Museum celebrates Mexican death themes
Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The house of the dead awaits your arrival.
Just off the courtyard of a former Carmelite convent here, half a dozen clay sculptures of the dark Aztec underworld lord Mictlantecuhtli fix you with voracious grins and hollow eyes. In a next-door gallery, scores of miniature skeletons strum instruments, cavort in beery fiestas and enlace their bony limbs in fervid love making.
If the mood at Mexico's 2-month-old National Museum of Death feels more celebratory than sepulchral, that's hardly surprising. Although most Western cultures tend to treat death with fear and loathing, Mexicans prefer to embrace it.
San Francisco Chronicle
Study says more minorities ended up with high-cost mortgages
Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Minorities were far more likely than whites to be given high-cost subprime mortgages last year, according to a study to be released today by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, an advocacy group.
In the Bay Area, the disparity between high-cost home loans made to minorities and whites was particularly pronounced, even among borrowers with similar incomes, the study found.
San Francisco Chronicle
Judge stays rule requiring employers to fire illegal immigrants
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, September 1, 2007
A federal judge in San Francisco blocked the Bush administration Friday from imposing a rule requiring employers to fire workers identified as illegal immigrants in government records or face possible prosecution.
U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney granted a nationwide temporary restraining order sought by the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions to keep the government from sending letters to employers demanding that they clear up workers' citizenship status.
The order will be in effect until Oct. 1, when another federal judge will consider whether to grant an injunction that would block the rule until a trial on the unions' lawsuit against the government is held.
San Francisco Chronicle
THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE
Legality of local anti-immigrant laws in doubt
There are few court rulings to serve as guidelines in field long considered federal turf
Karin Brulliard, Washington Post / San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
(08-29) 04:00 PDT Washington --
As local officials from Missouri to Texas to Pennsylvania increasingly respond to public discontent over illegal immigration by passing ordinances, law scholars say a key question remains: Are local regulations legal?
The validity of the measures, designed to regulate an area long considered part of the federal domain, is among the murkiest territories in the already-byzantine field of immigration law, they say, largely because local leaders have never before felt impelled to act, and so there are few specific court rulings to offer clarity.
"You have this complex overlay of statutes and regulations and court cases, and you've got this federalism question of ... what has traditionally been federal power and what the states can do," said Jan Ting, a Temple University law professor. "There could not be an area of law that is less clear than this, I think."
San Francisco Chronicle
Jon Carroll, Friday, June 1, 2007
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Good morning, I understand that you're illegal. Or rather, your status is illegal. That is, you're in the wrong place. Yes, you're in your home, but your home is in the wrong place.
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One way to get clarity on foreign policy issues is to turn the dynamic around. Pretend you are a citizen of the other country; what would you think and what would you do?
If you were an Iraqi, four years after you were invaded by a foreign power because it had been attacked by people who shared your religion and general geographic area but not much else (sort of like the United States retaliating for Pearl Harbor by attacking Korea), and you had seen your cities destroyed and your friends either dead or displaced, what would you do? Better yet: What would most members of the current administration suggest that you do? What would be the patriotic thing to do?
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San Francisco Chronicle, viernes abril 27, 2007
The human face of immigration raids in Bay Area
Arrests of parents can deeply traumatize children caught in the fray, experts argue
Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, April 27, 2007
Immigration agents arrested siblings Victor and Elvira Mendoza, 21 and 17, when it turned out the fugitive they were looking for no longer lived at the Mendozas' home. Officers detained 6-year-old U.S. citizen Kebin Reyes for 12 hours when they arrested his father as an illegal immigrant.
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San Francisco Chronicle, jueves abril 26, 2007
OAKLAND
Measures to oppose U.S. raids
Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Measures to oppose U.S. raids
Oakland city officials Wednesday announced two new resolutions condemning recent federal immigration raids and formalizing the city's intention not to cooperate with the U.S. government effort to deport undocumented residents.
The resolutions, one by Mayor Ron Dellums and the other by Council President Ignacio De La Fuente, both condemn the recent raids, including one Friday at an East Oakland manufacturer.
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San Francisco Chronicle, miércoles febrero 21, 2007
A SHARED GOAL
Divided by class, soccer rivals united by love of the game
David White, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Richmond High's boys soccer team spends winters playing behind the poorly lit corner of 23rd and Maricopa streets, where the corner-store windows are protected by bars, the pavement is cracked and potholed, and the temporary street sign touting a revitalization project is obscured by graffiti.
Monte Vista High's soccer team plays in Danville, off to the side of Stone Valley Road, where the rolling hills are green with damp grass and oak trees, the mansions are double-decked and garage doors come in threes at the end of winding driveways.
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La Jornada, martes 13 de febrero de 2007.
México, campeón de la inmigración: 11 millones de expulsados a EEUU
El TLCAN y la apertura indiscriminada detonaron el aumento explosivo de la migración, advierte red internacional
Sólo entre 2000 y 2005 se perdieron 900 mil empleos en el campo
ISRAEL RODRIGUEZ
México se ha convertido en el campeón de la migración mundial, superando a países como India, Filipinas, Marruecos y Turquía, con 11 millones de connacionales en Estados Unidos, y 28 millones de personas de origen mexicano en aquel país, aseguró Raúl Delgado, director de la Red Internacional de Migración y Desarrollo.
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Identity theft probe results in raids in 6 states
Federal agents arrest illegal workers at meatpacking plants
Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
(12-13) 04:00 PDT Washington -- Federal officials raided six meatpacking plants across the country Tuesday in the culmination of a 10-month investigation triggered by allegations that illegal immigrants were using the stolen identities of U.S. citizens.
The raids, all at plants operated by Swift & Co., resulted in arrests of workers on immigration violations and some existing criminal warrants, with charges of aggravated identity theft possible at a later date, officials said. The number of arrests was not immediately known. The company was not charged.
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Gringos turn tide crossing border
Boomer retirees invading Mexico
Mike Davis, San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, October 15, 2006
The visitor crossing from Tijuana to San Diego thesedays is immediately slapped in the face by a hugebillboard screaming, "Stop the Border Invasion!"Sponsored by Grassfire.com, the same truculent sloganreportedly insults the public at other bordercrossings in Arizona and Texas.
The Minutemen, once caricatured in the press asgun-toting clowns, are now haughty celebrities ofgrassroots conservatism, dominating AM hate radio aswell as the even more hysterical ether of theright-wing blogosphere. In the heartland as well as inborder states, Republican candidates vie desperatelyfor their endorsement. With the electorate alienatedby the dual catastrophes of Baghdad and New Orleans,the Brown Peril has suddenly become the Republicandeus ex machina for retaining control of Congress innext month's elections.
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Influx of English learners a challenge for California
Tyche Hendricks, San Francisco Chronicle, 11/29/06
Almost 30 percent of the non-English speakers in the United States live in California, many of them in households that are "linguistically isolated" because they lack adults or teenagers proficient in English, according to data from the 2000 census...
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San Francisco Chronicle
THE BAY AREA'S MINORITY MIGRATION - POPULATION SHIFT: Inner cities shrinking as nonwhites seek better schools and lives
Leslie Fulbright, San Francisco Chronicle, 08/15/06
After spending most of his life in Berkeley, Peter Wilson packed up his family last year and moved to Antioch, one of the Bay Area's fastest growing cities. "Berkeley was getting really expensive," said Wilson, 49, who lives with his wife, Yvette, three...
San Francisco Chronicle
THE BAY AREA'S MINORITY MIGRATION - U.S. IMMIGRANTS: Census data find 16% rise in 5 years -- many go to new destinations
Rick Lyman, San Francisco Chronicle, 08/15/06
The number of immigrants living in American households rose 16 percent over the last five years, fueled largely by recent arrivals from Mexico, according to fresh data released by the Census Bureau. And increasingly, immigrants are bypassing the...
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San Francisco Chronicle
Cheaper China taking business away from Mexico
Jeans factories face increasing competition
Monica Campbell, Chronicle Foreign Service
Thursday, April 6, 2006
(04-06) 04:00 PDT Tehuacan, Mexico -- Down an alley, past Doberman-guarded factories, Reyna Rodriguez sits behind a tall, unmarked metal gate sewing 1,400 pockets a day onto Abercrombie & Fitch designer jeans for $70 a week.
The constant pressure to produce keeps her from chatting with co-workers or taking as many restroom breaks as she feels she needs. She leaves her station only after a floor manager, who checks her progress every two hours, hands her an exit pass -- proof that the petite, bespectacled Rodriguez has met her daily quota.
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Grapes of Wrath, Revisited - Napa Valley celebrates the good life -- but things aren't quite as rosy for the workers who pick the grapes
Glen Martin, San Francisco Chronicle, 12/19/04
To arrive in the Napa Valley, as either resident or tourist, is to have -- well, arrived. It takes an impressive cache of ducats to buy a home in St. Helena or Calistoga, where modest cottages fetch close to a million and anything with any real elbow room...
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