Pan African Women's Action Summit

The Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and our sister organization, Priority Action Network (PAN) will be co-hosting a workshop at the Pan African Women's Action Summit on August 11th, 2011 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The Pan-African Women’s Action Summit (PAWAS) was created in 2005 to convene diverse black diaspora women to promote collaboration, networking, skill building, as well as personal health and wellness to strengthen the Pan-African Philanthropy Movement's capacity to impact the social and other issues that affect our communities.

Our workshop is entitled Beyond Us and Them: Sharing Our Stories, Healing Our Communities. Here's the workshop description:

It is a fact that the “black community” in this country is changing and is a lot more diverse than we assume. While the majority of the Black population is still African Americans – there are significant and increasing populations of Black immigrants that are adding challenging existing assumptions of the homogeneity in the “black.”

When then Senator Obama first announced his candidacy for the highest Presidency, much of the discussion among Black communities was the challenge in defining his identity. Clearly he is black and yet he is not of slave-ancestry; he was not “black enough” for some and too black for others. His identity as a man whose father is African, married to an African American made visible the profound need for race dialogue among diverse black communities. It also made visible both the commonalities and differences in the black community.

Statistics show that an estimated 5% of the Black population is made up of immigrants from Africa and another 12% of immigrants from the Caribbean. Yet, racial discourse is framed always within the black/white dichotomy and very little exists to have transnational conversations which bring race, culture, identity and history into our communities.

We at Priority Africa Network and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration have held several community dialogues that brought together diverse groups from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean in the San Francisco/Bay Area. Lessons learned from these over the past five years have given insight into ways to bring much needed exchanges on the critical need to know one another’s history, to go beyond the assumptions of damaging stereotypes held on all sides.

This workshop will present one model on how to hold open and healing exchanges about the divisions that exist in the African diaspora community. As the number of Black immigrants increases in the coming decade, and there is increased visibility of the diversity of Black communities, the opportunity to learn and use these transformative ideas is critical. It will also highlight the role and power of diverse black women, and their allies, in building community across ethnic and racial lines.

On Jose Vargas and Real Immigration Stories

Post by Renee Simms, BAJI Phoenix

Jose Vargas’s moving New York Times’ essay about how he came to the United States as a boy and how he has lived with the secret of his undocumented legal status is exactly the type of immigration story Americans should be telling. It’s a real story, about the personal decisions people make in order to have a better life. It’s not calculated political rhetoric like what we heard from Senator John McCain about immigrants starting wildfires in Arizona. It wasn’t a story intended to trigger fear or nationalism. Instead, Vargas’s essay was a story that we can all relate to since each of us, with the exception of indigenous Native Americans, is an immigrant to this country.

Each American has a story of how his or her family, for political and economic reasons, ended up away from an original homeland. We also have stories about our families’ migration within the United States. If I understand my family’s story of migration, I should be able to understand and sympathize with yours.

As a black woman, part of my migration history is the tale of my father who was born during the Great Depression in the Jim Crow south. He had seven brothers and sisters. His father left my grandmother to raise these eight children by herself. Because poverty, legislated racism and lynchings were accepted facts of life in the early 20^th century, my father left Atlanta, Georgia by train the very first chance that he got. Like millions of other blacks from 1915 to 1970, he moved to the urban north.

When my father arrived in Detroit in the 1950s, the city had a strong, post-war economy. By the 1980s when I was a teenager, Detroit was part of the declining industrial rustbelt and a community ravaged by the crack cocaine epidemic. The city that had attracted my father, would provide limited opportunities for me, and so in 1996, I moved west to Los Angeles, California.

I lived in L.A. during the second term of the Clinton presidency and the tech stock bubble. Many people were flush with cash during these years (or had access to easy loans) and a modest home in southern California could sell for $350,000 and upward. Because I was not flush with cash and couldn’t afford a home in California, I eventually migrated to the Southwest and then to the Pacific Northwest. My movement across the U.S. has been influenced by economic opportunities as well as cultural considerations like the racial attitudes within a community. I want to live in a place that is affordable, safe, that is tolerant of divergent viewpoints, that is ethnically diverse, and a place where I feel respected.

Immigration and migration have always been about our human search for a better life. That’s what Vargas’s essay makes clear and what this Times’ article about young blacks moving back to the south also makes clear. People will move to a place that promises a good life.

It’s in this spirit that the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) enters the immigration debate. BAJI seeks to raise awareness about the global economic systems and politics that force people to migrate in the first place. We know that immigration is not a small, national story about wildfires or workers who want to take American jobs. Immigration is a big, human rights story about economic opportunity, and the risks that people will take to attain that opportunity. The risks include separation from one’s family, crossing armed borders, or living in fear like Jose Vargas that someday you’ll be caught.

Black Immigrants Join the Debate

Millions of African- and Caribbean-born people are missing from the immigration-reform conversation. A few of them tell The Root that they will not be shut out.

by Cynthia Gordon
Originally posted in the Root

On March 11, at a press conference on Capitol Hill, Tolu Olubunmi came out publicly as an undocumented immigrant for the first time.

"It's been nerve-racking because it puts me at a risk," the 30-year-old told The Root about her speech supporting Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin's (D-Ill.) reintroduction of the DREAM Act. The bill, which passed in the House last year but failed to clear the Senate, would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented youths like her, brought to the United States as children. "But I think you have to focus on the individuals to get away from the politics of an issue that's so divisive. Once you know that there are real people attached to the statistics, then you have to start working on real solutions."

Olubunmi, who was born in Nigeria, is also one of 3 million black immigrants in this country. Despite moving from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America at a remarkable rate -- and despite an estimated 400,000 having undocumented status -- they are barely footnotes in an immigration-reform conversation that is usually framed as a Mexican-border issue. But in light of newer, smaller-but-growing communities, as well as recently granted protected status for Haitians in particular, black immigrants are becoming stronger voices, advocating for reform from their diverse perspectives.

Black Sojourners

According to a Population Reference Bureau report (pdf), about two-thirds of black immigrants to the U.S. are from the Caribbean and Latin America -- mostly Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad -- with families that largely began settling in the United States from the 1960s through the '80s. More recently there's been a wave of African immigrants, with more arriving between 2000 and 2005 than in the previous decade. The top three countries from that continent are Nigeria, Ethiopia and Ghana.

Most black immigrants enter the United States legally, seeking education and job opportunities, either by joining immediate relatives who are U.S. citizens or by presenting student or tourist visas with an expiration date. Those who are undocumented often fall out of status by overstaying these visas.

As The Root noted in a previous article, Caribbean- and African-born blacks tend to be wealthier and more educated than other immigrants, a class difference that has kept many from joining Latinos in the immigration-reform movement. But in recent years, with more African and Caribbean people coming to the United States to flee political strife, civil violence and natural disasters, new groups are entering as refugees or asylum seekers. While only 3 percent of immigrants from Caribbean countries, mostly from Haiti, were admitted under the refugee category, nearly 30 percent of sub-Saharan Africans granted legal residence between 2000 and 2006 entered as refugees.

As these flows of people have come from countries like Somalia, Congo, Liberia and Haiti -- without the same educational resources allowing them to flourish -- many have run into trouble navigating a slow-moving and restrictive immigration system.

Who Gets In?

Although immigration from Africa and the Caribbean has grown rapidly over the past decade, having contributed to at least one-fifth of America's black population growth between 2000 and 2005 alone, there are anecdotal arguments that the process is infused with racism and works less efficiently for black people.

Sheryl Winarick, an immigration attorney in Washington, D.C., suggests that the largest hurdles for blacks in the immigration system, particularly those fleeing poverty or civil strife, usually arise from the economic situation in their countries. She explained that most visas require proof that an individual plans to return home after a temporary visit to the U.S.

"Anyone that's coming from a developing country has a harder time demonstrating their intent to just visit instead of staying permanently," she told The Root. "If you don't own a home or have a steady flow of income to go back to, then the government assumes you're more likely to want to stay here permanently and find work."

On the other hand, Phil Hutchings, an organizer with Oakland, Calif.'s Black Alliance for Just Immigration, which lobbies for immigrants' rights, believes that race is always in play. "It factors into whether you get through speedily or whether there's a lot of circumspection," he says.

"People who go against the norm of what Americans are 'supposed to look like' -- and that generally includes black people -- have more difficulty," he continues. "Also, a fair number of African immigrants are Muslim, putting them in a suspect category that makes it harder for them to come here."

An African Dreamer

For her part, Olubunmi says her challenges stemmed from a rigid policy that makes it impossible for undocumented immigrants to rectify their situation once they fall out of legal status. When she was 14, her mother brought her to Maryland from Nigeria to escape political instabilities. The plan was for her aunt, a U.S. citizen, to adopt her.

"The plan was never to be undocumented," she says, but the process hit a snag when her papers were filed late. It's a common mishap. "When you file your paperwork, officials could say that you missed a deadline by a week or two, but they don't actually respond to you for two or three years because of the backlog. People who are committed to doing the right thing get caught up, unbeknownst to them, in these basic flaws in the system. It's pretty easy to fall through the cracks."

Olubunmi graduated from high school at the top of her class and then from college, earning a chemical engineering degree. She anticipated filing her papers with a company that would hire her as an engineer, only to learn that she couldn't legally get a job. "The law says that if you're undocumented, you cannot adjust your status while living in the U.S.," she says. "I'd have to go to Nigeria to sort out the conflict; then, once I got there, it would trigger a three-to-10-year bar from returning to this country. But this is my home."

Since 2008, Olubunmi has volunteered with various advocacy organizations, working behind the scenes for comprehensive immigration reform and the DREAM Act in particular. "We're not asking for a free pass," she says, explaining that many would-be beneficiaries were brought over as babies or toddlers.

"People always say, 'Get in line.' Well, the DREAM Act creates a line," she says. "These students are saying that they will do whatever they have to, if it's going to college or serving in the military. They are just asking for an opportunity to prove themselves worthy of the country they love."

A Rising Haitian Voice

David Faustin, 45, says he had a smooth process coming to the United States from Haiti 22 years ago. He acquired his green card upon marrying his wife, who already had permanent residency, and became a citizen after 10 years of marriage. But as the pastor of a Washington, D.C. church with largely Haitian congregants, he has helped many of them through a far more difficult course.

When a devastating earthquake plunged the island into further despair in 2010, he was relieved by the Obama administration's decision to grant Temporary Protected Status for Haitians who had already been living in the U.S., allowing them to stay here legally and suspending deportations.

"The church brought in lawyers like Ms. Winarick to help people who were scared of applying for TPS because they were of unlawful status," he tells The Root. "They thought it was a way for immigration officials to know where they live."

This month, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would extend TPS for Haitians, which was scheduled to expire in July, for another 18 months. The department also expanded it to include Haitians who came here up to one year after the 2010 earthquake. "Having protected status is helping a lot of Haitian people to not only make it here and contribute to the American economy, but also to send money to other people back home and help them survive," says Faustin.

Furthermore, it has empowered more Haitians to organize around immigration reform, partnering with immigrant-rights groups to build a powerful lobby. "In the past it was just the Hispanic community, but the Haitian community has become involved to advocate for what they would like to see happening for them," says Faustin, citing, for example, amnesty for immigrants who once had legal status but are now unable to resolve their position. "As soon as the government gave them TPS, Haitians decided to take advantage of the momentum."

Beyond the Border

Hutchings, of the 10-year-old Black Alliance, concurs that he's seen other black-immigrant organizations mobilize in recent years, including San Francisco's African Advocacy Network and Chicago's Pan African Association. "In different parts of the country, black immigrants have developed enclosed communities just to themselves," he says. "But at a certain point, a community realizes that it needs to reach out to develop allies and meet political officials. Their participation is really about people beginning to take responsibility for their own development in the United States."

Olubunmi is heartened to see more people from African and Caribbean countries speaking out. "The majority of undocumented immigrants are Latino, but it's important to recognize that there are different groups involved in this debate," she says. "I remember once watching Bush talk about creating a path for folks who 'come across the border.' Well, if a bill is written from that perspective, it wouldn't work for everybody."

Ultimately, she knows that a system that works for everyone will require action from Washington. "I'm a huge supporter of President Obama, but I am very disappointed that we haven't been able to get comprehensive immigration reform done," she says.

While she understands that Congress must act, as the president demanded in his recent immigration-policy speech, she maintains that he has executive authority to make some changes himself -- changes like stopping the deportation of undocumented "Dreamers."

Until then, Olubunmi is committed to lending her voice to the struggle, even if it now means going public with her own status. "If it will help to raise consciousness, if it will help make life easier for other people," she says with a quick, nervous laugh, "then I will lay myself at the altar."

Watch Full Episode: Mexico & Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet

Originally published in PBS Black in Latin America website

In Mexico and Peru Professor Gates explores the almost unknown history of the significant numbers of black people—the two countries together received far more slaves than did the United States —brought to these countries as early as the 16th and 17th centuries, and the worlds of culture that their descendants have created in Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico, the Costa Chica region on the Pacific, and in and around Lima, Peru. Watch full episode.

Watch the full episode. See more Black in Latin America.

DWN: New Data Spotlights Influence of Private Prison Industry on Immigration Detention

Originally posted by Detention Watch Network

As the largest for-profit prison company in the country, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), prepares for its annual shareholders meeting, new data released today by the Detention Watch Network (DWN) sheds light on the growing influence of the private prison industry on the immigration detention system.

Drawn from a variety of sources, including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Reading Room, and the Federal Lobbying Disclosure Act Database, the data reveals the companies most heavily invested in the business of immigration detention – CCA, The GEO Group Inc., and the Management and Training Corporation – and suggests increased lobbying activity over the last decade, both in terms of dollars spent and government entities targeted.

“For years, private prison firms have played a critical role in shaping public policy around immigration detention, pursuing the bottom line at the expense of basic civil rights and tax payer dollars,” said Emily Tucker, Director of Policy and Advocacy at DWN. “This data highlights deep corporate investment in the detention business, raising concerns about how the corporate profit-motive is fueling the expansion of the detention system as a whole.”

According to research by DWN, corporations have increasingly devoted resources over the last decade to lobbying for policies and programs that will increase their opportunities to do business with the government. Of the five corporations with ICE contracts for which official federal lobbying records are currently available, the total expenditure on lobbying for 1999-2009 was $20,432,000, with CCA ($18,002,000) and GEO ($2,065,000) as the top two spenders. Lobbying efforts targeted a wide range of government entities, indicating a comprehensive strategy for influencing policy and legislation.

Both CCA and GEO have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, as a lack of transparency and accountability has led to multiple cases of abuse and mismanagement in their facilities, resulting in the termination of contracts in a few recent cases.

“ICE has called for sweeping changes in the immigration detention system,” said Tucker. “Yet they continue to partner with private prison firms that are part of the problem. We hope this research inspires further exploration into the relationship between prison corporations and the government at all levels. We need to reduce our dependence on detention and begin putting human rights over profits.”

For the full collection of data, visit: http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/privateprisons

The Detention Watch Network is a national coalition of organizations and individuals working to educate the public and policy makers about the U.S. immigration detention and deportation system and advocate for humane reform so that all who come to our shores receive fair and humane treatment. For more information visit www.detentionwatchnetwork.org