News Round Up In-Brief

U.S. News

• In one month, approvals under the Obama administration’s deferred action program increased from 4,591 to 53,273.
• In Texas, the Hidalgo County prosecutor is seeking a grand jury investigation of the Texas Department of Public Safety for its permissive shooting-at-vehicles policy. On October 25, a state trooper shot at a truck he allegedly thought was involved in drug trafficking, killing two young immigrant men who were lying in the truck’s bed.
• A new report by the Detention Watch Network highlights ten detention centers it believes are the worst in the U.S. for treatment of detainees. A vigil was held outside one of the centers, Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, on Friday, November 17.  
• A new Georgia immigration law requiring all healthcare workers to provide proof of citizenship or legal residency has created serious backlogs for the secretary of state and the medical board, causing many nursing and doctor’s licenses to expire.
• The Texas Tribune reports that Texas construction companies often intentionally misclassify their workers to avoid paying payroll taxes, worker’s compensation, and overtime.
• The Obama Administration recently decided that immigrants benefiting form the Deferred Action Childhood Arrival (DACA) policy would not be eligible to participate in health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act.
• After being reelected, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced he wanted to meet with “the Latino community.” Arpaio is nationally known for his strong positions against undocumented immigrants.

International News

• At Australia’s offshore refugee processing center in Nauru, doctors issued a medical alert for an Iranian man who has now been on a hunger strike for 36 days.
• In Canada, the Quebec Public Interest Research Group organized a panel to discuss changes to the Interim Federal Health Programme which have placed severe limitations on care for certain refugees.
• For dependent relatives from outside Europe to be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK with their citizen family members, they must prove they need long-term personal care to perform everyday tasks.
• In Australia, advocacy groups claim that the government’s attempts to soften the country’s entry requirements for people with disabilities have not truly removed the discriminatory criteria, which regard disability as a “disease.”
• The Sweden Democrats (SD), Sweden’s far-right, anti-immigration party, is now third in national polls, and may garner significant influence in the 2014 elections.

Research

Mendenhall, Emily. 2012. Syndemic Suffering: Social Distress, Depression, and Diabetes Among Mexican Immigrant Women. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Organista, Kurt C., Paula A. Worby, James Quesada, Sonya G. Arreola, Alex H. Kral, and Sahar Khoury. 2012. Sexual health of Latino migrant day labourers under conditions of structural vulnerability. Culture, Health & Sexuality doi 10.1080/13691058.2012.740075.

Zuber, Julianne. 2012. Comment: Healthcare for the Undocumented: Solving a Public Health Crisis in the U.S. Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy 28: 350-378.

Prepared by Rachel Stonecipher and Nolan Kline

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