Immigrant Rights News - Thursday, March 05, 2009

Immigrant Rights News – Thursday, March 05, 2009

 

1. San Antonio Express News: Border runs through Valley prove deadlier

2. Gourment magazine: Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes – If you have eaten a tomato this winter, chances are very good that it was picked by a person who lives in virtual slavery.

3. South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Protest held in Pompano Beach against U.S. policy on Haitians

4. Atlantic Free Press: US Discriminatory Immigration Policies Toward Haitians

5. Center for Investigative Reporting: Mexico's Drug War Creates New Class of Refugees

 

 

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San Antonio Express News

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6292677.html

 

Border runs through Valley prove deadlier

 

By LYNN BREZOSKY San Antonio Express-News

March 3, 2009, 11:15PM

 

BROWNSVILLE — The number of unauthorized immigrants who died trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico declined border-wide except in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, leading Mexican officials to conclude that increased Border Patrol presence has channeled migrants to the valley’s most dangerous river and brush routes.

 

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Gourment magazine

http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-the-price-of-tomatoes

 

Barry Estabrook

 

Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes

If you have eaten a tomato this winter, chances are very good that it was picked by a person who lives in virtual slavery.

 

Originally Published March 2009

 

Driving from Naples, Florida, the nation’s second-wealthiest metropolitan area, to Immokalee takes less than an hour on a straight road. You pass houses that sell for an average of $1.4 million, shopping malls anchored by Tiffany’s and Saks Fifth Avenue, manicured golf courses. Eventually, gated communities with names like Monaco Beach Club and Imperial Golf Estates give way to modest ranches, and the highway shrivels from six lanes to two. Through the scruffy palmettos, you glimpse flat, sandy tomato fields shimmering in the broiling sun. Rounding a long curve, you enter Immokalee. The heart of town is a nine-block grid of dusty, potholed streets lined by boarded-up bars and bodegas, peeling shacks, and sagging, mildew-streaked house trailers. Mongrel dogs snooze in the shade, scrawny chickens peck in yards. Just off the main drag, vultures squabble over roadkill. Immokalee’s population is 70 percent Latino. Per capita income is only $8,500 a year. One third of the families in this city of nearly 25,000 live below the poverty line. Over one third of the children drop out before graduating from high school.

 

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South Florida Sun-Sentinel

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/community/news/pompano_beach/sfl-flbhaitians0301sbmar01,0,978696.story

 

Protest held in Pompano Beach against U.S. policy on Haitians

Hundreds in Pompano Beach seek Obama administration's attention

 

By Aiyana Baida

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

March 1, 2009

 

Pompano Beach

 

Hundreds of Haitians and supporters gathered to protest current U.S. immigration law and urge President Barack Obama and his administration to grant temporary protection status to the more than 30,000 illegal Haitian immigrants living in the United States.

 

Haiti's poverty has long hurt its people but after Hurricane Gustav struck the island in August 2008, thousands were left homeless without food, running water and electricity.

 

Under current immigration law, the 600 Haitians being held at the Broward Transitional Center on Powerline Road, where the protest was held, will be sent back to even more dire conditions.

 

 

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Atlantic Free Press

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/8318-us-discriminatory-immigration-policies-toward-haitians.html

 

US Discriminatory Immigration Policies Toward Haitians

 

by Stephen Lendman

 

It's a familiar story for Haitians - last in, first out for the hemisphere's poorest, least wanted, and most abused people here and at home. Most recently it was highlighted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials announcing the resumption of over 30,000 deportations to a nation reeling from poverty, repression, despair, the devastation from last summer's storms, and occupation by UN paramilitary Blue Helmets - since 2004, illegally there for the first time ever to support and enforce a coup d'etat against a democratically elected president, at the behest of Washington.

 

On December 9, ICE resumed deportations after halting them in September following summer storms that battered the country leaving 800,000 people without food, clean water, other essentials, and for around 70,000 their homes.

 

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Center for Investigative Reporting

http://www.centerforinvestigativereporting.org/node/4009

 

Mexico's Drug War Creates New Class of Refugees

 

By Andrew Becker, Patrick J. McDonnell | Los Angeles Times | March 4, 2009

EL PASO—The Juarez police lieutenant was recovering from three gunshot wounds, the result of an assault by hit men for a drug cartel. His name was on a death list brazenly posted at a monument for fallen peace officers. Lt. Salvador Hernandez Arvizu didn't like his odds of surviving in Mexico. So he fled his hospital bed, hoping to take refuge in the U.S.

At a border post in El Paso, he filled out immigration paperwork, made a formal request for political asylum—and was taken directly to jail.

 

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