#immigration iies

[ausetkmt]

Black nurses have shared their experiences of racism in the workplace, as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) commemorates the 75th anniversary of Windrush at its annual conference this week.

In June 2018, the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, commissioned the Windrush Lessons Learned review – a report reflecting on the causes of the Windrush injustices. The independent review was in response to mounting evidence that members of the Windrush generation were losing jobs, homes and access to benefits, as well as being denied NHS treatment, detained, and forcibly deported to countries they left as children.

The findings, alongside the testimonies of black British citizens affected by the hostile environment, are truly anguishing.

Wendy Williams, the HM inspector of constabularyappointed as the independent reviewer, has examined the key legislative, policy and operational decisions that led to the Windrush injustices, and spoken to those who suffered grave and catastrophic consequences from becoming entangled in the government’s hostile immigration policies.

Williams’ review draws a stark conclusion: the UK’s treatment of the Windrush generation, and approach to immigration more broadly, was caused by institutional failures to understand race and racism. Their failures conform to certain aspects of Lord Macpherson’s definition of institutional racism, enshrined in the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, published in 1999.

Macpherson defined institutional racism as: “The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.”

The Windrush Lessons Learned review pulls no punches in describing the failure of ministers and officials to understand the nature of racism in Britain. It shows how the government’s hostile environment immigration policies had devastating impacts on the lives and families of black citizens within the UK.

The fact that black British people who had spent much of their lives in Britain, working and paying taxes, were accidental victims of the government’s immigration policies, perfectly illustrates how the coalition and Conservative governments not only failed to adhere to existing race relations legislation, but also showed a complete lack of understanding about “indirect discrimination” – a concept accepted in legislation as far back as the 1976 Race Relations Act.

Neither that lesson of “unintended discrimination”, nor the definition of “institutional racism” from the Macpherson report, seem to have been learned by Britain’s policymakers and politicians. Not only is intent irrelevant for assessing whether policies are racially discriminatory, but race equality laws (including the 2000 Race Relations Amendment Act and the public sector equality duty) appear to have made little difference to immigration and citizenship policies affecting people from different ethnic groups.

This reveals a shocking lack of understanding of what racism is – namely that it’s not solely about intent. In April 2018, the dramatic apology by the then prime minister, Theresa May, showed a failure to understand this lesson, when she insisted it wasn’t her government’s intent to disproportionately affect people from the Caribbean in the operation of hostile environment immigration policy.

For policymakers and politicians to learn the profound lessons of the Windrush review, they must not only “right the wrongs” suffered by the Windrush generation (as well as those from other ethnic minority groups), but they must also understand how and why immigration and citizenship policies, and Home Office culture, have repeatedly discriminated against black and ethnic minority citizens over the decades.

The Windrush generation are owed a full apology – an apology that is based on understanding that their treatment wasn’t an accidental misfortune, but the result of institutional failure to understand the role of race and racism in Britain.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sam Levin at The Guardian:

California, home to the largest immigrant population in the US, is bracing for Donald Trump’s plan to enact the “largest deportation operation in American history”, with advocates pushing state leaders to find new and creative ways to disrupt his agenda. The Golden state led the fight against Trump’s first term, shielding many non-citizen residents from removal by restricting local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. But the threat this time, immigrant rights groups say, is more extreme, and blue states across the US are facing pressure to mount an aggressive, multipronged response. “Communities that will be involved in mutual aid and self-defense are prepared,” said Chris Newman, general counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a California-based group that supports immigrants. “I think many lawmakers, frankly, are not. They were primarily focused on supporting Kamala Harris, and people’s hope for the best got in the way of their preparation for the worst.”

Trump, who built his political career on racist, xenophobic rhetoric, has said he wants to expel “as many as 20 million people” from the US in his second term. That would mark a dramatic increase from his first administration, in which he carried out several hundred thousand removals a year, in line with other recent presidents. To reach his target, Trump would have to uproot the lives of undocumented people who have lived in the US for years. He has pledged to build mass detention camps and deputize national guard troops and local police to assist the effort. In 2017, California was the first state to pass a sanctuary law under Trump. The bill prohibited local law enforcement from assisting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), and it had major effect. While local police had been transferring thousands of immigrants to Ice each year before, those numbers dwindled to the hundreds, according to advocates who reviewed state data. Nationally, Trump did not meet his overall removal goals – arresting fewer immigrants within the country and carrying out fewer deportations than Obama – in part because of California’s and other states’ sanctuary policies.

Before California’s bill was signed, however, it was watered down to allow state prisons to coordinate with Ice, and to give Ice agents access to interview people in jails. The final version also weakened proposals to limit police data-sharing with Ice. Those loopholes have continued to leave many immigrants vulnerable.

Activists and some lawmakers have since fought to strengthen the sanctuary policy in recent years. But California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat now styling himself as an anti-Trump leader, has repeatedly opposed those efforts, which advocates say could have made the state better equipped for Trump’s new threat of mass deportations. “California has its own culpability in feeding the deportation machine, which advocates have been pointing out for years,” said Anoop Prasad, advocacy director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, which supports incarcerated Californians. “Governor Newsom hasn’t taken action on those calls in prior years, but hopefully now he’s willing to understand the urgency.” In 2019, Newsom vetoed a bill passed by lawmakers that would have banned private security agents from entering prisons to arrest immigrants. In 2023, he vetoed another measure widely supported by legislators that would have stopped transfers from prisons to Ice. This year, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed undocumented students to be hired for campus jobs.

States such as California are urged to find ways to block Donald Trump’s immoral and economically ruinous mass deportation plan.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Displaced persons arriving in New York, 1948.

Photo: Clemens Kalischer via the NY Times

[usssnarfblat]

Did Anastasia deserve to die for her family's crimes against Fieval's family?

I've always found it interesting that "Anastasia" and "An American Tail" were made by the same guy...

My mom got us "An American Tail" as kids, since we were Jewish, and a Disney-like movie with Jewish characters was a one-of-a-kind thing. ("The Prince of Egypt" was still a few years away. Yes, I'm that old.) More to the point, my dad's side of the family is largely Russian Jews, who immigrated in the early 1920s, for exactly the same reasons as the Mouskewitz. Being a child of this background and very literally obsessed with cats, I had mixed feelings about the movie.

When "Anastasia" came out a few years later, Mom didn't let that history stop us from enjoying the new princess movie, but she didn't shelter us from it either. We regarded it like we did the real history behind any sugar-coated princess movie. She even got us some history books about the real Romanov family, and we were fascinated by the subject.

Still, it's an odd elephant in the room, watching "Anastasia" and knowing that her granddad was the one who sent those Cossack cats after Fievel's village, and her dad himself continued doing it to the Jewish mice who didn't leave.

"Go, Pompom, Kibble and Fluff-Baron! Kill those Jew mice, and I'll give you extra catnip treats tonight!"

Don Bluth presents both the Romannov family and their victims with equal sympathy, even opening both movies with the family celebrating a holiday, with the kid heroes getting a plot-specific present, before being viciously attacked.

"Wow Grandmama! Fieval and Tanya could use this as a merry-go-round!"

*Cough* "Yes uh, about those Jewish mice Sweetie..."

Bluth's portrayal of the Romanov family is not entirely inaccurate. By all accounts, Nicholas II was a deeply loving father who both doted on his children, but raised them not to be spoiled. Despite being royalty, the princesses shared bedrooms and did charity work at hospitals.

It's a baffling irony that Nicholas was nevertheless was a tyrant, and not remotely just to his Jewish subjects. When I was about twelve, Mom got me the Dear America book A Coal Miner's Bride, about the Catholic Polish immigrants who also fled the oppression of the Russian Tzar. (Anastasia's family conquered part of Poland in the 1800s, banning the Pols from speaking their own language and drafting their sons into the Tzar's dick-measuring contest wars.) Anyway, that's what my mom's side of the family was fleeing when they immigrated. Yes, my family has double reason to hate the Romanovs.

So, I personally don't have a lot of sympathy for Nicholas II. But the horrors his poor wife and children endured in their final moments never fails to get the reaction from me.

The rationalization for the murder of the children and queen was that it was the only way to ensure that the monarchy never returned. But I assume most modern-thinking people would say that the ends do not justify the means in this case.

That said, millions of families like Anetka's and Fievel's suffered as bad or worse than the Romanovs, because of the Romanovs, and no one remembers them because they didn't wear tiaras. This no doubt was another factor that killed sympathy for the Romanov children. But they were still children.

The question today is, if we can feel for a family that was literal royalty, despite their father being an undeniable tyrant against our own families...can we also feel for Palestinian and Israeli families, during a conflict that is vastly more complicated than Imperial Russia?

Or do they need to be cute mice and glittery princesses to get our attention?

[fictonrantsworld]

U know I too relate to aegon bc I too can understand my ancestral language very well and then stutter like an idiot when I speak it

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Meditating on horror - the horror of abandonment. We look around at the world (ourselves) and it's temples (ourselves): hidden, desolate, broken down. A wasteland. Clearly it has been abandoned. Why would God make us only to abandon us? We are his temple - his dwelling place - so why would he leave?

So we - the children of the children of the children of exiles - keep looking. All our life we are looking for God (knowingly or not). Instead we see a mosaic of violence: spouse and spouse, sibling and sibling, parent and child. We almost die just entering this place. Humans are cruel to their own flesh and blood, to themselves - why would God make us only to abandon us?

We keep looking. We get past the horrors of suffering and finally see glory: our God of Glory becomes human. A Conquering King - and also a Suffering Servant: feeding the hungry, riding donkeys, washing feet. He is a humble God, but a God nonetheless: goodness and holiness and love. But where is he? Why would God make us only to abandon us?

We look deeper, approach his throne, and we find that he died. Bloody and bruised and dead. A slave's death. Evil had it's way with him, exhausted it's weapon - Death - against him. So even still we have been abandoned. We mourn the loss of our God. Dead and in the grave. God did not abandon us, he died. And yet we are still abandoned. And so we mourn.

But we are also comforted, for a sacrifice has been made. By mechanism, temples demand a sacrifice. The sacrifice is inevitable. Two go in a temple; one returns. One goes in; they don't come out whole. We are his temple. Someone is destined to die. We have been abandoned by God, but now we don't have to die.

But he's not dead. He's alive again. He is God: Life, Being, Reality itself. He is everything beautiful and good and just. He is Love. God is not just alive he is Life and Resurrection. He is here.

And we are terrified. The living God is more horrifying than the dead God. The presence of God, more horrifying than his absence. If he is absent, we free. If he is present, we are condemned.

And so we run. We, his temples, hid dwelling places, flee from him, abandoned him.

Why would God make us?

I'm meditating on the horror of abandonment. On how our world has become hidden and desolate and broken down. A Wasteland Temple. But it is not that God abandoned us, but that we abandoned God. We violently abandoned him, and our temple was destroyed. Now a wasteland is in its place.

God forbid God be God.

[pepsimaxolotl]

Hot take: I dont want king charles to die from his current sickness.

Cause while it'd be very funny, honestly at this point im more upset and worried about the insane amount of money that'd be spent on his funeral and William V's coronation than any joy I'd feel from seeing another rich royal racist pedo die. That money should be spent on the people rather than celebrating some inbred people who happened to decend from William I.

[todaysdocument]

The Yuma County Water Users Association wrote to the Immigration and Naturalization Service on April 23, 1943, asking that Mexican workers from neighboring Sonora be allowed to stay in the U.S. to help with the harvest. 

Record Group 85: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service

Series: Subject and Policy Files

File Unit: 55854/100H

Transcription: 

[stamps read "SPECIAL" and "VIA WESTERN UNION"]

WUG 26 111

YUMA ARIZ APR 23 148P

EARL H HARISON COMM IMMI AND NAT

DIV DEPT OF JUSTICE

THIS FARMING AREA RAISING ALFALFA FLAX AND OTHER VITAL WAR CROPS SERIOUSLY SHORT OF FARM LABOR BUT SITUATION COULD BE RELIEVED IF MEXICANS FROM ADJACENT SONORA WERE ALLOWED TO HELP IN HARVEST NOW COMMENCING. SOME SONORA MEXICANS HAVE DRIFTED IN DURING THE PAST FEW MONTHS BUT FACE IMMEDIATE DEPORTATION. MEXICANS RECRUITED BY A F S FROM INTERIOR MEXICOS HIGH ALTITUDE AND COOL CLIMATE CANNOT STAND OUT HEAD AND MOST OF THEM HAVE LEFT. BORDER MEXICANS FROM SONORA AN LOWER CALIFORNIA USED TO OUR CLIMATE ARE EXPERIENCED FARMERS. THIS HELP ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO HARVEST VITALLY ESSENTIAL WAR CROPS. CAN DEPORTATION BE STAVED TEMPORARILY OR UNTIL AUTHORITY FOR LEGAL ENTRY CAN BE SECURED

YUMA COUNTY WATER USERS ASSOCIATION HENRY FRAUENFELDER PRESIDENT.

FSA

725P.

[Pencil marks reads "/3/6" or "1316"]

[stamp reads "A MESSAGE CENTER P.M. APR 23 (illegible) & NATZ SERVICE DEPT OF JUSTICE" and "SPECIAL"]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"This morning I met Hans, who has a cell in the same block [in the New York Detention Headquarters.] The dayroom was pretty dirty, and since no one else seemed interested in doing more than .sweeping it, I located a bucket of hot water and a mop and set to work. In a few minutes Hans, who had been sitting on the bench holding his head in his hands, got another mop and began to help me. While we worked we fell into conversation. His turned out to be another of the tragedies caused by the artificial barriers we frightened humans have interposed between each other: in this case, the immigration barrier.

Hans came to this country twenty years ago from Germany, by the simple expedient of jumping ship. Although he as in the country illegally, he had no difficulties until the war came along. He is quite obviously a conscientious, hardworking and thrifty person, who established himself in a good job as an electrical worker, married, and began to raise a family. He and his wife saved their money and were able to furnish a home and buy a car. They have a little girl four years old and another child born two weeks ago.

The draft came to Hans like the foreknowledge of doom. He registered, and hoped they wouldn't get to him, since he was nearing 38. They let him alone for a while, but eventually his luck broke. He passed his physical examination and got orders to report for induction. Apparently he was neither more anxious nor more reluctant than other men his age to go into the Army, but he was convinced the Army would soon find out about his illegal entry and intern him as an enemy alien. So he skipped.

The months that followed must have been nerve-racking. He had to quit his job, of course, and the little family had to move. He could not earn much, because he could take only jobs that did not inquire too closely into his background. They sold the car first thing; later they sold the nice new furniture, too, and bought what Hans scornfully called "junk." And, of course, they were always on edge.

A neighbor's curious question, or a stranger loitering on the corner, would be enough to make them move. They became hunted things, losing their freedom by the very effort they made to keep it.Eventually, of course, the FBI caught him. Now he has a sentence of three years, with the likelihood of deportation after the war, and worry and grief weigh him down like physical burdens. We talked for quite a while, and I tried to cheer him a little—the only success I had, though, was when I promised to have Dot look up his wife and see that she gets help if she needs it."

- Alfred Hassler, Diary of a Self-Made Convict. Foreword by Harry Elmer Barnes. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1954 (written 1944-1945), p. 13-14.

[shamballalin]

Veterans Are Valiant Heroes ~ God Bless Our Vets ~ Repost

Veterans have served the United States of America with valor and honor. Veterans do not ask what political side you are on. Veterans are not suckers or losers. Project 2025 plans on cutting Veteran’s Disability Benefits. This is no way to honor any veteran who has honorably served this country. It’s time to honor all veterans who have honored this country, the United States of America, with…

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Learning About National Hispanic Heritage Month?

Discover Latino Heros Who Fought Fascism Intro I started out writing about National Hispanic Heritage Month and look where I ended up. My outrage at hearing immigrants and asylum seekers, including Latinos, called criminals and worse, found its way into the story, as you will see. Yet, in the process of doing a bit of research, I was touched by learning of Hispanic heroes who fought fascism,…

[dailyworldecho]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

This evening, racist cat-eating hoax-pusher Donald Trump told NewsNation reporter Ali Bradley in an exclusive interview for the network that he would revoke the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio if he is elected “President” again. The cat-eating hoax was started by Trump’s ticketmate and Ohio Senator JD Vance. Dear Mr. Trump, the folks that are on TPS status are here legally, despite your feverish insinuations otherwise. 

Read the full story at Daily Kos.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Mrs. Juliette Rosenbaum (second from right) stands on pier in New York on July 22, 1946 with her son, Andrew, and her two daughters, Gabriela (second from left) and Katherine, after arrival on board the Swedish-American Liner Drottningholm. Mrs. Rosenbaum and her daughters, exhibiting concentration camp numbers tattooed on their left arms, are survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Andrew was in a concentration camp at Mauthausen, Austria. The family is en route to Passaic, New Jersey.

Photo: Associated Press

[hunterofartemis151]

Hey folks, because I apparently enjoy torture and can't get an answer online, I have a question about immigration, and I was hoping someone who knows a ton about immigration, especially immigration to the US in the 1940s, could help me. Basically, if there was a family of Scottish immigrants, two parents and a kid of about two or three years of age, how would the parents go about getting the child citizenship? I for the most part understand the bit for the adults, though clarification would be appreciated, but I can't find much information on toddlers becoming citizens. Thanks!

[elarpa-stuff]

The Troublesome Irish Refugees in Spain

This is the story of the troublesome Irish Refugees in Spain. Immigration and refugees are two interlinked concepts that seem unmistakably modern. Continue reading The Troublesome Irish Refugees in Spain