News Round Up In-Brief

U.S. News

• In the early months of his second term, President Obama plans to swiftly seek a path to citizenship for most of the country’s undocumented population as part of a comprehensive bill overhauling the immigration system.

• The Obama administration will soon introduce a waiver that can lift the 10-year bar on reentry into the country for undocumented spouses and children of legal residents, who are required to return to their countries of origin to be issued green cards. Previously an unavoidable Catch-22, the ban kicked in whenever family members left the country to retrieve their cards. This change suggests that administration is moving ahead on immigration reform through executive action in anticipation of a larger legislative battle in the months ahead.

• Following a public outcry driven largely by social media, the mother and brother of prominent Dream Act activist Erika Andiola, who had been arrested by ICE in Phoenix on January 10th, were released from detention.

• Undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles, who are excluded from health reform, turn to cash-only “bodega clinicas” for regular care.

International News

• Zimbabwean child migrants detained in South Africa are being held in dirty, crowded, and unsafe cells.

• A Greek court ruled that a group of undocumented immigrants was justified in escaping from police detention because their cell was disease-ridden, overcrowded, and lacked running water.

• Police in Rome arrested 55 people accused of human trafficking.

• Canada plans to resettle 5,000 Iraqi and Iranian refugees from Turkey by 2018.

• Following the Kenyan government’s efforts to curtail tobacco production, adult workers on tobacco farms have been replaced in many instances by child migrant laborers trafficked from refugee camps.

New Research

• Ingleby, David. Ethnicity, Migration, and the “Social Determinants of Health” Agenda. 2012. Psychosocial Intervention 21(3): 331-341.

• Lewis, Paul, Doris Marie Provine, Monica W. Varsanyi, and Scott Decker. 2013. Why do (some) city police departments enforce federal immigration law? Political, demographic, and organizational influences on local choices. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 23(1): 1-25.

Report

• According to a Migration Policy Institute report titled, “Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery,” the Obama Administration spent almost $18 billion on immigration enforcement in 2012, more than all other law enforcement agencies combined. Read the full report or report in brief.

New Blog

• The blog Medical Deportation has just launched as a joint project of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and the Seton Hall University Law Center for Social Justice. It offers resources and information, advocacy tools, and the blog team’s report on medical repatriation.

Prepared by Rachel Stonecipher