Author: JHISN

Greyhound Protest Draws Hundreds to the Port Authority

“As I followed hundreds of protesters down the escalator to the Greyhound ticket counter, our lively chant ‘ICE off the buses! ICE out of New York!’ engulfed the sound space of the Port Authority.” –Dovar Chen

On Friday, August 23rd, members of the Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network attended a spirited protest against Greyhound Bus at the Port Authority Building in Manhattan. Although Greyhound is not legally required to let ICE or the Border Patrol onto a bus without a signed judicial warrant, which they almost never have, Greyhound has been allowing immigration agents to board buses. Agents walk up and down the aisles demanding documents from passengers to prove their immigration status. Some people are pulled off buses and detained.

Friday’s protest was part of a growing nationwide campaign to force Greyhound to change their policies and stop assisting the administration’s attack on immigrants or allowing the government to intimidate passengers.

Dovar Chen, a member of the Jackson Heights Immigrant Solidarity Network, attended the event. “I found the experience empowering and uncanny. Exactly one week before, I was accompanying a person who was just released from a NJ detention center to Port Authority to catch his Greyhound bus. We spent hours at the Port Authority waiting for his phone to recharge from months of no use; to buy a prepaid SIM card, so he can reconnect with his family via cellphone; to stand in a long line to print out the bus ticket for his upcoming two-day journey back to Texas to reunite with his family.”

Greyhound has argued that they let immigration agents board buses for the “safety” of their drivers and passengers. This excuse has been exposed by the drivers’ union, which argues firmly against the company’s policy of letting ICE and the Border Patrol onto buses.

Grassroots groups will continue to keep the pressure on Greyhound. The ACLU is sponsoring a national petition campaign. Please sign their petition. As Dovar Chen said, “People’s solidarity and voice empower us—we are not alone in this struggle. Not me, and not you. Together is the best way to fight injustice, and inhuman and oppressive government practices.”

 

 

 

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Some Facts about Immigrants in NYC

  • NYC is home to 3.2 million immigrants (foreign-born people), the largest number in city history.
  • Immigrants make up over 37% of the city’s population. There are more households that include immigrants than there are households without any immigrants.
  • Over a million children (under 18) live in a household with at least one foreign-born family member. This represents almost 60% of all NYC children.
  • About 56% of immigrant New Yorkers are naturalized US citizens. Almost half of those naturalized citizens have lived in the US for 20 years or more.
  • An estimated 660,000 legal residents of New York (green card holders and others) are potentially eligible to naturalize in the future under current law.
  • 5.3% of New Yorkers are undocumented immigrants. This is roughly 477,000 people. Mixed-status households, which include at least one undocumented family member, make up 12.7% of households in the city.
  • The undocumented population of the city has been going down since 2008, nationally and locally. The decline has been attributed to the weak economy after the 2008 housing crash, improved economic conditions in Mexico, and increased enforcement at the border.
  • 16.6% of Queens residents are undocumented immigrants—roughly 184,000 people. This is far more undocumented immigrants than live in any other borough.
  • 67% of undocumented immigrants in New York have at least a high school diploma. Over 21% have a college degree, including advanced degrees.
  • 65% of all New Yorkers over age 16 are in the labor force. But 77.4% of undocumented immigrants in the city over age 16 are in the labor force. Their median earnings are 35% lower than those of citizens.

Source: “State of Our Immigrant City, MOIA Annual Report for Calendar Year 2018”

Resources for Individuals and their Families Facing Detention or at Risk of Deportation

Freedom for Immigrants has posted resources for individuals and their families facing detention or at risk of deportation, including:

  1. ICE Detainee Locator – To locate a person currently in ICE custody or who was released from ICE custody within the last 60 days
  2. A phone number to find out a loved one’s U.S. Immigration court date
  3. Directory to find a U.S. Immigration Attorney
  4. Information that describes what a U.S. Immigration Bond is
  5. What to do if you’ve been granted asylum in the United States
  6. What to do if you or a loved one has been wrongfully deported
  7. How to find a host or sponsor for someone in ICE detention
  8. What are the rights of people with disabilities in immigration detention
  9. How to find people detained anywhere in the world

Click here for further information.

Update on Public Charge Rule

A letter from Nick Gulotta, Director of Outreach and Organizing, Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs:

Dear Community Partner,

As you know, the Trump administration has released the “Public Charge” rule change. This rule change has not gone into effect.

As Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Bitta Mostofi of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs said in a statement, this rule is another attempt to instill fear and concern among countless working immigrant families. But as we know, New Yorkers are fighters and the City will do everything in our power to ensure people have the resources they need at this critical time. The City of New York will be bringing legal action and will have more to share in the coming days.

Update you should know about the public charge rule:

  • It will go into effect on October 15, 2019. (Anticipated litigation over the rule may change this timeline.)
  • The rule will penalize low and middle income immigrants applying for a Green Card or certain types of visas, for using certain public benefits for which they are eligible.
  • Immigrants who are concerned about how the public charge rule might affect them or their loved ones can call ActionNYC at 311 or 1-800-354-0365 and say ‘public charge’ to access City-funded, trusted legal advice.

Please share this update with your network. Resources in multiple languages will be made available shortly on nyc.gov/publiccharge.

We are committed to helping all New Yorkers access the public benefits and services they’re entitled to.

In solidarity,

Nick

Nick Gulotta
Director of Outreach & Organizing
Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs
212.748.0395
Pronouns: He/him/his

 

Petition to Keep Border Patrols off Greyhound Buses

BUSES ARE NO PLACE FOR BORDER PATROL

Sign the Petition HERE.

From the ACLU:

Throughout the country, people rely on Greyhound to get to work, visit family, or to simply travel freely. But Greyhound has been letting Border Patrol board its buses to question and arrest passengers without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing. The company is throwing its loyal customers under the bus.

For more than a year, we’ve been urging Greyhound to stop letting Border Patrol board its buses, but the company is refusing to issue a policy protecting its customers. So now we’re taking our fight to the next level.

Greyhound is owned by FirstGroup plc, a multi-national transport group based in the UK, whose own Code of Ethics and Corporate Responsibility contradicts what its subsidiary has been doing to passengers.

“We are committed to recognising human rights on a global basis. We have a zero-tolerance approach to any violations within our company or by business partners.”

Greyhound’s complicity in the Trump deportation machine is a clear violation of the human rights values that FirstGroup professes to uphold. We must raise our voices: Sign the petition to demand that FirstGroup direct Greyhound to comply with its code of ethics. Greyhound must stop throwing customers under the bus.

Sign the ACLU’s petition to FirstGroup plc, the parent company of Greyhound, to demand that they comply with their code of ethics and stop allowing Border Patrol to board and search its buses without probable cause or warrant.

Sign the Petition HERE.

In Praise of Migrants—And Jackson Heights

(A Review: This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto, Suketu Mehta)

Suketu Mehta is an immigrant. And he’s not apologizing for it.

These days, a great many people in the rich countries complain loudly about migration from the poor ones. But as the migrants see it, the game was rigged: First, the rich countries colonized us and stole our treasure and prevented us from building our industries. After plundering us for centuries, they left, having drawn up maps in ways that ensured permanent strife between our communities….

Having built up their economies with our raw materials and our labor, they asked us to go back and were surprised when we did not. They stole our minerals and corrupted our governments so that their corporations could continue stealing our resources; they fouled the air above us and the waters around us, making our farms barren, our oceans lifeless; and they were aghast when the poorest among us arrived at their borders, not to steal but to work, to clean their shit, and to fuck their men.

Still, they needed us. They needed us to fix their computers and heal their sick and teach their kids, so they took our best and brightest, those who had been educated at the greatest expense of the struggling states they came from, and seduced us again to work for them. Now, again, they ask us not to come, desperate and starving though they have rendered us, because the richest among them need a scapegoat. This is how the game is rigged today.

Mehta’s book is a clear, engaging explanation of the global, national and personal dynamics of immigration. It’s based on his own experience, and that of his family, which has migrated all over the world. But it’s also grounded in research, informed by righteous indignation, and fueled by a desire for justice for migrants, especially those less fortunate than himself. As the author puts it, “This book is being written in sorrow and rage—as well as hope.”

This Land isn’t a “movement” book. It doesn’t delve into the various strands of the immigrant rights struggle, analyze immigration legislation or lay out a strategy for defeating Donald Trump. But nevertheless, it’s definitely a political book. What Mehta does is to try and change the popular discourse about immigration, using facts, experiences and exhilaratingly blunt arguments. He approaches migration in various contexts and from various angles, always reinforcing the value, humanity and dignity of migrants.

Mehta, who lived in Jackson Heights as a young immigrant, combines pithy arguments with devastating real-life examples. One of his most memorable examples is an extended description of a “friendship park” between San Diego and Tijuana. For many years, this was “the only place on the two-thousand-mile U.S. Mexican  border where you could meet your family face to face…a small patch of land adjoining the Pacific Ocean.” Mehta describes in agonizing detail how this tiny park, where families were once allowed to mingle freely, was suddenly fenced in, then double-fenced, so that people could barely touch pinkies. Today only ten people at a time are allowed in from the U.S. side. They are forbidden to take photos or videos, or even record the voices of their loved ones. Mehta spent two days at the park, absorbing the poignant and tragic stories of separated families, who travel for hours and days to see their loved ones across the border fences. Meanwhile, Border Patrol officers he interviewed exhibited open disdain for the park’s visitors.

Some of Mehta’s most potent writing is dedicated to exposing the realities of imperialism. He doesn’t pull any punches:

Before you ask other people to respect the borders of the West, ask yourself if the West has ever respected anybody else’s border. How often has the United States gone over the southern border or into the Caribbean or Southeast Asia? How often does it keep doing so, going over the borders of Iraq or Afghanistan? The United States has not acted lawfully with other nations, including the Native American nations on its soil, through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. How can it now expect the human victims of that enormous illegality to obey the laws of the United States and stay home or wait thirty years for a visa to rejoin their families?

Mehta makes it clear that this imperial hypocrisy doesn’t just apply to the U.S., but to all the colonial powers. For instance, he spends some time examining the history of British imperialism in his original homeland of India. He also describes how brutal French colonialism in the Caribbean and North Africa has resulted in massive migration.

In recent decades, as Mehta explains, colonialism has taken new forms. Many former colonies have gained legal independence. Now it is primarily multinational corporations and global banks that control the world economy, not Western governments. But the effects on ordinary people are largely the same. As he puts it,

They looted us for centuries, and they took whatever was worth taking, and they continued taking after we became ‘independent’—of their governments, but not of their corporations.” Trillions of dollars in wealth is still being transferred from the poor countries to the rich countries….

This has a direct bearing on the ethics of immigration. Between 1970 and 2010, Mexico lost $872 billion in illicit financial outflows, and most of the money ended up in American banks. Around this time—from 1965 to 2015—16 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States. They weren’t doing anything wrong; they were just following the money. Their money.

Besides the economic injustice of imperialism, Mehta discusses how imperialist wars trigger mass migration. He discusses not only classic armed conflicts, such as proxy civil wars and invasions, but also the phony “war on drugs,” which destroys nations while fattening the wallets of Western bankers. Together, all of these wars generate refugees by the millions.

Another major source of migration discussed in This Land is climate change. More and more nations are experiencing droughts, floods, and severe weather of all kinds. Crops are dying; heat-related deaths are skyrocketing. And so people are leaving their homes.

And where should they move to? To their former colonizers, or to the country most responsible for the heating of the planet? Americans are only 4 percent of the world’s population but are responsible for one-third of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Next comes the European Union, which put another quarter of the existing CO2 in the atmosphere. America creates a third of the world’s solid waste and consumes a fifth of the world’s energy. The average American uses as much energy as 35 Indians, or 185 Ethiopians, and consumes as many goods and services as 53 Chinese. But America was the first and only country to walk away from a global attempt at a solution: the Paris Agreement. The Trump administration is an existential threat to life on the planet today. The most damning indictment against Americans: we ruined the planet and then elected a government that will stop any last chance we have of saving it.

Mehta emphasizes that anti-immigrant sentiment, especially in the U.S., is closely tied to racism. White citizens often feel a sense of entitlement, coupled now with the feeling that they are losing privileges that used to be automatic. White citizens also, at times, feel jealous. Many immigrants are better educated than white U.S. citizens, and make more money after arriving here. (For instance, the median income for Indian Americans was over $110,000 in 2016.) Donald Trump, of course,has amplified false white nationalist narratives about crime and about immigrants draining resources from the U.S. His open appeal to white grievance and betrayal has helped increase and intensify an onslaught of racist attacks on immigrants. As Mehta says, “the conversation about immigrants in America…is approaching incitement to genocide.”

Mehta makes it clear that this racism isn’t random or disorganized. It’s actively encouraged by wealthy capitalists. The billionaire class and giant corporations have profited from globalist outsourcing,while simultaneously disinvesting from the U.S. Now the capitalists are eager to redirect outraged white resentment away from themselves and onto scapegoated immigrants.

One of Mehta’s most controversial assertions is that immigration should be understood as a form of reparations for the sins of colonialism. This is an attention-grabbing argument, but it turns out to be one of his less rigorous ones. After all, as Mehta argues at length, immigration has been good for countries like the U.S. Not just good: indispensable. It seems like an odd kind of “reparations” that comes free of cost to the offenders. This Land struggles with the contradiction, finally concluding that: “A huge bill is coming due to the West. And it is one that the West is not only morally obligated to pay, but one that it should also look forward to paying.”

This part of Mehta’s analysis, while it may be somewhat confusing, is also pretty thought-provoking. Mehta is putting his finger on a sensitive spot. Doesn’t the U.S. in fact owe reparations to the countries and peoples it has undermined and ripped off? Isn’t migration a human right, whether it helps the receiving country’s economy or not? These are some of the most important questions in front of us today.

This Land is full of revealing data. For instance, did you know that there are now 9 million U.S. citizens—migrants—living abroad, up from 4 million in 1999? Or that Turkey took in more than a million refugees in 2014, while the has U.S. allowed in just 50,000 refugees per year for decades? (Trump wants to reduce that to 30,000.) Mehta’s book is not only interesting and easy to read, but it’s also chock full of ammunition for immigrant rights fighters and supporters.

This Land includes many heartbreaking and hopeful stories of migrants—those who he calls “everyday heroes”—in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. They are people who often end up doing the hardest work in our societies, after risking their safety and freedom to migrate because they are driven to help their families or are fighting to escape intolerable situations. In many cases the migrants Mehta profiles show tremendous insight, courage and initiative.

Ultimately, This Land is a cautiously hopeful book. Bringing things right home, Mehta upholds Jackson Heights as an example of the advantages of migration and multiculturalism. Mehta is aware of the divisions here. And in fact, he argues that multiculturalism doesn’t depend on everybody instantly loving each other. It’s more of a process. He remembers that, in his youth, Jackson Heights had to cope with some deeply rooted ethnic antagonisms, which had migrated right along with people.

My neighbors were Indians and Pakistanis, Jews and Muslims, Haitians and Dominicans; the building was owned by a Turkish man but the super was Greek. Many of them had been killing each other just before they got on the plane….

But we were in a new country now, making a new life. And we could live side by side and interact in certain demarcated ways. We could exchange food; our kids could play together; they could go to school together. We discovered that we are more alike than different. South Asians in the West, for instance: Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who have been warring at home discover, in Jackson Heights, that they are “desi,” and share a love of samosas and Bollywood. If we still didn’t like our neighbors, we would not burn and riot as we might at home; we would suffer them…. Because no one ethnicity dominates, no one community gets blamed if the economy goes south.

And now, diversity has become a point of attraction for all kinds of people, from all kinds of backgrounds. As Mehta puts it, “Creative people want to live in the kind of city where they can hear many languages spoken on the street, and have a choice between pupusas and parathas for dinner.”

Mehta is inspired by Jackson Heights, and by New York in general. He notes that the city has been thriving because of the huge waves of immigration that arrived in recent decades. The author’s moving hope is that New York can serve as an example to the world.

But as Mehta knows only too well, there’s plenty of racism and inequality in New York. And there’s a vicious anti-immigrant storm raging all around us. Many residents of Jackson Heights are living in fear, while ICE thugs swagger around like modern-day Brownshirts.

Woven together with his sadness and rage, This Land’s moral clarity and expansive vision do give us cause for long-term hope. Mehta’s manifesto is important for that reason, among many others. But it’s pretty obvious that the author’s optimistic view of Jackson Heights isn’t something we can take for granted. On the contrary, it’s something we’re going to have to fight like hell to live up to, and to defend.