Recently in U.S. Immigration Reform Category

Julia Preston's article in the New York Times speaks for itself. (sombrero tip to the ImmigrationProf Blog)

The migrant-rights organization Immigration Equality scored a major victory today in ushering through the Senate a repeal of the HIV immigration and travel ban.  From Immigration Equality’s press release (I’ll post the link as soon as it goes up on their website) (Update: here it is):

Immigration Equality hails the Senate's vote to lift the HIV immigration and travel ban.  The Senate voted today to repeal the language that bars people with HIV/AIDS from entering the U.S., as part of the legislation reauthorizing the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).  The Senate approved PEPFAR by a vote of 80 to 16.

"Congress has finally moved to end the HIV ban - a ban based on myth and misinformation," said Rachel B. Tiven, Executive Director of Immigration Equality.  "For twenty years, the United States has barred HIV-positive travelers from entering the country even for one day.  Today the Senate said loud and clear that AIDS exceptionalism must come to an end." 

HIV is the only disease excluded by Congressional fiat; all other decisions on communicable diseases are left to the discretion of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  The repeal provision in the PEPFAR bill will remove the anti-HIV language from the Immigration and Nationality Act, and restore the determination of whether HIV is "communicable disease of public health significance," to the discretion of HHS.

Important Update: Note that the bill has not yet become law, so the waiver requirement is still in place until it does.  From Immigration Equality's website:

The Senate’s version of PEPFAR has not yet become law.  Right now, if you are HIV positive and planning to travel to the U.S. or planning to apply for legal permanent residence status you must still obtain a waiver of inadmissibility.  For more information on HIV Waivers please read this section of our website.

Second Update: It's been a while since I linked to Andrew Sullivan, but take a moment to read his moving post about what the repeal means to him (via). 

I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's one of the happiest days of my whole life. For two and a half decades, I have longed to be a citizen of the country I love and have made my home. I now can. There is no greater feeling.

And I should also note that one of the co-sponsors of the bill was Gordon Smith (R-OR), a prominent Mormon in good standing in the faith.  I hope that the era of reflexive alignment of religious conservatives with anti-gay politics is coming to an end (I say "anti-gay" on the premise that the HIV ban had its roots in animus against the LGBT community).

[End updates]

In a post I wrote earlier today, I made my thoughts about this "flip-flop" narrative known.  This is a happy day for migrant youth.  Today, a courageous member of One Dream 2009 got Senator McCain to say he supports the DREAM Act.

The Democrats have put out a video documenting the flip-flop(sombrero tip to Todd at MyDD who has been covering this with me):

It can be stressful working in a field where my clients, and I by extension, feel constantly under siege from government agencies, the courts, and even members of the public.  So sitting at the opening session of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) annual conference with 3,000 or 4,000 other immigration attorneys yesterday was an empowering experience.  We are fed up!  Both the outgoing 2007 and incoming 2008 AILA presidents took a vocal and rousing stance against the egregious violations of constitutional rights and basic human rights we have seen recently from ICE and the other immigration agencies.

Marshall Fitz, advocacy director for AILA, said what most immigration attorneys have come to realize in recent years, that 9/11 changed the entire immigration landscape. 

American Harvest, the non-partisan documentary about migrant farmworkers, American farmers, and the relationship between the immigration debate and our food, is hitting local theaters now!

Get into some air-conditioned comfort & see this important film, then get out and enjoy the season's bounty of fruits and vegetables with new eyes.

Roberto Lovato has been sounding the alarm for weeks now on the deaths in detention scandal that ICE is now trying to brush under the rug.  I have to admit I’ve not yet given the issue the attention it deserves in this small corner of the blogosphere. 

As is often the case, Nina Bernstein broke the story in the NY Times.  The Times’ editorial board, headed up on this issue by Lawrence Downes, followed up with an opinion piece citing Bernstein's article. 

Ms. Bernstein chronicled the death of Boubacar Bah, a tailor from Guinea who was imprisoned in New Jersey for overstaying a tourist visa. He fell and fractured his skull in the Elizabeth Detention Center early last year. Though clearly gravely injured, Mr. Bah was shackled and taken to a disciplinary cell. He was left alone — unconscious and occasionally foaming at the mouth — for more than 13 hours. He was eventually taken to the hospital and died after four months in a coma.

Nobody told Mr. Bah’s relatives until five days after his fall. When they finally found him, he was on life support, soon to become one of the 66 [ed. note: the Post reports the number is now 83] immigrants known to have died in federal custody between 2004 and 2007. Mr. Bah’s family still does not know the full story of when or how he suffered his fatal injuries.

Kyle already addressed some of the deficiencies in Antonio Olivo’s article in the Chicago Tribune yesterday about the migration blogosphere.  Even so, it is always nice to be noticed.  The article gives some much-needed exposure to the online manifestation of rising frustration in migrant communities, including Flor Crisostomo and our DREAMers. 

In the article, though, there was no hint that Olivo acknowledged any difference between the people trying to stay with their families and work in this country and the people trying to boot them all out.  The migrant rights movement is one of the great moral struggles of our time.  It implicates a host of issues about how people work and interact in a global community.  The NY Times has realized the import of the human rights issues involved and the destruction that is being visited on migrant families.  The Times has picked a side, the side of tolerance, compassion, and common sense.  I know there’s a difference between an opinion piece and straight reporting.  But by covering the story in a “he said/she said” format that the press often reverts to when dealing with controversial political issues, Olivo left the underlying issues almost entirely unanalyzed. 

From Andrew Sullivan, via Zaheer at Immigration Equality’s blog:

"There is a gaping hole in the Times' coverage of the same-sex marriage issue: Any state recognition of same-sex couples applies only to couples who are both U.S. citizens.  Heterosexual citizens have the right to marry foreign partners and bring them legally into the country with the right to live and work and even seek citizenship. Homosexual citizens don't have that right; they must either choose another citizen as a partner or leave the country in order to be with their foreign partners. I know this issue intimately because both my children have foreign partners. My heterosexual daughter was able to marry and give her foreign partner the right to live here. My homosexual son can't do that, and his partner isn't even allowed to enter the U.S., so he has no choice but to live in his partner's country. The people who claim to be protecting families are not doing anything to protect mine. Instead, they've torn it apart. I wish the Times would cover that aspect of the gay marriage issue because there are thousands of American families affected by it," - a mother of a gay son, commenting on the story on Governor David Paterson's decision to treat gay citizens married in other states no differently than straight ones.

Frank Sharry, Executive Director of the newly formed U.S. pro-migrant communications war room, America's Voice, has laid out what looks to be Sharry's new strategy for victory in a post on Alternet.  Let's see if we can come up with catchy phrases, a la nativist, that describe the new strategy.

Julia Preston at the New York Times reported yesterday on an alarming development in the Postville debacle:

In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.

The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.