Politics/Justice

Stories about the politics, policies, and law enforcement issues surrounding immigration.

Out of the closet twice: Cartoonist Julio Salgado on coming out as undocumented and gay

The art of illustrator Julio Salgado has become synonymous with the immigrant rights youth movement, that embraced by U.S.-raised young people who were brought here illegally or stayed on with expired visas after their parents brought them to the U.S. as children.

Art courtesy of Julio Salgado

His bright, chunky characters, sometimes depicted in graduate cap-and-gown attire, are found on posters and t-shirts advocating for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, proposed federal legislation that would grant conditional legal status to young people who arrived before age 16 of they go to college or join the military. Last year Salgado created “Liberty for All,” an online political comic strip about a young college graduate named Libertad, or Liberty, who can’t find work beyond menial jobs.

The comic strip paralleled Salgado’s life. The Cal State Long Beach graduate, now 28, arrived with his family on temporary visas from Mexico when he was 11. They overstayed when his sister became ill and never returned. It’s been some time since he joined a growing movement of young people who have “come out,” borrowing a gay rights term, with their status as a political act.

Salgado now works as a freelance journalist and co-founder of DreamersAdrift.com, an advocacy collective that has produced a series of videos titled “Undocumented and Awkward.” Over the past few months, starting with an essay last fall that appeared in The Huffington Post, Salgado has been writing about the parallels between one of the secrets he once kept – his sexual identity – and the other, his immigration status. Especially for children of immigrants who face harsh judgment at home, coming out as gay can be a particularly difficult step. So can coming out as undocumented for someone raised in the U.S., with its potential repercussions.

Here is Salgado’s take on what it’s like to come out twice – or not:

M-A: Over the past few years, the practice of “coming out” undocumented has become a rite of passage of sorts for undocumented young people in the U.S. But among these are youths who have come out twice, once as undocumented, and again as homosexual. You’ve written about this quite a bit lately. For you, what do the two have in common?

Salgado: Both issues have so much in common. For one, both the migrant and LGBTQ communities have been a special target from (people who) have made it their goal to go after us.

Undocumented and queer youth are more likely to suffer from depression…and we need to come out of the shadows. Whether than means coming out as undocumented or queer. In some cases as both.

M-A: Are there often two secrets kept, one (sexual identity) around Latino or other immigrant culture and especially elders, and another (immigration status) around peers? What is it like to keep two secrets like that? What does it take out of you?

Salgado: For sure, I truly believe that religion plays a huge part in that way of thinking. In my case, I have never told either one of my grandmothers that I am gay. Specially my father’s mom, who truly believes that homosexuality can be cured by reading a pamphlet.

As I get older, I have learned to respect her beliefs. I have come to understand that she comes from a different generation. Even my father, who still struggles with the idea of me being queer, has sort of come around because I’ve given him that space to try and understand what is like to have a gay son. Being around my peers has been a different story. I remember when I was in high school, I was out as gay to some of my friends, mostly girls.

For the most part, it was easier to come out as undocumented because I knew that some of them were undocumented as well. I remember having conversations with some of them about what our lives would be like after high school and we just simply had no answer. Mind you, this was toward the end of the year 2000. There weren’t such things as DREAM Teams.

After high school and during college, I sort of put my queer identity to the side and focused on finishing school. I also tried to keep my immigration status a secret. College counselors were often the only people I came out to as undocumented in the hopes that they could help me score a scholarship through their networks. Sometimes it worked. I felt safe with them. Even if they didn’t know how to help me, it helped to just let go of this huge burden I had with me.

Every time I told someone I was undocumented, I felt liberated. I began to use that coping mechanism with my queer identity. That was another huge intersectionality. When you are both queer and undocumented, you have to be extremely careful who you come out to. You wonder, “How are they going to act? Will they like me less if they know my secret?”.

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FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice

December 22, 2011 | 12:10 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

Who came from where when? Immigration history in charts

Screen shot from www.migrationinformation.org

There’s a treasure trove of U.S. immigration history buried in census data, and the Migration Policy Institute has again updated its collection of graphs and charts detailing it.

The data includes some statistics that might be expected, for example the top ten immigrant sending countries (Mexico remains at the top, followed at a distance by China) and the annual number of new U.S. citizens, a number that has dropped sharply since the most recent peak in 2008.

There’s also a fair amount of hard-to-guess immigration trivia dating back decades:

Which country has the largest immigrant diaspora group in the United States in terms of ethnic origin? Germany. (Mexico come in second, though it leads in terms of country of birth.)
Even as recently as 1980, which region’s immigrants made up the biggest percentage of foreign-born residents in the U.S.? Europeans. (Latinos took the lead in 1990.)
When did legal immigration to the U.S. peak? 1991. (In the last couple of years, it has been down to levels below that of the previous peak in the early 1900s.)

One of the more interesting features is a chart, below, illustrating foreign-born immigrants as a share of the total U.S. population from 1850 to the present. It’s thought-provoking to note that today, despite their far larger numbers than a century ago, immigrants make up a smaller share of the nation’s population than they did in 1860, 1870, 1890, 1900, 1910 or 1920.

Screen shot from migrationinformation.org

The entire MPI data sheet with links to features can be downloaded here.

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, Immigrant diasporas, Migration Policy Institute, Naturalizations

December 19, 2011 | 10:50 AM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

Read the report: Immigrants in deportation not getting adequate legal assistance

Photo by s_falkow/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A new report from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York details a troubling finding: Of the immigrants being represented by attorneys in deportation proceedings, a large percentage aren’t getting what even judges consider adequate representation.

Titled “Accessing Justice,” the study from the law school at Yeshiva University in Manhattan takes in immigration cases in New York, with input from the judges who hear these cases. From a New York Times story:

Immigrants received “inadequate” legal assistance in 33 percent of the cases between mid-2010 and mid-2011 and “grossly inadequate” assistance in 14 percent of the cases, the judges said.

They gave private lawyers the lowest grades, while generally awarding higher marks to pro bono counsel and those from nonprofit organizations and law school clinics.

While only New York cases were examined, the study’s implications apply to the immigration caseload in similarly large cities like Los Angeles, where immigrants are subject to predatory representation not only from unscrupulous attorneys who may not have the necessary background, but from unqualified non-lawyer notaries. From the report introduction:

Compounding the lack of legal entitlement to appointed counsel are the distinctive characteristics of the population facing removal: a relative lack of familiarity with the legal system; lack of financial resources; language barriers; and general susceptibility to unscrupulous lawyers. In addition, immigrant representation, to date, has not been considered to be within the mandate of the various governmental and institutional actors that would otherwise be responsible for providing indigent civil legal services. As such, we now find ourselves in a place where no sizeable entity – government or otherwise – views providing or funding removal-defense services as its primary responsibility.

The entire report can be viewed here.

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Cardozo Law Review, Immigration courts

December 16, 2011 | 4:21 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

A Vietnamese Iowan’s response to Prof. Stephen Bloom’s essay

Photo by yark64/Flickr (Creative Commons)

What we think of when we think of Iowa? Farm fields near the Mississippi, May 2007

University of Iowa professor Stephen Bloom’s recent essay in The Atlantic on Iowa, the state that could determine the next president, didn’t go over well with everyone who read it.

Among these was KPCC’s OnCentral blog editor Kim Bui, a Vietnamese Iowan (yes, there are those), who objected especially to the state’s remaining residents being portrayed in the essay as “often the elderly waiting to die, those too timid…to peer around the bend for better opportunities, an assortment of waste-toids and meth addicts with pale skin and rotted teeth, or those who quixotically believe, like Little Orphan Annie, that ‘The sun’ll come out tomorrow.’ “

Kim’s response below to Bloom’s essay, first posted on her Linkage+ blog, takes in her unique Iowa experience as the child of immigrants, reflecting on “why it made so much sense for my parents to raise a family there – it’s akin to the Vietnamese sensibility.”

“Iowa is a good place to be from.”

That’s what I usually say when a Californian asks me how it was to grow up in Iowa.

“What do you mean?”

And here’s where it gets tricky. I just finished reading Stephen Bloom’s Atlantic article on Iowa and I understand parts of what he is saying. And I understand the backlash. So here’s my picture of Iowa, one of the state’s “exports,” as Bloom kindly called us.

—

I’ve been to a lot of beautiful places — Switzerland, the Czech Republic, my homeland of Vietnam — but it is hard to beat the beauty of Iowa in that glorious two weeks between spring and summer, when the fields are starting to grow, the flowers are blooming and it’s too humid. The summer storms are starting to roll in and the hills look endless.

I grew up in Des Moines, far from a farm, far from rural Iowa. I’ve never been to a farm. I grew up in a suburb of a small, but teeming city. We had sushi (though not until late in my high school days) delicious Chinese, Vietnamese and country cooking. I would play in the woods behind my house daily. The green belt, which stretches through a large portion of Des Moines, was a large part of my childhood. We swung on vines, caught tadpoles and my father and I went on miles-long bike rides (memories of which I still cherish).

It is not a state without issues. Racism was part of my youth, and there is plenty of “nothing to do.” Meth and drugs is and was a huge problem. I was far removed from the farms, but the Des Moines Register brought me stories of farm subsidies and stories of poverty throughout the state.

In the second grade, I was called a “chink.” A boy, who lived down the street and well-known as a bully, turned around on the bus, and said it. Nothing else. Then he stared at me for about a minute, then turned around. When I worked at JCPenney’s in high school, I was asked to follow my mother’s friends around, because security was afraid they would try to steal – regardless of how I protested.

But I had friends who were Indian, white, black and other. I had gay friends. I had straight friends.

Many of my family’s Vietnamese friends were meatpackers. They lived on the East side of town and over time, I figured out my family and others who lived on the more wealthy west side were regarded with dislike. We had made it.

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FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, Iowa, Iowa Caucus, Stephen Bloom, The Atlantic

December 15, 2011 | 4:36 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

Hundreds at ‘Occupy ICE’ rally in downtown L.A.

Photo by Corey Moore/KPCC

"Occupy ICE" protesters in Los Angeles, December 15, 2011

KPCC’s Corey Moore reported on today’s “Occupy ICE” protest in downtown Los Angeles, organized by labor, civil and immigrant rights groups. It’s one of a slowly growing number of immigration-related Occupy protests, similar to one that took place in San Diego last month.

Hundreds joined the rally, according to the story, protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Secure Communities fingerprint-sharing enforcement program and the separation of mixed-status families as the federal government has carried out record numbers of deportations. A march concluded at the downtown federal building, where ICE has an office.

Check here later for audio.

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, ICE, Occupy ICE, Occupy LA, Occupy Wall Street, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

December 15, 2011 | 12:21 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

More immigration-Occupy synergy as ‘Occupy ICE’ comes to L.A.

Photo by DB's Travels/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A sign at the Occupy L.A. camp, October 2011

Several posts lately have explored the immigrant rights component of the Occupy movement, at least in California, where Occupy protesters in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego have counted immigration among the many issues they’ve taken up.

Last month, protesters in San Diego mounted an “Occupy ICE” rally organized by the local janitors’ union. The Service Employees International Union has joined with with other labor, civil and immigrant rights groups to do the same in Los Angeles today, with a march to the downtown federal building, which houses a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

In spite of recent immigration-related Occupy protests in New York and Alabama, perhaps nowhere has the Occupy movement – initially accused of being too white – been as involved with immigrant rights activism as in California. Late last month, as police prepared to remove the protesters’ camp outside City Hall, Occupy Los Angeles leaders put together and posted a list of “grievances not addressed” that included this request:

Los Angeles to be declared a sanctuary city for the undocumented, deportations to be discontinued and cooperation with immigration authorities be ended – including the turning in of arrestees’ names to immigration authorities.

In the Bay Area, some protesters became involved in a “Free Pancho” movement after the arrest in Oakland of Mexican-born protester and former graduate student Francisco “Pancho Ramos-Stierle, which landed him in the custody of immigration officials. Ramos-Stierle was eventually released pending a deportation hearing.

According to the Occupy Los Angeles website, protesters today are rallying “to help end the targeting of immigrant workers and their families, who have struggled to make poverty jobs, into good jobs!” (That’s their exclamation point.)

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, ICE, Occupy ICE, Occupy LA, Occupy Wall Street, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

December 14, 2011 | 1:52 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

Readers sound off on Lowe’s pulling ads from ‘All-American Muslim’

The recent decision by the national Lowe’s Home Improvement chain to pull its advertising from “All-American Muslim,” a TLC reality show, has landed the company in a public relations mess. The home improvement chain made its decision after being targeted, along with other advertisers, by a religious-right Christian activist group called the Florida Family Association.

The group has condemned the show, a reality series which follows five Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan, as “propaganda” on its website.

Here’s what Lowe’s posted on its Facebook page explaining its decision to pull the ads:

Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lightning rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.

A post yesterday by KPCC’s Yasmin Nouh addressing the anatomy of the Lowe’s controversy drew a long string of comments from readers sharing their thoughts, some of them pretty interesting. Here they are, unedited.

Mandingo wrote in support of the boycott that critics of Lowe’s have called for, and regarding hip hop mogul Russell Simmons supporting the show and buying remaining ad time:

I am boycotting Lowes and support Rusell simson in boycotting them. There should be repercautions for Blantant prejudices

Jskdn wrote:

I think commercial sponsors should only be concerned with the audience they reach and stay out of issues around the programing content. Otherwise they will needlessly involve themselves into political controversies that shouldn’t be their concern. Of course that principle would also apply to the John and Ken show.

A reader whose handle is too profane to print – but whose comment was clean enough – wrote:

Lowes has the right to do what they want. I guess it would be okay if Russell Simmons wanted to protest chic filet because of their Christian standards. Double bias always come from the left and the minorities.

InTheDark replied with this:

The Florida Family Association’s statement was very unfair to a sizable portion of our fellow Americans and to TV producers who dare to show Muslims simply being Americans not involved in advancing Islamic fundamentalism. Lowe’s, by discontinuing their ads, showed either agreement with that unreasonable statement or acceptance of it as legitimate.

The appearance is there—that Lowe’s corporate leadership considers anti-Muslim discrimination and prejudice to be appropriate in American society. Lowe’s could have made a positive gesture in favor of fairness to American religious minorities by continuing the sponsorship it originally undertook with potential consequences anyone could have foreseen. A shame they caved.

So did prado4587:

As a shareholder, I would be disappointed in Lowes’ decision. Muslim Americans are highly educated and high income earners. I like companies I invest in to maximize profits instead of making business decisions based on religious beliefs and perceptions.

But apmd disagreed, writing:

Lowes did the right thing.

(everyone so offended and protective when it concerns anything related to islam)

Lowe’s isn’t the only company to stop advertising on the show. The online travel booking company Kayak admitted it won’t continue advertising on “All-American Muslim” when it returns in January although “we adamantly support tolerance and diversity,” as chief marketing officer Robert Birge wrote on the company website. “Mostly, I just thougth the show sucked,” he wrote.

The Florida Family Association has claimed that several other companies have pulled advertising, but the New York Times reports that at least three have denied the claim, including the Campbell Soup Company, Sears Holdings and Bank of America.