Tag Archives: Northern America

Age, Nationality + Migration

U.S. News | Child Immigrants

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Audit finds U.S. border patrol violated rules in vast majority of deportations of children over five-year period
  • The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that from 2009 to 2014, 93% of unaccompanied Mexican and Canadian children under 14 were deported without documentation of the safety assurance process.
  • Unaccompanied Mexican and Canadian children undergo interviews with border patrol authorities to determine if they have been or will be trafficked, persecuted, or otherwise endangered in their home country.
  • Immigration lawyers and rights monitors have questioned the effectiveness and legality of having border patrol oversee the interviews, arguing their officers are not the appropriate figures to make such determinations.

“CBP just does not have the training, the understanding of humanitarian protection, to make the assessment of these children from Mexico before sending them back to their home countries.”

Read the full story at the Guardian.

(Image Credit: John Moore/Getty Images, via the Guardian)

Nationality + Migration

U.S. Feature | Guest Workers

The Low Tide of Slavery

The low-skilled counterpart to the U.S.’s highly promoted H1-B program, the H-2 visa program brings guest workers to the U.S. to fill low- or unskilled labor positions, including farm work, construction, household maintenance, and elements of the food harvesting supply chain. BuzzFeed News investigates how limited enforcement of regulations and workers’ unbreakable tie to their employer while in the country exacerbate employer-employee power inequalities in the program, leaving guest workers vulnerable to slavery-like exploitation including wage undercutting, visa and passport withholding, illegal fee leveraging, basic resource deprivation, and more insidious threats like sexual violence and death.

Read the full feature at BuzzFeed News.

(Image Credit: Ken Bensinger/BuzzFeed News)

Sexual + Gender Minorities

U.S. News | LGBT

Texas Supreme Court rules Houston must repeal LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance or submit to popular referendum
  • The court overruled a state district judge who ruled that opponents of the ordinance’s passage failed to submit enough valid signatures to the city for a repeal referendum.
  • Houston’s mayor and city attorney overrode the city secretary’s sign-off on the petition, declaring many signatures invalid due to improper paperwork.
  • The city is expected to choose to submit the addition of sexual orientation and gender identity as locally protected classes to ballot, which observers expect to draw national attention and money to Houston’s local elections in November.

“You’re going to have money pouring in from all across the country on this issue because it’s extremely important. … We’re going to be looking at mayoral candidates, city council candidates that stand with us on this important issue. The eyes of the country are going to be looking at Houston.”

Read the full story at the Houston Chronicle.

(Image Credit: Cody Duty/Houston Chronicle)

Race + Color + Ethnicity, Sexual + Gender Minorities

U.S. News | Black Trans Women

Trans woman of color in killed in Florida, tenth in 2015’s increase in violence against trans individuals
  • India Clarke was found murdered in Tampa by blunt force trauma to the upper body.
  • India is the ninth trans woman of color and tenth trans person killed so far in 2015, which is consistent with a trend of year-over-year increases in violence rates experienced by the trans community.
  • Local police and media have persistently misgendered Clarke in reports and stated gender identity is not considered a factor in her death, instead focusing on Clarke’s history of sex work and drug activity.

“India Clarke’s death is a tragedy that is made worse by egregious misgendering by local police and media.”

Read the full story at BuzzFeed.

Nationality + Migration, Race + Color + Ethnicity

U.S. Feature | Garifuna Immigrants

From Honduras to the Bronx: The Garifuna of New York

Spanish photographer Elena Hermosa has trained her camera lens on the lives and culture of Garifuna immigrants in New York City. A genetic mix of African and indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, the Garifuna community has been pushed from Honduras by ongoing violence, with many having settled in the South Bronx of New York. From the precarity of the undocumented to endangered cultural traditions, the New York Times explores the subject and implication of Hermosa’s work.

View the full feature at the New York Times.

(Image Credit: Elena Hermosa, via the New York Times)

Gender, Health + Ability, Race + Color + Ethnicity

U.S. News & Feature | Black Women

Video

The March of Impropriety in the Arrest of Sandra Bland

The New York Times has published a multimedia feature breaking down the legality of the police interaction with Sandra Bland, a black woman with professed mental health afflictions found dead in a Houston-area jail cell under contested circumstances three days after her arrest.  Legal experts find improper police behavior involving statement of cause, escalation, and use of force as ongoing investigations have revealed a range of behaviors that have pushed and breached the boundaries of police power leading up to her death.

View the feature at the New York Times.

(Video via the Texas Department of Public Safety YouTube channel; the Sandra Bland interaction begins at 1:30)

Race + Color + Ethnicity

The Americas News | Indigenous Americans

Research: One major migration from Siberia led to American settlement no more than 23,000 years ago
  • The results of two studies appeared in Science and Nature, with the first indicating there was a single migration that brought anatomically modern humans to the American continents.
  • Researchers claim that the migrants inhabited the now-submerged area connecting Russia and Alaska until roughly 15,000 years ago, when ice melt led to population divergence as some migrated to the newly accessible American interior (American Indians) and others remained in the region (Native Alaskans).
  • The second study found closer ancestral connections of Amazonians to indigenous Australasians than to native Americans, spurring further questions about early American settlement.

Read the full AFP story at GlobalPost.

(Image Credit: Mario Tama/AFP/Getty Images, via GlobalPost)

Nationality + Migration

U.S. News | Undocumented Immigrants

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Immigrants file suit against Texas for denying birth certificates to their U.S.-born children
  • Texas has cracked down on the documentation required to obtain a birth certificate for U.S.-born children, accepting only a U.S. driver’s license, visa, or home-country voter identification.
  • State registrars are no longer allowed to accept the popularly held matriculas, or consular-issued identification cards, because of alleged verification concerns.
  • The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship to children born on U.S. soil, which has formed the basis of the legal claim by immigrant parents.

“It says we need a U.S. license we don’t have; a [Mexican] passport we have, but with a visa we don’t have; voter ID card I have, but it expired. … It’s not fair. She has a right to her birth certificate. What are we supposed to do?”

Read the full story at The Los Angeles Times.

(Image Credit: Molly Hennessy-Fiske/Los Angeles Times)

Sexual + Gender Minorities

U.S. News | LGB

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rules existing civil rights law covers sexual orientation
  • The EEOC found that discrimination claims lodged by lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals against employers fall under sex discrimination, which is covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  • The decision applies directly to federal employees but impacts nationwide employment security more broadly because the EEOC investigates discrimination claims from the private sector as well.
  • The development follows the commission’s 2014 ruling that gender identity was protected under Title VII, which the Justice Department joined later in the year.

“'[T]he question is not whether sexual orientation is explicitly listed in Title VII as a prohibited basis for employment actions. It is not,’ the commission found. Instead, the commission stated that the question is the same as in any other Title VII sex discrimination case: ‘whether the agency has “relied on sex-based considerations” or “take[n] gender into account” when taking the challenged employment action.’”

Read the full story at BuzzFeed.

(Image Credit: via BuzzFeed)

Gender, Nationality + Migration, Religion + Belief

Canada News | Muslim Women

Religious freedom and politics face off over face-covering ban for Canadian citizenship oaths
  • A legal showdown looms over the constitutionality of the 2011 policy requiring oath-takers to have their faces uncovered, which conservative Muslims say violates their religious freedom.
  • A federal judge ruled in favor of a Muslim woman who had been denied citizenship after refusing to unveil herself, leading the government to appeal.
  • Lawyers for the woman hope to have the constitutionality of the ban addressed in the appeal ruling, while Conservative politicians have drummed up the issue as a political one.

“Despite the party’s success with new immigrants and ethnic communities … and spearheading connections to those communities, a lot of the base still has a view that minority cultures have inappropriate practices.”

Read the full story at The StarPhoenix.

Uncategorized

Snapshot: United States

U.S. Snapshot

Nearly 250 years after its founding, the United States of America has transformed from a fledgling band of rogue British colonies into the world’s foremost political and economic superpower.  With that success, however, came the near-eradication of indigenous Americans, the enslavement and disenfranchisement of Africans and their descendents, the exclusion of women from public life, longstanding discrimination against targeted immigrant groups, and the criminalization of sexual minorities.  Over the last century, one of the world’s most multicultural countries has been engaged in the long, difficult process of dismantling the structures of disempowerment that have permeated American social, political, and economic life.

Learn more about identity security in the U.S. through flash facts, historical notes, and connections to the latest U.S. content through the U.S. Snapshot.

Sexual + Gender Minorities

U.S. Feature | Gay

Video

(Dis)connecting Speech and Sexuality

The New York Times takes a look at the cultural perceptions and scientific realities of speech and sexual identity’s intertwining.  Featuring two men with different speech patterns and experts in the social origins of speech, the short op-doc investigates early speech formation and its social effects.

Follow more from the Times on YouTube.

Nationality + Migration

U.S. Perspectives | Undocumented Immigrants

Video

Define American: Coming Out

Non-profit group Define American has launched a media campaign focused on the stories of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Confronting difficult questions of national identity, visibility, and integration, the campaign is soliciting the stories of undocumented individuals ready to share their personal experiences to advance the cause of U.S. immigration reform.

Visit and subscribe to Define American’s YouTube channel for the latest coming out videos or their website to contribute your own.

Gender, Race + Color + Ethnicity

U.S. News | Young Women of Color

Report: Female youth in U.S. juvenile justice system likely to have faced abuse prior to detention
  • According to a recently released report, some states see as many as 80% of the girls in their juvenile justice systems having been victims of sexual or other physical abuse.
  • In particular, the report found girls arrested on prostitution charges were likely to have been victims of sex trafficking, leading to distrust of law enforcement and further victimization.
  • African-American, Latina, and Native American girls were found to be disproportionately involved in the system, which has seen an increase in arrests even as crime rates have flattened.

“When law enforcement views girls as perpetrators, and when their cases are not dismissed or diverted but sent deeper into the justice system, the cost is twofold: Girls’ abusers are shielded from accountability, and the trauma that is the underlying cause of the behavior is not addressed.”

Read the full story at the New York Times.

Health + Ability

U.S. News | Blind

Accessibility programming at U.S. museums extends appreciation of the visual arts to blind individuals
  • The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and other major art museums offer programming allowing visitors to touch selected works or work replicas.
  • Such programming allows for the more individualized aesthetic appreciation enjoyed by those without visual impairment, and in museums where tactile engagement is forbidden, specialized tours offer detailed descriptions of works to visitors.
  • Museum professionals note the growth in accessibility programming since the 1970s, with the introduction of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1980 spurring cultural institutions to work to create inclusive experiences across the ability spectrum.

“I don’t think it’s red tape-wise such a difficult thing to do. … And you can certainly use the argument, ‘Look at all these other museums.’ … I think that the institutions that don’t have something in place are scrambling because they’re thinking, ‘Here we are 25 years [after the ADA], we’d better get going on this.’ ”

Read the full story at the Washington Post.

(Image Credit: Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)