ImmigrationProf Blog

UC Davis Lawyer Helps "Stateless" Marathoner Compete in Olympics

Guar Marial and Brad Poore

ImmigrationProf previously posted about the “stateless” South Sudanese marathoner Guor Marial, who is competing under the Olympic flag in the Olympic marathon on Sunday.  Yesterday, I learned that Marial's friend and advocate is Brad Poore, a UC Davis School of Law alum, lawyer, and elite runner in his own right.   Poore advocated for Marial to compete in the Olympics as an independent athlete. 

I remember Brad as a sincere law student and always was impressed with his dedication to law and the sport of running.

UPDATE (AUG. 12):  Marial finished 47th in the Marathon with a time of 2:19:32.

KJ

Immigrants on Team USA in London Olympics

As the world knows, the London Olympics have been in the news.  Dozens of foreign-born athletes who immigrated to the United States have represented Team USA. Here are some of the top Americans who came from other lands:

Lopez Lomong, the Sudan 'Lost Boy'.  One of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan, he came to the United States at the age of 16, fleeing civil war and life in a refugee camp. Event -- 5,000-meter run. Lomong qualified for the 5000 meter finals.

Danell Leyva, Gymnast Whose Family Fled Cuba.  Leyva's mother brought him to Miami from Cuba as an infant in 1993. His stepfather and coach, Yin Alvarez, defected from Cuba by swimming across the Rio Grande River into the United States while the Cuban national team was competing in Mexico.

Foluke Akinradewo, Volleyball Player.  Akinradewo, U.S. middle blocker, was born in London, Ontario, Canada in 1987 and is a citizen of three countries: Canada, Nigeria and the U.S. 

Photo Courtesy of Leo Manzano.com

Leo Manzano, Son of an Undocumented Migrant Worker.  Born in Mexico, Leo Manzano moved with his family to Texas at the age of 4 where he soon began running. His father had supported the family as a migrant worker, frequently crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally to find jobs. Leo became a U.S. citizen in 2004. Manzano won a silver medal in a thrilling 1500 meter final.

 Liezel Huber, Tennis.  At age 15, Liezel Huber moved to the United States from South Africa to attend the Van Der Meer Tennis Academy in Hilton Head, S.C. She has lived in the United States since 1992. She married Tony Huber, an U.S. citizen, in February 2000 and became a U.S. citizen.

Bernard Lagat, Distance Runner.  Growing up on the family farm in Kapsabet, Kenya, Bernard Lagat would run 1.5 miles to school in the morning and then run home in the afternoon. Lagat, 37, has lived in the United States since 1996 and graduated from Washington State University. He became a U.S. citizen and started competing for the United States.

Mariya Koroleva, Synchronized Swimmer From Russia.  Born in Yaroslavl, Russia in 1990, Mariya Koroleva grew up in Concord, California, after the family immigrated to the United States.

For more about immigrant athletes on Team USA, click here.

KJ

A's Yoenis Cespedes a refugee of Cuban baseball politics

Marcos Breton of the Sacramento Bee analyzes how the Oakland A's new star player was a "refugee of Cuban baseball politics," not anti-communist or pro-capitalist.

KJ

An American Dreamer: Cal Basketball Star Jorge Gutierrez

I had the pleasure of watching a previous ImmigrationProf Immigrant of the Day, Jorge Gutierrez, play his last home basketball game at Haas Pavilion at UC Berkeley on Saturday night.

Gutierrez, last year's Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year as well as a member of the conference's All-Academic team, is a contender for this year's conference Player of the Year. On Saturday night before a raucous crowd (including his parents from Mexico) celebrating Jorge and his achievements, Gutierrez helped lead the team to victory against the Oregon State Beavers to stay atop the Pac-12 standings.

On the verge of a possible NBA career, Gutierrez came to the United States just a few years ago from Chihuahua, Mexico and had to learn to speak and write English. He will graduate from Cal this June.

Cal basketball has a few other players from outside the United States. Bak Bak comes from Sudan and Emerson Murray is from Canada.

KJ

ImmIgrants of the Day: NBA Star Jeremy Lin's Parents (Taiwan)

Courtesy of NBA.Com

ImmigrationProf has decided to contribute to the media sensation -- dubbed "Lin-Sanity" -- over new NBA star Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks. As we have heard, Lin was born in Los Angeles, grew up in Palo Alto, and went to Harvard.  His parents, Gie-Ming and Shirley, immigrated from Taiwan to the United States in the mid-1970s.  His paternal family comes from Beidou, Changhua in Taiwan (his great-grandfather immigrated to Taiwan from Zhangpu County, Fujian in mainland China, while his maternal grandmother is from Pinghu, Zhejiang in mainland China.

 

Watch Lin beat the Toronto Raptors on Valentine's Day 2012.

KJ

Immigrant of the Day: The Oakland A's New Centerfielder Yoenis Cespedes (Cuba)

ImmigrationProf's Immigrant of the Day is Yoenis Cespedes, the the Oakland A's new centerfielder.  Yesterday, Oakland signed the 26-year old Cuban outfielder to a four-year, $36 million deal. The contract will not be official until Cespedes, who defected from Cuba obtains a visa, and takes a physical. Cespedes will earn $6.5 million in 2012, $8.5 million next season and $10.5 million in each of the final two years of the deal. Read more.

KJ

Immigration Article of the Day: THE LATINO CYBER-MORAL PANIC PROCESS IN THE UNITED STATES

THE LATINO CYBER-MORAL PANIC PROCESS IN THE UNITED STATES by Nadia Yamel Flores-Yeffala, Guadalupe Vidales, April Plemons

Abstract In the past few decades, the anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States has been influenced, in part, by the massive immigration of Latinos to the United States. The internet technology in the Web 2.0 age offers a new medium in which this anti-immigrant movement can appear and create what Cohen calls a 'moral panic', which we claim to has become a Latino cyber-moral panic. Of a subsample taken from 170 anti-immigrant websites, the authors examine the role of internet in the creation of a cyber-moral panic against Latinos in the United States in which they find the classic stages of moral panic must be modified and updated. Facilitated by the internet, a 'call for civil action' stage is added to the classic moral panic process in which donations and direct civil and political action are sought from online visitors. Recycled information is spread via other anti-immigrant websites, blogs, forums, and other social media, helping to accelerate the moral panic process due to the ability to quickly spread information, reach those who have access to online technologies and hardware, the assumption of anonymity, etc. Using the updated moral panic process model, the authors apply these stages to the current nativist movement which has resulted in a wave of hate crimes against immigrants, several pieces of new anti-immigrant legislation, and fostered an environment widespread discrimination, oppression, and dehumanization against the contemporary 'folk devils', or Latinos in the United States.

KJ

Baseball News; Marlins Closer Played Under Assumed Name

AP reports that MLB Florida Marlins closer Leo Nunez has been playing under an assumed name and he returned his native Dominican Republic yesterday. This, of course, is likely to raise a myriad of immigratiuon problems and possibly even place his future in Major League Baseball in jeopardy. I am not aware of other Dominican (or other) players playing under assumed names, although baseball great Miguel Tejada lied about his age (and relative youth) when he was seeking to break into MLB.

KJ

Immigration Article of the Day: "Effects of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act on Crime" by SCOTT BAKER

"Effects of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act on Crime" Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 412 SCOTT BAKER, Stanford University - Department of Economics.  ABSTRACT: In the late 1970's, rates of illegal immigration into the United States increased dramatically. This increase led to pressure on the federal government to find some way of dealing with the immigrants, culminating in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). This paper seeks to examine the effects that the 1986 IRCA, which legalized over 2.5 million illegal aliens, had on the commission of crime in the United States. I find evidence that IRCA applicants are associated with higher crime rates prior to legalization and that, subsequent to legalization, this association disappears. I find drops in crime of approximately 1%-4% associated with one percent of the population being legalized, primarily due to a drop in property crimes. This fall in crime is equivalent to 80,000-320,000 fewer crimes committed each year due to legalization. Finally, I calibrate a labor market model of crime using empirical wage and employment data and find that much of the drop in crime can be attributed to greater job market opportunities among those legalized by the IRCA.

KJ

More on the the Phrase "Anchor Babies"

I recently posted something about how the phrase "anchor babies" constitutes hate speech.  Here is further analysis of the phrase.

The term "anchor babies" is, in my view, a pejorative similar in certain ways to "illegals", "Illegal aliens", and worse.  It is regularly employed by restrictionists in the modern immigration debate.  See, e.g., Kevin Alexander Gray, 14th Amendment Nullification Threatens Core of Citizenship, CHARLESTON GAZETTE (WV), Sept. 2, 2010, at 4A (criticizing Senator Lindsey Graham’s threat to revisit birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment because of undocumented immigrants having “anchor babies” or, as he put it, the “drop and leave”); Thomas Elias, More Fiction Than Fact About “Anchor Babies” Born in U.S., THE SALINAS CALIFORNIAN, Aug. 30, 2010 (discussing the misconceptions surrounding “anchor babies” or “maternity tourism,” a term used by groups attempting to abolish birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment); Rex W. Huppke, Terror Babies, Anchor Babies, and Beanie Babies, Oh My!, CHI. TRIB., Aug. 24, 2010 (criticizing concern over “anchor babies” and a new fear espoused by politicians of “terror babies”).

“Opponents of birthright citizenship use the term `anchor babies’ to refer to the U.S.-born, U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents.” Stephen H. Legomsky, Portraits of the Undocumented Immigrant: A Dialogue, 44 GA. L. REV. 65, 86 n.52 (2009); see Nicole Newman, Note, Birthright Citizenship: The Fourteenth Amendment’s Continuing Protection Against an American Caste System, 28 B.C. THIRD WORLD L.J. 437, 441 (2008) (“[The] threat of chain migration, pejoratively called the ‘anchor baby’ phenomenon, is the most inflammatory rhetoric that opponents of birthright citizenship employ.”) (footnote omitted); see also Keith Aoki, Arizona – Pick on Someone Your Own Size, S.F. CHRON., June 17, 2010, at A-16 (analyzing critically an Arizona proposal to not issue birth certificates to “anchor babies”).

Concerns with “anchor babies,” allegedly able to sponsor the lawful immigration of their undocumented parents, have contributed to the recent call for the abolition of birthright citizenship guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. See Julia Preston, Senator Picks Up the Fight Against Citizenship at Birth, INT’L HERALD TRIB., Aug. 9, 2010, at 4. There is a racial component to the “anchor babies” slur, which plays on racial, gender, and class stereotypes about Latina/os, see Gebe Martinez, Ann Garcia & Jessica Arons, Birthright Citizenship Debate Is a Thinly Veiled Attack on Immigrant Mothers, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS (Aug. 18, 2010), just as there is to the stereotypical African American “welfare queen,” see Catherine R. Albiston & Laura Beth Nielsen, Welfare Queens and Other Fairy Tales: Welfare Reform and Unconstitutional Reproductive Controls, 38 HOWARD L.J. 473, 476-88 (1995) (analyzing the racialized images of Black women in the debate over welfare and welfare reform in the United States); Angela Onwuachi-Willig, The Return of the Ring: Welfare Reform's Marriage Cure as the Revival of Post-Bellum Control, 93 CAL. L. REV. 1647, 1665-73 (2005) (same).

KJ

Donald Trump a Birther!!!!!!!!!!!!

 
Read on.

KJ

Immigrant of the Day (and Global Citizen): Madieu Williams (Sierra Leone), Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year

Announced before the Super Bowl, Minnesota Vikings Safety Madieu Williams was named the 2010 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year. The award recognizes a player's community service as well as his playing excellence. Williams, currently in the Persian Gulf visiting U.S. service members, will receive $20,000 toward his favorite charity.  Surrounded by service men and women, he appeared by video during the Super Bowl festivities to accept the award:  "I'm sorry I couldn't be there to accept the award, but it's an even greater honor to be here in Iraq with Task Force Iron Horse on a goodwill tour watching the Super Bowl with our troops."

A seven-year NFL veteran and Sierra Leone native, Williams made global headlines when he made a generous donation to create The Madieu Williams Center for Global Health that is affiliated with the University of Maryland. The center was built to focus on the public health issues in Prince George's County and Sierra Leone. Williams has already funded the construction of one school in his homeland and currently a second school is in the process of being built. Madieu's foundation sponsored a mission to Sierra Leone that flew American teachers, dentists and surgeons to help educate the teachers at his school, give free dental cleanings to all of the students and provide free surgeries.

Since joining the Vikings in 2008, Williams has left his mark on the Twin Cities community. He is involved with the North Community YMCA, the United Way and Harvest Prep/Seed Academy. He also provides season tickets for kids in his "Dieu's Crew" program. During the 2010 season, Madieu was named the Vikings Community Man of the Year.

KJ