Read full newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/db3d079b0e1b/american-hypocrisyif-they-are-essential-they-cant-be-illegal
California Community Colleges sue U.S. for Denying COVID-19 funds to undocumented students
By: NINA AGRAWAL, Staff writer, Los Angeles Times – May 13, 2020
The nation’s largest community college system is suing the federal government for denying coronavirus relief funds to more than a half-million California students, including DACA recipients and many of those from low-income families.
California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley and the system’s Board of Governors filed suit this week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against the Department of Education and Secretary Betsy DeVos over eligibility restrictions placed on the use of federal aid money for students, arguing that the restrictions are unconstitutional.
“The Department of Education ignored the intent of the CARES Act to give local colleges discretion to aid students most affected by the pandemic, and instead has arbitrarily excluded as many as 800,000 community.. Read full article here
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A former farmworker on American Hypocrisy: If they are ‘essential’ they can’t be ‘illegal’
By: Alfredo Corchado, New York Times (Op-Ed) – May 6, 2020
EL PASO — The other day, armed with a face mask, I was rushing through the aisles of an organic supermarket, sizing up the produce, squeezing the oranges and tomatoes, when a memory hit me.
Me — age 6 — stooping to pick these same fruits and vegetables in California’s San Joaquin Valley. I spent the spring weekends and scorching summers of my childhood in those fields, under the watchful eye of my parents. Once I was a teenager, I worked alongside them, my brothers and cousins, too, essential links in a supply chain that kept America fed, but always a step away from derision, detention and deportation.
Today, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Mexico and Central America are doing that work. By the Department of Agriculture’s estimates, about half the country’s field hands — more than a million workers — are undocumented. Growers and labor contractors estimate that the real… Read full article here
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For Latinos and COVID-19, Doctors are seeing an ‘Alarming’ disparity
By: Miriam Jordan and Richard A. Oppel Jr. ~ NY Times ~ May 7, 2020
Dr. Eva Galvez works as a family physician for a network of clinics in northwestern Oregon, where low-income patients have been streaming in for nasal swabs over the past several weeks to test for the coronavirus.
Dr. Galvez was dumbfounded by the results. Latinos, about half of those screened, were 20 times as likely as other patients to have the virus.
“The disparity really alarmed me,” said Dr. Galvez, who began trying to understand what could account for the difference.
It is a question that epidemiologists around the country are examining as more and more evidence emerges that the coronavirus is impacting Latinos, and some other groups, including African-Americans, with particular force.
Oregon is one of many states where Latinos are showing a disproportionate level of impact, and the effects are seen among both immigrants and Latinos from multigenerational American families… Read Full article here
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U.S. citizens locked out of stimulus payments turn to federal courts
By: Aaron Lorenzo ~ Politico ~ May 6, 2020
“Discrimination based on the fundamental right to marry is presumptively unconstitutional and subject to strict scrutiny,” one suit argues.
Some U.S. citizens who have been been denied economic stimulus payments are asking federal courts to declare their exclusion unconstitutional.
U.S. children of immigrants and Americans married to immigrants who lack Social Security numbers filed separate federal lawsuits to get the payments, which they were disqualified from in the coronavirus rescue package enacted in March.
In the spouse-related class-action complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for Central California, an anonymous U.S. citizen living in that state is suing over being denied payments because she files taxes jointly with her spouse, an immigrant with an individual taxpayer… Read full article here
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Let Our People Go
By: Michelle Alexander ~ The New York Times ~ May 13, 2020
I have been wondering what to say about the horror of Covid-19 behind bars. Much has already been written about the scale of the crisis, the moral argument for freeing people from prisons and jails, and the utter inadequacy of the response in many states, including New York.
Activists, community leaders, medical experts and family members of people who are incarcerated have been raising their voices to little avail. In recent weeks, I sensed something was missing from the public debate but struggled to name it.
Then I read a letter from a man in Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio. Suddenly the answer was obvious. Read full article here
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As Supreme Court considers end to DACA, some Dreamers are already leaving U.S. behind
By: Monsy Alvarado ~ North Jersey ~ May 7, 2020
Born in South Korea but raised in Montclair, New Jersey, Eun Suk “Jason” Hong seemed on the cusp of another American success story when he graduated from college in 2015.
Hong, whose mother brought him to the U.S. at age 10, landed a job as a financial planner and was looking forward to starting a career.
But in 2017, President Donald Trump moved to do away with DACA, the program that allowed him to work legally in the U.S., and Hong’s outlook began to change. In August, he quit his job and moved to Spain to seek a master’s degree in business administration.
He’s now barred for a decade from returning to the country where he grew up. But he also has left behind the anxiety of America’s… Read full article here
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Urgent call upon Governor Newsom to help Mexico respond to COVID-19
By Prof. Armando Vazquez-Ramos, President and CEO
The California-Mexico Studies Center, Inc. ~ April 14, 2020
Given Governor Gavin Newsom’s commendable “Nation State” response to President Trump’s intransigence and failure to provide California with critical federal government assistance, the governor emerges as a novel international moral leader to abate the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
Last week, during an interview on MSNBC, the Governor stated that he would use California’s massive purchasing power “as a nation-state” to secure the medical supplies that Trump’s government has failed to provide. In fact, the governor expressed that “California might even export some of those supplies to other states in need”.
This is the fundamental reason why the California-Mexico Studies Center is calling upon Governor Newsom and California’s legislative leaders to immediately respond to Mexico’s emerging COVID-19 crisis, at our neighboring state of Baja California… Read Full Article Here
CMSC’s Letter to Governor Newsom
Read and download the letter here or click on the image below.
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Why the United States needs to plan for the Coronavirus in the Americas
By Trevor Sutton, Dan Restrepo, and Joel Martinez Center for American Progress – May 5, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic is challenging the capabilities and resources of governments around the world, and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean are no exception. The region’s widespread poverty, weak health infrastructure, and fragile economies mean its residents could suffer greatly if political leaders do not act swiftly to mitigate the crisis. To date, countries’ responses have varied from strict lockdown measures to relaxed approaches lacking urgency to outright denial. Of particular concern, the two most populous Latin American countries—Brazil and Mexico—have been the slowest to mobilize to contain the spread of the virus. In Venezuela, meanwhile, the pandemic has begun magnifying an already horrific humanitarian situation. Read full article here
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COVID-19 & THE AMERICAS:
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Que Quiere Agradecer AMLO a Trump?
Foto: Moisés Pablo, Cuartoscuro.
By: Dolia Estévez ~ Sinembargo ~ Mayo 05, 2020
Washington, D.C.— Sorprendió a propios y extraños el anuncio de Andrés Manuel López Obrador, de que había planteado a Donald Trump la posibilidad de encontrarse en junio o julio para “externarle personalmente nuestro agradecimiento” por el envío de mil ventiladores y “dar testimonio” de la entrada en vigor del T-MEC (Twitter @lopezobrador_ 17 de abril). Algunos se enteraron el día de la llamada el 16 de abril. Otros hasta leer el tuit.
A más de dos semanas, no se ha materializado la invitación. “Algo se comentó sobre dicha visita en la última conversación hace varias semanas”, me dijo un diplomático estadounidense sobre la llamada. No ha habido seguimiento. Fuentes mexicanas corroboraron que el tema no ha sido abordado. Es improbable que Trump quiera ir a México... Leer el articulo aquí
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Hidden toll: Mexico ignores wave of Coronavirus death in Capital
By: Azam Ahmed ~ NY Times ~ May 8, 2020
MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government is not reporting hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths from the coronavirus in Mexico City, dismissing anxious officials who have tallied more than three times as many fatalities in the capital than the government publicly acknowledges, according to officials and confidential data.
The tensions have come to a head in recent weeks, with Mexico City alerting the government to the deaths repeatedly, hoping it will come clean to the public about the true toll of the virus on the nation’s biggest city…Read full article here | Leer en español
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Joint statement on US-Mexico joint initiative to combat the COVID-19 Pandemic
By: Department of Homeland Security ~ April 16, 2020
The strong partnership and close cooperation between the United States and Mexico has allowed us to maintain a productive border environment. We value the health and safety of our citizens and keep that at the forefront of joint decisions made by our respective leaders regarding cross-border operations.
Recognizing the robust trade relationship between the United States and Mexico, we agree our two countries, in response to the ongoing global and regional health situation, require particular measures both to protect bilateral trade and our countries’ economies and ensure the health of our nations’ citizens. We agree to the need for a dedicated joint effort to prevent spread of the COVID-19 virus and address the economic effects resulting from reduced…. Read full article here
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Muertos de Coronavirus saturan los hospitales de la Ciudad de México
By: Redaccíon ~ La Opinion ~ 11 de Mayo 2020
MÉXICO – A mes y medio de que fuera detectado el primer caso de coronavirus en el país, la cifra de muertos ha llegado a 3,465 y los hospitales del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) ya están saturados por los cadáveres.
Y es que son dos los principales factores por esta situación, el primero es el repunte de la pandemia de COVID-19 y la segunda es la tardanza de los familiares para recoger los restos de sus muertos.
Testimonios recabados en el Hospital General de Zona 27 y en La Raza, donde se ubican el Hospital General 01, así como los hospitales de Infectología y de Especialidades, todas del IMSS, coinciden en que las zonas de Patología lucen desbordadas y los cuerpos se quedan en pasillos contiguos. Leer el articulo aqui
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OPINIONS AND COMMENTARY:
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How my mother escaped East LA’s Housing Projects and built her dream home in Tijuana
By: Alvaro Huerta ~ LA Taco ~ May 7, 2020
Welcome back to L.A. Taco’s column, “Barrio Wisdom.” In this series, we follow the streets-meet-academia wisdom of Dr. Álvaro Huerta, a professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. In this installment, he writes an ode to his mother who after a life in El Norte, followed her dream to build her dream home in Tijuana.
My late mother, Carmen Mejía Huerta, built her own home, brick by brick, in Mexico. Too poor to secure a piece of the “American Dream” in El Norte, during the mid-1980s, while residing in East Los Angeles, she decided to build her own home.
When she told my siblings and me—all eight of us—about her ambitious plans, we all thought she had gone mad.
“What are you going to do in Tijuana all by yourself?” I asked.
“No te preocupes demasiado,” she said. “Voy a construir un cuarto para cada uno de ustedes.” Read full article here
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Vulnerable to COVID-19 and in frontline job, immigrants are mostly shut out of U.S. relief
By Muzaffar Chishti and Jessica Bolter, Migration Policy Institute – April 24, 2020
As the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is beginning to settle, there has been growing acknowledgment of the central role that immigrant workers play on the frontlines of the war against the virus. What is less recognized—but increasingly evident—is that immigrants are also disproportionately suffering from economic hardship caused by shutdowns and social distancing, are falling victim to the lethal virus, and becoming targets of hate and discrimination. And many are excluded from the relief authorized by Congress.
The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) has estimated that immigrants make up outsize shares both of essential workers in the fight against the pandemic and those in the industries hardest hit by its economic impact. Six million immigrants are working in frontline occupations, such as health care, food production, and transportation; they are overrepresented in certain critical occupations, such as doctors and home health aides, where they face heightened risk of exposure… Read full article here
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The CMSC is in dire need of funding support !!!
Please support the CMSC’s 2020 projects, initiatives, and campaigns, including our advocacy to provide and facilitate immigrants’ mental health services, our National Campaign to Restore DACA’s Advance Parole the Help Mexico Abate COVID-19, the Ethnic Studies for All and the Chicano Studies in Mexico initiatives.
[ DONATE HERE ]
Read full newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/db3d079b0e1b/american-hypocrisyif-they-are-essential-they-cant-be-illegal
