informational
Des Moines, Iowa - 11 January 2016

Hilary Clinton’s Immigration Reform Proposal / El plan de Hilary Clinton por la reforma inmigratoria

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versión en Español abajo

To win the democratic nomination 2383 delegates are needed. As of this morning, Hilary Clinton has 2184 pledged delegates to Sanders 1804; with superdelegates she has 2755 to Sanders 1852. While Donald trump is campaigning to enforce border security and deport the 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States, Hillary Clinton’s immigration reform proposal during the 2016 presidential election could be explained as the polar opposite of Trump’s proposal. Clinton ran in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primary election for president of the United States campaigning strongly on jobs and raising the minimum wage. During her second campaign in the 2016 presidential election, she finds herself pitted against Donald Trump’s massive deportation plan and Bernie Sanders’s democratic socialist plans to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 nationally.

2010
Phoenix, Ariz. - 18 July 2015

Bernie Sanders’ immigration reform plan/El plan de Bernie Sanders por la reforma inmigratoria

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versión en Español abajo

Bernie Sanders’ immigration reform plan also heavily focuses on the expansion of President Obama’s DACA and DAPA programs and the use of executive actions. In his immigration plan, he outlines his plans to enforce immigration and border security, dismantle for-profit and family detention programs and create a pathway for citizenship. Sanders blames Mexico’s poor economy and waves of immigrants on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), even though the Office of the United States Trade Representative states that 30 states report Canada or Mexico as their first or second largest export markets and U.S. manufacturing exports have increased 258% since implemented in 1994. Even the Republican Party frontrunner Donald Trump is against NAFTA. In October of 2015, CBS News reported on the effects of NAFTA.

14th
Phoenix, Ariz. - 11 July 2015

Donald Trump’s plans for illegal immigrants/El plan de Donald Trump para los inmigrantes

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versión en Español abajo

Donald Trump’s plans for illegal immigrants during the 2016 presidential elections may be the most aggressive position of any of the candidates. But just how much of his plans for illegal immigrants and his allegations against them are based on facts? The New York City businessman outlines his immigration reform strategy much like a business plan, listing the three core principles of “real immigration reform” and detailing his three-part plan. His three core beliefs, according to his campaign site, are:

“A nation without borders is not a nation.”
“A nation without laws is not a nation.”
“A nation that does not serve its own citizens is not a nation.”

Also, his three plans for immigration reform are to build a wall along the U.S./Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it, “defend the Laws and Constitution of the United States” and “put American workers first.”

Trump officially announced his bid for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in Las Vegas, Nev., on June 16, 2015, by immediately taking a strong stance on immigration control, illegal migration from Mexico and suggesting hardliner plans for illegal immigrants. While the media have been reporting what they deem as radical and racist sentiments from Trump toward Mexicans and other immigrants, like calling them drug traffickers, criminals and rapists, Trump’s campaign page cites his allegations to credible news sources.

what
The number of Mexican immigrants has increased from about 2 million in 1980 to more than 11.7 million in 2014.

Immigration today in the United States

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To understand and discuss current proposals and ideas regarding immigration today in the United States and the reform thereof, factual information must be used to argue cases for and against said proposals. While the effects of both legal and illegal immigration can be studied various ways and the details skewered to represent one point of view or another, it would be more reasonable to evaluate the arguments against immigration. The most-apparent misconceptions are that all Hispanics are immigrants, they all immigrated illegally, they all are Mexican and they can’t speak English. The Migration Policy Institute lists the following statistics about immigrants in the United States:
– Approximately 316 million people lived in the United States in 2013. – Of those, approximately 41.3 million, or 13%, were immigrants.

what

Immigration in the 2016 Election

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“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” This has been our nation’s promise to countless numbers of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island and the United States in general from the world over since 1886. However, even as a nation of immigrants created for the freedom and safe-haven of other immigrants, we have polarized our beliefs about who should be here, how to manage their intake and what language they should speak as well as who should not be here and how to keep them out. As a result, the 2016 presidential election and party primary candidates have a tremendous focus on immigration and border security, with GOP front-runner and Washington outsider Donald J. Trump proposing to build a border wall, make Mexico pay for it and deport all illegal immigrants currently in the United States.

Arizona
IMG_8354A

Introducing: Mykaela Aguilar

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When I was 11 years old I made the decision to become a journalist. I took speech and drama classes so I could develop a better TV presence, and routinely practiced the intro to the KOB channel 4 News. “Live, local, late breaking, this is Eyewitness News 4, today at 10.”

After a tragic graduation speech in 2012, when no one laughed at my, “how about that ride in” joke, I knew I shouldn’t be allowed to speak to the masses ever again. I was three months away from attending journalism school, so being the lazy daisy that I am I simply switched my focus to writing. Turns out that is one of the better decisions I’ve ever made.

Arizona
sisteres Caterine (in red) and Pamela (in brown) and their kids

Violencia Domestica / Domestic Violence: The JCCF Lifelines project

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Julie Rosen, Acting Director of CPLC’s domestic violence shelter in Phoenix, Ariz. – from Rebekah Zemansky on Vimeo.)

dc/vawa: Julie Rosen (rough cut) from Rebekah Zemansky on Vimeo. In the fall of 2010, I did a story that grew out of the same reporting behind this blog (Unidentified Dead Common on the Border) for Cronkite News called Trapped in violence: Undocumented abuse victims face hurdles. The story explored how provisions in The Violence Against Women Act are designed to help undocumented women who are experiencing domestic violence, women who may be less likely to report or leave situations that are dangerous for themselves and their families because they are afraid of deportation and family seperation (especially if their abuser has legal status in the U.S.). Extra material from the story became a supplementary page, Undocumented Abuse.

Arizona

Launch: on community participation

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Community participation. It’s become such a catch phrase that making it solidify when you stop to really look at it can be tricky, like trying to see synergy or social networking. Yet it was an excitingly tangible part of the event I covered Saturday, the official launch of the Colibri Center for Human Rights which included the Tucson premiere of Who is Dayani Cristal? More than 400 people showed up – more than double the number that attended the award winning documentary’s New York premiere. But a crowd alone doesn’t mean community.

behind the scenes

Family through a fence

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A bittersweet reunion lets three young immigrants see – and reach for – their deported mothers through a fence. Read more here in the June 11 The New York Times piece: Immigrants Reach Beyond a Legal Barrier for a Reunion

As a young man and two young women approached the border from the Arizona side, a cry rang out through the bars of the border fence. Waiting for their children in matching turquoise t-shirts on the Mexican side were their mothers, separated for years since their deportations for being illegally present in the U.S.

The six came together, reaching through the spaces between the thick metal poles, with sobs and laughter under the watchful (and not always dry) eyes of organizers, reporters, Border Patrol, and Mexican Federales last Tuesday – the culmination of days of travel and two months of planning. All three children are in President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program which gives qualified applicants the ability to go to school, work and in some states get drivers licenses while they wait for a more permanent resolution to their legal status limbo. It’s a way for participants to start coming out of the shadows.

MFM updates

MFM blog update: Weekly news roundups at Tucson Sentinel

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If news links weren’t enough in 2012, get ready for news summaries: Missing from Mexico’s News article highlights & updates page will now be listing a series of weekly border news roundups that I’m writing for the Tucson Sentinel. They’ll also be available under the drop-down menu for news in the navigation bar above ^ . In addition Missing from Mexico’s News article highlights & updates page will still have extra articles (including topics like forensics or immigration in other countries). Plus all these links and more are regularly going into Missing from Mexico’s database of articles, radio pieces, video and official reports about border issues, forensics and reporting.