NEWSMIGRATION

As the White House pushed to pass the Dream Act this month, a number of relevant personal stories have surfaced in support of it.

They’re tales of young adults who arrived in America at a tender age, who grew up here and see this as the only country they’ve known. Yet as they become adults, they lack citizenship and access to the rights they need to become productive people. Fearing deportation or worse, they live in a limbo, not exactly Americans but not anything else either.

While many of these young people would be accepted by their country of origin, there are millions of refugees and immigrants worldwide who exist in a similar No Man’s Land but with no country willing to claim them as their own.

Considered one of the silent global human rights travesties, the predicament of the world’s stateless people is starting to come to prominence with the help of activists, NGOs and refugee groups here in the states.

A stateless person is usually defined as someone who is not legally considered a national by any country. How countries dole out citizenship is how they decide, whether right or wrong, who belongs and who doesn’t, and the stateless peoples of the world are the losers of this arbitration.

There are a variety of ways people become stateless: an ethnic group might be expunged from their home country, discriminatory laws might restrict birth registration, or nationality in a country might be based solely on descent. Without any citizenship, stateless people can claim few basic human rights and are often prone to being exploited by traffickers or treated inhumanely by their host government. They also are often restricted in their access to basic human rights such as health care and education as well as fair employment.

Discussions about race can be tricky, if not dangerous. Even the best intentioned folks can find themselves stumbling into the landmines of vocabulary. Once detonated, the person who triggered the explosion needs more than a “But, I’m not a racist” to put out the fire.

Racism is structural, so our words run the danger of reinforcing the structures that exist to disenfranchise groups of people. Some might try to surround a word with nuanced contexts, but racial epithets are fraught with historical meaning, and racist intention may not be necessary for a word to be racist.

Words carry weight, conveying our values and political inclinations, informing our audience where we stand on a given subject. Unfortunately, public debate in the US is often caught between the First Amendment and 'political correctness'.

There are those instances when a person clearly knows that a word is widely considered racist. Take the 'N-word', for instance. Although non-Blacks have argued that they can use the word because some Black people use it (see Dr. Laura), popular knowledge maintains that this is a racist term, and whether it’s permissible for Black people to use the word is for Black people to decide (see Rev. Irene Monroe’s take on the topic).

But there are many cases in which the line isn’t as clear. Readers may have noticed, for example, the current immigration debate jumping between using 'Illegal' and 'Undocumented' to refer to immigrants without legal resident status in the US. While some use the terms interchangeably, for progressive pro-immigrant advocates, they’re actually antonymous.

It's true.  Somewhere deep in the darkest pits of the system there exists a heart - and every once in awhile we get a glimpse of it.

This week California Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a private bill that allowed for the release of Steve Li, a San Francisco college student who had spent the past two months in detainment awaiting deportation to Peru – the country his family migrated from when he was just eleven. Completely unaware that he was residing in the country illegally until the moment his door was busted down in an immigration raid, Li's story caught massive attention and shed a humanizing light on an issue that is often oversimplified.

Li's case was far from the stereotypical circumstance when discussing immigration policy in the political arena. He didn't maliciously sneak over the border to squeeze out an anchor baby, nor did he cargo himself in the back of a van in order to exploit the economy through a thriving career in grape-picking. He simply did as a good young person should: he followed his parents, went to college and pursued a career in nursing. Regardless of one's personal politics, it's hard to deny that sending a kid back to a country where he knows absolutely nobody is pretty messed up (haven't you seen Home Alone 2?).

Upon the announcement that Li was granted freedom, the best that conservative commenters could muster was along the lines of "If there was proper legislation, he would've been deported at 11 instead of 20!" Niiiiiice. Words of wisdom from the type of person who would probably have no qualms with smacking Elian Gonzalez in the face with an oar. When dealing with the immigration issue on a person-by-person basis, it's much more difficult to maintain the political stance 'deport them all.' Plus, someone like Li cannot be accused of "sucking the system dry" when he's sitting in detainment telling reporters that he can't wait to go home so he can study.

The bigger message we should learn from Li's case is that a person's story is seldom ever cut-and-dry, and effective immigration reform requires legislation that considers the diversity in past and present situations that immigrants experience.  Senator Feinstein addressed Li's case largely due to the overwhelming number of petitions for Li, such as the hundreds of signatures collected on Change.org.

The battle is not over. The private bill only delays his deportation process by 75 days, and when asked about her decision to introduce Li's private bill, Feinstein referenced the DREAM Act, which still holds the key to Li's lasting peace of mind. If passed, the DREAM Act could be a saving grace for many young people who find themselves in situations similar to Li's – who simply want to live in the country they were raised to call home.

---

GOT A TIP FOR US? Is there a story or campaign in your area that we'd want to know about? E-mail us at humanrightstips@change.org. Please also follow Change.org's Human Rights page on Facebook and Twitter. Photo Credit: 依靈

Kakuma, Kenya - Seven Sudanese refugees sit in a circle in a bright room at a former health clinic filling out mock voter registration cards, practicing inking each others' fingers, interviewing one another and roll-playing how to respond to questions community members may have.

For the first time in their lives, 22,000 refugees are about to vote, and these seven will take them through the process.

This week registration booths opened to start collecting the names of eligible voters for a historic referendum on independence for South Sudan scheduled for January 9. As fingerprinted voter cards were issued, there were reports of jubilant scenes unfolding throughout the South.

But will the South Sudan referendum actually take place on January 9?

This is the question on the minds of activists, journalists and analysts covering Sudan. Sudanese officials pledge to not delay, but with less than two months to go, the outstanding logistical and political challenges are significant.

Eid al-Adha: to Muslims all over the world, today's 'Festival of Sacrifice' marks the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son Isma'il (Ishmael) in an act of divine servitude.

As part of the celebrations women and men will dress in their very best, decorations will sparkle throughout the streets, excessive amounts of meat will be served, folks will wish one another Eid Mubarak ("blessed festival") and the poor will be fed.

But to the less fortunate in Saudi Arabia, Eid al-Adha means something entirely different: the beginning of death penalty season.

Saudi Arabia has one of the highest executions rates in the world, with an average of one to two people killed every week, usually by beheading in a public square. The majority of those killed are foreign workers, and since 1990 the kingdom has put 40 women to death, 22 of them female foreign workers.

But for a period of over two months between Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, and today's Eid al-Adha, the annual Hajj pilgrimage is performed by millions of Muslims all over the world. Out of respect for this holy period, and the tourism and money it brings into the country, Saudi Arabia tends to graciously delay the head chopping until after Eid al-Adha.

Meaning that while Eid al-Adha is a joyous day for mainstream Saudis, not everyone, particularly the millions of foreign workers in the country who serve the Saudis, are so happy.

Last week asylum seeker Jimmy Mubenga died while being deported from the United Kingdom and flown back to Angola.

Upon boarding an October 12 British Airways flight in the custody of G4S, a private security group which has a contract with the UK government to escort deportees out of the country, Mubenga's guards restrained him in a manner so brutal that according to several witnesses they appear to have suffocated him.

To make matters worse, the UK Home Office and G4S shamefully tried to obfuscate the cause of Mubenga's death, claiming that he became ill while on the flight.  One witness found this lie so outrageous that he contacted the Guardian, giving the newspaper his account of three physically imposing security guards holding Mubenga down as he called for help and said he could not breath.

It was thirty years ago this year that the United States passed what's known as the Refugee Protection Act, a piece of legislation signed into law under President Jimmy Carter that affirmed the dignity of those seeking refuge from persecution around the globe. The law enmeshed in U.S. policy a commitment to helping victims of persecution, making sure that the U.S. had a fair and impartial system of asylum and resettlement.

Thirty years later, the Refugee Protection Act of 1980 has helped more than half a million people seek asylum from brutal regimes, and has helped more than 2.5 million refugees resettle. Talk about a law that puts human rights front and center.

So what's the problem? Over the past decade, particularly since the advent of a certain law infamously known as the Patriot Act (as well as 2005's Real ID Act), much of the meat of the Refugee Protection Act has been rendered moot, as broad national security laws have turned responsible refugee policy into shambles. The result has meant that tens of thousands of people fighting for democracy under repressive regimes (like, say, Burma), are not allowed to seek asylum in the United States.

Talk about a good law being swept under the bus. That's why groups like Human Rights First are pushing hard to renew the Refugee Protection Act in 2010, to help take care of many of the gaps that were created in U.S. refugee policy post-9/11. They're pushing for the U.S. Senate to pass a bill introduced by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy and Michigan Senator Carl Levin that will re-establish the United States as a model country when it comes to refugee policy. Help out by urging your Senator to get behind this historic effort.

Perhaps nothing underscores the flaws in current U.S. refugee policy like th

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is going to have a hard week. You should make it harder.

Today, Senate Bill 1070, which modifies Arizona's trespassing laws to criminalize undocumented immigrants, is going to land on the Governor's desk like a ton of bricks. If she signs the bill into law, she will severely compromise public safety, equal protection and the human rights of her constituents. If she vetoes the bill, she might severely compromise her chances of being reelected next year. What's a Republican Governor who was never really elected to do?

SB 1070 directs police to determine the immigration status of non-criminals if there is a 'reasonable suspicion' they are undocumented, dramatically expanding police powers to stop, question and detain individuals for not having proper identification. The proposed law also makes it a state crime to pick up an undocumented day laborer and for migrant workers to solicit work. It expressly forbids communities from adopting “sanctuary” policies that prevent police from carrying out immigration enforcement.

All in all, the law would dramatically increase racially discriminatory policing and increase the immigrant community's distrust of law enforcement.

Long Read More »