Podcast: DREAMers No More- What is Happening to Young, Undocumented Immigrant Activists?
Undocumented youth activists are changing strategies in response to the deadlock over immigration reform.
Tag: New York Immigration Coalition
As Health Insurance Deadline Approaches, NY Said to Lag in Outreach to Latinos
The open enrollment period ends on March 31. But an English-only website could be a barrier for Latinos and immigrants.
DREAMers Celebrate Obama Announcement on Shift in Immigration Policy
President Barack Obama announced today that his administration will cease deporting undocumented youth who grew up in the US and who fulfill a number of requirements. The government will also begin issuing them work permits.
In Shadow of Triangle Shirtwaist Building, Immigrant Workers Call For Safer Conditions and Unionization
At a commemoration for the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, immigrant workers said even though a hundred years have passed, they still suffer from unsafe work conditions and abuse.
Immigrants Ask Cuomo to Keep Services in Budget
Immigrants rallied at the State Capitol on Tuesday to push NY Governor Cuomo to maintain funding for key services supporting their communities.
Advocates Press Obama to Issue Executive Order on Immigration Reform
Advocates in New York are symbolically mailing pens to President Obama, urging him to use his executive powers to reform the federal immigration system.
Immigrant Advocacy Groups Work to ‘Get Out the Vote’
Part of the effort is encouraging new citizens to represent those who can’t vote at the polls–the undocumented.
Health Care Reform Would Make No Difference for Immigrants, Study Claims
Whether health care reform passes or dies in Congress does not make much of a difference to immigrants, says a report by two progressive organizations in New York.
Immigrants Protest Napolitano as She Asks the Public to Join Fight Against Terrorism
Advocates are getting frustrated with Obama’s immigration policies. (Photo: New York Immigration Coalition — Click to see more photos.)
NEW YORK — More than 30 immigrants and immigrant advocates demonstrated on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Wednesday to protest U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano as she visited the Council on Foreign Relations. Napolitano was in New York to announce a new strategy to involve individuals in the fight against terrorism.
The demonstration, which ended with a press conference, is one of the most visible signs to date of immigrant advocates’ growing frustration over the Obama administration’s immigration policies.
“By the end of this year, we hope he (President Obama) will have much more to show. He has to switch from talking to actions. Right now, statements are positives and actions are negative. There is a big gap,” said the director of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), Chung-Wha Hong.
Voter Registration 101: How Do New Citizens Become Voters?
In the midst of the swirling allegations of fraudulent voter registrations, I thought it would be useful to explain how most of the nation’s immigrant citizens become legally registered voters. Federal authorities are investigating alleged voter registration fraud by the community group ACORN, and a controversial recent report warned of up to 2 million non-citizen immigrants voting nationwide.(Click here for more of Feet in 2 Worlds’ coverage of the report on non-citizen voters, released by a publishing house the Southern Poverty Law Center designated a hate group.)
Most immigrant rights groups focus their large-scale — and, by law, nonpartisan — voter registration efforts on ceremonies where immigrants officially become U.S. citizens. Concentrating on citizenship ceremonies ensures that the people who register to vote are citizens. The lion’s share of newly- naturalized U.S. citizens register to vote this way.
Registering to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen is a felony. This means that if you are an immigrant who isn’t a citizen and you register to vote, you are breaking federal law, and are subject to deportation.For this reason alone, immigrant rights groups are very careful to make sure they do not register non-U.S. citizens to vote.
The ceremonies themselves are huge and moving affairs where hundreds or occasionally thousands of immigrants become citizens after years of waiting to make their way through the quicksand of the legal immigration system.(Check out GOOD and Reason magazines’ recent charts, which outline just how many years this process takes – six to ten years in a best case scenario, twelve to twenty at its worst).Voter registration rates at citizenship ceremonies are typically very high: usually about 75-90% of new citizens choose to register, a rate higher than the 2006 national average of 68% of all citizens eligible to vote .