Immigration

This is my Cue to Go to Law School: The Adoption Case of Carlos Bail

Published on by Lisa

There’s nothing, NOTHING, I tell you, like waking up Monday morning, checking my social media and finding cases like this.

Nutshell, here’s the timeline of events:

ICE RAID–>Bail is incarcerated for immigration violation –> loses custody of son –> son is bounced around before being officially adopted by a midclass family who just fell in love with him –> Bail’s lawyer appeals and loses –> case itself is bounced around, going all the way up to the Missouri Supreme Court and now awaits until December 6 for the next step in this custody hearing

What can be gathered from this undocumented mother is that she broke a law of identity theft and immigration.

And OUR legal says that that choice to steal identity, to find her way to our land of eroding yet unsympathizing immigration laws, and to steal identity to, probably, protect herself so she can make her way through this country is so egregious that she loses custody of her own son to a childless middle class family and changes his name and now “lives a wonderful life.” Even though that wonderful life also means he very likely may never see his birth mother ever again. In the eyes of the law, Bail “abandoned” her son by breaking the law and being thrown in jail.

At every level of this case, one can see how we, as a nation, with our idea of “justice” and “what a wonderful life” means, we continue to criminalize and demonize the undocumented people of our nation which was founded on the backs of immigrants. We, as a nation, continue to exploit the labor and, clearly now, children of these laborers who we want to give wonderful lives to without any regard of the definition of family, sanctity of family, or respect for the family relationship. With these legal decisions, favoring adopting middle class families, we continue to support the colonizing ideals of taking what is not ours, of upholding the rights and needs of the privileged over the lives of those who we perceive as alien or foreign. In this matter of a child, I can scarcely understand how this is one of the most gross interpretations of justice and a complete travesty of human rights.

For a mother to be separated from her child is an immeasurable trauma. For a child to be legally stolen from her mother is an immeasurable and perilous trend that I fear may affect the millions of children of undocumented beings in the US.

Raging About Deportation

Published on by Lisa

My mother called me crying about this story. The Servanos are friends of my parents.

After 25 years of building their lives here in the United States, the Servanos are likely to be deported back to the Philippines. After an error in paperwork that led to a 17 year battle, the Servanos are left with little choices but to return “home” after they raised their four children in this country, two of which are still in grade school.

Now while most stories of immigration typically surround the Latin@ community, it’s easy to forget that there are other populations affected by the letters from “homeland security.”
After all, what’s 25 years, 4 children, and roots compared to a piece of paper that indicated you were single and not married when you applied for a visa? These laws of immigration are so inhuman that I can’t think right now. This family is going to be torn apart after nearly 3 decades of growing roots in the US soil. This country, a country of immigrants, a nation of “aliens” reserves the right to destroy any “illegals” because one question was inaccurate.

I’m so enraged, I can’t blog straight. Read about it here.

Poor Migrant Workers At Risk

Published on by Lisa

Asia’s migrant workers need more state help to curb AIDS

Millions of migrant workers in Asia who lack sufficient access to health services are threatened be spread of AIDS, regional activists say.

“For a comprehensive approach to contain HIV/AIDS, the health of not only local populations but also migrant communities needs to be addressed,” CARAM Asia, a Malaysian-based coalition of migrant and health groups from 15 countries, said in an open letter to Asian governments late Monday.

There are now about 53 million migrant workers in Asia who are vulnerable to HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, because of their relative lack of access to HIV-prevention programs, health counseling and medical tests, CARAM Asia said.

In many cases, migrants found to be HIV-positive are deported without any help or immediate treatment, it added. It did not give estimates of how many migrant workers in Asia are HIV-positive.

Many migrant workers come from poor areas in countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They often find employment in more affluent Asian nations as housemaids and laborers in plantations, factories and construction sites.

According to recent U.N. statistics, about 8.6 million people in Asia are infected with HIV. About 500,000 people in the region die per year from AIDS and financial losses are estimated at US$10 billion (EUR7.5 billion) annually.

However, investment in HIV control in Asia remains extremely low at 10 percent of the required US$5 billion (EUR3.7 billion) per year, officials have said. The number of people in Asia infected with HIV could more than double to 20 million in the next five years without a better government response and more funding, they said.