The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors adopted the county’s final $46.7 billion budget. Despite the billion-dollar budget the Immigrants are LA (IRLA) coalition believes the immigrant community and its needs are not rightfully represented in this budget. IRLA wants to ensure that the approximately 3.5 million immigrants living in LA, the majority of them being Latinos, are a visible, integral and permanent part of the county’s budget process.
Category: Immigration
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: The political violence of relocating immigrants
Since early 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Taxes Gov. Greg Abbott have been weaponizing immigrants’ suffering to gain political clout. They have used their constituents’ tax dollars to relocate migrants into Democratic-led states. They are using this tactic to gain influence within the Republican party and win future elections.
Posted inImmigration
Angelenos protest Ron DeSantis’ Florida law punishing employers of undocumented workers
This month, June, marks the start of National Immigrant Heritage Month, a time to show appreciation and celebrate immigrant communities in places like the United States.
Posted inImmigration
International Institute of Los Angeles helps refugees, low-income families and immigrants
In June, people from all over the world honor those who have left their home countries to outrun violence, abuse or persecution. They honor, observe and celebrate World Refugee Day.This international day was first celebrated on June 20, 2001, and its purpose is to bring awareness to the challenges and threats faced by refugees who seek safety in a new country and to show support for them.
Posted inRepresentation
PBS’s America ReFramed to release documentary film, “FROM HERE,” which focuses on identity and migration in the U.S. and Germany
The documentary film, which is brought to us by WORLD and American Documentary, follows the lives of four artists and activists who are not only fighting to belong in the height of growing nationalism but in societies, New York and Berlin, that are exceedingly hostile toward their existence. The inspiration behind this film came from Antonakos-Wallace’s experience growing up as a Greek-American in Seattle, Washington. Raised as part of the Greek Orthodox, which tends to be sexist and homophobic, and exploring her own identity, the filmmaker wondered how culture changes and what people do with their traditions as they’re fighting for progressive change.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Mexican president, LULAC and NAACP slam DeSantis’ plans to shut down border and his anti-migrant agenda
DeSantis recently signed legislation that among other things places criminal penalties on anyone who transports an undocumented person across state lines, requires employers with 25 or more workers to verify their immigration status, and demands hospitals who accept Medicaid ask immigration status to patients and report the data. It also repeals a law that allows some undocumented immigrants to obtain a license to practice law in the state. Barring any potential court action, the DeSantis legislation goes into effect on July 1.
Some undocumented workers in South Florida are not showing up for work or leaving job sites because of the law.
Posted inImmigration
UC signals support for hiring of undocumented students; vote will follow six-month study
The University of California on Thursday took a first step toward allowing the hiring of undocumented students for jobs across the 10-campus system, a move that follows months of pleas from those students. The action by the system’s board of regents Thursday does not immediately authorize the employment of undocumented students. Instead, UC plans to create a working group, proposed by President Michael V. Drake, that will spend the next six months considering the proposal.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: Democrats criticize Biden sending troops to the border
Members of the president’s own party are smacking down the plan for troops at the U.S.-Mexico border around the same time that Biden announces his reelection bid. So the administration’s strategy appears to stress that the military deployment is temporary (just 90 days, for now) and that it has been done in the past, including during the Obama administration. Then-president Obama sent nearly 1,500 military to the southern border, and they were there for nearly a year at one point.
Posted inImmigration
Six months since my Dad was forced to move to back Mexico, things will never be the same
It’s been almost six months since the last time I saw my father. On November 2022, he left behind Los Angeles and returned to his home in Queretaro, Mexico. After 17 years of being in the United States without papers, my dad decided it was time to go back to Mexico and reunite with his family.
Posted inOpinion
COMMENTARY: ICE data breach puts asylum seekers at risk
While ICE has released some people from detention and some have secured relief through representation, but many still do not have legal representation and remain detained because ICE refused to release them for unknown reasons. Thus, while little progress has been made, most people affected by the data breach remain detained. A typical length of detention can be anywhere from three to four months to almost three years in cases of arbitrary prolonged detention.
Posted inOpinion
COLUMN: Migrants killed in fire reveals broken immigration policies
But what the fire reveals is broken immigration policies in the U.S. and Mexico. Mexico is detaining and holding migrants, including those expelled from the U.S. They don’t have the facilities or the resources to do this humanely.
Under U.S. immigration law, migrants fleeing persecution can request asylum regardless of how they arrive on U.S. soil. But the Biden administration proposed a more restrictive immigration rule to take effect in May.
Posted inEquity
SHARET GARCIA, mentoring and training Latino ‘undocuprofessionals’
In 2020, Sharet Garcia launched Undocuprofessionals, a free online mentorship program that connects undocumented mentees with undocumented mentors that have professional careers. Alongside the mentorship program, Garcia uses Instagram to provide information about undocumented opportunities and news nationwide. “I wanted to give back to my community, I knew if I started a platform like this, it would push me to work harder as well,” said Garcia. Garcia, 37, is an undocumented advocate, who became a single mother and head of the household in 2020.