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 on May 7, 2008 - View this thread

Some Kind of Funny Porto Rican? is a documentary produced by Claire Andrade-Watkins about the gentrification of Providence's once-thriving Cape Verdean community of Fox Point.
posted on May 5, 2008 - View this thread

Prior to 1990, over a hundred illegal immigrants died attempting to cross the I-5 in Southern California. The answer? Put up a sign, of course. The sign has been seen as racist, and sometimes as a joke. The L.A. Times profiles the man who designed the sign, a Vietnam veteran who grew up on a Navajo reservation. The sign in question has become iconic in the debate on immigration policies, and a copy of it now sits in the Smithsonian. Via Strongly Worded Letter.
posted on Apr 12, 2008 - View this thread

Record levels of immigration have had "little or no impact" on the economic well-being of Britons says a report (pdf) from an influential House of Lords committee. Initial reactions from the various parties, institutes and publications have been largely predictable. Coming so closely on the back of the BBC's recent "White" series on white working-class Britain, it looks likely to provoke some debate on British attitudes to immigration (pdf).
posted on Apr 1, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Mar 24, 2008 - View this thread

"I'm not a politician, I'm an artist. Depravity is part of the job description," says self-styled dandy, former drug addict, and controversial British author Sebastian Horsely, who was denied entrance to the US by customs officials at Newark Airport on the grounds of "moral turpitude," a wide net that encompasses everything from fornication to being a "nuisance." Shades of Oscar Wilde.
posted on Mar 21, 2008 - View this thread

"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 on Mar 10, 2008 - View this thread

Kick A Migrant!
posted on Feb 9, 2008 - View this thread

The president of The University of Texas at Brownsville has refused to sign a right of entry request granting access to surveyors planning the U.S./Mexico border fence. This comes shortly after Cameron County landowners were forced to allow the government access to their land. Meanwhile, landowners in Hidalgo County are filing the next wave of lawsuits.
posted on Feb 6, 2008 - View this thread

As the immigration debate rages, Anti-Latino hate crimes rose by almost 35% between 2003 and 2006. Here are a few dozen of them. To some, this trend may seem perfectly FAIR.
posted on Dec 18, 2007 - View this thread

Turkish-German singer Muhabbet (Murat Ersen) is on the books as a veritable poster child of German immigration, what with singing integration-promoting songs with the German and French foreign ministers and all. [mp3, youtube]

Well until today, at least. Because according to journalist Kamil Taylan [in German; robot English], also a German of Turkish descent and co-author of a documentary investigating the death of Theo van Gogh, Ersen was quoted as saying: "Theo van Gogh was lucky he died as swiftly as he did - I would have locked him up in my basement and tortured him first", adding, "Ayaan Hirsi Ali deserves to die, as well". [in German; robot English]
posted on Nov 14, 2007 - View this thread

A top immigration official has apologized after awarding 'most original costume' to a Homeland Security Department employee who dressed in prison stripes, dreadlocks and dark makeup for a Halloween gathering at the agency.
posted on Nov 6, 2007 - View this thread

On July 10, Prince William County, Virginia voted to begin a major crackdown on illegal immigration. Two local filmmakers have responded with a series of videos covering everything from county hearings to head-on confrontations between white and Hispanic residents. Full collection of 31 youtube videos (with more regularly being added). The Washington Post's coverage.
posted on Nov 4, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Oct 16, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Sep 2, 2007 - View this thread

"How do the tacos help gumbo?" Hold the tacos, New Orleans says. In yet another pig-ignorant move in Post-Katrina New Orleans, local politicians have decided to destroy the booming taco-truck business that is feeding the workers (and plenty of the locals) who are rebuilding the city. Blame racism, blame taxes, blame immigration politics: A hundred years ago this line of reasoning would have banned the muffulettas and poor-boys that those invading hordes of Sicilians were using to corrupt our youth.
posted on Jul 16, 2007 - View this thread

Happy fourth of July! One thousand people "realize the dream of becoming United States citizens" during a naturalization ceremony at Walt Disney World. Meanwhile, thousands of legal immigrants are prevented from filing green card applications because of a last minute flip-flop by USCIS. The chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, Zoe Lofgren, writes that the action "seriously undermined the stability and predictability of U.S. immigration law". The American Immigration Law Foundation (AILF) has been authorized to file a class action lawsuit on behalf of the affected petitioners. God bless America.
posted on Jul 4, 2007 - View this thread

"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 on Mar 5, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Feb 18, 2007 - View this thread

Border Fence Firm Snared for Hiring Illegal Workers
posted on Dec 15, 2006 - View this thread

OPPERATION WAGON TRAIN!!!! The ICE just launched raids of meat packing plants in six states (Nebraska, Iowa, Texas, Utah, Colorado, and Minnesota). Workers are seperated by skin color and the Hispanic looking ones scrutinized. Here in Iowa, an Infant is now without her mother. Just in time for the hollidays
posted on Dec 13, 2006 - View this thread

Where did your ancestors live in 1840? 1880? 1920? A nifty little map showing how names traveled across the US.
posted on Dec 10, 2006 - View this thread

Name one important idea found in the Declaration of Independence. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services unveiled a new test for citizenship today, aimed at fostering a greater understanding of the meaning of America's institutions. Some consider the questions too difficult for poorer immigrants. As a spokesman for USCIS said, 'Our goal is not to make this test harder or easier for anyone, but to make it much more meaningful." Of course, USCIS is a division of the Dept. of Homeland Security who could stand to take a look at question #8 an give it some serious thought.
posted on Nov 30, 2006 - View this thread

"They say, 'get bent,' we say, 'let's fight!'" A protest at Columbia University and Minutemen (NYT link) are forced off stage.
posted on Oct 9, 2006 - View this thread

Felipe Calderon has been declared the next President of Mexico, but the controversy has not ended as his rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed to stay in the streets. The most intense conflict has been in Oaxaca, but this is underreported in the US media. Tie this in with a recent Mother Jones article describing the current influx of Mexicans into the United States as an exodus from a failed economy, and all of a sudden the reports coming from Mexico take on a very different meaning.
posted on Sep 7, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Sep 4, 2006 - View this thread

"Everything is foggy. Everything is not clear. He was alive when we got to the other side. And now I have brought him back dead. Whatever hopes we had, that's where they ended."
The Summer of the Death of Hilario Guzman (BugMeNot)
posted on Sep 3, 2006 - View this thread

Buchanan Argues For Immigration Moratorium To Preserve White Dominance His new book also explains that western civilization is dependant on white people's "genetic endowments". Could explain why John Gibson famously called for "more white babies" a couple months ago. Is blatant racism becoming less taboo?
posted on Aug 23, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Aug 17, 2006 - View this thread

The New York Times profiles Special English, a 1500-word language used by the Voice of America "to spread American news and cultural information to people outside the United States who have no knowledge of English or whose knowledge is limited." The article notes that the language has the potential to play a valuable role in the bilingual education of recent immigrants to the U.S.
posted on Aug 5, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Aug 2, 2006 - View this thread

Invest in immigrants!!! Business is booming!!!
posted on Jul 22, 2006 - View this thread

Free The Tucson Two. Or don't. If you find someone lost and dying in the desert, should you help them? What if they turn out to be attempting to enter the country illegally? Then is it OK to leave them to die? These folks say no, not really. And these folks say yes, probably. Previously discussed immigration fun on MetaFilter: 1 2 3
posted on Jul 14, 2006 - View this thread

send a hammer is a site that popped up recently to offer something to send a congressman(or woman) to break down the wall that the send a brick folk want made with their bricks. What a strange conversation the nation is having about immigration! It's all the talk from the churches to the white supremacists but ---won't someone think of the kids!! How bad is this an issue to tackle in an election year - don't forget how much madness can get legislated in the shadow of a heated election
posted on Jun 27, 2006 - View this thread

Princeton Salutatorian - Undocumented Immigrant. Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Princeton '06, has achieved many academic honors. He is also in the US illegally. He has now spoken out. "[A] former roommate of mine wrote that illegal immigrants constitute a drain on American resources and a threat to the jobs of native American workers; that they are intentional law-breakers who should not receive considerate treatment from the government; and that existing laws concerning illegal immigrants should be rigidly and more consistently enforced, even if this results in behavior that could be characterized as inhumane. I was taken aback by his words, but they provided me with the impetus to speak out and emphasize the inhumanity of such a perspective as well as the misinformation it is based upon."
posted on Jun 10, 2006 - View this thread

Banned in D.C., not to mention the rest of the U. S. A. --British-Sri Lankan rapper M. I. A. (myspace page, with music), aka Maya Arulpragasam, has apparently been denied entry into the United States to record her next album, a follow-up to the surprise success of her first major release, "Arular." Could it have been this album that pricked the ears of immigration officials? Or maybe these lyrics ("Sunshowers," available at myspace)?
posted on May 22, 2006 - View this thread

1 DEPLOY GUNS AND BADGES. Josh Bolten's Five Point Plan is in full effect. "It'll be more guys with guns and badges," said a proponent of the plan. "Think of the visuals. The President can go down and meet with the new recruits. He can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go ride around on an ATV."
posted on May 18, 2006 - View this thread

While the main Day Without An Immigrant site is down at the moment (cached), the protests have begun and they are everywhere (LA, Arizona, Pennsylvania/NJ). In SF they look quite large. More on flickr and google news.
posted on May 1, 2006 - View this thread

Boycotts : politics and corportate power Hispanic News on a call to boycott Kimberley Clark (Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, etc...) as the corporate member behind Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner "author/sponsor of HR 4437 which would turn 11 million undocumented immigrants into felons, punish anyone guilty of providing them assistance" and more. What's the real story here? Boycotts, are they still effective? How much of a link (symbolic or otherwise) is there between this legislation and the company? None? A little? A lot?
posted on Apr 24, 2006 - View this thread

Segregation. Elimination. Two different accounts of bizarro things happening in USA schools. [via]
posted on Apr 17, 2006 - View this thread

Will it be a Prague Spring? Protestors in France have actually influenced their government as this morning Chirac scrapped the Youth Job Law. Will the immigration bill protestors in U.S. streets be able to equally influence the American government? With Latin America shifting to the left, and with Berlusconi probably shifting out, and if FitzEaster delivers a special basket, is it a sign of the tide turning? Is another Prague Spring in the making, or is a long, dark, Russian Winter more likely before the approaching apocalypse?
posted on Apr 10, 2006 - View this thread

Eighth grader Anthony Soltero shot himself on Thursday, March 30, after the assistant principal at De Anza Middle School told him that he was going to prison for three years because of his involvement as an organizer of the April 28 school walk-outs to protest the anti-immigrant legislation in Washington. The vice principal also forbade Anthony from attending graduation activities and threatened to fine his mother for Anthony's truancy and participation in the student protests." Anthony was learning about the importance of civic duties and rights in his eighth grade class. Ironically, he died because the vice principal at his school threatened him for speaking out and exercising those rights," ...
posted on Apr 7, 2006 - View this thread

H.R. 4437 will make illegal immigrants Felons. Protests have occured nation wide.
posted on Apr 2, 2006 - View this thread

Some facts about Latinos and immigration, and chances are good they haven't been mentioned at all during coverage of the "immigration crisis" . (and take a stroll down memory lane to past GOP platform statements on the issue)
posted on Mar 30, 2006 - View this thread

In the great olfactory tradition of stinky protests caregivers across America are text mobilizing themselves into action: "APRIL 10 IS DIRTY DIAPER DAY. ALL POLISH, RUSSIAN, FILIPONO (sic) AND OTHER CAREGIVERS IN THE U.S. ARE URGED TO TAKE A DAY OFF IN SOLIDARITY WITH IMMIGRATION REFORMS. REMEMBER TAKE A DAY OFF ON APRIL 10, DIRTY DIAPER DAY. YOUR FUTURE "DEPENDS" ON IT! (Entry #27 here). Yes, they are incensed!
posted on Mar 26, 2006 - View this thread

The Border Film Project. "For three months last summer, three filmmakers with ties to Arizona passed out hundreds of disposable cameras to two groups: [...] undocumented immigrants on the perilous journey to enter the United States and Minuteman volunteers determined to stop them." [article] [previously]
posted on Mar 18, 2006 - View this thread

300,000 March in Chicago against Immigration Control Act of 2005. General Question, Why did this not make national news? Compare to their front page now. Its like it never happened. 1/4 million people didn't matter enough.
posted on Mar 13, 2006 - View this thread

US Border Patrol attempts to build a wall between Mexico and the US. Coyotes are not worried Mexico is already coming up with plans around it and the Americans are already coming up with a way to not pay for it.
posted on Feb 25, 2006 - View this thread

A day without an immigrant.
posted on Feb 15, 2006 - View this thread

Meet Rita Verdonk, shit-stirrer extraordinaire. The Dutch Immigration and Integration minister wants everybody to start speaking only Dutch in public from now on. Pity she fails at that herself, needing to resort to a foreign language to describe her constituents' feelings on the matter. After that, she flies to a refugee camp in Kenya to tell the people there that they should f*** off to their own countries. Well, maybe they'll be safer there than in Holland under the oversight of Ms. Verdonk. Or maybe not... Pity that her media forays appear to prevent Iron Rita from putting her own department in order...
posted on Jan 31, 2006 - View this thread