[Blogger’s Note: Our guest blogger today is Careen Shannon, who is Of Counsel at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP and an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. This is an updated and condensed version of an article Careen wrote for the online magazine Salon.com.
Arcing toward Immigration Justice: “Illegals” No More
All of us at times become dispirited.
As I’ve viewed immigration over the last 40 years, passionate advocates have come and gone, fortunate foreign citizens have been granted green cards and then naturalized; but the harshness and hard-heartedness of immigration law as a reflection of American cultural norms hasn’t really diminished.
For example, back
New York Times and Ann Coulter Refuted: Immigrant Rights ARE Civil Rights
Today is the federal holiday of Columbus Day. In ironic recognition, President Obama will stop by a remote California village to dedicate the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument, memorializing the contributions of the eponymous Mexican-American civil rights leader who fought tirelessly to gain justice for immigrant farm workers.
Also today, Cesar’s widow, Helen, continues her effort, with many
Telling Immigration Stories: It’s Not Just about Code Sections
From the first prehistoric evenings sitting around campfires, humans have been telling stories. Heroic myths, fairy-tale fables, oral histories — all have been seared into heart and memory through the power of narrative. Civil and criminal trials are merely stylized forms of storytelling. Journalism’s hook, theatre’s Sturm und Drang, reality television’s sour and sweet confections —
Suffer the Children: Immigration Heartlessness and Hypocrisy
A recent televised debate revealed an immigration fault line within the GOP. Texas Governor Rick Perry’s many challengers for the Republican presidential nomination railed against his decision to extend in-state tuition rates to undocumented college students, brought to the U.S. as children, who graduate from the Lone Star State’s high schools. His initial reply:
“If
Immigration Thought Leadership – Needed Now More Than Ever
Writing for The Hill, pundit Kathy Kemper just published a thoughtful piece on “Debt and immigration.” In it she contrasts American policy-makers’ obsession with the financial Sword of Damocles, set to behead us on August 2, with Norway’s all-consuming focus on the aftermath of a xenophobic madman’s gutless acts of murder and mayhem.
Americans, it seems, can
Immigration ‘Language is the Skin of the Soul’
As 1930s radio shows and 21st Century talk-radio shock jocks remind us, words — perhaps even more than images — carry evocative power, the power to incite passion. Fernando Lázaro Carreter, the academician and guardian of Spanish (whose quote appears in the title of this post and in a slide deck I published years back on
