News Round Up In-Brief

U.S. News 

• In a recent CNN Opinion piece, Charles Garcia traces the shadowy origin and post-2000 rise of the phrase “illegal immigrant” as a slur masked as neutral by the Associated Press and political strategists.
• The ACLU recently delivered a statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council, urging governments to adopt a human rights-based approach to detention policies, highlighting concerns over rights violations in Georgia detention facilities.
• Undocumented youth view President Obama’s executive order to extend work permits to “dreamers” as a potential salve for the “undocumented blues,” albeit with some trepidation.
• New York Times contributor Maggie Jones profiles efforts to rebuild in the city of Postville, Iowa, four years after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid of Agriprocessors, the town’s largest employer.

International News

• In a 100-page report, U.S.-based human rights organization Human Rights Watch called for the Greek government to take action against rising numbers of violent attacks against Asian and African migrants in Athens and other cities.
• While Greece’s far right-wing Golden Dawn party has denied any involvement in violence against migrants, its anti-immigrant campaign continues to expand. In July, Golden Dawn began a drive to collect blood only from and for Greeks, saying it would give the blood collected “to patients we choose and to no one else.”
• The New York Times reports that an increase in migration across the Greece-Turkey border has generated support for Golden Dawn and heightened anti-immigration stances among Greece’s mainstream political parties.
• Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has publicly amended its April announcement that refugees would no longer receive “supplemental” health benefits through the Interim Federal Health Program, stating that “resettlement refugees” would still receive comprehensive medical care. However, refugee claimants will remain excluded from drug, dental, and vision benefits, and CIC’s plan to create a “Designated Countries of Origin” list intends to exclude claimants from designated safe countries from all coverage, including urgent care.
• A commentary published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal warns that Canada’s new refugee detention policy will provoke or aggravate mental health problems among refugee claimants. The policy, effective June 28, requires any claimants over 16 who are designated “irregular arrivals” to spend one year in mandatory detention.
• The deaths of 54 people trying to reach Italy from Libya by boat mark the latest in a long series of disasters that have killed thousands of migrants traveling from North Africa to southern Europe.
• A shelter for migrants in Tultitlan, Mexico was shuttered by authorities in early July, adding lack of shelter to the long list of factors that make Central American migrants passing through this region vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
• According to a Daily Beast correspondent, Israel’s high-profile campaign to deport African migrants (many asylum seekers) has been spotlighted in the media to the neglect of the state’s ongoing deportation of migrant families, including Israeli-born children.

New Research

Gleeson, Shannon, and Roberto G. Gonzales. 2012. When Do Papers Matter? An Institutional Analysis of Undocumented Life in the United States. International Migration 50(4):1-19.

Gonzales, Roberto G., and Leo R. Chavez. 2012. “Awakening to a Nightmare”: Abjectivity and Illegality in the Lives of Undocumented 1.5-Generation Latino Immigrants in the United States. Current Anthropology 53(3):255-281.

Media

On Friday, July 20, “Need to Know” on PBS will air its second investigation into U.S. Border Patrol abuses of detained migrants. Check here for local listings.

Prepared by Rachel Stonecipher

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