Immigrant Mujeres : New Poll Helps Fill in the Picture Pero is it the Same Old Imagen?

by: MamitaMala

Thu May 21, 2009 at 12:07:33 PM EDT

Cross posted from VivirLatino

While anti-immigrant actions and speech are facing a serious pushback, the face of immigration continues to be read as male. Immigrant women are rarely mentioned or discussed, except in the context of being breeders, bearers of anchor babies, victims, dangerous, deceptive. Immigrant women aren't painted in the full colors of their lives as mothers, activists, artists.

Last week New America Media (NAM) released the results of a poll of 1,102 immigrant women. And while the information isn't surprising, as they reflect what immigrant women have been saying for years about their lives, there are those who get hung up on numbers as truth. So what do the numbers say?

82% of Latin American women found discrimination against immigrants
to be a major problem for their family, compared to 17% for women from
African or Arab countries, and only 13% for those from China.  Still, 90% of
the Latin American women said they want to become US citizens.
40% of immigrant women from Latin America and significant
percentages from other regions do not have health insurance. A clear
majority of women immigrants without health insurance are unaware of public
health programs that could help their children receive medical assistance.

Another important finding is that immigrant women were concerned about immigration raids and their possible impact on the family.

Pero is the image of immigrant women presented in the poll really three dimensional or does it play up old stereotypes?

Ongoing Echoes from the Women of the Long House

by: Kai

Wed Feb 25, 2009 at 14:30:58 PM EST

A park visitor center adjacent to the chapel serves as a sort of museum of US feminism, commemorating the 1848 milestone and many subsequent developments in the struggle for equal rights. It's obvious that a conscious effort has been made in recent years to highlight women of color, including a prominent tribute to Sojourner Truth, as well as interactive multimedia kiosks exploring intersections of race, gender, and class. It's equally obvious that such gestures of inclusion, while certainly praiseworthy, remain wedged into a set of implicit narratives which could probably still use some work. For example, discussions of the Underground Railroad, by virtue of omission, continue to create an impression that antislavery activism was the work primarily of white abolitionists heroically saving pitiful black slaves, rather than centering the ongoing efforts of black abolitionists throughout the history of slavery, from early slave rebellions, to later coalition-building with non-black indentured laborers and activists, to all manner of effective direct action and organization in the Underground Railroad and the antislavery movement.

Perhaps the most fundamental oversight, however, is embodied within the most obvious question: Why Seneca Falls? What historical winds were swirling through that particular place at that particular time to give rise to the so-called "first wave" of US feminism? Was there something in the regional water which gave women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Matilda Joslyn Gage the vision and fortitude to do what they did? Were there any socio-cultural undercurrents in Seneca Falls which might have helped create fertile intellectual ground for the foundations of US feminism?

These questions have fascinated me for years, because I've stumbled across tidbits and whispers here and there in my readings and wanderings, which have aroused suspicions that there's more to this story than I've been told. This was one of my reasons for wanting to personally visit Seneca Falls, so that I could stand among those ghosts and walk those streets and see if anything caught my eye. As it turns out, something did catch my eye, right there in a corner of the visitor center giftshop which I was perusing after taking in the exhibits, a book which jumped out at me as being exactly what I was looking for: Sisters In Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists by Sally Roesch Wagner. I decided that this would be my first book of 2009. I devoured it in a few nights and when I was done, I started over and read the whole thing again.

Study Released About New Demographic Powerhouse.

by: Duke Reed

Thu Oct 23, 2008 at 21:59:24 PM EDT

Only those living under rock for the past year would not be familiar with Obama's family history. The son of a black father and white mother who married young then divorced, he lived in Indonesia as a child with his stepfather, then returned to Hawaii to be raised by his maternal grandparents.

While it's well know that Obama's father was Kenyan, little is made of the fact that he is the child of an immigrant .... Yet, this makes him part of one of the fastest growing, and politically important demographics in the nation.

Today in California, half of all teens have at least one immigrant parent, and throughout the nation the number of 18-25 year olds who can trace their ancestry in this country back no further than their parents grows daily. Among all Latinos, 40% have immigrant parents, and Asians, 90%.

Obama, in a way, represents the leading edge of a demographic boom of children born of immigrant parents who will continue to come of age far into the future with ramifications politically, socially, and culturally, that could be monumental.

A new study, released today by the Immigration Policy Center, entitled, "The New American Electorate: The Growing Political Power of Immigrants and Their Children", looks not only at the growing power of this demographic, but the vast numbers of newly naturalized citizens, and the Latino and Asian communities from which they come.

The Diversity Train has Arrived

by: ragemail

Sat Aug 09, 2008 at 22:45:32 PM EDT

Study: Most legal immigrants were 'Illegal' at one time

by: DreamActivist

Fri Jun 06, 2008 at 05:03:55 AM EDT

It appears that most things don't happen in a STRAIGHT line (neither do brain waves and heart beats FYI).

After my constant repetition of "undocumented or illegal is not a permanent immutable characteristic" this past week, the Public Policy Institute of California has just confirmed the accuracy of the statement.

In a new study based on a survery of 8000 people, the PPIC found that 52% of Californians had past experience of living in the country illegally at one time or another.  It absolutely smashes the ill-promoted dichotomy of legal/illegal, proving that binary modes of thinking about immigration policy are superficial, baseless and untrue.

"It highlights how overly simplified our understanding of immigrants and immigration can be," said Hill, who said a stark distinction between "illegal" and "legal" immigrants does not acknowledge the frequent correlation between both categories. "We need to be a little more cognizant of the variety and breadth of experience."

The ALIPACers are seething. They cannot believe that the lines between legal and illegal can be blurred. After all, we are talking about black and white, engraved-in-stone distinctions, right? You can see the obvious physical, emotional, spritual, intellectual and personality differences between a legal and illegal migrant, right? Some have even gone as far as to say that "if they are going to break simple immigration laws, they will break other laws." Yes, because if you run a traffic light or drive above the speed limit, it immediately makes you more likely to commit felonies, right? Believe it or not, there is such a thing as "ex-illegals."

Hispanics Dying On Job At Higher Rates Than Others, Especially In S.C.

by: Kit

Thu Jun 05, 2008 at 21:00:46 PM EDT

Hispanics tend to hold more high-risk jobs than those in other racial groups, but language and literacy barriers and poor training and supervision may also be factors, researchers said. The leading causes of death in recent years have been falls and highway-related accidents.

"Many of the Hispanic workers in construction are undocumented, and many of those who are recently arrived do face a language barrier," said Rakesh Kochhar, associated director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center.

"A language barrier hinders understanding of a job, or the risks associated with it, or safety precautions," said Kochhar, who was not part of the new study.

The study was done by health researchers in Massachusetts, Michigan and New Jersey and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's being published this week in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The study counted more than 11,000 Hispanic work-related deaths nationwide from 1992-2006. The data were culled from death certificates, police reports, workers' compensation reports and other sources.

The researchers calculated an annual death rate of 5 per 100,000 Hispanic workers in 2006. But the rate for foreign-born Hispanics, roughly 6 per 100,000, was far higher than the 3.5 for those born in the United States.
...
For the rest of the article
http://www.wsoctv.com/news/165...

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by: Duke Reed

Tue Feb 19, 2008 at 23:30:00 PM EST

For almost three years now, anti-immigrant forces have been ratcheting up  their message of opposition to  anything short of deportation and/or attrition for the approximately 12 mil unauthorized immigrants currently living and working in the US, coupled with increased militarization  and "security" along the southern border as the only way to solve their self-defined "immigration crisis."  Armed with talking points crafted by Republican right-wing spinmeisters like Frank Luntz and zero-population-growth advocacy groups like the  Federation for American Immigration Reform and NumbersUSA, pundits, politicians and talking-heads have hit the airwaves with a constant barrage of misinformation and distortion.

By now we all know the drill.

They claim they don't oppose immigration ...just "illegal" immigration. There's no need for sweeping comprehensive reforms ...because we have perfectly good laws, it's just that the government refuses to enforce them.  It's not about the immigrants themselves ... but rather respect for the "rule of law." And those who wish to enter this country "legally" have a clear path to do, so it's only those wishing to skirt the law and "take advantage of our generosity" that are creating all the problems and need to be harshly dealt with  ... the mantras are repeated ad nauseam until ingrained into the collective American psyche.

But like all right-wing propaganda, this current fairy tale about immigration being the cause of all ills, and the need for a simple, quick fix, is based upon a foundation of lies and misdirection. It is only the newest in a long line of right-wing efforts to steer the American people in a direction that runs contrary to logic and their own best interests. From Colin Powell at the UN displaying cartoon pictures of mobile WMD labs, to Bush telling us why the "privatizing " Social Security is good for working Americans, or Reagan explaining how giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans would cause wealth to "trickle down" to those lower on the economic ladder, the history of right-wing lies, deception, and failure goes back more than twenty-five years. And the current hysteria over invading hordes of disease-ridden, uneducated criminals, streaming over the southern border to steal our jobs and destroy our American way of life is no more based in reality than Mr Powell's cartoons were.