You can read some of the selections here

The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children released the most in-depth and impartial study on family immigrant detention titled “Locking Up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families” (2007), finding:

• [the detention center] is a former criminal facility that still looks and feels like a prison, complete with razor wire and prison cells.
• Some families with young children have been detained in these facilities for up to two years. The majority of children detained appeared to be under the age of 12.
• At night, children as young as six were separated from their parents. Separation and threats of separation were used as disciplinary tools.
• People in detention displayed widespread and obvious psychological trauma. Every woman we spoke with in a private setting cried.
• At Hutto pregnant women received inadequate prenatal care.
• Children detained at Hutto received one hour of schooling per day.
• Families in Hutto received no more than twenty minutes to go through the cafeteria line and feed their children and themselves. Children were frequently sick from the food and losing weight.
• Families in Hutto received extremely limited indoor and outdoor recreation time and children did not have any soft toys.

The Texas State Comptroller released a report, “Undocumented Immigrants in Texas: A Financial Analysis…2006”, finding that “The absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion. Undocumented immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion in state services they received. However, local governments bore the burden of $1.44 billion in uncompensated health care costs and local law enforcement costs not paid for by the state.”

The Public Policy Institute of California released a similar report titled How Immigrants Affect California Employment and Wages finding that

• There is no evidence that the influx of immigrants over the past four decades has worsened the employment opportunities of natives with similar education and experience.
• There is no association between the influx of immigrants and the out-migration of natives within the same education and age group.
• Immigration induced a 4 percent real wage increase for the average native worker between 1990 and 2004.
• Recent immigrants did lower the wages of previous immigrants.

And on the “immigrants cause crime” myth, sociologists Ruben Rumbat (Sociology, UC Irvine) and Walter Ewing (Anthro, IPC) found overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that immigrants are a fraction as likely to commit crime as the native-born: “In every ethnic group, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are less educated, said the study by the Immigration Policy Center, an immigrant- advocacy group in Washington. This holds especially true for Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans, who make up the bulk of the illegal population. See a pdf of their report here

And finally, Dowell Myers (USC, Urban Planning) is arguing that babyboomers worried about the future of their Social Security really need to be encouraging the education and development of immigrant populations to strengthen the [especially Latino] taxpaying U.S. middle class. Baby Boomer self-interest could be a powerful political ally, no?

Marissa’s blog is highly recommended reading, by the way.

Their work examines “mujer-centered… definitions of pedagogy and epistemology rooted in Chicana/Latina theories and visions of life, family, community, and world. Armed with the tools of Chicana/Latina feminist thought, the contributors link cultural studies theories to critical/feminist pedagogies by re-envisioning the sites of pedagogy to include women’s brown bodies and their agency.”

Fellow MALCSista Edén Torres opines “This book has the potential to transform the way we theorize feminist pedagogy or conceptualize ways of knowing. It plumbs the depths of Mexican American intellectual traditions, interrogates the scope of feminist teaching, and explains the morality of a political commitment to liberatory pedagogies.”

See the complete table of contents at the SUNY website here. Contributors also include Jennifer Ayala, L. Esthela Banuelos, Courtney C. Bentley, Rebecca Burciaga, Rosario Carrillo, Cindy Cruz, Elizabeth Cruz, Perlita R. Dicochea, Norma González, Patricia Herrera, Michelle A. Holling, Laura Jiménez, Michelle G. Knight, Irene Lara, Jo Anna Mixpe Ley, Nadjwa E. L. Norton, Karleen Pendleton Jiménez, Ana Tavares, Iris Taylor Dixon, Ruth Trinidad Galván.

Please take a look and consider using this in your courses, etc.  Renee Saucedo’s piece on immigration enforcement violence against migrant women, Sylvanna Falcon’s piece on border violence against women (she introduces the term “militarized border rape,”) and Rosa Linda Fregoso’s piece on Juarez would add substantially to the discussion of gender, patriarchy and the role of the state in considering violence against Latinas, especially vis a vis the migrant experience for Latinas.  There are also several pieces by Latinas documenting and recommending strategies for movement building and organizing on the ground, including pieces from Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, Sista to Sista in New York and (CARA) Communities Against Rape and Abuse in Seattle and much more!

In our efforts to disinvest from the NonProfit Industrial Complex, we are fortaleciendo our grassroots fundraising strategies and the proceeds from this book will go to support INCITE’s work!

En lucha,
Clarissa Rojas

The INCITE! Anthology
Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
Pages: 336  (paper)
ISBN: 0-89608-762-X
Release Date: 2006-10-10

*NOTE: this book is a fundraising effort, please buy your copy today and support INCITE’s work!!!
https://www.southendpress.org/2005/items/8762X

Dear MALCS Members and Allies:

Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of MALCS is now accepting proposals for focused issues. In the future, proposals for focused issues are accepted at any time, but for the first open call, proposals must be received by Jan. 13, 2006.

This new policy for publishing articles, commentary, creative writing, and an extended book review on a specific topic was approved at the 2006 MALCS Summer Institute by the National Advisory Committee and the Associate Editorial Board.

A focused issue is a set of works on a specific topic proposed by a MALCS member who will function as the special editor for the issue. Unlike special issues, the focused issue is part of the regular publication schedule and it is included in one of the two issues that are published each academic year.

For more information about the Call for Proposals, please see this attached document.

Sincerely, Karen Mary Davalos,
coeditor

So the committee report, “College Scholarships for Latino Students: Are Opportunities Being Missed?” is available here, and even better, they created a new online gateway for Latina/o students to find out about scholarship opportunities – see latinocollegedollars.com (opens in new window). The same info is also available in a pdf directory, available here.

–submitted by Valerie Talavera-Bustillos