The People's Record

350,000 to 500,000 people take to the streets of Dallas, Texas & demand immigration reform & a more just life in the United States
May 6, 2013

Thousands gathered Sunday in downtown Dallas to call for an immigration system overhaul as the Senate considers a proposal to legalize some of the estimated 11 million people who are in the U.S. unlawfully.

At the front of a march that began at the Cathedral Shrine of Our Virgin of Guadalupe were Catholic Bishop Kevin J. Farrell, an immigrant from Ireland, and Domingo García, a Dallas lawyer and one of the demonstration’s organizers.

“This nation was founded and built on immigrants, and we must continue to always welcome the immigrant in our midst,” Bishop Farrell said as the crowd clapped. The bishop drew more applause when he switched to Spanish and said he prayed that the nation’s leaders “accept and treat every person with justice.”

The march stretched for several blocks, bringing out families, college students and other supporters of the cause. A crowd estimate wasn’t available from police, but the turnout was a fraction of a similar march in 2006 that police said drew 350,000 to 500,000 people.

When the marchers arrived at Dallas City Hall, a Cinco de Mayo festival paused as the Pledge of Allegiance was recited and “The Star-Spangled Banner” was sung.

Dallas County Commissioner Elba García told the crowd: “We want immigration reform now. No more excuses!” Her husband, Domingo García, added, “The march is not over until President Obama signs an immigration bill.”

Angel Mondragon, an immigrant from Mexico City, carried a handmade placard that read, “Gays also want an immigration reform.” Mondragon said he loves the U.S. “I am gay and I have more opportunity here. People give me more respect here.” But the Senate measure doesn’t provide a provision that recognizes same-sex bi-national couples — a fact highlighted by various gay advocacy groups on the national level.

Some marchers and speakers noted the recent record deportations in the U.S. of about 400,000 a year. Hector Flores, a past national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Roberto Corona, an immigrant leader demanded that deportations should end. Through hard work within the United States, Corona said, “we have earned this immigration reform.”

Source

MAY 1 LOS ANGELES SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

12:00pm: Long Beach Revolutionaries : Back in Actions @ Pershing Square

2:00pm: Occupy LA Meet @ Pershing Square

2:30pm: March to Olympic and Figueroa

3:00pm: Join with Occupy Fights Foreclosures to SHUT DOWN Wells Fargo

4:00pm: Join the SCIC march @ Broadway & Olympic to march for FULL legalization for all!

7:30pm OLA General Assembly @ Pershing Square

Neighboring Occupations are also holding their own events this year! For more information, please visit their Facebook pages:

• Occupy San Fernando Valley
• Occupy Venice Beach

Additional Information:

• http://occupylosangeles.org/
• http://www.immigrationcoalition.org/
• http://www.occupyfightsforeclosures.org/

This was all from that first link that was posted after the question. The other two links were for these Facebook pages:

• One for LA in general
• & one for UCLA

Thank you to everyone who submitted links to answer this person’s questions!

Undocumented youth infiltrates another immigration detention center: Read what she discovered
April 19, 2013

When I spoke with Claudia Muñoz two weeks ago, she said she was tired of fearing the moment when authorities might arbitrarily place her in detention. Because she arrived in Texas from Mexico at the age of 16, the 27-year-old is ineligible for Obama’s deferred action for students—and that means it might be easier for her to be deported. So Muñoz decided to take the matter into her own hands, and infiltrate a detention facility. “I’m the one who’s going to determine the moment when I’m detained, and the moment when I’m released,” she said.

Muñoz was apprehended a week-and-a-half ago by customs agents near the US-Canada border, and has been working to document the stories of immigrant women housed at the Calhoun County Correctional Facility near Detroit, Michigan. She works with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NIYA), which has infiltrated detention centers in the past with the aim of organizing with detainees on the inside. The facility holds just thirteen undocumented women—among non-immigrant inmates held for more serious charges.

Since her detention, Muñoz has managed to call me collect several times to explain what she’s found. Each of those collect calls costs $9.99—paid to a private contractor that specializes in jailhouse communications services—and ends at exactly five minutes, with several precious seconds lost in the one-minute warning message. Muñoz says she was prepared for the rather deplorable conditions: it’s often cold, and the food is often inedible, so inmates and detainees go hungry.

What she didn’t expect were the daily lockdowns. Two or three times daily, immigrant detainees and inmates accused of varying crimes are locked into cells for a few hours at a time. Early on, Muñoz says her cellmate explained the solicitation charges she was facing, and asked her why she was in. When Muñoz told her it was because she didn’t have papers, her cellmate didn’t seem to get it. “But what did you do?” she questioned. Muñoz says she had to explain that simply being undocumented has landed her in jail.

Since her arrival at Calhoun, she’s been in contact with NIYA, which last week highlighted the imminent removal of Everlida Calvo Sanchez—a woman who is the primary caretaker of three children who feared being deported to Guatemala, where her own sister was murdered just two years ago. Although she was set to be deported last Friday, immigration authorities opted to allow her stay after a barrage of phone calls and petition emails demanded a halt to her deportation.

Now, NIYA is focused on more cases. Wanda Rivas Rivas was detained after a traffic stop for a broken taillight revealed she had an expired driver’s license. Rivas does have an old deportation order, but fears returning to El Salvador because of extreme violence there. Members of her entire family in the US have temporary protected status to shield them from such a circumstance.

Muñoz met Gustavo Vargas when she was first detained, and although the two are now housed in a separate facility, NIYA is brining attention to his case. Vargas, a local entrepreneur and the father to four US citizen children, was deported more than a dozen years ago but returned in order to take care of his family. The group hopes that phone calls and petition emails will make immigration authorities reconsider all of these cases.

Muñoz has had little face-to-face contact with the outside world—undocumented immigrants are not allowed to visit her in jail. But a visit from Steve Pavey changed that last week. Pavey, an applied anthropologist who works with the One Horizon Institute, become involved with undocumented youth in 2010 during a bus ride with some seventy undocumented youth from Kentucky to Washington, DC.

Pavey says he was surprised when he saw the jail—which he says looks more like a corporate business office complex than anything else. Once inside, Pavey and Muñoz shared horrific stories about women in detention. At Calhoun, nine of the thirteen women there have children under the age of ten at home. But Pavey says that what might seem like the last stop before deportation has changed with Muñoz’s presence. After Calvo Sanchez was released last week, women began to have hope about making their stories public. “Claudia Muñoz has come in on her own will, in one sense,” explains Pavey. “And that’s shining hope for other women in that space in the midst of the awful despair of family separation.”

Activists are now calling for an immediate investigation into Michigan Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Director Rebecca Adducci, and corrections officer J. Jolin, who acts as an ICE liaison. They say Adducci has willfully ignored federal directives to release those detainees with low-priority cases. Jolin, meanwhile, is a local deputy who Muñoz says has verbally harassed detainees—including threatening long prison sentences for those who don’t sign voluntary departure agreements. Jolin is also married to the federal deportation officer in charge at the jail, which may signal a conflict of interest.

Despite the conditions as she approaches two weeks into her detention, Muñoz says she’s doing fine, and it’s the other women and men being unfairly held that worry her the most.

Source

Pictured: Claudia Muñoz at a news conference on the DREAM Act.

At least 28 immigrants shot at Greece strawberry plantation after not being paid for six months
April 19, 2013

Greek police are hunting three strawberry plantation foremen, who are suspected of shooting nearly 30 workers, mostly Bangladeshi, after immigrants demanded wages they had not been paid for six months.

Officials have promised “swift and exemplary” punishment for the three foremen who disappeared after the incident that took place on April, 17 in Nea Manolada, about 260km (160 miles) west of Athens.

So far police arrested the owner of the farm, in the rural south of the country and a local man on suspicion of hiding the three foremen.

The violence allegedly occurred when one of the supervisors opened fire on a crowd of about 200 foreign workers gathered to request their unpaid salaries.

According to one of the immigrants, they were promised wages of 22 euros ($28.70) a day.

“They keep telling us that we will get paid in a month, and this has been going on for more than a year,” Reuters quoted a man who refused to be identified.

The conflict resulted in at least 28 people being injured. Seven Bangladeshi workers are still receiving treatment in local hospitals, but none of them has life-threatening injuries.

The Greek government has condemned the “inhuman, unprecedented and shameful” shooting.

“This unprecedented and shameful act is foreign to Greek ethics,” government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said.

At the same time, the country’s main labor union, GSEE, has accused the government of failing to properly investigate conditions at Manolada.

“The criminal act in Manolada … shows the tragic results of labor exploitation, combined with a lack of control” [by the government labor inspectorate]”, a GSEE statement said. “In Manolada, and particularly in the strawberry plantations, a sort of state within a state has been created.”

Wednesday’s attack has been called the worst of all recent attacks on migrant strawberry workers in Greece, the country that mostly Asian and African asylum seekers see as a gateway to the European Union.

The Greek department of the Doctors of the World medical aid group suggested the shooting should be treated as a case of racist violence, a felony which carries more severe penalties.

“The protracted financial crisis, combined with a constantly growing mood of xenophobia and tolerance for racist violence, is leading to incidents of barbarity and brutality that … insult Greece,” the group said.  

Following the violence, local supermarkets, Vasilopoulos and Chalkiadakis, announced that they would stop selling strawberries from the company that employed the alleged shooters.

Activists are now calling for a boycott of what they call slavery, by not buying Manolada berries.  

“By boycotting #Manolada’s #bloodstrawberries you’re sending a clear message that you do not condone slavery,” reads the statement on Twitter.

However, there are some who believe that illegally hired immigrant workers should be deported from crisis stricken Greece.

With unemployment hitting a record 27 percent, anti-immigrant sentiment has been rising in the country.

Right-wing extremist political party, Golden Dawn, which holds 18 seats of the 300-member Parliament, said in a statement Thursday that they “condemn those who illegally employ illegal immigrants, taking the bread away from thousands of Greek families.”

“All illegal immigrants must be immediately deported,” it said.

Source

sinidentidades:

Guillermo Campos-Ojeda says goodbye to his wife Adela and daughter Paloma before boarding a deportation flight chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2010.

Just a daily reminder that 1.6 million people have been deported under the Obama administration. That’s an average of 32,886 each month, which is about 1.5 times as many as under Bush. 

(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)

More than 1200 people marched throughout downtown El Paso, Texas & in nearly 25 other cities across the US today fighting for immigrants’ rights & a comprehensive, humane immigration reform. 

I was at this march in El Paso & it was incredible to see how many children & older community members were there. These are the communities hit hardest by harsh immigration laws that tear families apart. 

Visit our Facebook page for more photos. Feel free to share your own photos from any #A10 actions on our wall, too!  

(Source: thepeoplesrecord.com)

April 10 is the National Day of Action for Immigrants’ Rights

• There have been a record 1.6 million deportations under the Obama administration.
• That number is set to reach 2 million by 2014.
• On average, there have been 32,886 deportations per month under Obama. Under Bush, there were an average of 20,964 deportations monthly, and 9,059 deportations each month under Clinton.
• Nearly as many people have been deported under this administration than during the years between 1892 to 1997.
• One quarter of deported immigrants are parents to children born in the US.
• The US spends more on immigration law enforcement than all other law enforcement combined. 
• The federal government spent $18 billion in immigration law enforcement during the 2012 fiscal year. 
• There are about 11.1 million undocumented immigrants living in the US. 

#NOT1MORE #NIUNAMAS

Photo source

Study: About one construction worker dies a day in Texas
April 8, 2013

Wage theft, it’s a problem that is not only occurring in El Paso, it’s an epidemic. All this according to a local group who is working with employes who are not at least minimum wage.

Juan Carlos Casteneda was a construction worker in El Paso, but says he was fired after asking his employer a simple question.

“I talked to him and I asked him why he didn’t pay me. And then I was fired,” Casteneda said.

Elena Arrevalo also says she was fired from her job at a dry cleaners after asking why she wasn’t paid.

“I was threatened. They said they were going to call the police, or they would call immigration,” Arrevalo told us.

Casteneda’s and Arrevalo’s stories are unfortunately very familiar here in Texas and both are seeking help with the Labor Justice Committee.

“The Labor Justice Committee was started to try and fight this epidemic of unpaid wages. Wage theft we call it,” Shalini Thomas, a member of the Labor Justice Committee said.

The group is working with Arrevalo and Castenda. But so far, they say, neither of their former employers are working with them.

“We worked hard for him. Monday through Friday, sometimes Saturday. And you paid us half,” Casteneda claimed.

Casteneda says he worked for a construction company here in El Paso, a sector which is riddled with many problems here in Texas.

“Texas is the most deadly state for construction workers,” according to Thomas.

Thomas cited a recent study out of the University of Texas, at Austin. The study claims more than 40 percent of construction workers were found to be victims of payroll fraud and were misclassified as independent contractors.

“Texas is the only state that does not mandate workers compensation and because of that we have almost an average of one worker death a day,” Thomas told us.

To beat these statistics the group is working with all workers who feel they are not getting paid fairly.

“The only way to stop that situation is you come forward, you talk to us about what’s going on, and we do everything we can to make sure you’re getting a fair wage,” Thomas said.  

Source

Half of all construction workers in Texas are undocumented. 

Undocumented children are crossing the US border alone in increasing numbers
March 26, 2013

They miss their parents, whom they haven’t seen in years. Or they’re escaping poverty and neglect, or violence. So the kids come across the border by themselves—and their numbers are increasing, even as illegal immigration trends down or stays flat.

Interview: waging the fight for migrant justice from under a border patrol truck
March 13, 2013

As with many deportations, René Meza Huerta’s started with a traffic stop. The Tucson Police Department (TPD) had received a call about a suspected kidnapping of six children from a man who saw Huerta’s and his girlfriend’s children getting into the hatchback of their newly purchased 99 Mercury Cougar. TPD was searching for the car when they pulled Huerta over in the early afternoon of Sunday, February 17. After determining that no kidnapping had taken place, TPD officers asked Huerta for his driver’s license, a document he did not have. Deciding that they had probable cause to suspect Huerta was in the country without proper documentation, TPD called the Border Patrol (BP), which came to detain him.

This is a scene that plays out constantly in communities within 100 air miles of the US-Mexico border, the so-called “constitution-free zone” where BP has expansive powers of search and seizure. In Arizona, this is compounded by Senate Bill 1070 (also called SB 1070), the state’s infamous 2010 “show me your papers” law that was partially upheld by the US Supreme Court in June of 2011. Section 2(b) of the law, which was not struck down, requires all state law enforcement officers, “when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person, except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation,” when “reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States.”

There’s a lot about Huerta’s deportation that makes it totally unexceptional, most importantly that it resulted in the separation of yet another parent from his children. What sets it apart is that somebody tried to stop it: Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa, a day labor organizer with the Southside Worker Center and member of the migrant justice group Corazón de Tucson.

Ochoa’s decision to place himself under a BP truck to prevent the detention and likely deportation of Huerta was a bold act of civil disobedience and a tremendous personal risk. Ochoa, who was born in Mexico, is a legal permanent resident, meaning that he is subject to deportation if convicted of certain crimes. Ochoa’s and Huerta’s arrests sparked a 300-strong protest in front of TPD’s headquarters the next day, little more than 12 hours after the previous afternoon’s events. Attendees demanded the immediate release without charges of both men, an end to TPD/BP collaboration and a halt to all deportations.

Truthout interviews Raúl Ochoa below.

Murphy Joseph Woodhouse for Truthout: Could you give me a brief account of what happened and what you did the afternoon of Sunday, February 17?

Raúl Alcaraz Ochoa: I was biking from my home to a community meeting. About a block east of there, just as I was about to arrive at the meeting, I saw three Tucson Police Department vehicles that had pulled over a car to my left on a corner one street over. I walked my bike to the scene, and I saw that there was a man who was handcuffed and in the custody of the police officers. I approached the car and there were six kids inside, six children. They were scared; they were startled; they were crying. I approached René’s partner and she was crying and she really didn’t know what to do. She explained to me what had happened. She said that they got pulled over by the police and that [the police] had called the Border Patrol.

When she told me this, I took out my notebook and I started writing everything down: the time, the officers’ names, the patrol car numbers, just as much information as I could. An officer approached me; he was a sergeant. He asked me if I needed help. I immediately asked him, “Why did you call Border Patrol on this family?”

When I asked that, he said, “My officers are obligated and required to call Border Patrol because of SB 1070.” I responded to that, “You actually have discretion even within 1070. You only need call Border Patrol when practicable and if it’s not going to hinder another investigation.” And then he told me that they had received a call that René had abducted children and that’s why they had stopped him.

“So you mean to tell me that these children in the middle of the street crying for their father because you have him handcuffed - are you telling me that these children were abducted by him?” And then he said: “Well, no no no no. We determined, after the investigation, that that was not the case, that he was not abducting the children.”

“So why is he still handcuffed?” I asked. “Why is he under your custody?” That’s when he said that they had reasonable suspicion to believe that he was undocumented. Then I asked him to define what reasonable suspicion was and why René was reasonably suspicious. He refused to answer and threatened to have me arrested if I didn’t leave. I told him I wasn’t going to move because I was on a public sidewalk within a reasonable distance and I wasn’t interfering with any of his duties. Then the Border Patrol came onto the scene. It was one vehicle and one agent. Once the Border Patrol parked, I immediately thought “I’m going to get under the vehicle. I’m going to try to impede as much as possible them taking away this father away from his crying children.”

Once I got closer to the Border Patrol vehicle and I saw that the agent was walking toward the vehicle with René handcuffed, I immediately rushed in front of the vehicle and lay down on the ground and crawled underneath the vehicle. As soon as I did, the officers rushed up to the vehicle and screamed, “What the hell are you doing?” And then one of them grabbed me by the arm and then he let go like he was really confused and surprised. They didn’t know how to respond. When he let go of me, that’s when I crawled deeper underneath the car. The Border Patrol agents were taking pictures of me and I was taking pictures back. I was calling people, sending messages and telling people to come. Then the Border Patrol agent came up to me and said if I didn’t leave the area, if I didn’t get out from underneath the vehicle, then I would get felony charges for impeding the work of a federal agent. They threatened to pepper-spray and Taser me. Eventually they pepper-sprayed me to get me out, and then they dragged me on the concrete floor until we were in an area where they could handcuff me and take me away to the Border Patrol station. That’s where René and I were taken.

Why did you feel compelled to intervene?

I work with day laborers, with domestic workers, with mothers and fathers, and youth. On a regular basis I receive calls from people, friends, colleagues, coworkers, who tell me they have been stopped by the police and that they may potentially call Border Patrol. Sometimes I don’t even know that this happens until I get a call from somebody in detention who has been incarcerated. Police pull them over, stop them and then call Border Patrol. This happens on a regular basis. This is daily life in Tucson, Arizona, in one of the most militarized regions of the continent. I regularly hear about my community, my family members, my coworkers being taken, pulled over by police and then handed over to Border Patrol and disappeared from their communities: torn apart, family separation, community disruption taking place invisibly. I constantly deal with the effects of detentions and deportations and how they tear people and families apart. I have witnessed firsthand the effects of all of these injustices that take place.

After dealing with them from the time I was little and detained along with my parents when we were crossing over to the United States when I was young, all the way to my auntie getting her house raided by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents, to working here in Tucson, Arizona, amidst SB 1070, and working with families and day laborers and them constantly getting pulled over, harassed and incarcerated, I felt like enough is enough. We do everything that we can; we document when abuse happens; we take pictures; we show videos. But at this point, seeing René being handcuffed in front of his six children, and his six children crying their eyes out and screaming for their father to be given back to them, and then just thinking that these are children who are possibly not going to have their dad with them this evening at home, comforting them, I felt like I needed to do something that was more than just document what was going on. I felt like I needed to put my body on the line to interrupt this detention from taking place. That’s what I felt needed to be done at the moment. I needed to do everything in my power to be able to attempt to stop this injustice that takes place due to unjust immigration and state laws.

In your view, what is the importance of direct action and civil disobedience in the context of the ongoing debate around immigration policy?

Currently, the only thing that can save us from the right-wing immigration reform debate is grassroots community organizing, direct action and civil disobedience. If there is no massive movement that resurfaces again, much like the DREAMers have done in the past and continue to do, if there isn’t a focus on strategizing around community organizing and direct action, then our movement is going to be hijacked and co-opted by the center-right tendencies of the big national Hispanic organizations that claim to represent us.

In the conversations around immigration reform, I believe it is key to demand a moratorium on deportation, ending detention and family separation, and a halt to the militarization of the US-Mexico border. To give voice to those demands, we are going to need to continue and escalate civil disobedience and direct action. In order to be able to amplify these messages and these demands that don’t have the mainstream appeal within the movement, I think we need to learn from the actions that the DREAMers have done, the UndocuBus, the civil disobedience that took place in North Carolina and along the journey to North Carolina, where undocumented people were speaking for themselves and making that sacrifice and taking that risk to come out of the shadows, undocumented and unafraid. That’s where the power lies.

It is up to people power, how much the people believe in their own power and act on that power to really create political pressure for an immigration reform that truly lives up to our visions of equity and liberation; an immigration reform that will be meaningful and that will include all of the 11 million people who are undocumented at the moment. Living under this deportation regime, I am not sure this can happen, but we must utilize all direct action tactics to make our undocumented dreams a reality.

Read more here

Dear educators and allies,

Thank you for being incredible advocates for undocumented youth. As you may know, the NYS Youth Leadership Council is an undocumented youth-led organization built to fight for the rights of undocumented youth. For the past three years, we have been working on advocating for the New York Dream, a bill that would allow undocumented youth to access financial aid for their college education.  One of the key people who can make the New York DREAM Act a reality is Governor Cuomo, who can include the bill in his executive budget which is being finalized next week. Right now, it seems that he is not convinced that including the NY DREAM Act in his budget is the right thing to do, so we need to be united and strong in our demand that he do the right thing and allow young, promising people in NY State to access financial aid.

We believe that the best way to get his attention is by holding a human chain around his midtown New York City office (633 Third Avenue) this Tuesday, March 19, 2013 from 1:00-1:30pm. A human chain is a safe and effective way to show Governor Cuomo that we are united as advocates who believe that all people, regardless of their immigration status, have the right to go to college and realize their full potential. We know that this is very short notice, however there is still time to act to convince Governor Cuomo that this is the right thing to do. Passing the NY DREAM Act would change the lives of thousands of young, promising people in NY who dream of going to college. Please forward this on to your networks.

Sincerely,

Dominique Hernandez
Field Organizer
P | 646-484-8537

—
From Dominique Hernandez <dominique@nysylc.org> at YLC - please pass along to your networks and be in touch with her if you can hard confirm.

anarcho-queer:

New York Millionaire On Trial For Keeping A Slave In Her Mansion

Millionaire socialite Annie George, 40, went on trial Tuesday for allegedly keeping an undocumented immigrant as a “slave” in her upstate New York mansion.

According to CBS 6 in Albany, Valsamma Mathai, 49, testified Tuesday that she was held in the 30,000 square foot, 26-bedroom Llenroc Mansion in Rexford, New York for six and a half years as she worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and slept in a walk-in closet.

Mathai, an undocumented immigrant from India, said she was picked up at a New York bus station by George’s late husband Mathai Kolath George, who spoke her native tongue and offered a job that would pay $1,000 per month — a significant raise over the $100 per month she was making.

When she arrived, however, Mathai claims she did not have her passport or visa, and soon discovered she wasn’t allowed to leave.

It wasn’t until the National Human Trafficking Resource Center received a tip from the woman’s son, who prosecutors said recorded a conversation with George, that agents came to her rescue. A criminal complaint was filed last March.

George is facing a charge of harboring an undocumented immigrant, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

That the worst thing they could charge this woman with is ‘harboring an undocumented immigrant,’ & that that’s a crime that carries a potential sentence of 10 years in prison is baffling. This woman should face criminal prosecution, but not for giving shelter to another human being.

How ‘bout false imprisonment or kidnapping or torture or extortion? What does it say about our criminal justice system that HARBORING AN UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT is worse and/or more prosecutable than all those other things?

Student organizers & the ACLU protest Georgia regents’ exclusion of undocumented citizens whom they call ‘illegals’
March 6, 2013

Student protesters and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Georgia called on the State Board of Regents Wednesday to eliminate a policy that bans undocumented citizens from attending the state’s top colleges.

The ban, which went into place in fall 2011, prohibits ‘illegal immigrants’ from attending colleges that are the most sought after, under the logic that, if there are white students in Georgia being turned away because smarter, more capable undocumented citizens are being admitted to the best schools, then that’s a terrible thing because white people in the U.S. south should always be treated preferentially. This year it applied to University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Georgia Health Sciences and Georgia College & State universities.

Undocumented citizens (often referred to by racists as ‘illegals’) may attend other colleges in the University System of Georgia, provided they pay out-of-state tuition.

A rally against the ban was held in Athens. The ACLU also sent the regents a letter calling on them to reconsider the policy.

The regents have repeatedly refused to rescind the rule. They are racists.

Source

Here are just a few of the largest budget cuts from the sequester that went into effect on March 1. $85 billion will be cut in 2013 with $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years.

Health care

• $20 million cut from the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Programs 
• $10 million cut from the World Trade Center Health Program Fund 
• $168 million cut from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 
• $75 million cut from the Aging and Disability Services Programs

Housing

• $199 million cut from public housing 
• $96 million cut from Homeless Assistance Grants 
• $17 million cut from Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS 
• $19 million cut from Housing for the Elderly 
• $175 million cut from Low Income Home Energy Assistance

Disaster and Emergency

• $928 million cut from FEMA’s disaster relief money 
• $6 million cut from Emergency Food and Shelter
• $70 million cut from the Agricultural Disaster Relief Fund at USDA
• $61 million cut from the Hazardous Substance Superfund at EPA
• $125 million cut from the Wildland Fire Management
• $53 million cut from Salaries and Expenses at the Food Safety and Inspection Service

Obamacare

• $13 million cut from the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Program (Co-ops)
• $57 million cut from the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control 
• $51 million cut from the Prevention and Public Health Fund 
• $27 million cut from the State Grants and Demonstrations 
• $44 million cut from the Affordable Insurance Exchange Grants program

Education

• $633 million cut from the Department of Education’s Special Education programs 
• $184 million cut from Rehabilitation Services and Disability Research 
• $71 million cut from administration at the Office of Federal Student Aid 
• $116 million cut from Higher Education 
• $86 million cut from Student Financial Assistance

Immigration

• $512 million cut from Customs and Border Protection 
• $17 million cut from Automation Modernization, Customs and Border Protection 
• $20 million cut from Border Security Fencing, Infrastructure, and Technology

Security

• $79 million cut from Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance 
• $604 million cut from National Nuclear Security Administration 
• $232 million cut from the Federal Aviation Administration 
• $394 million cut from Defense Environmental Cleanup

Source