GOOD MORNING TO ALL:
Today is the International Migration Day. More than 250 million immigrants in the world.
The first week of January the Catholic Church commemorates Migration Week starting with the remembrance of the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt for safety.
The Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Migration and Refugees Services' department have produced a variety and very useful material in order to celebrate migration week, the first week of January and all year long. Google "migration week 2010". Share this material and information with family and friends as well with your Parish community, and invite them to join the Universal Community of the Catholic Church and all other Faith Traditions to remember Migration Week and with that our own ongoing life's long pilgrimage to God through love to our brothers and sisters.
Pope Benedict XVI wants to emphasize during this migration week the painful human drama of migrant children, the unaccompanied minors that migrant away from home within their own country and to other countries; many times abused and used. They are our world children. We are invited to become aware of these huge shameful issue in our world society, with no country who can claim they are not included in trafficking of children or abuse of immigrant children. We are called to pray, to care and to act upon this problem in our own communities and countries.
PEACE
Alejandro Siller-González, M.A.S.
San Juan Diego Project Coordinator
(Immigrants and Migrant Farmworkers /
Inmigrantes y Campesinos Migrantes.)
Mexican American Catholic College (MACC)
Friday, December 18, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
LOVE IS LIKE A CHILD
National Center of The Haitian Apostolate
Web Site: SNAA.ORG
Weekly Bulletin of The National Center of the Haitian Apostolate
December 13-December 20
2- The Christmas Gap-Editorial
***********************************************************
The Christmas Gap-Editorial
Type into the Google search engine the words “Christmas” and “Gap” these days, and you’ll get a series of stories about a Christian group calling for a boycott of Gap clothing stores, because the chain was not using the word “Christmas” in its advertising to Christmas shoppers. You’ll also see stories about Gap fighting back by using an ad that does use the word Christmas, along with Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.
In this consumer culture of ours, Christmas and Gap appear often in stories measuring the success of the season, when retailers reap a large share of their profits for the entire year. But right now, I’d like to talk about a different kind of gap: the one between rich and poor countries, between rich children and poor children. That gap is growing, and it constitutes a continuing crucifixion for Jesus, our great brother.
In this country, our children do not have enough positive models. Instead, the image they see every day in the media is the desirability of worldly success, measured in dollars earned and possessions gained. Around the globe, more than 200 million children are cruelly exploited: forced to serve as soldiers in endless wars, to work in health-threatening conditions in plantations and factories, and too often struggling through life without adequate food, clothing or health care.
Multinational corporations, focused only on profits, have shattered the unity of families. In far too many families, both parents are forced to work long hours just to pay the bills, and the children are often alone at home, with no one to guide them, teach them, care for them, discipline them, love them, for hours at a time. In our country, as in poor countries around the world, children often have to go to school hungry, if they are lucky enough to go to school at all. And when they get there, they too often find substandard buildings, inadequately trained teachers, and class sizes too large to allow for real learning.
In other words, society too often ravages our children, instead of treasuring and nurturing them. In this Christmas season, we have to remember their pain, pray for their deliverance and exhort our political leaders to help families build a more solid foundation. The anniversary of the birth of Jesus, the savior born in a stable, is an excellent time to think about these forgotten children of our planet.
In the face of all this overwhelming suffering and need, it is a cruel paradox that the powers of this world prefer to spend billions to build and buy weapons, instead of to feed, clothe and educate children. Even Dwight David Eisenhower, the former general and lifelong soldier who rose to the presidency of the United States, recognized this. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed,” Eisenhower said. “This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
As a result of this sinful structure—billions for weapons and too little for the real needs of people—millions die every year of hunger, lack of health care, and disease. If our church is to be the living presence of Jesus in our time, if it is to be true to its mission, it has no choice but to heed his words and come to the defense of the poor children.
So, as we prepare to celebrate the birthday of Jesus our great brother, we must not forget how strongly he admonished us to care for the poor. Remember: Giving to those in need is the best of all possible birthday presents for Jesus.
Frère Buteau (Brother Tob)
For The National Center
Web Site: SNAA.ORG
Weekly Bulletin of The National Center of the Haitian Apostolate
December 13-December 20
2- The Christmas Gap-Editorial
***********************************************************
The Christmas Gap-Editorial
Type into the Google search engine the words “Christmas” and “Gap” these days, and you’ll get a series of stories about a Christian group calling for a boycott of Gap clothing stores, because the chain was not using the word “Christmas” in its advertising to Christmas shoppers. You’ll also see stories about Gap fighting back by using an ad that does use the word Christmas, along with Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.
In this consumer culture of ours, Christmas and Gap appear often in stories measuring the success of the season, when retailers reap a large share of their profits for the entire year. But right now, I’d like to talk about a different kind of gap: the one between rich and poor countries, between rich children and poor children. That gap is growing, and it constitutes a continuing crucifixion for Jesus, our great brother.
In this country, our children do not have enough positive models. Instead, the image they see every day in the media is the desirability of worldly success, measured in dollars earned and possessions gained. Around the globe, more than 200 million children are cruelly exploited: forced to serve as soldiers in endless wars, to work in health-threatening conditions in plantations and factories, and too often struggling through life without adequate food, clothing or health care.
Multinational corporations, focused only on profits, have shattered the unity of families. In far too many families, both parents are forced to work long hours just to pay the bills, and the children are often alone at home, with no one to guide them, teach them, care for them, discipline them, love them, for hours at a time. In our country, as in poor countries around the world, children often have to go to school hungry, if they are lucky enough to go to school at all. And when they get there, they too often find substandard buildings, inadequately trained teachers, and class sizes too large to allow for real learning.
In other words, society too often ravages our children, instead of treasuring and nurturing them. In this Christmas season, we have to remember their pain, pray for their deliverance and exhort our political leaders to help families build a more solid foundation. The anniversary of the birth of Jesus, the savior born in a stable, is an excellent time to think about these forgotten children of our planet.
In the face of all this overwhelming suffering and need, it is a cruel paradox that the powers of this world prefer to spend billions to build and buy weapons, instead of to feed, clothe and educate children. Even Dwight David Eisenhower, the former general and lifelong soldier who rose to the presidency of the United States, recognized this. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed,” Eisenhower said. “This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
As a result of this sinful structure—billions for weapons and too little for the real needs of people—millions die every year of hunger, lack of health care, and disease. If our church is to be the living presence of Jesus in our time, if it is to be true to its mission, it has no choice but to heed his words and come to the defense of the poor children.
So, as we prepare to celebrate the birthday of Jesus our great brother, we must not forget how strongly he admonished us to care for the poor. Remember: Giving to those in need is the best of all possible birthday presents for Jesus.
Frère Buteau (Brother Tob)
For The National Center
Monday, December 14, 2009
IMMIGRATION REFORM
Guardian News
GUTIERREZ'S IMMIGRATION REFORM BILL TO BE INTRODUCED NEXT TUESDAY
Congressman Luis Gutierrez's eagerly awaited comprehensive immigration reform bill will be introduced next Tuesday. The news was immediately welcome by Rio Grande Valley immigrants' rights group La Unión del Pueblo Entero, which holds a meeting on the issue in Mercedes this Friday evening. "The people of South Texas know how important immigration reform is and they have been working for comprehensive reform for almost a decade," said LUPE Director Juanita Valdez-Cox.
GUTIERREZ'S IMMIGRATION REFORM BILL TO BE INTRODUCED NEXT TUESDAY
Congressman Luis Gutierrez's eagerly awaited comprehensive immigration reform bill will be introduced next Tuesday. The news was immediately welcome by Rio Grande Valley immigrants' rights group La Unión del Pueblo Entero, which holds a meeting on the issue in Mercedes this Friday evening. "The people of South Texas know how important immigration reform is and they have been working for comprehensive reform for almost a decade," said LUPE Director Juanita Valdez-Cox.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
CARDINAL MAHONY AND HEALTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/opinion/08mahony.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=CARDINAL%20MAHONY%20DECEMBER%208&st=cse
READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE.
December 8, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Coverage Without Borders
By ROGER MAHONY
LOS ANGELES
AS the leaders of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops noted last month, the current health care reform bills in Congress are fundamentally flawed because they fall short in three critical areas: the prohibition of federal financing for abortions and the protection of current conscience laws; the inclusion of meaningful provisions to ensure affordability; and the defense of immigrants’ rights to health care.
Although all three areas are critical for this proposed legislation to be acceptable to the Catholic Church in our country, I would like to focus on the lack of adequate health care for immigrants who live in our midst but who do not yet have legal standing.
The two bills are quite different. The Senate bill bars undocumented immigrants from using even their own money to buy health insurance in the government-sponsored marketplace, or exchange, being proposed. The House bill allows undocumented immigrants to purchase health insurance from the exchange, if they use their own money and receive no federal subsidy.
READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE.
December 8, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Coverage Without Borders
By ROGER MAHONY
LOS ANGELES
AS the leaders of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops noted last month, the current health care reform bills in Congress are fundamentally flawed because they fall short in three critical areas: the prohibition of federal financing for abortions and the protection of current conscience laws; the inclusion of meaningful provisions to ensure affordability; and the defense of immigrants’ rights to health care.
Although all three areas are critical for this proposed legislation to be acceptable to the Catholic Church in our country, I would like to focus on the lack of adequate health care for immigrants who live in our midst but who do not yet have legal standing.
The two bills are quite different. The Senate bill bars undocumented immigrants from using even their own money to buy health insurance in the government-sponsored marketplace, or exchange, being proposed. The House bill allows undocumented immigrants to purchase health insurance from the exchange, if they use their own money and receive no federal subsidy.
HUMAN RIGHTS DAY
Today is the 60th anniversary of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
All countries members of the U.N have signed the U.N agreement on Human Rights. See http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Much is still to be done in our country and throughout the world to make this declaration a reality.
Our Catholic faith teachings and Church tradition have long before the U.N. taught us that we are created by God in His Image; we are all equal and we all have the right to a life with respect and dignity. God provides us with resources in the world for our sustenance for all equally. God has given us life and the resources to live with dignity and equality.
I pray that we may accept life as a gratuitous gift from GOD and assure that all our brothers and sisters enjoy their right for life with dignity and equality; and that we may sustain and nurture the resources God created for our well being.
All countries members of the U.N have signed the U.N agreement on Human Rights. See http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Much is still to be done in our country and throughout the world to make this declaration a reality.
Our Catholic faith teachings and Church tradition have long before the U.N. taught us that we are created by God in His Image; we are all equal and we all have the right to a life with respect and dignity. God provides us with resources in the world for our sustenance for all equally. God has given us life and the resources to live with dignity and equality.
I pray that we may accept life as a gratuitous gift from GOD and assure that all our brothers and sisters enjoy their right for life with dignity and equality; and that we may sustain and nurture the resources God created for our well being.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Mexico's Zetas gang buys businesses along border in move to increase legitimacy | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Mexico News
Friday, December 4, 2009
AMERICANS-IN-WAITING
On 12/3/09, Carlos Munoz, Jr. <cmjr@berkeley.edu> wrote:
From: "Jose Calderon" <Jose_Calderon@pitzer.edu>
November 27, 2009
Editorial
Immigrants, Criminalized
A bedrock premise of smart immigration reform is the sharp distinction it draws between criminal aliens and Americans-in-waiting. While it acknowledges that illegal immigrants need to get right with the law, it treats illegal status as a civil matter to be resolved by the machinery of naturalization, not by the police and prisons.
To hard-line opponents of legalization, illegal immigrants are irredeemable lawbreakers by definition, and the only thing they should be waiting for is deportation.
The administration's job, as it works on a long-overdue reform bill next year, is to resist that view. So it was disheartening to hear Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, boast recently about identifying "more than 111,000 criminal aliens" through a jailhouse fingerprinting program called Secure Communities.
That was misleading. The program, now in 95 cities or counties in 11 states, will ultimately require all local police agencies to check federal immigration databases for anyone after an arrest. It has so far identified a few thousand serious criminals, rapists and burglars, the kinds of people whose removal from the country must be part of any sane immigration strategy. But it also uncovered minor traffic infractions and visa violations.
It is easy to understand that the administration wants to sound as tough as possible as it gets ready to battle deep-seated resistance to real immigration reform. It is encouraging that Ms. Napolitano recently repeated the president's insistence that a clear legalization path must be a pillar of reform. That makes it all the more important for the administration to avoid conflating illegal immigration and serious crime.
Laws must be enforced, but doing it this way hurts the innocent, creating a short line from Hispanic to immigrant to illegal to criminal. Having brown skin, speaking Spanish, seeming nervous in the presence of flashing police lights - none of those things say anything about whether you are here illegally or not, are deportable or not. But any one of them can be enough to get you pulled over in jurisdictions across the country.
In Arizona, it can get you jailed. We know of citizens whose homes were mistakenly raided by reckless federal agents on Long Island, day laborers who were targets of indiscriminate sweeps in California, and others who were singled out at roadblocks in upstate New York.
This hurts public safety. If you want to know the consequences of turning the police and jails into instruments of deportation, ask the law-enforcement officials who have complained about programs that muddy the line between local crime-fighting and federal enforcement, and make immigrants fear and shun the police.
President Obama has repeatedly assured 12 million illegal immigrants that he will fight to give them the chance to earn the right to stay. His administration should not undermine that noble effort by carelessly lending credibility to the view that the future citizens living and working among us are a class of criminals.
--
Dr. Carlos Muñoz, Jr.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Ethnic Studies
510-642-9134
http://ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu/faculty/munoz/
"Life is struggle and struggle is life,
but be mindful that Victory is in the Struggle"
- Carlos Muñoz, Jr
From: "Jose Calderon" <Jose_Calderon@pitzer.edu>
November 27, 2009
Editorial
Immigrants, Criminalized
A bedrock premise of smart immigration reform is the sharp distinction it draws between criminal aliens and Americans-in-waiting. While it acknowledges that illegal immigrants need to get right with the law, it treats illegal status as a civil matter to be resolved by the machinery of naturalization, not by the police and prisons.
To hard-line opponents of legalization, illegal immigrants are irredeemable lawbreakers by definition, and the only thing they should be waiting for is deportation.
The administration's job, as it works on a long-overdue reform bill next year, is to resist that view. So it was disheartening to hear Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, boast recently about identifying "more than 111,000 criminal aliens" through a jailhouse fingerprinting program called Secure Communities.
That was misleading. The program, now in 95 cities or counties in 11 states, will ultimately require all local police agencies to check federal immigration databases for anyone after an arrest. It has so far identified a few thousand serious criminals, rapists and burglars, the kinds of people whose removal from the country must be part of any sane immigration strategy. But it also uncovered minor traffic infractions and visa violations.
It is easy to understand that the administration wants to sound as tough as possible as it gets ready to battle deep-seated resistance to real immigration reform. It is encouraging that Ms. Napolitano recently repeated the president's insistence that a clear legalization path must be a pillar of reform. That makes it all the more important for the administration to avoid conflating illegal immigration and serious crime.
Laws must be enforced, but doing it this way hurts the innocent, creating a short line from Hispanic to immigrant to illegal to criminal. Having brown skin, speaking Spanish, seeming nervous in the presence of flashing police lights - none of those things say anything about whether you are here illegally or not, are deportable or not. But any one of them can be enough to get you pulled over in jurisdictions across the country.
In Arizona, it can get you jailed. We know of citizens whose homes were mistakenly raided by reckless federal agents on Long Island, day laborers who were targets of indiscriminate sweeps in California, and others who were singled out at roadblocks in upstate New York.
This hurts public safety. If you want to know the consequences of turning the police and jails into instruments of deportation, ask the law-enforcement officials who have complained about programs that muddy the line between local crime-fighting and federal enforcement, and make immigrants fear and shun the police.
President Obama has repeatedly assured 12 million illegal immigrants that he will fight to give them the chance to earn the right to stay. His administration should not undermine that noble effort by carelessly lending credibility to the view that the future citizens living and working among us are a class of criminals.
--
Dr. Carlos Muñoz, Jr.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Ethnic Studies
510-642-9134
http://ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu/faculty/munoz/
"Life is struggle and struggle is life,
but be mindful that Victory is in the Struggle"
- Carlos Muñoz, Jr
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
IMMIGRANTS' U.S.A. CHILDREN
NY Times, Editorial,
"Their Future Is Ours" - 11.17.09
There are 16 million children in immigrant families in the United States, one of the fastest-growing segments of the population. It's an old American story made new in the age of globalization, when waves of human displacement in recent decades have led to immigration on a scale not seen since Ellis Island. But a country that has been so good for so long at integrating new Americans is stumbling under the challenge.That is the conclusion of Professors Marcelo and Carola Suárez-Orozco, fellows at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and co-directors of immigration studies at New York University. They have done basic research in immigration for more than 20 years, five of them studying 400 children from China, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Central America and Mexico.The results of their research, released this month, show the stark effects of what Marcelo Suárez-Orozco calls "the age of global vertigo." Dislocation breeds a host of difficulties, starting with family separation.
Nearly half of the children in their sample had at some point lost contact with one or both parents, either through migration directly or through divorce or death. The absent parent was most often the father for long stretches or permanently. For 49 percent of the Central American children, separations lasted more than five years. The children from separated families were, perhaps unsurprising, more likely to show signs of depression. Those symptoms were often accompanied by poverty, isolation and - despite an early period of hopefulness and engagement - a downward academic slide. Immigrant children lagged in mastering standard academic English, the passport to college and to brighter futures. Whereas native-born children's language skills follow a bell curve, immigrants' children were crowded in the lower ranks: More than three-quarters of the sample scored below the 85th percentile in English proficiency. There is clearly a need for policies and programs to support immigrant parents and children, but the reality is as haphazard and tenuous as these children's lives often are. Millions are growing up in mixed families, with some members here illegally, others not. Bills to help immigrant families with a path to legalization have died repeatedly in Congress, and small-scale reforms like the Dream Act, a path to college or the military for children of illegal immigrants have been stymied for years. New investments in language education, citizenship preparation and after-school and preschool programs have been derailed by economic crisis, harsh immigration politics and a general lack of attention. This is the great challenge that is forgotten in the heat of the immigration debate.
The children of immigrants are Americans. "They" are "us," a cohort of newcomers who will be filling the demographic void left as the baby boomers start fading away. Their future is our country's future. The job of integrating them is not only unfinished but in many critical ways has hardly begun.
"Their Future Is Ours" - 11.17.09
There are 16 million children in immigrant families in the United States, one of the fastest-growing segments of the population. It's an old American story made new in the age of globalization, when waves of human displacement in recent decades have led to immigration on a scale not seen since Ellis Island. But a country that has been so good for so long at integrating new Americans is stumbling under the challenge.That is the conclusion of Professors Marcelo and Carola Suárez-Orozco, fellows at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and co-directors of immigration studies at New York University. They have done basic research in immigration for more than 20 years, five of them studying 400 children from China, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Central America and Mexico.The results of their research, released this month, show the stark effects of what Marcelo Suárez-Orozco calls "the age of global vertigo." Dislocation breeds a host of difficulties, starting with family separation.
Nearly half of the children in their sample had at some point lost contact with one or both parents, either through migration directly or through divorce or death. The absent parent was most often the father for long stretches or permanently. For 49 percent of the Central American children, separations lasted more than five years. The children from separated families were, perhaps unsurprising, more likely to show signs of depression. Those symptoms were often accompanied by poverty, isolation and - despite an early period of hopefulness and engagement - a downward academic slide. Immigrant children lagged in mastering standard academic English, the passport to college and to brighter futures. Whereas native-born children's language skills follow a bell curve, immigrants' children were crowded in the lower ranks: More than three-quarters of the sample scored below the 85th percentile in English proficiency. There is clearly a need for policies and programs to support immigrant parents and children, but the reality is as haphazard and tenuous as these children's lives often are. Millions are growing up in mixed families, with some members here illegally, others not. Bills to help immigrant families with a path to legalization have died repeatedly in Congress, and small-scale reforms like the Dream Act, a path to college or the military for children of illegal immigrants have been stymied for years. New investments in language education, citizenship preparation and after-school and preschool programs have been derailed by economic crisis, harsh immigration politics and a general lack of attention. This is the great challenge that is forgotten in the heat of the immigration debate.
The children of immigrants are Americans. "They" are "us," a cohort of newcomers who will be filling the demographic void left as the baby boomers start fading away. Their future is our country's future. The job of integrating them is not only unfinished but in many critical ways has hardly begun.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Immigrants are grateful
ENRIQUE MORONES, NAMED MEXICO'S 2009
HUMAN RIGHTS AWARDEE BY MEXICO'S
COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS (CNDH)
Honored and humbled by Mexico's 2009 National Human Rights Award! I will dedicate it to migrants that have died and are dying crossing the border, will also dedicate it to Roberto Martinez "the" icon on Human Rights along the border and to my parents and family that instilled in me a deep love for Mexico and social justice on both sides of border.
I will also honor the work of so many other organizations and individuals on both sides of the border as we state NI UNA MUERTE MAS, REFORMA YA!, stated Enrique Morones.
President Calderon will present this award in Mexico City next month. Gracias a todos, Enrique Morones President & Founder BORDER ANGELS///ANGELES DE LA FRONTERA www.borderangels.org www.angelesdelafrontera.org (619) 269-7865 enriquemorones@cox.net
Gloria H/Fresno
"Our lives began to end when we stopped speaking up for the things that matter."-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
HUMAN RIGHTS AWARDEE BY MEXICO'S
COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS (CNDH)
Honored and humbled by Mexico's 2009 National Human Rights Award! I will dedicate it to migrants that have died and are dying crossing the border, will also dedicate it to Roberto Martinez "the" icon on Human Rights along the border and to my parents and family that instilled in me a deep love for Mexico and social justice on both sides of border.
I will also honor the work of so many other organizations and individuals on both sides of the border as we state NI UNA MUERTE MAS, REFORMA YA!, stated Enrique Morones.
President Calderon will present this award in Mexico City next month. Gracias a todos, Enrique Morones President & Founder BORDER ANGELS///ANGELES DE LA FRONTERA www.borderangels.org www.angelesdelafrontera.org (619) 269-7865 enriquemorones@cox.net
Gloria H/Fresno
"Our lives began to end when we stopped speaking up for the things that matter."-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Immigrants Abused
The link below should take you to an article with a videointerview of a woman who was forced by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaijo to remain shackled while she delivered her baby in a hospital. This in spite of pleas from nurses that he allow her to be unshackled for the delivery. This incredible story illustrates the kind of situations that immigrants are being forced to endure around the country. http://bit.ly/8TQquV
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