Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Civil Rights Roundup:07/09/08

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news (abbreviated and late due to work, alas)

CNN has now picked up the story of the racist Mexican cartoon character I posted on in yesterday's roundup.

An atheist solider is suing the military, alleging discrimination.

A Louisiana judge has overturned the conviction of Albert Woodfox, an ex-Black Panther and one of the "Angola three", who was held in solitary confinement for thirty years.

Can a diversity advocate serve two masters? A Loudoun County advocate tasked with outreach to the minority community has been ousted, despite rave reviews and strident support from the minority community. The county itself, however, apparently did not like her performance (hints in the article point to her being too aggressive).

ICE is reporting that tougher enforcement against employers who hire undocumented/illegal immigrants is coming up.

Illegal/undocumented college students face anxiety about their future. Following up on a theme, I'm not all that keen on deporting B+-average UCLA grads.

Buried in this piece on that same issue comes a shocking policy out of Virginia: apparently, state universities are allowed to decide "on a case-by-case basis" whether U.S.-born child of illegal immigrants (also known as U.S. citizens) should be allowed in-state tuition.

Girl Detective at Feministe has a post up that I'm thrilled to see: This is What Anti-Semitism Looks Like.

2 comments:

Stentor said...

Saying "illegal/undocumented" is actually more annoying than when you just said "illegal." (It also defeats one important rationale for the "undocumented" term, which is to avoid making 'they're lawbreakers!' central to the framing.)

PG said...

There's a little bit of difference between being an illegal immigrant and an undocumented worker. An undocumented worker does not have the proper papers to work in a particular country. For example, holders of student visas are limited in their ability to work; a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford doesn't have the right to take a job in the UK. Holders of H1 visas can work only for the employers who got the visas for them.

An illegal immigrant entered the country illegally with the intent to remain beyond merely the time needed to obtain an education, complete a work project, etc.

There are problems likely to affect illegal immigrants (such as getting shot by overenthusiastic Minutemen, or being threatened by the "coyotes" that brought them over) that do not affect people whose presence in the country is legal but whose work is not. Collapsing all the various kinds of people who are not permanent residents/ citizens of the U.S. into simply "undocumented workers" over-simplifies immigration, education and labor issues.