Activists: Fed Has Power to Spur Recovery in Poor Communities
The Charlotte Post - March 6, 2015, by Herbert White - America’s economy may be in recovery, but Simone McCray can’t...
The Charlotte Post - March 6, 2015, by Herbert White - America’s economy may be in recovery, but Simone McCray can’t see it.
McCray works at a Charlotte warehouse where she earns $8.10 an hour and lives with family to stretch her budget. A 2010 UNC Charlotte graduate with a degree in psychology, she has yet to land a job in that field.
“You don’t think you’re going to make $8.10 when you go to college,” she said. “That is not what they tell you.”More Americans are working than before the Great Recession of 2008, but African Americans are lagging. Figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor Friday showed the national unemployment rate fell to 5.5 percent in February, an improvement over the previous month.“With another strong employment report, we have now seen 12 straight months of private-sector job gains above 200,000 -- the first time that has happened since 1977,” said Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. “Moreover, 2014 was the best year for job growth since the late 1990s and 2015 has continued at this pace. But additional steps are needed to continue strengthening wages for the middle class.”But for African Americans, the jobless rate is double that of whites and the wage gap between the ethnic groups is getting wider.The Federal Reserve, which sets national policy on interest rates, is debating whether to boost the rate as a hedge against inflation. Progressive activists, however, are pushing the Fed to hold the line, arguing low rates will spur a jobs rebound, especially for low-income Americans.“Don’t put any brakes on the economic recovery,” said Pat McCoy, director of Action NC, which held a press conference Thursday to press the Fed. “Not only has it not yet been a full recovery, but in community of color, particularly in the African American community, unemployment rates, underemployment rates remain extremely high.”A study authored by the Center For Popular Democracy found that women and people of color are more likely to struggle to find work that pays a living wage. African Americans are especially hard hit with unemployment rates double the nation as a whole and plummeting wages.“Creating a strong American economy must include prioritizing a genuine recovery for the African American community,” the report summarizes.McCray wants to get in on the recovery. Saddled with debt from student loans, she’s looking for work that will allow her to meet financial obligations. Until then, she’s struggling to make ends meet.“My student loans are going to start going back into repayment and you have to have a way to repay them,” she said. “With jobs that are just above minimum wage, it’s kind of hard to stay afloat and pay your student loans, so you have to stay with family longer and not be out on your own and be independent sooner.”The Fed can help, activists insist, by resisting calls to raise interest rates. Corporate America and conservatives are pushing for an increase to prevent inflation, which is the simultaneous increase in consumer prices and devaluation of currency.“We need to continue to stimulate the economy through low-interest rates in order to serve these communities that need recovery,” McCoy said.As the Fed wrestle with the pros and cons of raising rates, Americans struggling to find work with a living wage are yet to be part of the nation’s limited recovery. Without a robust economic program, millions will be left out.“Only by pursuing genuine full employment will the Fed ensure that the recovery reaches Main Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard – and communities of working people throughout the country,” the CPD report’s authors wrote. “As the Fed makes crucial monetary policy decisions in the months and years to come, it must ensure that all communities can share in the prosperity of a functional economy.”
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City to help immigrants seeking deportation reprieves
New York Times - July 17, 2013, by Kirk Semple - New York City plans to spend $18 million over the next two years to...
New York Times - July 17, 2013, by Kirk Semple - New York City plans to spend $18 million over the next two years to help young unauthorized immigrants qualify for a federal program that grants a temporary reprieve from deportation, officials announced on Wednesday.
The money will add 16,000 seats to adult education classes throughout the city, and priority for those slots will be given to immigrants who might qualify for the reprieve.
While more than 20,500 immigrants in New York State have already been granted the reprieve, known as deferred action, city officials have estimated that about 16,000 others in New York City alone would satisfy all the conditions save for the requirement that they have a high school diploma or General Educational Development certificate, or be currently enrolled in school.
The project — the largest investment made by any municipality in the nation to help immigrants obtain the deferral, city officials said — is one of two new immigrant-assistance initiatives that will receive significant injections of public money in the current fiscal year, which began July 1.
The other budget allocation, which the city plans to announce formally on Friday, will pay for a pilot program that will create what immigrants’ advocates say will be the nation’s first public defender system for immigrants facing deportation.
Together, the two programs further cement New York’s reputation as one of the most immigrant-friendly cities in the nation. They also come at a time when a push for comprehensive immigration reform that would include a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants has met stiff resistance among Republicans in the House of Representatives.
In a news conference in City Hall on Wednesday, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, seemed to allude to sclerotic politics on Capitol Hill, saying the Council’s budget decisions send a message to the rest of the nation “that local government can take action while we wait for comprehensive immigration reform.”
The federal deportation reprieve was announced by the Obama administration in June 2012. To qualify, an applicant must have arrived in the United States before reaching his or her 16th birthday and been younger than 31 as of June 15, 2012, among other requirements. Recipients of the reprieve, which is subject to renewal after two years, are legally allowed to work and, in many states, obtain a driver’s license.
More than 400,500 people across the nation have been granted the deferral; for many others, the educational requirement has been a major hurdle.
For years, adult education programs in the city have been swamped by huge demand yet been hamstrung by financial shortfalls.
Of the $18 million allocation, $13.7 million will be provided to community-based organizations through the Youth and Community Development Department and used for outreach and the increase in seats. The remaining $4.3 million will help expand related education programs offered through the City University of New York, like English for Speakers of Other Languages and General Educational Development.
In recent days, immigrants’ advocates have also been celebrating the City Council’s decision to help pay for another initiative: the allocation of $500,000 in its current budget for a network of legal service providers to represent immigrants facing deportation.
Defendants in immigration court, unlike those in criminal court, have no constitutional right to a court-appointed lawyer. Hampered by language barriers, lack of money or ignorance, most end up trying to fight their deportation alone — almost always with poor outcomes.
According to a recent study, 60 percent of detained immigrants in the New York region did not have counsel at the time their cases were completed. Of those without counsel, only 3 percent won their cases, compared with 18 percent of those with counsel.
Proponents of the program, called the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, said it would cost about $8.7 million to provide legal representation for the 2,800 or so immigrants living in New York State who are detained and face deportation every year. The city allocation, however, will help cover the cost of a pilot program to represent just 135 immigrants. Advocates said that despite its limited reach, the pilot program would give them a chance to test their theories and demonstrate the potential impact of a broader plan.
The program will not only help keep families together, argued Andrew Friedman, executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group that helped to lobby for the financing, but will also create “an innovative model program” for other municipalities to replicate.
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Fed Up Says It Unjustly Lost Rooms at Jackson Hole Meeting
Fed Up Says It Unjustly Lost Rooms at Jackson Hole Meeting
A coalition of community and labor groups known as “Fed Up” said 39 members planning to stay at the hotel hosting the...
A coalition of community and labor groups known as “Fed Up” said 39 members planning to stay at the hotel hosting the Federal Reserve’s prestigious annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, were unfairly singled out when their 13 room reservations were canceled.
The group, which is pressing the U.S. central bank to appoint more minorities and women to its leadership, said most of its attendees would have been black and Latino. It has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice and other government officials. The group believes it lost the rooms because of “specific targeting of the Fed Up coalition.”
Fed Chair Janet Yellen is the first woman to lead the U.S. central bank and it remains under pressure to become more diverse. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton joined calls for reform in May and the central bank has taken fire from Republicans, who warn its low interest rate policies risk inflating another asset bubble.
The Fed Up coalition, which wants rates to stay low to boost hiring and lift wages, has discussed its concerns with Fed officials, including Esther George, president of the Kansas City Fed, which hosts the annual Jackson Hole monetary-policy conference in late August.
Faced with criticism that it doesn’t look out for the interests of poorer Americans, the Fed has been making efforts to change. The Kansas City Fed said on Thursday that it will hold a conference on the challenges low- to moderate-income communities face on Sept. 7-8 at its headquarters.
Booking Error
Alex Klein, vice president and general manager of Grand Teton Lodge Company and Flagg Ranch, said the reservations were canceled because “an error in the booking system” resulted in the Jackson Lake Lodge being oversold by 18 rooms. “We worked proactively and diligently with guests to relocate them to our nearby Flagg Ranch property,” he said in a statement.
The Kansas City Fed has a contract to provide rooms for guests at the symposium and “has no input regarding any decisions that the Lodge makes outside of its contract with us,” said bank spokesman Bill Medley.
The symposium, which gathers policy makers and economic-thought leaders for a three-day retreat in the heart of the Grand Teton mountains, is probably the most important event of its kind on the central-banking calendar. Yellen will attend and plans to address the conference on Aug. 26. This year’s meeting, which is invitation only, is focused on the topic “Designing Resilient Monetary Policy Frameworks for the Future.”
The hotel, while remote, is open to the public and Fed Up representatives have made the trip for the past two years. In 2015, Fed Up held an alternative conference at the Lodge which was addressed by Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
By Steve Matthews & Jeanna Smialek
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Meet the Group of Feisty Urban Progressives Who Want to Transform the Country One City at a Time
The Nation - December 10, 2014, by Steve Early - A century ago, working-class radicals frustrated with the pace of...
The Nation - December 10, 2014, by Steve Early - A century ago, working-class radicals frustrated with the pace of change often scoffed at their more patient comrades in city government, calling them “sewer socialists.” The latter, however, numbered in the hundreds, and, in their heyday, were quite influential in cities both large and small. After being elected to municipal positions on the Socialist Party ticket, they labored mightily to improve local services, from public sanitation to street repair. They even encroached on private markets by expanding public housing and experimenting with municipal ownership of utilities.
The national expansion of popular democracy sought by these left-wing reformers was, sadly, never achieved under their party banner. But several decades later, their many ideas for putting government to work for the people found traction during the New Deal. Programs to promote social equality and economic opportunity first tested at the state or local level became a Depression-era lifeline for millions of Americans nationwide.
In the twenty-first century, many on the left still yearn for economic and policy victories on the scale of the 1930s and the emergence at the federal level of a counter-force that might one again curb the influence of corporate America. While waiting for that second coming, progressive activists have, like the “sewer socialists” of old, been forced to grapple with serious problems—national and even global in nature—at the municipal level instead.
Some of the bravest (or most ambitious) among them have sought and won local elected office. So, in city halls across the country, they are now trying to deploy the limited resources of local government to fight poverty, inequality and environmental degradation at a moment when higher levels of government have failed to address such problems or made them worse. To maintain public support, these reform-minded mayors, city councilors, county commissioners and allied civil servants must be as concerned about street paving and policing as saving the planet from global warming.
Until recently, most of these “pothole progressives” have toiled largely in isolation. They chipped away at local injustice or city hall dysfunction in ad hoc fashion with little national infrastructure to sustain or support them. But as their ranks have swelled in recent years, several networks have developed to promote greater coordination of this difficult work through systematic sharing of information, ideas, and technical expertise.
From December 4 to 6, the only of these groups to focus exclusively on cities, Local Progress, hosted a lively and racially diverse “convening” in New York City to celebrate recent municipal election victories and progressive policy wins, while laying the groundwork for more. Local Progress is funded by several national unions and social-change foundations. Its individual and organizational affiliates profess a “shared commitment to a strong middle and working class, equal justice under law, sustainable and livable cities, and good government that serves the public interest effectively.” Its mission? “To drive public policy at the local level—an area of governance that is too often ignored by the progressive movement.”
Among the “electeds” gathered in New York City for the Local Progress third annual meeting, there was little moping about the Democratic Party’s now much weakened condition in various state capitols and Washington, DC, as a result of last month’s midterm elections. Instead, they and their larger supporting cast of labor and community organizers, public policy advocates and social-change funders all resolved to expand their influence at the local level, where reform is still possible. To hasten this goal, the organizers distributed a sixty-page compilation of “case studies and best practices” from around the country, co-produced with the Center for Popular Democracy. This dense, well-documented guide provides an ambitious blueprint for improving local labor standards, housing and education, policing practices, environmental sustainability, treatment of immigrants, voting rights and financing of elections.
Local Progress has recruited 400 members in forty states; about a third turned up for its latest annual meeting, with impressive representation from the city councils of San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, Denver, New Orleans, New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Mayoral participants included everyone from the high-profile chief executive of the host city, Bill de Blasio, to his far less well-known, but equally feisty, West Coast counterpart, Meghan Sahli-Wells. She hails from Culver City, California, a Los Angeles County enclave with a population smaller than some New York City neighborhoods.
But that difference in scale hasn’t stopped Sahli-Wells from making waves of her own, as an enviro-oriented “bike mayor” who helped secure a ban on single-use plastic bags and has been working tirelessly to ban fracking as well. Now her talk about property tax reform has local realtors organizing against her and wishing she had never been chosen by her council peers to be the city’s part-time mayor. “My Chamber of Commerce hates me,” she reported, but expressed confidence that “harnessing the power of community” would enable her to overcome business opposition to some of her future plans.
De Blasio welcomed such diverse colleagues amid the ornate surroundings of the New York City Council chamber. He was joined by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Brooklyn councilmember Brad Lander, who both described the salutary effect of having a Progressive Caucus of nineteen in the city’s fifty-one-member leadership body.
The Big Apple’s affable, lanky mayor quickly gave what an alarmed New York Post called, the next day, “a fawning shout-out to Seattle.” And indeed, de Blasio did hail Seattle city councilmember Nick Licata, chair of Local Progress, and others from “the Left Coast,” for their leading role in the nationwide minimum-wage campaign that has now bettered the pay of seven million workers. “We all reference each other,” de Blasio noted. “We all build on each other’s work…. Every time we succeed, it builds momentum for other cities.”
The job of Local Progress members, the mayor argued, is to be organizers, not just elected officials. As a result of the group’s collective efforts, “change is coming from the grassroots and working its way up—real, sustained and lasting change.”
In the smaller strategy sessions that followed, participants shared information and ideas on a wide range of topics. These included “participatory budgeting”—an experiment now underway in New York City to solicit neighborhood input on spending priorities—and multi-state efforts to expand public financing of candidates for local and county office. According to Emmanuel Caicedo, state affairs manager for Demos who spoke at the conference, this election reform was a key factor in making progressives more competitive electorally in New York City and enabling them, once in office, to expand the reach of paid sick day legislation. “Without this matching funds system, councilmembers would not be able to do the right thing for their constituents, “ he said.
Local Progress workshop turnout and the intensity of discussion were both driven, in part, by the momentum of events unfolding outside the gathering. The latest round of national fast-food worker protests and street demonstrations in Manhattan over the grand jury decision in the Eric Garner case provided an urgent backdrop for brainstorming about workers’ rights and major reform of US police departments.
On the labor front, city officials were reminded by several speakers from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO that minimum wage hikes, statutory entitlement to paid sick days, and better enforcement of local labor standards still doesn’t give enough Americans the workplace voice that collective bargaining provides. More needs to be done, they argued, to help workers for government contractors or in public facilities, like airports, to win bargaining rights without management interference. “Having a union is necessary to sustain gains,” Héctor Figueroa, president of SEIU Local 32BJ, pointed out.
Few labor allies in Local Progress question the value of unionization—but some did express concern about unions being unhelpful in their own past municipal campaigns. For example, Anders Ibsen, an earnest 28-year-old city councilor from Washington State, sought advice from AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre about dealing with conservative “business unionists” who’ve tried to thwart progressive initiatives in Tacoma. In the same panel discussion, San Diego councilmember David Alvarez—a recent labor-backed candidate for mayor—recalled the initial opposition he faced from a major AFL-CIO affiliate. According to Alvarez, it took much patient relationship-building to win over this union, despite his strong commitment to local labor causes like taxi-driver organizing.
Before their gathering ended, most of the city officials present endorsed a Local Progress statement criticizing the “excessive use of force” by police officers in Ferguson, Cleveland, and New York City. They urged federal officials to ensure “that cities around the country end discriminatory policing practices and replace them with programs that respect and empower residents…”
Just how to do that, at the local level, was the subject of much debate at a session on “Winning Real Police and Criminal Justice Reform.” Panelists discussed remedies like requiring police body cameras, retraining officers, recruiting more from minority communities, and offering them financial incentives for local residency. Lisa Daugaard, policy director for the Public Defender Association in Seattle, cautioned against quick fixes, including indiscriminate body camera use and training programs unaccompanied by real institutional change. “It’s easy to hold a three-day training session. It’s very difficult to have training change behavior, habits, instincts,” she said.
Daugaard reported on Seattle’s Community Police Commission (CPC), an oversight body, which she co-chairs and includes two active members of the police force. According to Daugaard, the CPC has spurred a “deeply transformative” shift in the treatment of jobless, homeless, addicted, and/or mentally ill residents previously targeted for police round-ups and jailing, with a disproportionate racial impact. By expanding relevant social services and, in effect, decriminalizing vagrancy and low-level drug dealing, Seattle has been able to “re-humanize” at least some “daily interactions between police and the community.”
And just as cities like Seattle can’t arrest their way out of petty crime spawned by poverty and unemployment, Daugaard warned against a singular focus on prosecutions of police misconduct, after the fact. Many such cases are likely to fail, she noted, and, even if successful, don’t transform the departmental culture or quality of police-community relationships. Jumaane Williams, a New York City councilmember from Brooklyn, agreed with Daugaard that community policing done right “works better than the lock-‘em-up strategy” that still prevails in most cities, even some with Local Progress ties. “The problem, “said Williams, “is when we send policemen to do the job that everyone needs to do. Public safety is an everybody kind of thing.”
Turning the overall Local Progress agenda into actual public policy in more places is also “an everybody kind of thing.” As Seattle’s Nick Licata observed, urban progressives “need both an outside and inside game” to win because neither street politics nor electoral victories alone can change the status quo sufficiently. Instead, he said, “you need people on the inside and people protesting on the outside to provide insiders with backbone.”
By bringing both catalysts for change together, in one organizational network, Local Progress is not blazing an entirely new path or one as explicitly anti-capitalist as left movement builders a century ago. But, in a modern political landscape otherwise bereft of many bright spots at the moment, contesting for power locally, in ecumenical fashion, still makes sense for any group of progressives with higher aspirations and longer-term societal goals.
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Jill Cicero and Elizabeth Nicolas: Women in the legal profession
Jill Cicero and Elizabeth Nicolas: Women in the legal profession
Jill Cicero, president of the Monroe County Bar Association, and managing partner of Cicero Law Firm LLP, and Elizabeth...
Jill Cicero, president of the Monroe County Bar Association, and managing partner of Cicero Law Firm LLP, and Elizabeth Nicolas, a worker’s rights attorney with the Center for Popular Democracy, and former staff attorney for the Empire Justice Center, talk about continuing discrimination, harassment and bias in the office and in court.
Listen to the conversation here.
Woman Who Confronted Jeff Flake in the Elevator: 'I Wanted Him to Feel My Rage'
Woman Who Confronted Jeff Flake in the Elevator: 'I Wanted Him to Feel My Rage'
The protesters who cornered Flake just before he voted on Kavanaugh's confirmation spoke out about why they did it....
The protesters who cornered Flake just before he voted on Kavanaugh's confirmation spoke out about why they did it.
Read the full article here.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen: Slowdown in job market likely ‘transitory’
Fed Chair Janet Yellen: Slowdown in job market likely ‘transitory’
Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet L. Yellen expressed hope Tuesday morning that the slowdown in the U.S. job market...
Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet L. Yellen expressed hope Tuesday morning that the slowdown in the U.S. job market would prove temporary, but she emphasized that the central bank would be cautious in raising interest rates again.
Yellen, testifying before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, acknowledged that hiring has dropped off sharply in recent months, but she also pointed to early signs that wages are beginning to rise after years of stagnation. She said she is "optimistic" that the progress in employment will continue.
"We believe that will turn around, expect it to turn around, but we are taking a cautious approach … to make sure that expectation is borne out," Yellen told lawmakers.
The Fed is responsible for charting the course for the nation’s economy, with the dual mission to keep prices stable and strengthen employment. It does that by adjusting the influential federal funds rate. A higher rate helps curb inflation by making borrowing money more expensive, which discourages spending and investment and reins in economic growth. A lower rate means that money is cheap, stimulating purchases by households and businesses. That helps boost employment and speeds up the economy.
The Fed chief's assessment comes less than a week after the Fed unanimously voted to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged. The central bank raised rates in December for the first time since the Great Recession but has not done so again amid persistent concerns about the health of the global economy.
Yellen said Tuesday that there is still "considerable uncertainty" over her outlook, with such risks as slow growth at home, turbulence in China and volatility in financial markets.
The most immediate threat comes from across the Atlantic Ocean, where Britain will vote Thursday on whether to remain in the European Union. A decision to exit — popularly known as Brexit — would upend Britain's four-decade partnership with the continent and throw the future of Europe’s open market into doubt.
Already, the British pound has been on a roller coaster as the probability of departure shifts with each poll. International policymakers have warned that a decision to leave would lower economic growth in the country by more than 5 percent over the next three years and potentially ripple across the rest of the world.
"A U.K. vote to exit the European Union could have significant economic repercussions," Yellen said Tuesday.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed slashed its target rate all the way to zero and pumped trillions of dollars into the economy in a bid to bolster the American recovery. More than seven years later, it is finally in the process of withdrawing that support.
The first move was in December, when the Fed nudged its target rate up to a range of 0.25 to 0.5 percent. At the time, officials anticipated raising rates four times this year, but the uncertainty in the global economy has forced them to downgrade that projection. Most Fed officials now think only two rate hikes are warranted this year, and a growing number think only one will be necessary.
That shift in thinking at the central bank is evident in Yellen’s own statements. Just last month, she had signaled that the central bank could raise rates "probably in the coming months." But Yellen dropped the reference in a speech early this month, after disappointing government data showed employers added just 38,000 jobs in May. And last week, she told reporters that she is "not comfortable to say it's in the next meeting or two."
On Tuesday, Yellen made the case for caution. Because rates are already so low, the Fed has limited room to reduce them further if the economy were to weaken, she said. Moving gradually also gives the central bank time to assess whether its forecast of continued economic improvement will come true.
"Our cautious approach to adjusting monetary policy remains appropriate," she said.
The Fed has faced criticism from both the left and the right recently over its governance. Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Banking Committee, opened the hearing Tuesday by calling on the Fed to follow more stringent rules for setting policy and to explain when it deviates.
"The desire to preserve the Fed’s independence, however, should not preclude consideration of additional measures to increase the transparency of the board’s actions," he said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) focused on diversity within the Fed’s top ranks. Last month, more than 100 lawmakers sent a letter to Yellen arguing for more minority representation among its leadership.
The central bank is led by a board of governors based in Washington and 12 regional bank presidents scattered throughout the country. The governors are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but regional bank leaders are chosen by local boards of directors.
Those officials tend to be white men. Yellen is the first woman to serve as chair in the central bank’s 101-year history. Only three Fed governors have been African American, and there have been no black regional bank presidents. No one now in the top brass is Hispanic.
By Ylan Q. Mui
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One simple action the Fed refuses to take could make its policies a lot more powerful
One simple action the Fed refuses to take could make its policies a lot more powerful
There is an easy step officials at the Federal Reserve could take to improve their ability to fight the next recession...
There is an easy step officials at the Federal Reserve could take to improve their ability to fight the next recession, but policymakers are deeply reluctant to go there: raising the central bank’s 2% inflation target.
Several prominent economists, including former President Barack Obama’s top economic advisor Jason Furman and Nobel laureate and Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz, have signed a letter proposing Fed officials do just that.
Read the full article here.
Citizenship and Immigration Services to Naturalize Over 27,000 New Citizens
Latin Post - September 18, 2014, by Michael Oleaga - The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced thousands...
Latin Post - September 18, 2014, by Michael Oleaga - The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced thousands of individuals will be declared citizens as the country commemorates its Constitution.
The USCIS confirmed over 27,000 new citizens will be welcomed in more than 160 naturalization ceremonies between Sept. 17 and Sept. 23. Sept. 17 is Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, and according to USCIS Director León Rodriguez, citizenship in the U.S. defines what Americans have in common: "equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities."
"As we celebrate our Constitution this week, more than 27,000 new U.S. citizens will now be able to vote, volunteer, participate, and become engaged in issues that are important to them and their families," said Rodriguez.
The Center for Popular Democracy, the National Partnership for New Americans and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at USC Dornsife released a report finding citizenship has its benefits for immigrants. The report, "Citizenship: A Wise Investment for Cities," noted immigrants' earnings can increase between 8 percent and 11 percent after naturalization.
The report noted if half the number of eligible immigrants were naturalized, approximately $10 billion could be earned in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York alone. The three aforementioned cities have events called Cities for Citizenship (C4C), a national immigrant naturalization effort.
"Cities and their mayors are modeling progressive leadership to address national issues where the federal government has failed. Cutting through the administrative and financial red tape of the naturalization process is an outgrowth of that leadership and will benefit millions of American families who have been excluded from the privileges of citizenship," said Center for Popular Democracy Co-Executive Director Ana Maria Archila.
According to a statement from the CPD, the rate of people becoming U.S. citizens has been mixed due to application costs. In 2000, applying for U.S. citizenship cost $225, but it had increased to $680 by 2008. As a result, applying for citizenship has been "sensitive" as 52 percent of immigrants are low-income.
"We hope Cities for Citizenship will encourage millions of immigrants to take the important step of becoming U.S. citizens and full participants in the economic, cultural, and civic life of this nation," said National Partnership for New Americans Co-Chair Eva Millona, a naturalized U.S. citizen. "We are bringing immigrant organizations into partnership with Mayors to grow C4C in dozens of cities across the U.S. to break down barriers for immigrants, and grow ours into a truly participatory democracy.
Meanwhile, Houston and Los Angeles are hosting citizenship workshops by the New Americans Campaign, which will help eligible immigrants apply for U.S. citizenship.
"There are many reasons to become a citizen -- citizens stand to earn up to 11 percent more in wages over a lifetime, they have access to more and better-paying jobs, and they can help their kids under 18 become citizens," said Immigrant Legal Resource Center Executive Director Eric Cohen.
To commemorate Citizenship Day and Constitution Day, the USCIS is hosting the naturalization ceremonies at several national parks and landmarks including Yosemite National Park, the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum and the Morristown National Historical Park in New Jersey
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Rep. Blanc arrested, then released following D.C. demonstration
Rep. Blanc arrested, then released following D.C. demonstration
Blanc was in Washington participating in a sit-in along with advocates from Living United For Change in Arizona, or...
Blanc was in Washington participating in a sit-in along with advocates from Living United For Change in Arizona, or LUCHA, and national groups like United We Dream and Center for Popular Democracy. The groups demanded that Congress pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill protecting the more than 700,000 young undocumented immigrants protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or DACA.
Read the full article here.
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