Undocumented individuals who suffer from sexual assault, domestic violence and exploitation in the work force face unique challenges due to the added vulnerability created by their immigration status in the United States. It’s time to stand up for and protect immigrant survivors.
Category: Immigration
America’s Forbidding Legacy on the Southern Border
U.S. border challenges are largely due to our old, inadequate immigration laws, as well as America’s indiscriminate and criminal meddling in Central America over seven-plus decades.
Ideological-driven and fear-based U.S. foreign policy decisions in the past are among the core causes of today’s Central American disorder. America is now reaping the whirlwind that it helped to sow.
Some People See Teeming Masses. I Remember a Small Child Sharing Her Candy.
“When I listen to lawmakers demonize migrants and reduce them to numbers, I am reminded of the days I spent managing a migrant shelter in New Mexico and the people I met there. … I know from firsthand experience that the children and parents at our border right now are not national security threats. They are families faced with no good choices who made the incredibly tough decision to leave a dangerous situation for an equally dangerous journey in hope of finding safety.”
The Misery Trump Left at the Border Is Finally Being Revealed
Protecting asylum seekers is a woman’s issue of the first order.
Asylum seekers in and of themselves are not a “crisis” for the U.S., nor is an increase in the flow of undocumented immigrants generally—as long as the resources are made available to humanely manage the flow of people.
They Don’t Teach You How to Grieve as a First-Generation, Only-Child American
As the only child, only daughter to immigrant parents coming from strong Latin and Middle Eastern cultures, I was taught many things of life in this “new” world. COVID-19 showed me that I was never formally taught one constant emotion amongst all of humanity: grief.
Just when I start to learn to process one traumatic event, another hits, and another, and the next—all while grieving a nation I love and a democracy my parents sacrificed to attain.
Behind Closed Doors: The Traumas of Domestic Work in the U.S.
Domestic workers often endure horrific abuses that go unchecked. Many are brought to the U.S. by employers promising a better life, only to find themselves subjected to forced labor, denied wages, and threatened with deportation.
“All I want as a domestic worker is recognition. Domestic work is seen as a lowly job but it’s a decent job and it’s vital to society. We should not be ignored. We are important.”
Supermodel Aweng Ade-Chuol Is an Advocate for Refugee Mental Health
Aweng Ade-Chuol was born in a Kenyan refugee camp. As a child she immigrated with her family to Australia, where she was scouted by a modeling agency. Today, at age 22, she is a world-famous model who advocates for mental health and equality—especially for refugee girls.
New Refugee Order Declares “America is Back”
A new Biden executive order provides a blueprint for rebuilding the badly damaged U.S Refugee Admissions Program. The order reflects the consensus among refugee resettlement and other humanitarian groups that the USRAP must not only be revived, but renewed.
“Women’s Work”: How the Devaluation of Care Work Hurts Women and the Economy
Dismissed as “women’s work”—that is, not “really” work—taking care of children, attending to housework, and/or caring for the sick and elderly is both socially and economically invisible labor. It carries little prestige and, for those who do it for a living, very little pay. Yet, as pandemic life and the shrinking economy remind us, it is crucial, demanding labor. Without it, our economy does not function at the household nor at the national level.
Biden’s Second Round of Executive Actions Tackles Immigration and Reuniting Families
The second round of executive actions on immigration, signed by President Biden this week, send a clear message that the Biden administration intends to tackle the immense structural damage caused to U.S. immigration policies by the Trump administration.