposed to it without knowing,” he says.

Because of his work, he was required to undergo intense random medical checkups every three months. It was during one such checkup that he found out radiation was getting into his blood and affecting his kidneys, and after two more failed exams his doctor disqualified him from doing any more HAZMAT work.

The U.S. government had set up retraining programs for workers like Raihan who were medically disqualified, and he used that opportunity to go back to school and receive certification as an HVAC technician from the Denver Institute of Technology in 1996. He used that training to build his own HVAC business, Royal Bengal Mechanical, which provides HVAC servicing throughout the metro Denver area.

As for concerns about Muslims in America, Raihan points to his eldest son, who served with distinction in the Army Reserves for seven years while maintaining his Muslim faith. He places the blame for terrorism at the feet of fundamentalist Muslim leaders.

“It’s time for us to speak up [against these preachers],” Raihan says, “who have hijacked the religion.”

He says these leaders have turned people who are already troubled into killers, but these people are not limited to the Muslim faith.

“What David Koresh did in Waco, Texas – we didn’t shut down the churches. What Jim Jones did [enabling a mass murder-suicide], we didn’t seize all the Bibles… so the media just focuses on us [Muslims] right now.”

Raihan mentions Dylann Roof, the young white supremacist suspected of perpetrating the massacre of black Christian parishioners at the AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

“These are maniacs… this is the mindset of people who believe in destruction, and they try to excuse their destructive, evil behavior under the shelter of religion,” Raihan says.

‘Because this is a free country’

Bangladeshi immigrants like Shirin Chowdhury, Kayes Ahmed and Taufiq Raihan will not forget where they came from, and will continue to welcome other immigrants with open arms.

“I’ve been a business owner for 13 owners,” Raihan says. “When I hire someone, I look for an immigrant. You know why? They know the value of the dollar. They’re gonna give you a hard day of work. They know their job is their future, that will bring the bread and butter on their table for him and his family.”

A constant refrain for Bangladeshis and other immigrants coming to the U.S. – legally or otherwise – is the pursuit of the “American Dream.” While it’s a nebulous concept for many, to Ahmed it has always been rather clear.

As an American citizen, he has been able to help sponsor and bring all five of his sisters and his brother to the U.S., all of whom have become successful in their own ventures. He says that the U.S. immigration system is fair, and he believes the U.S. will always welcome those who have the right education and skill set. He doesn’t believe that the immigration system is discriminatory against certain countries. Most importantly, the U.S. system allows dreamers like himself to become wealthy.

“I have a lifestyle that I like, and my child will have a better lifestyle than me,” Ahmed says. “Because this is a free country.”

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Ethiopians in Colorado

Anonymous — Mon, 09 May 2016 18:09:07 +0000

Ethiopians in Colorado Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/09/2016 - 12:09 Anja Semanco

Fasting-growing immigrant group in the U.S. has had a large presence in Colorado since the 1970s

Stock image

This story is told in a few paragraphs, a motion graphic, an audio story and an exhaustive timeline. Enjoy.

Colorado is home to a large population of Ethiopian immigrants. Nearly 30,000 live in the Denver Metro area alone. Their culture, although often overlooked in Colorado, has shaped and influenced the state in many ways.

The Ethiopian migration to Colorado is not an isolated incident. Ethiopians immigrate to the U.S. more frequently than any other country in the world, according to the 2015 UN Stock Migrant Report. In 1980, only 7,516 Ethiopians lived in the entire U.S. That number has grown by more than 2,000 percent in the past three decades.

The animation below details the influx of Africans and Ethiopians to the U.S. and some of the impact that has had on Denver’s community.

[video:https://youtu.be/uo8KxHibYW4]

Zewge Gebre-Marim and his wife, Edda, moved from Ethiopia in the 1970s and came to Colorado after their two sons attended the �鶹��Ƶ. Zewge and Edda recalled their time in Ethiopia with fondness, but also fear.

Zewge started the nonprofit organization PRIDE, which builds latrines, school buildings and provides desks and other educational material to rural parts of Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government paid for all of his education (up to his master’s degree), and he said this is his way of giving back and still remaining a part of his home country.

Listen to this audio piece to hear Zewge and Edda’s story.

[soundcloud width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/261526437&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"][/soundcloud]

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Incarcerating the Innocent

Anonymous — Mon, 09 May 2016 18:09:07 +0000

Incarcerating the Innocent Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/09/2016 - 12:09 David Cook

Call it 'detention' if you'd like, but immigrant advocates say detention centers feel and look more like prison

In this investigative audio piece, CU News Corps’ David Cook examines detention centers used to house undocumented U.S. immigrants, like the facility in Aurora, Colorado. While few know of the conditions these immigrants face, the individuals and organizations fighting for a better life for those caught up in this broken system are asked to share the struggles and triumphs that are part of their day-to-day work, as they strive to change current policy.

[soundcloud width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/263308571&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"][/soundcloud]

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A Visit from the Neighbors

Anonymous — Mon, 09 May 2016 18:09:07 +0000

A Visit from the Neighbors Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/09/2016 - 12:09 Mollie Putzig

Canadians have a much easier time crossing the border and becoming citizens than Mexicans do.

Photo Credit: Peter Dutton via Wikimedia Commons

A shout rang out: “I am not a criminal!” A door slams. A man is curled in a ball on the floor. A woman in the audience cries.

It’s the last night the cast of “Do You Know Who I Am?” gathers to publicly tell their immigration stories at the Longmont Museum and Cultural Center. They are Mexican. Four of the five are “undocumented and unafraid.” At the end of the performance they boldly state their names.

“Juan Manuel Juarez Luna.”

“Victor Uriel Galvan Ramirez.”

“Hugo Enrique Juarez Luna.”

“Oskar Juarez Luna.”

Oskar began his monologue getting up from his position on the floor to tell the story of crossing the border as a child, asleep on the floor by the passenger’s seat. As they drove through the desert in the middle of the night, his family took turns holding him because his young body was the warmest.

A decade later he would be denied entry to the Army. Spending most of his life in the U.S. didn’t give him the papers he needed to fight for his country.

Across town and a world away another group of immigrants gathers at Lowry Beer Garden in Denver for a networking event with the Canada Colorado Association (CCA). The room buzzes with laughter and conversation. Beers are poured, greetings exchanged. They are Canadian, they are documented and they have nothing to fear. Everyone wears a nametag written in thick permanent marker.

Nina Morton came to the U.S. because she couldn’t take the snow in Winnipeg anymore. Originally from Calgary, she and her now ex-husband moved from province to province before settling in a city locally nicknamed “Winterpeg” for its heavy snows and temperatures below negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit. After a few years they fled south, bickering over how far to go — Texas or Minneapolis, Atlanta or Seattle — before settling on Denver.

The question wasn’t whether they could go, but where they would end up.

‘It really bothers people that I’m here in the U.S.’

U.S. immigration is a politically and emotionally charged topic. Concerns range from public safety, to economic security, to unjust treatment of immigrants. Regardless of where they stand on the issue, most Americans recognize that we have a problem.

Part of the problem is that, in the collective American eye, immigrants are not created equal. Immigrants in this country have very different experiences depending on where they come from.

Our neighbors are some of the most drastic examples of that. From the south we have our most talked about immigrants, Mexicans, and from the north possibly some of our least, Canadians.

Of the 46 million immigrants in the U.S., 12 million are Mexican. But this means there are another 34 million people that make up the rest of the story. That’s more than the population of Colorado and every state that touches our borders combined. You could even throw in Idaho, Montana and the Dakotas. There are still more non-Mexican immigrants. Of those, only 800,000 are Canadians, about one South Dakota’s worth.

To be fair, there are more Mexicans living in the U.S. than immigrants from any other country. Although 2014 marked the first year on record that more non-Mexicans were apprehended at U.S. borders than Mexicans, according to the Pew Research Center.

“It really bothers some people that I’m here in the U.S.,” Oskar said at the beginning of his monologue. “But others, they just simply don’t care or have no clue. But there are some who really want to help out. Somebody once told me …”

“Go back home!”

“Go back where you belong!”

His brothers interjected, demonstrating comments hurled in their directions as immigrants in the U.S.

“They were talking about Mexico, but I don’t even know what Mexico’s like. I’ve been here since I was a little kid,” Oskar said. “Saying the Pledge of Allegiance, saluting the American flag since I can remember. And yet people say I’m a criminal for breaking the law when I crossed the border. I didn’t choose to be here. I didn’t sit at the table with my family and take a vote as if we were debating where to go for summer vacation.”

‘Everyone assumes you’re American’

Canadians immigrants are arguably some of the least likely to be noticed. Not only because there aren’t that many, but there’s also almost no way to distinguish them from your average white American. They speak English, have virtually no accent and they look just like us.

“It’s so easy as a Canadian,” Morton said. “Everyone assumes you’re American.

“I’ve been here since (1999) and I just got my citizenship,” she said. “You know when we’re coming up on an election, and they’re always trying to get you to sign up. I always say, ‘Oh, I can’t vote’ and I just walk by. I knew they’d be thinking ‘What?’ Whereas, if it were a Mexican person they’d be like ‘oh well, of course you can’t vote.’”

Mexicans look different enough to have become the target of regulation like Arizona’s “show me your papers” immigration law allowing law enforcement officers to stop people they suspect of being in the country illegally and ask for their documentation.

The Juarez family fled Arizona when the law was passed in 2010, the week of Oskar’s high school graduation and right before Juan would graduate from college.

“My family and I were scared,” Juan said. “When one of us would go out, we were worried we were gonna get pulled over by police and eventually be deported.

A friend of Juan’s had his car stolen. Instead of investigating the theft, police deported him, leaving his wife and children without a father, Juan said.

“So my entire family decided that, to keep any of us from being deported, we would have to sell everything, more like give it away, and move to Colorado,” Juan said. “I had to drop out of college, leave my hometown. It was like starting all over again.”

The Juarez family would later learn of a similar law in Colorado, requiring law enforcement to report suspicious persons to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But this time they refused to run.

‘I’m bloody sick of these bloody taxes’

There are only a few ways a foreign born person can immigrate into the U.S.

“There’s family, work, asylum and investing $500,000 or up in a business,” said Ken Stern, a partner in the immigration law firm Stern & Curray, with ties to CCA.

Wait times for Canadians and Mexicans applying to immigrate through family connections are drastically different. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, parents, spouses, or children under 21 of a U.S. citizen don’t have to wait for their visas. For every other category of family, USCIS assigns a priority date that shows how long ago an applicant must have applied for their application to reach the desk of the people in charge. Mexicans have a longer wait in every category.

The shortest time difference is for a spouse or child of a permanent resident. For either country of origin they must have applied in 2014, but Mexicans must have applied three months earlier. An adult Mexican sibling of a U.S. citizen must have applied six years earlier than a Canadian. A married Mexican who is the child of a U.S. citizen has to have applied 10 years earlier than a Canadian. And being married can save years of waiting. An unmarried Mexican adult, who’s the child of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, must have applied in the mid 1990s to have their application looked at today, almost 14 years earlier than a Canadian.

For Canadians, the family based wait is of little concern. Most of them come in through employment, Ken said.

Krystle Landry, an attorney with Evergreen Law and member of CCA, has migrated between the U.S. and Canada three times. All for work.

“My dad was a doctor and he was sick of being taxed to death in Canada, so when I was 9 we moved to Georgia,” Landry said. “We lasted 10 months. Moved back to Canada, ‘cause [Georgia] was just rednecks and heat and fire ants. Then we got to back to Canada and he was like ‘Oh I’m bloody sick of these bloody taxes,’ so we moved back to Georgia, but to Statesboro, which is a university town.

“He found a house he liked and he bought it and that was it,” she said. “He moved all six of us, and a baby. So they’re still in Georgia. I moved back to Canada to finish high school, and I went to university in Nova Scotia. And came to Colorado cause there are fewer law schools and more jobs.”

Landry got U.S. citizenship when she married nine years ago. Her primary motivation was saving money when she took her husband’s name. Changing your name as a Canadian costs $1,000, while U.S. citizenship costs $595, name change included.

Betty and Garth Wilson, Canadian immigrants who were at the first meeting of CCA 25 years ago, found their move to the U.S. similarly simple.

“I’m an engineer and I worked overseas for 11 years and the company was headquartered here in Denver,” Garth said. “When I got enough gray hair they said, ‘Come and work in [the] head office.’ And I fell in love with the place. The mountains, the climate — you can’t beat it.”

With the help of an immigration attorney, the whole process took six months. Paperwork, a citizenship test, a few thousand dollars, and an interview where they pledged allegiance to the flag, and Betty and Garth walked away dual citizens.

‘Come on in’

Peter Martinek, a director of CCA, moved to the U.S. with his American wife. He got citizenship three years ago, after waiting 17 years, through the birth of both of his children.

Why the wait?

It had nothing to do with the difficulty of obtaining citizenship. It was just procrastination on his part. Despite knowing that a green card can be revoked at any time, there’s no real concern for Canadians. Martinek had to renew his residency every 10 years, sending in paperwork and updated photos. When he finally decided to get citizenship the whole process took five months. He said he was never concerned that he might not be granted citizenship.

Rob Martin, a Canadian immigrant and member of the CCA who moved here for the military and stayed for a wife, said the only time he’s ever nervous is waiting for the green card.

“I worked for a four-star general and my job required me to travel to Canada with him whenever he went,” Martin said. “I actually had to walk into his office one day and go ‘I can’t go with you this week.’”

His application hadn’t been approved yet. He sent in a signed letter from his general to expedite the process, but was denied.

“I got it about three weeks later, but that was a bit of a hassle,” Martin said. “You can’t cross the border once you’re in the application process, so I had to wait.”

It’s the only time he ever faced the struggle of not being allowed to cross the border.

Even when they’re not asking to stay, Canadians have it much easier than Mexicans when visiting the U.S.

“Citizens of Canada can make their application right at the border,” Stern said. “So whether it’s at the airport or a land crossing they bring their paperwork and give it to the inspector. The inspector looks it over and says ‘come on in.’ Everybody else has to apply to a service center and wait months and months and months.”

This may be why Canadians are the most likely to overstay an authorized visit, according to Homeland Security Research. They come over on tourist and business visas, blend in, and never leave. There are 93,035 Canadians who crossed the border in 2015, promised to return home, and never left. That’s 50,000 more than the next largest group to do that: Mexicans.

Crossing the border is a much bigger deal for Mexicans.

The worst was the Juarez brothers’ grandfather died.

“I still remember like it was yesterday,” Juan said. “Watching my mom cry like I had never seen before. We were devastated. And my mom, my mom knew he was sick but she couldn’t go back and say goodbye cause she knew if she went back to Mexico she might not be able to come back to us.

“Because of a piece of paper with numbers that we didn’t have, I had to see my mom suffer,” he said.

‘It was like a dream come true’

Landry, Martinek, Martin and Morton told their border crossing stories casually. Fleeing the snow in Winnipeg, or the heat in Georgia. Looking for jobs or following love. Stern joked about building a Canadian border wall, so that they could keep out their scary southern neighbors.

When Juan spoke of his inability to visit his dying grandfather, a woman in the audience began to cry. Oskar recounted becoming a criminal in his sleep and laughed at the absurdity. Mexican voices rose in frustration, sprinkled with Spanish. A language barrier that looms larger than the fences on our southern flank.

Many of the Canadians in the CCA came for college and never left. Victor Galvan, Oskar, Juan, and Hugo Juarez all struggled for years to even go to college because they couldn’t afford out of state tuition. Living and working and paying taxes in their states since childhood did nothing to secure their statehood.

In Galvan’s case, he has lived in Colorado since he was eight months old. He watched his mother escape his abusive father. He joined her to become a two-person burrito factory, waking up at 3 a.m. on summer mornings to make the burritos that would keep food on their table and clothes on their backs, Galvan said. His mother took every job she could get so he could go to school, where he excelled.

“My mother told me never to miss an opportunity to try something I might love,” Galvan said. “I did everything that caught my attention. I was in theater, choir, speech and debate, ethics club, junior achievement, wrestling, weight lifting, padres y jovenes unidos, parents and youth united. I had tons of performances and competitions, my mother was too busy working to attend.”

But when it came time to apply for college, he knew no amount of burritos sold would pay out of state tuition. He couldn’t apply for scholarship. They require a social security number.

He thought he’d found his big break when his advisor called to tell him he’d received the Denver Mayor’s Youth Award for Overcoming Adversity, which gave him one free year at Community College Denver. Before he could start, it was taken away because he was undocumented.

Juan also received a scholarship, for soccer, that would pay half of his tuition at his community college in Arizona.

“For me it was like a dream come true,” Juan said. “I finally had the financial aid that would help me get through.”

After completing his first year, Arizona law changed to mirror Colorado’s, requiring undocumented students to pay out of state tuition. His costs would triple. He was already working full time. He didn’t know how he would pay for school.

Adding insult to injury, Juan found out at the same time that his soccer scholarship was being taken away because of his status. He spent years working toward his degree anyway. He could only afford a couple classes at a time, but he kept going.

He would never finish college in Arizona because of the “show me your papers” law.

‘I’m gonna make sure their dreams are realized’

The Juarez brothers and Victor Galvan have faced obstacle after obstacle as Mexicans living in the U.S. Members of the CCA cited their biggest obstacle as transferring credit from Canadian banks to American ones so they could get a credit card, buy a car or take out a mortgage on a house.

Crime rates and economic burdens are the two most cited reasons for not wanting Mexican immigrants. But a study from the Census and American Community Survey shows that immigrants are less disposed to crime than Americans. A study of incarceration rates from the 1980s to the 2000s also shows that immigrants are increasingly less likely to be the ones committing crimes.

As far as the economy, studies show that undocumented immigrants contribute $12 billion in taxes alone, according to the Social Security Administration. By removing all the undocumented immigrants, private industry output would fall between $380 billion and $620 billion, and the long term net effect on the economy would be a trillion dollar loss, according to the American Action Forum.

The Juarez brothers and Victor Galvan are allowed to stay in the U.S. under DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA was started by the Obama administration in 2012 to allow immigrants who arrived as children to stay in the U.S. on a renewable two-year work permit.

But it’s not a law, it’s a policy, so it could be revoked be a future president who’s less supportive of immigrant rights.

“My mother’s husband, my husband, my mother, my father, friends from high school, I could go on and on about all the people I love who are immigrants and are undocumented and the daily injustices, obstacles and threats,” said Ana Cristina Temu, the only American born member of “Do You Know Who I Am?”

“Sometimes I just want to hand someone my social security number, just take it, take it because that’s all that it is, a nine digit number holding this country’s people back from their full potential,” she said. “I have to wake up in the morning and witness the hard work immigrants put into this country. And then I watch us, the privileged judge, hate, blame and criticize.

“As a citizen I feel the responsibility to fix the problem because I can vote and because I can walk out those doors without the fear of being sent to an unknown country or being ripped apart from my family,” Temu said, in the ending words of the final performance of “Do You Know Who I Am?”

“Do you want to know what my dream is, what my nine-digit American dream is?” she asked. “I’m gonna make sure that their dreams are realized. Will you help me?”

As the CCA networking event winds down Canadians finish their drinks, exchange phone numbers and promise to meet at the lobster dinner this summer. Even those that are not yet citizens, despite knowing their green cards could be revoked, have no fear of being forced out of a country they’ve come to call home. They roll up a Maple Leaf flag and glance at the end of a hockey game playing in the background of the beer garden as they walk out the door.

The cast of “Do You Know Who I Am?” sits on boxes talking with the crowd. People had clapped, and cheered, and cried, and took turns thanking them for their bravery in telling their stories and reliving their pain. The microphone comes to rest in the tiny hand of a Mexican American girl.

She starts with a smile in her voice.

“Thank you for telling your stories.” But her voice starts to shake. “It really made me think of how grateful I am to have papers.”

She starts to cry and the audience starts to clap.

“What my parents had to do to get to the United States. I’m really thankful to have papers and also for all the things that my parents have gone through.”

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Immigration detention center gets certified as child care center

Anonymous — Tue, 03 May 2016 18:09:07 +0000

Immigration detention center gets certified as child care center Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/03/2016 - 12:09 Deepan Dutta

Russian man dies at San Diego ICE detention center, sixth detainee to die since October

In this Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014 photo, elementary aged children talk about a short story in Spanish during a class at the Karnes County Residential Center, a temporary home for immigrant women and children detained at the border in Karnes City, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Igor Zyazin, 46, a Russian man detained at the Otay Detention Center in San Diego, was found unresponsive and pronounced dead on Sunday, April 2. Zyazin had been picked by ICE at the San Ysidro checkpoint on the Mexican border on April 24 and was being held pending an interview with officials to determine his status. He is the sixth detainee to die in ICE detention since October.

ACLU: Tuscon police are violating rights with prolonged traffic stops to check immigration status

The ACLU, after doing a public records review of traffic stops conducted by Tucson police, reports that many drivers have been held longer than necessary in order to check their immigration status. Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 law allows law enforcement to check the immigration status of drivers during traffic stops. But the ACLU alleges that the stops were prolonged while officers conducted the immigration checks, and also condemns the Border Patrol for participating in these prolonged stops. The civil rights organization has sent a letter to Tucson’s Chief of Police, Chris Magnus, calling for an end to prolonged stops and better training for officers. They also sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson, calling for DHS to uphold the Obama administration’s promise of limiting federal government involvement in Arizona’s enforcement of SB 1070.

Federal immigration detention center in Texas is granted child care license while immigration activists cry foul

The Karnes County Residential Center, in Karnes City, Texas, has been granted a child care license by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. The private detention facility, which houses undocumented mothers and and their children, may now avoid a federal court ruling ordering the release of mothers and children from facilities not equipped for child care. Immigration activists claim the license is just a way to get around the ruling and does not reflect any change in inhumane conditions for detainees, especially for children.

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Updates from the European Refugee Crisis

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Apr 2016 18:09:07 +0000

Updates from the European Refugee Crisis Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/29/2016 - 12:09

The UN warns of growing xenophobia in Austria.

telesurtv.net

UN chief secretary Ban Ki-Moon spoke to the Austrian parliament on Thursday, expressing his concerns to a newly passed bill that would allow Austria to reject all refugees and migrants at their border. Austria would have to declare a state of emergency before implementing this practice.

Austria has seen a surge of far-right supporters in the past months as the country has faced a massive wave of migrants and refugees from war-torn Middle Eastern countries. The small Alpine country sits between Italy and the Balkans making it a pivotal point for refugees trying to make their way to the North of Europe.

Italy to fingerprint all migrants rescued at sea.

Migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea rarely intend to remain in Italy, the first European country on their path. Refugees and migrants coming from Africa often aim to continue their travel towards richer countries such as Germany and England.

In an attempt to track refugees who intend to leave Italy and make their way into mainland Europe unlawfully, the Italian government will begin to take fingerprints of all migrants rescued at sea. The government in Rome is implementing this tactic to mitigate rising tensions regarding the refugee crisis in Europe.

Riot breaks out in refugee camp in Greece.

A riot broke out on the Greek island of Lesbos this Tuesday after a fight between unaccompanied Syrian minors in the refugee camp of Moria.

The riot was met with force by the Greek police, who intervened to sedate it with tear gas. The malcontent and precarious conditions of the refugees, mainly escapees from the devastion of the Syrian Civil War, paved the way for an outburst of violence.

The great majority of refugees have no intention in remaining on Greek soil and are waiting for a chance to proceed to Northern Europe.

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Presidential Primary Candidates on US‑Mexico Immigration Reform

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 18:09:07 +0000

Presidential Primary Candidates on US‑Mexico Immigration Reform Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/27/2016 - 12:09

U.S. Presidential Candidates on Immigration (May, 2016)
✓ indicates support ✗ indicates opposition ~ indicates ambiguity	Hillary Clinton	Bernie Sanders	Donald J. Trump
“The Wall”	✗	✗	✓
Increasing Deportations	✗	✗	✓
Amnesty	✓	✓	✗
Citizenship	✓	✓	~
Health Care	✓	✓	~
Expanding Legal Immigration	✓	✓	✗

From left to right, photos courtesy of Kamil Kryzaczynski, EPA; Alex Wong, Getty Images; and Gage Skidmore. Table by Max Levy.

With the end of primary season in sight, voters in undecided states should be thinking about where each of the candidates stands on issues like immigration.

It may not be the same stance they had several months ago.

From the wall-rhetoric of Trump to the pro-DREAM Act promises of Clinton and Sanders, finding a “solution” to America’s immigration problems has become the hot-button issue in the 2016 race for the White House.

Here’s where the remaining candidates stand on immigration:

Hillary Clinton

Many pundits attribute her success to the Clinton name and it’s salience among minority voters, but she’s also seen as more politically savvy than her opponent, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Conservative Democrats are more likely to support her as well, which may explain her sweep of Southern states in March.

Despite the Obama administration’s checkered history of immigration enforcement, Hillary Clinton has been an outspoken supporter of both DACA and DAPA, which would allow the government to grant de facto legal status to certain classes of undocumented immigrants, as well as the DREAM Act, which would offer a path to legal residency and has yet to pass the Senate.

As the Clinton campaign has developed, her views on immigration have curved left to approach those of Sanders and Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who suspended his presidential bid in February.

Clinton is unapologetic about voting “Yea” on the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which called for 700 miles of fencing to be constructed along the U.S.-Mexico border. The barrier was never completed, much to the chagrin of Senate Republicans.

Clinton, however, claims that the border has been sufficiently secured, and that it is time to shift national focus towards comprehensive immigration reform.

Extending services such as health care to undocumented immigrants, especially children, is another one of Clinton’s stated presidential objectives.

At the first Democratic debate in October, she stated that she wanted to make sure all children had access to health care, including those without documentation.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, affected in 1994, is often blamed for the decline of Mexican agriculture and the rise of undocumented immigration from Mexico to the United States. While Clinton voiced support for NAFTA during her husband’s presidency, she has since criticized the agreement and its Central American analogue, CAFTA.

What impact this would have on a Clinton presidency is open to interpretation.

Potent Quotables

“We could add hundreds of billions of dollars to our GDP by passing comprehensive immigration reform.”
Speech at National Immigration Integration Conference — Dec. 14, 2015

Bernie Sanders

According to a recent Gallup poll, the Hispanic vote could swing either way.

When asked during the Mar. 9 debate, Sanders said that he would not deport undocumented immigrants unless they had criminal records.

Along with his opponent, Sanders would support “sanctuary city” laws, which prevent municipal workers and police from asking after immigration status in places like Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C.

After releasing his health care proposal in January, Sanders’ senior policy adviser Warren Gunnels confirmed that undocumented immigrants would be given access to plans in the ACA marketplace.

Clinton criticized Sanders’ rejection of the bill at a Feb. 11 debate, prior to Super Tuesday.

“Yeah, I did vote against it,” he answered. “I voted against it because the Southern Poverty Law Center said that the guest-worker programs that were embedded in this agreement were akin to slavery.”

In a 2007 interview with CNN’s Lou Dobbs, he insisted that an influx of guest workers would “drive wages down even lower than they are now.”

Sanders proposes increasing the wages for H-1B visa holders in his immigration platform.

One program put forth by Sanders is the so-called “whistleblower visa,” which would be granted to guest-workers who report employer abuse.

In a primary race where the Democratic candidates have such similar stances on immigration, work visas could be a deciding issue for concerned voters.

Potent Quotables

“Senator Sanders rejects the argument that the border must be further militarized before the implementation of a roadmap to citizenship.”
“A Fair and Humane Immigration Policy” — Accessed May 6, 2016
“What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them.”
Interview w/ Vox’s Ezra Klein — Jul. 16, 2015

Donald J. Trump

The extensive coverage given to Trump’s campaign by major media outlets may explain why immigration has become such an issue in the 2016 presidential race, especially among Republican voters.

76 percent of Republicans say that a candidate’s stance on immigration is very or extremely important to them, compared to 62 percent of Democrats, according to a February Gallup poll.

Trump’s characterization of undocumented immigrants as drug runners, rapists and undesirables foisted upon the American people by the Mexican government began when he first announced his bid for president in June 2015.

His in-your-face campaign style and image as a Washington outsider have garnered him support among blue-collar voters, and helped propel him to the nomination in early May.

Trump has voiced support for completing and reinforcing a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border since the publication of his 2011 book, “Time to Get Tough,” in which he advocates for a triple-layered border fence, surveilled by Predator drones and 25,000 additional Border Patrol agents.

In his campaign announcement speech, Trump reiterated this point and added that he would force Mexico pay for the wall.

Trump was initially hesitant to discuss how he would force Mexico to pay for the wall, but has since said that he would stop undocumented immigrants from sending their wages south. Remittances, as these payments are called, make up about 1.9 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product, according to a 2014 estimate by World Bank.

The payments are a vital source of income for many Mexican families living in poor agrarian communities.

In a February debate, Trump said that he would deport the “11 million people that came in illegally.”

Trump has said that he would deport all “criminal aliens,” as well as individuals apprehended at unauthorized border crossings.

He has also said that he would allow certain deportees to return to the U.S. after a lengthy processing period.

In his earlier book, “The America We Deserve,” Trump has this to say on the legal immigration process: “Legal immigrants do not and should not enter easily. It’s a long, costly, draining, and often frustrating experience by design. I say to legal immigrants: welcome, and good luck.”

Trump has argued for restrictions on visa programs like H-1B. On his campaign’s website, he argues that base wages for H-1B visa holders need to be increased to protect Americans working in STEM fields.

He also says that he will implement an electronic visa monitoring system and impose criminal penalties on those who overstay their visas.

“It’s something that I frankly use and I shouldn’t be allowed to use it,” he said. “We shouldn’t have it. Very, very bad for workers.”

“Second of all, I think it’s very important to say, ‘Well, I’m a businessman and I have to do what I have to do,'” he added.

Potent Quotables

“I declare: I’m not gonna pay for that f‐‐‐‐‐‐ wall.”
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Interview w/ Jorge Ramos — Feb. 25, 2016
“The wall just got 10 feet taller.”
10th Republican Presidential Debate, Trump in re Fox — Feb. 25, 2016

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Bengali artists bring their culture to the Front Range

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 18:09:07 +0000

Bengali artists bring their culture to the Front Range Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/25/2016 - 12:09 Deepan Dutta

On a bright Sunday afternoon in late April, more than a dozen members of the “Colorado Literary and Cultural Society” gather at a clubhouse of a condo complex in Aurora. First things first, lunch is served: jasmine rice with chicken curry, egg masala, and traditional daal, or lentil soup.

The Colorado Literary and Cultural Society conduct their monthly meeting on April 24, 2016.

After everyone has had their fill, the meeting officially starts with host Amitabh Rakshit explaining to members the purpose of the Society, its history, and the process of sharing their art.

The Society is a collaborating group of Bengali writers, poets, artists and musicians from all over the Front Range. Group members meet once a month to share and discuss their creative work, as well as to strengthen cultural bonds in the region’s growing Bengali immigrant community. Established in 2012, the group has grown steadily since its inception and publishes selected contributed works to Aspen, an annual self-published magazine. The group is made up of first- and second-generation immigrants from Bangladesh and East India. Contributors range in skill from budding artists seeking an audience, to award-winning literary heavyweights.

The location of the meeting moves to a different member’s home each month, and the host usually organizes and conducts the session while providing ample food and refreshments. There is no established leadership structure in the group and no set rules for membership. However, there is an expectation that all in attendance, including those who are there merely to observe, offer feedback to contributors so that a lively discussion can take place.

The process of sharing begins when a contributor is called on to get on the ‘hot seat’ and present their work to the audience, after which they are offered praise and critique, with an emphasis on encouragement and constructive criticism.

The Society’s meeting on April 24 is led by contributions from younger members of the group. First up is Pradipta Bhakta, recently arrived from West Bengal, who reads a travelogue she wrote about wandering around a small fishing village near Kolkata, on India’s Eastern border with Bangladesh. In Bengali, she describes her experiences as she walks long, windy dirt roads, encountering lively fishermen and shopkeepers. She provides rich detail to the sights and rhythms of everyday life in that small, vibrant corner of the world.

Up next is Cynthia Kalam, a substitute teacher who moonlights as a freelance poet, recites several selections of English poems she plans to publish later this month. Her writing is deeply rooted in love and loss, with intense brooding and sensual imagery twisting through each stanza. One of her poems, titled “Starfall,” begins:

We gazed absently out the windows of the train car

And the landscape slices by, the bleeding sunset an open wound.

It weeps and fades like us into satin and rust

And we’re left staring at the face of a bloodless white moon.

The final member of the younger contingent is Rahat Ibn Rafiq, a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at CU Boulder, attending his first meeting of the Society. Initially nervous about presenting his work to the audience, he eventually takes the hot seat. He presents two selections, a Bengali story written in stream of consciousness, and a short story in English titled “The Ship,” about a young man who longs for a dream that seems forever out of reach.

After each contributor finishes speaking, the members offer their reflections. The writers are encouraged to continue publishing their work, and to seek wider avenues in mass media to reach a larger audience. The writings will be shared to the Society’s e-mail newsgroup and may be published in Aspen at year’s end.

Contributors continue to share their work through the afternoon and evening. As night falls the members take their leave, and the Society adjourns until May.

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