Marwa el-Sherbini testified in court against a neighbor who had called her a "terrorist" because she wore the hijab. As she spoke, the man she had accused walked across the courtroom and stabbed her 18 times. In the Muslim world, she is now being referred to as
"the headscarf martyr." [more inside]
posted by melissam
on Jul 11, 2009 -
144 comments
Border Stories is a series of
short documentaries about life on the US-Mexican border, none longer than 6 minutes. The subjects are:
drug addicts on the border (warning: graphic images),
electronic music group Nortec Collective,
hospital costs of fence jumpers,
lonesome Minuteman,
Mexican emigrant safety patrolman,
ranchowners whose land is an immigration throughway,
US-raised 18 year-old sent back to Mexico,
virtual vigilantes,
two old men provide water in the desert,
dangers of journalism in Ciudad Juarez,
graveyard of US tires in Mexico,
drug ballads,
hardened border policy hurts cross-border community,
another cross-border community fears closing of footbridge,
working illegally in Laredo,
mayors of the two Laredos,
migrants' safe house,
hand-pulled ferry,
dentistry in Nuevo Progreso,
Brownsville high school teacher protests border fence,
golf course with the border on three sides &
fishermen on the mouth of the Rio Bravo. Border Stories also has a
blog about immigration issues.
posted by Kattullus
on May 21, 2009 -
18 comments
Rosa is a bailarina. For a couple of dollars per song, she dances with strangers in a bailarina bar. It’s a job held by many immigrant women in Spanish-speaking New York, filling a need created by many immigrant men. The man on the phone is typical of her clients. He’s in his twenties, doesn’t speak English, and immigrated to the United States by himself—no mother, no girlfriend, no wife. He works six days a week at a restaurant and sends his money back home to Ecuador. Most of all, he’s lonely.
posted by jason's_planet
on Nov 12, 2008 -
43 comments
An Interpreter Speaking Up for Migrants: Erik Camayd-Freixas is a professor and a legal translator who assisted in the fast-track trial and sentencing of the over 400 illegal immigrant workers in Postville, Iowa, who were arrested on criminal charges involving identity theft rather than the usual deportation proceedings. Unusually for a court interpreter, who maintain a strict code of impartiality and neutrality, Camayd-Freixas spoke out, writing "that the immigrant defendants whose words he translated, most of them villagers from Guatemala, did not fully understand the criminal charges they were facing or the rights most of them had waived."
[more inside]
posted by Forktine
on Jul 11, 2008 -
46 comments
Federal and state government officials and border activists say the garbage dumped in the
Sonoran Desert by illegal immigrants and their smugglers is staggering. The cleanup is costing taxpayers millions. The
Southern Arizona Project(pdf) is a multi-year program setup by the Bureau of Land Management to mitigate the impacts to the ecology by illegal immigration and smuggling. In 2006 alone, more than 1.18 million pounds of trash was collected along the southern Arizona border.
posted by netbros
on May 7, 2008 -
22 comments
Emilio Gonzalez, Director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, will be
resigning next month. To mark the occasion, the
New York Times prints an
editorial exposing the magnitude of the case backlog that USCIS currently faces, and their decided lack of speed in handling said backlog. Gonzalez doesn't like the editorial, so he
blogs about it. And that's when the
comments start rolling in.
posted by Faint of Butt
on Mar 24, 2008 -
37 comments
"It's the first time since Japanese Internment that we've imprisoned children" -- from
a post displaying
a letter written by a 9 year old Canadian.
posted by mathowie
on Mar 10, 2008 -
72 comments
Two recent reports on immigration in the UK, a published
study on its economic effects, and an expert panel
report on its and public service consequences, paint very different pictures. Not that the press need logic or evidence: they
made their minds up about those
Poles a long time ago, like people did about the
West Indians,
Bangladeshis and
Jews . Is a rational debate on immigration even possible?
posted by athenian
on Oct 16, 2007 -
18 comments
The nationalist Swiss People's Party (who garnered 26% of the vote in the last elections) is proposing a
deportation policy reminiscent of Nazi-era practices. Under the plan, entire families would be expelled if their children are convicted of a violent crime, drug offense or benefits fraud. And get a load of their
black sheep poster campaign, or their 2004 poster, with the dreaded
black hand reaching for (gasp!) a Swiss passport. Yodel-odel-ay-eeeeeee-
who?
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Sep 2, 2007 -
75 comments
"Dear Mr. Prime minister haper, I don’t like to stay in this jail. I’m only nine years old. I want to go to my school in Canada. I’m sleeping beside the wall. Please Mr. Priminister haper give visa for my family. This place is not good for me."
Two Iranian parents and their Canadian-born son Kevin have been detained in a Texas detention centre after trying to escape their torturous and dangerous situation in Iran.
Hear the
interviews.
posted by Menomena
on Mar 5, 2007 -
96 comments
Just Coffee is a vertically-integrated coffee cooperative with a mission to provide the training and resources to create a sustainable small-scale international coffee company fully owned and controlled by the coffee growers. Could they also provide a model
solution for the immigration problem?
posted by carsonb
on Feb 18, 2007 -
17 comments
I was a slave in Puglia. A long first-person exposé, in English, about immigrant slave labor in Italy, from Fabrizio Gatti writing in the Italian newspaper
L'Espresso. "I can hire you. Tomorrow," he promises. "Do you have a girl friend?" "A girlfriend?" "You have to bring me a woman. For the boss. If you bring him one, he'll put you to work right away. Any girl will do." He points to a twenty year-old woman and her companion, working on the conveyor belt of a huge tractor that is being used to gather tomatoes. "Those two are Romanians, just like you. She slept with the boss." "But I'm alone." "No work for you then."
Photo galleries.
Italian version (includes additional sidebars not found in the English version, including local and government reaction to the exposé and more photo galleries under the sidebar "Reportage Fotografico.")
posted by Mo Nickels
on Sep 4, 2006 -
16 comments
In the Hollywood version of the
Kwame James story, he becomes an NBA All-Star, helps achieve world peace and, of course, lives blissfully ever after. While the real-life plot hasn't followed quite that arc, perhaps it's headed toward a happy ending.
(via SpoFi)
posted by mr_crash_davis
on Aug 17, 2006 -
7 comments
Would-be citizens sue for U.S. citizenship. Ten Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants sued the government Tuesday for allegedly letting their U.S. citizenship applications linger indefinitely by delaying background checks.
What is the world coming to when foreign nationals try to sue the government and force it to give them U.S. citizenship?
posted by ArunK
on Aug 2, 2006 -
75 comments
