News Round Up In-Brief
U.S. News
- When the Affordable Care Act of 2010 goes into full effect, undocumented immigrants will comprise roughly 25 percent of the nation’s uninsured, and may face even fewer options for care if reforms spur cutbacks in community health clinics.
- In defiance of the Secure Communities program, the New York City Council proposed two bills that would expand the city’s powers to block federal immigration detainers.
- A Washington Post Letter to the Editor extends concerns that temporary residency through a U.S. “guest worker” program would not extend adequate rights to visiting workers.
- Congress members have started to convene with members of their parties to discuss diverse immigration reform plans, including several alternatives to the DREAM Act. President Obama has made comprehensive immigration reform a priority for after his inauguration.
- The Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration Council released a report criticizing the 287(g) Program for causing racial profiling and hindering community contact with local police. The program, enacted in 1996 as an addition to the Immigration and Nationality Act, authorized the INS (now ICE) to deputize local law enforcement officers to perform the functions of immigration enforcement agents.
- California Attorney General Kamala Harris informed local law enforcement officials that they are not obligated to enforce Secure Communities, the program that sends all arrestee’s fingerprints to immigration authorities.
- Secrecy within U.S. detention centers harms detainees’ ability to air complaints and claims of maltreatment.
- Unauthorized immigration to the United States continues to drop, according to a census from the Pew Hispanic Center.
- The federal government expressed concern that clean-up workers in hurricane-affected regions, many of whom are immigrant day laborers, may face particular health and safety concerns.
- Though time spent in the U.S. appears to be inversely related to health among some migrant populations, recent migrants from Mexico who had diabetes before migrating may come closer, over time, to diagnosis and treatment.
International News
- Opposition to Canada’s strict new policies limiting refugee health care continues as politicians and the public respond to several disturbing cases. Most recently, the government denied a visa to the relative of a refugee woman with renal failure who had offered his kidney, due to fears that the relative would refuse to leave the country.
New Research
Guell, Cornelia. 2012. Self-Care at the Margins: Meals and Meters in Migrants’ Diabetes Tactics. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 26(4): 518-533.
Horton, Sarah B. 2012. Medical Returns as Class Transformation: Situating Migrants’ Medical Returns within a Framework of Transnationalism. Medical Anthropology doi 10.1080/01459740.2012.749875.
Amnesty International published a report in November titled, “’We are Foreigners, We Have No Rights’: The Plight of Refugees, Asylum-Seekers, and Migrants in Libya.”
Video
Nando Sigona of the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre gave a presentation at the 2012 TEDxEastEnd talks in support of an immigration reform policy to address the UK’s own “DREAMers,” which would be similar to President Obama’s “Deferred Action” program for undocumented youth.
Prepared by Rachel Stonecipher and Nolan Kline
