f you are one of the 3.484 billion people who use social media and you are seeking an immigration benefit, you’ll want to think twice before posting. Since September 2019, visa applicants abroad have been required to disclose their social media profiles, past email addresses, and phone numbers. U.S. Consular Officers are required to review …
Category: Advocacy
Social Media Monitoring (2019)
Personal information gleaned from social media posts has been used to target dissent and subject religious and ethnic minorities to enhanced vetting and surveillance. Read More…
The Power of Cartoons in Global Education: An Interview with Christian Clark
Conducted by Sumita S. Chakravarty A former cartoonist and two-time Emmy-award winning writer for the Children’s Television Workshop flagship show, Sesame Street, Christian Clark works for the United Nations where he has more than 25 years of experience in communications, advocacy and public information, leading campaigns for the BBC and the UN in North America, …
Mapping Art in Times of Protest
— by Pamela Vasquez Torres Pamela Vazquez Torres is a Mexican art historian living in the Twin Cities since 2017. She is driven by the potential of art for political action and social change. Most of the store fronts that were boarded up during the Minneapolis uprising are still up and continue to appear in …
Artwork: Artist Cosimo Cavallaro Builds a Wall of Cotija Cheese at the Mexican Border (2020)
From ARTNET.com: Artist Cosimo Cavallaro is helping President Donald Trump build his controversial border wall between the US and Mexico—but his barrier is constructed not from steel and concrete, but from blocks of cotija cheese. “I don’t like walls,” said the immigrant artist in a video promoting the project. “This is a wall that I’m willing to live with. …
Artwork: Rael San Fratello, Teeter-Totter Wall (2019)
From ARTNET.com: “The art project, which has been a media sensation, is the work of architecture studio Rael San Fratello, a partnership between San Jose State interior design faculty member Virginia San Fratello and UC Berkeley architecture professor Ronald Rael, author of the 2017 book Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. Ten years in the making—the duo drew up …
Database/Community: Syria Cultural Index
Berlin based non-profit CoCulture is working with the Syrian diaspora artistic community to build connections and cohesions to provide creative outlets and structure to a traumatized community in search of social stability in unfamiliar places. More from CoCulture: CoCulture e.V. is a Berlin-based non-profit organization founded by artist and cultural activist Khaled Barakeh in 2017, …
African Migrants Stuck in Mexico Plead For Release: “Africa Weeps, Free Us”
The Los Angeles Times featured a story about African Migrants attempting to reach the southern US border to seek asylum. According the the report, over 4,779 Africans have were detained by Mexican authorities in the first seven months of 2019. Migrants told the LATimes: “We just want to get out of here, and arrive to …
Why migrants need social citizenship
Prominent political philosophers — including David Miller at Nuffield College, Oxford, and Joseph Carens at the University of Toronto — outline an account of “social membership” in receiving societies. This process unfolds over five to 10 years of work, everyday life, and the development of attachments. As Carens writes in Who Should Get In?(2003), after a period of years, …
UNHCR steps up efforts towards alternatives to detention in Libya and solutions for vulnerable refugees
UNHCR is currently negotiating with the Libyan authorities the establishment of an open reception centre that would allow refugees and asylum seekers freedom of movement, giving priority to the most vulnerable among them. In this reception centre, UNHCR could provide registration, accommodation, food, social services, counselling and support to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, …
Hotline aids families of border crossers
“There are 2,771 crosses, so 2,771 human remains since 2000,” says Cristen Vernon Coalición de Derechos Humanos, Missing Migrant Hotline coordinator for Derechos Humanos. That number, she says, only accounts for a fraction of those who have died along the entire U.S.-Mexico border. More than 6,330 people have died along the southwest border with Mexico …
La Santa Cecilia’s Music Video for “El Hielo (ICE)”
La Santa Cecilia’s Music Video for “El Hielo (ICE)” Produced by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network as part of the #Not1More series at http://notonemoredeportation.com with support of the abc* Foundation You might not suspect from its lovely, breathy lead vocal and deceptively languid, vaguely bossa nova lilt that La Santa Cecilia’s latest single, “El Hielo” …
Advocacy Blogs and National Organizations
Advocacy Blogs and National Organizations Americas Mexico Blog — It chronicles and analyzes the developments in the U.S. and the consequences in Mexico of U.S. policies in the war on drugs, immigration and globalization. Chron.com — This a blog of the Houston Chronicle newspaper. One of the blogs is about news on immigration in Mexico and the U.S. Define …
Keep our families together
End Detentions and Deportations NOW! (2013) 12-year-old DRUM youth member, Nushin Kashem, is fighting to bring her father home from detention, and for all immigrant families and youth. Join and support DRUM to build the leadership and voices of undocumented immigrants to lead the struggle for immigration reform, workers’ rights, and to roll back enforcement …
Newcomers High School: New Immigrants Share Their Stories
The students of Newcomers High School in Long Island City, which specializes in teaching recent immigrants, and those of St. Luke’s, a private middle school in Manhattan, have come together to dialogue about difference and combat bias. The Building Bridges project was created through a collaboration between Newcomers teacher Julie Mann, and St. Luke’s teacher …
Activists Protest Against the Detainment and Rampant Abuse of LGBTQ Immigrants
A number of organizations led a march on May 27, 2015 to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Washington D.C. to protest the detainment of LGBTQ undocumented immigrants. The group, “#breakthecage”, said that LGBTQ detainees are subject to a greater degree of sexual and physical assault, solitary confinement, and lack of access to medical care …
National Immigrant Youth Alliance Infiltrates Michigan ICE: Calhoun County Jail
On April 4th, 2013, Claudia Munoz, an organizer with The National Immigrant Youth Alliance, allowed for herself to be detained by Michigan immigration in order to get into detention and expose the abuses. In her weeks detained Claudia found numerous instances of ICE officials (J. Jolin) forcing detainees to sign Voluntary Departure. Claudia witnessed CBP …
Undocumented and Awkward Series by Julio Salgado
The 28-year-old artist and video producer was among dozens of undocumented immigrants featured on the 2012 cover of Time magazine who have “outed” themselves, talking publicly about their status. “As a queer individual, I know what it’s like to be in the shadows and have this secret,” Salgado tells Kurt Andersen. “And when I came out, it was …
Jose Antonio Vargas on ‘biggest story of my life’
“Documented” is the new immigration documentary from Jose Antonio Vargas that is the centerpiece film at this year’s AFI Docs festival in Washington, D.C., and it tracks the one-time Washington Post reporter’s personal story as an undocumented immigrant (he revealed his undocumented status in a New York Times magazine piece in 2011). “To me, immigration …