Young Immigrant Women Have a DREAM

With hope fading that Congress will tackle comprehensive immigration reform before adjourning in October, most immigrant advocates have turned their attention to passing The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minor’s (DREAM) Act. The DREAM Act would let undocumented young people (who meet certain criteria) enter the military, attend public colleges and apply for federal [...]

Feds Slap Sheriff Joe Arpaio with Lawsuit

It’s been the summer of Arizona vs. the federal government, with lawsuits flying fast and furiously. The controversial state government now has yet another legal battle on its hands. Today, the U.S. Justice Department filed suit against Arizona’s infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio for his refusal to cooperate with a federal investigation of possible human rights [...]

Women in Detention Not Protected From Sexual Abuse

Building on the latest charges of sexual abuse to come out of T. Don Hutto detention center in Texas (which I blogged about here), Human Rights Watch has issued a scathing indictment of Homeland Security’s utter failure to protect women from abuse and harassment in detention. Since reports of sexual abuse at Hutto surfaced earlier [...]

Newsflash: Federal Judge Blocks Parts of Arizona Immigration Law

The most controversial parts of Arizona’s new immigration law won’t take effect at midnight as originally scheduled, thanks to federal judge Susan Bolton. SB 1070, signed into law in late April, would have allowed police to detain people based on suspected immigration status and would have made it a state crime for a person to [...]

Femicide May Be Grounds for Asylum

Do you remember the core principle that emerged from the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women? Women’s rights are human rights. Hillary Clinton gave her famous speech, we saw it on banners and we heard these words chanted in many languages. On July 12, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco put this [...]

How We’re Doing: the Real Numbers on Immigrants and Crime

You’ve probably heard the right-wing canard that illegal immigrants cause higher crime rates. And if you’re like the majority of the public, you believe it, as the pie chart (based on a 2000 General Social Survey) shows. So hurray for Tim Wadsworth of the University of Colorado at Boulder for publishing new research that debunks this [...]

Ms. Takes On Miss USA

We Ms. staffers don’t normally gather ’round to watch the Miss USA pageant. In fact, feminists have long protested such pageants and considered them  exploitative of women. But we found a little something to cheer about this year. Rima Fakih, 24, is the first Arab American to win the pageant, and probably the first immigrant. [...]

In Arizona, Both Racial Exploitation and Resistance Run Deep

On the heels of controversial immigration law SB 1070, which allows police to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant, Arizona’s legislature has passed a law targeting ethnic studies programs. The bill, which bans these programs because they supposedly teach “ethnic chauvinism”, represents another misguided effort by Arizona’s policymakers. As a professor of gender [...]

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