Monday Memo: Panama Elections – Haiti and the Dominican Republic – Uruguayan Marijuana – Colombian Mine Collapse – Brazil Soccer Death
This week’s likely top stories: Juan Carlos Varela will be Panama’s next president; talks between Haiti and the Dominican Republic are postponed; marijuana legalization goes into effect in Uruguay; a Colombian mine collapse kills at least 12 people; a Brazilian soccer fan is killed in Recife. Juan Carlos Varela Wins Panamanian Election: Juan Carlos Varela … Read more
Virginia Grants In-State Tuition to DACA Recipients
Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring announced on Tuesday that undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children and are granted legal presence through the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would qualify for in-state tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities. In a speech at Northern Virginia Community College’s … Read more
AFL-CIO Issues Immigration Recommendations to DHS
The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S., released a memo on Monday outlining steps that the Obama administration can take to alleviate the burden of immigration enforcement on immigrant workers and families in the absence of congressional action on comprehensive reform. The memo, titled Recommendation on Administrative Action on Immigration, calls on … Read more
Monday Memo: Costa Rican Elections – U.S. Deportations – Venezuela-Spain Spat – FIFA Delays
Unchallenged Costa Rican Candidate Wins Presidency: Luis Guillermo Solís of the Partido Acción Ciudadana (Citizen Action Party—PAC) won Sunday’s presidential election in Costa Rica, claiming 78 percent of the vote. The challenging candidate, Johnny Araya of the Partido Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Party—PLN), dropped out of the running after a March 5 opinion poll ranked … Read more
Monday Memo: El Salvador’s Next President – Venezuela – Peace in Colombia – Protesters Cross U.S.-Mexico Border – Bogotá and Petro
Likely top stories this week: election results are sustained in El Salvador; Venezuelan protests continue; Santos is optimistic about peace with FARC; young immigrant protesters cross back into the U.S.; Gustavo Petro’s future as mayor is uncertain in Bogotá. Cerén Declared Next President of El Salvador: El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal officially rejected presidential candidate … Read more
House GOP Abandons Comprehensive Immigration Reform Push
Yesterday, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) effectively squashed the possibility of passing comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year, blaming President Barack Obama for stalled negotiations. During a midday news conference on Capitol Hill, Boehner said “There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws,” and that reform has a slim chance … Read more
House GOP Releases Immigration Reform Plan
Republican leaders in the House of Representatives released a long-awaited list of standards on immigration reform legislation on Thursday. The announcement comes seven months after the Senate approved its own comprehensive bill that stalled in the House. The GOP standards include a pathway to citizenship for young people brought to the U.S. as children, and … Read more
Brazil’s Acre State Asks to Close Borders, Keep Haitians Out
The Brazilian state of Acre has asked the government to temporarily close the Brazil-Peru border to control Haitian migration. Acre’s secretary of justice and human rights, Nilson Mourão, said the levels of Haitian migration into the region are unsustainable and have strained the capacity of social services in the area. Since the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that … Read more
Politics Innovator: Rashida Tlaib, United States
Rashida Tlaib is used to overcoming obstacles—just like Detroit, the city she was born in and now represents in the Michigan State Legislature. The eldest of 14 children born to Palestinian immigrant parents, and the first in her family to graduate from high school, Tlaib (pronounced Ta-LEEB) is the first Muslim woman to serve as … Read more
U.S., Cuba Discuss Migration Policy
U.S. acting deputy assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs, Edward Alex Lee, and Cuban director-general of the U.S. Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, met in Havana on Thursday to discuss accords on safe, legal and orderly migration between the two countries. This was the second meeting on migration … Read more
DR, Haiti to Discuss Citizenship Ruling
Government officials from the Dominican Republic and Haiti will meet next month to discuss a controversial court decision that would take citizenship away from thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent, Haiti’s foreign minister Pierre Richard Casimir said on Thursday. A commission made up of five officials from both countries will meet in Ouanaminthe, a town … Read more
Monday Memo: Honduran Elections – Haitian Immigrants – Venezuela – U.S. Immigration – Santos and Correa
Likely top stories this week: Honduras’ election results are still pending; the Dominican Republic deports Haitian immigrants after violence in a border town; Henrique Capriles urges the Venezuelan opposition to vote on December 8; a new report says that most Americans favor a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants; Juan Manuel Santos and Rafael Correa … Read more
House Speaker Boehner Postpones Immigration Vote
Republican House Speaker John Boehner announced Wednesday that the Republican-led House of Representatives would not vote on comprehensive immigration reform before next year. Specifically, Speaker Boehner said that the House would not vote on the bipartisan Senate bill passed earlier this year, saying: “I’ll make clear we have no intention ever of going to conference … Read more
President Obama and Senator McCain Discuss Immigration Reform
President Barack Obama and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) met at the White House on Thursday afternoon to discuss “a broad range of issues,” including strategies for moving immigration reform forward in Congress. While a bipartisan reform bill passed the Senate in June, the House of Representatives has yet to schedule a vote on its comprehensive … Read more
Third House Republican Pledges Support for Immigration
A Representative from California became the third Republican in the House of Representatives to pledge support for comprehensive immigration reform legislation proposed by House Democrats. Rep. David Valdadao of California’s twenty-first congressional district joins Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) in publicly supporting H.R. 15 this week, the House version of the bipartisan bill … Read more
