Economic Refugee News: Weekly Roundup 05/16/10


  • Massachusetts: many blame Gustavo Rezende’s suicide, a Brazilian immigrant youth, on the pressures and limitations of his undocumented status. Read the story here and don’t forget to DIGG it.
  • US Olympian Simon Cho Reaches Out to Youth in Face of Anti-Immigrant State Proposals: recently, U.S. Olympian Simon Cho completed a community speaking tour sponsored by NAKASEC and the Korean Resource Center, speaking to over 1,000 youth from kindergarten to college age, as well to dozens of Korean American seniors.  Read her Op-ed piece that appeared on The Baltimore Sun here. 
  • Senator Rick Durbin issued a statement on making the DREAM Act a reality in light of the new Arizona authoritarian police law.
  • William Gheen and ALIPAC ridicule the “Frustration of a legal immigrant”: Steinar Andersen, a legal immigrant from Norway and an IT manager for a logistics firm in the Chicago area posted this letter on May 2, 2010 in the Chicago Tribune, only to be quickly ridiculed and belittled by racist ALIPAC.
  • Maine’s Bangor Daily News: John Buell, a political economist, published a thoughtful Op-ed piece on immigration.  Favorite line: “Yet despite overwhelming evidence about the weaknesses in our deregulated banking system and crude and illegal union busting tactics, there is, other than from Michael Moore, no movement to deport bankers or corporate thugs.” Drop him a comment of support here.  
  • On CNN, Anderson Cooper ran a debate between Tom Horne, the sponsor of the bill to ban Cesar Chavez and other figures within Ethnic Studies, and Professor Michael Eric Dyson. Professor Dynson just obliterates Horne in this debate. Check it out here.
  • Newly independent Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for Senate this year, has an idea to address two of the nation’s most pressing political issues: Give undocumented immigrants a chance to become citizens so they can pay into Social Security. Read the story on USA Today.
  • Los Diablos, ASU’s Latino Alumni Association, has unveiled a brilliant new retort to Arizona’s nasty “paper’s please” legislation: A maroon and gold T-shirt, which reads, “You want to see my papers? Here’s my degree from ASU.” Here’s the story and you can DIGG it here.
  • Sam Stein on The Huffington Post: “…The nation’s largest union organization and one of its biggest civil rights groups have written a stern letter to Secretary Janet Napolitano demanding that the Department of Homeland Security cut programmatic ties with law enforcement officials in Arizona or be complicit in the state’s controversial immigration law.”
  • Texas: Austin City Council passed a resolution to stop doing business with Arizona.