By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio has become famous for his made-for-TV antics, like forcing inmates to use pink underwear, and his immigration enforcement fervor, which has drawn heavy criticism from civil rights advocates. Now, he’s getting his own FOX reality show and pro-immigrant organizations are not happy.

In response to the FOX Reality Channel’s announced launch of Smile, You’re Under Arrest!, America’s Voice is gathering support for a petition which asks the Department of Justice to investigate Arpaio “for gross civil rights violations in the name of immigration enforcement.”

Arpaio is a controversial figure in his home of Maricopa County (which encompasses Phoenix) and way beyond.

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By Eduardo A. de Oliveira, EthnicNewz and FI2W reporter

The talk of the town within the “Brazilian corners” of Somerville and Framingham, Massachusetts is whether the Brazilian housecleaner employed by Homeland Security official Lorraine Henderson betrayed her boss by agreeing to record their conversations for immigration authorities. Henderson, the Boston area port director for the Customs and Border Protection Division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was arrested last Saturday for allegedly employing an undocumented Brazilian housecleaner at her home in Salem, Mass.

The controversy in the Brazilian community, which we reported earlier this week, has now made it to the airwaves on Portuguese-language radio in the Bay State.

“Three years ago my boss asked if I had Social Security. I said no. She fired me, but her neighbors kept my services. I would never record a conversation with somebody who gives me a job,” said a listener to a show on WSRO (650 AM), who declined to reveal her name.

“I simply asked my listeners: if a boss treated you well, gave you a job, would you do what this housecleaner did to Henderson?,” said Fausto da Rocha, host of “Brazilian Immigrant Center on the Air” a show broadcast every Monday morning on 1360 AM. (more…)

Poles going back to Poland, a trend that was first noticed two years ago, may be getting a boost from the economic crisis in the U.S. Speaking recently on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, FI2W journalist Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska talked about the growing number of Poles who are returning to their home country for economic reasons.

A variety of factors have encouraged reverse migration, chief among them is Poland’s admission into the European Union four years ago. EU membership has opened up work opportunities for Polish citizens in a number of European countries. Ewa, who reports for Nowy Dziennik/The Polish Daily News, also noted that some younger Poles have moved to Poland in the belief that their American education gives them a competitive advantage in Poland’s economy. But she also said that like the U.S., Poland is experiencing an economic slowdown, so the benefits of moving to the Eastern European country may not be as great today as they have been in recent years.

Press play below to listen to Ewa on WNYC or click here to visit the show’s page.

[audio:http://audio.wnyc.org/bl/bl112608epod.mp3]

Ewa was recently honored by New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. at a Polish-American Heritage Celebration. Thompson hailed Ewa’s “truly impressive record of achievement that augurs a great body of work still to come.”

By Eduardo A. de Oliveira, EthnicNewz and FI2W reporter

Jaime Viviani is treated at Congregation Beth-El, a Jewish temple in Sudbury, Massachusetts
(Photo: Elizabeth Mendonca/Brazilian Times)

SUDBURY, Mass. — Despite the economic crisis, the Barbosa family will have a healthy holiday this year.

Three generations of the Brazilian clan are undocumented and uninsured. But Alessandra Barbosa knows that if her mother or her daughter ever need health care they can find it at Congregation Beth El, a Sudbury Jewish temple which becomes a walk-in clinic on Tuesday evenings.

In spite of all the talk about how Massachusetts Health Reform has increased access to care, there are those, mostly undocumented immigrants, who are falling through the cracks.

“Last year, we provided care to 515 patients through 753 visits, nearly all the patients ranging in age from 19 to 64,” said Kim Prendergast, resource developer with MetroWest Free Medical Program. “About two-thirds of them were Brazilian and 15 percent, Hispanic.”

What started four years ago as a “band aid” to care for about twenty low-income people has morphed into a reliable source of treatment for forty patients a week. I strolled through the temple last week as nurses rallied language interpreters to help with the majority-immigrant crowd.

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By Suman Raghunathan, Feet In 2 Worlds consultant

The Associated Press broke the story Friday that presidential candidate Barack Obama has a half-aunt, Zeituni Onyango, who, after her request for political asylum was rejected, is now undocumented and living in Boston.

The range of immigration statuses within Obama’s extended family reflects the reality of many immigrant families in the United States. Both Obama and his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, are US citizens; Soetoro-Ng is married to a Canadian citizen. And like many immigrants, Obama has a large extended family still living in Kenya, his father’s homeland.

Today, mixed-status families are extraordinarily common. For example, according to the Urban Institute, there are at least 5 million children in the country with at least one immigrant parent. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 3 million of these children have at least one parent who is undocumented.

During nearly two decades of historic migration to the US, in a period of extended economic growth powered in large part by immigrant labor, the number of Americans born to immigrant parents has risen steadily. The changes to the nation’s demographic make-up are dramatic. According to Pew, more than half or the growth in the US population in the last decade alone came from Latino communities, much of it due to recent immigrants and their children.

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It looks like the ethnic media’s role and importance only continues to grow – not only for immigrants, but for immigration enforcement agencies as well.

Federal immigration authorities are enlisting ethnic media in their efforts to encourage the nation’s eligible undocumented immigrants to come forward to deport themselves via a new pilot program, ‘Operation Scheduled Departure’, which Feet in 2 Worlds first reported last week.

The Associated Press reported today that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration law, is placing ads via ethnic media in many of the five major cities where the program is being piloted: Santa Ana and San Diego, CA; Phoenix; Charlotte, NC; and Chicago. The media outlets running these paid advertisements include major newspapers including La Prensa Hispana in Phoenix. Popular Spanish- and Polish-language radio stations such as WPNA 1490 AM in Chicago were also contacted by ICE to run the ads.

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In an editorial today The New York Times castigates the Bush administration over the treatment of undocumented immigrants arrested at Agriprocessors, the Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant that was the site of the largest worksite immigration raid in US history. The Times accuses the administration of, “abandoning mercy and proportionality,” in its treatment of the workers, and its lack of attention to egregious health and safety violations at the plant.

Feet in 2 Worlds has reported extensively on this issue. Learn more by reading our posts “Two Standards of Justice: Are Employers Paying a Price for Illegal Immigration?” and Advice to Journalists: keep the “immigration crisis” on the front burner.