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Monday, March 26, 2007

Asociacion de Migrantes Chilangos!

ESTIMADOS CHILANGELINOS: Con el propósito de organizar una Asociación de Migrantes Chilangos en la zona de Los Ángeles, se les invita a registrarse en el Proyecto California-México (CMP), que con la sede de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México en Los Ángeles (UNAM-LA) esta colaborando con el Gobierno del Distrito Federal (GDF) para la creación de una Oficina de Atención para el Migrante del D. F. en Los Ángeles, y así poder ofrecerles servicios aquí y a sus familias en la Ciudad de México. Para mayor información favor de llamar al Prof. Armando Vázquez-Ramos, coordinador del Proyecto California-México (CMP) al teléfono 562-972-0986, o mandarle por e-mail su nombre, dirección, teléfonos y dirección de correo electrónico a: avazque4@csulb.edu.


Todos los interesados que se registren por e-mail recibirán su invitación para acudir a la primera reunión de la Asociación de Migrantes Chilangos, que se llevará acabo el sábado 31 de Marzo, coincidiendo con el festejo del “Día de Cesar Chávez”.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Some Mexicans prefer to live in Northvan!

Welcome to Mexico North
Prospect of work, safe streets lure wave of educated, wealthy immigrants

KATHARINE HAMER

Read this article at The Globe and Mail

VANCOUVER -- Luis Batiz is used to dealing with one or two work-permit applications a month from Mexicans wanting to relocate to Canada.

But by the end of March, the immigration lawyer is expecting at least 10 applications to have crossed his desk -- and other lawyers "are doing 20, 50," he said.

"This year, there's going to be a flood of people coming. There's a shortage of skilled workers," he said, adding that small companies that never thought about hiring foreign workers see their business friends doing it and are now also bringing in workers.

Driven by concerns about security in their home country, highly educated and well-to-do Mexicans are making a beeline for the Lower Mainland.

Among them are lawyers, doctors, accountants, architects and mining company bosses. Many have chosen to settle on the North Shore, which is perceived as the most desirable location in Greater Vancouver.

"Most people who come here are people who can afford it," said Mr. Batiz, who moved to Vancouver seven years ago. "They have education, businesses, they can afford to not work for a year when they come here. And they prefer to have a low-paying job here than to be in Mexico City, where they can be kidnapped at any time or be assaulted at any time. People with young families, too, they say, 'You know what? This is not getting better, so we'll go somewhere else for our children.' "

"The Mexicans who are coming to start a life here, yeah, you can see those guys more and more and more," said Miguel Bertello, president of the local Mexican Business Association, "and you can see also companies that are promoting that. In Mexico, they put ads in the newspaper. They say, 'I will arrange for you to come and live here -- as long as you have the money, I will take care of the legal side; I will tell you how to apply.'

"They're doing that and they're really successful. The focus for them is not just the poor guy, but the guy who is actually really wealthy and they're bringing wealthy people here."

That influx will mean a visible addition to Vancouver's Mexican expatriate community -- a community that, right now, you'd have to search pretty hard to find.

"We don't really have a place," said Elsa Gleeson, whose two food stores, La Mexicana, in North Vancouver, and El Comal, in Burnaby, are nonetheless like a home away from home for recent immigrants.

La Mexicana's interior is like a little slice of Mexico City; its burnished orange and blue-tiled walls lined with colour-co-ordinated cans of chipotle, packets of flan and guava soda. Ms. Gleeson is quick to offer a visitor a taste of her cooking: black beans, rice and homemade tortillas, warmed on her kitchen's cast-iron grills.

"I have a Mexican factory [in Burnaby that supplies the two stores], and 99.9 per cent of my customers are Mexican," she said. "All the people that come, they become not only your customer, but your friend. We are very friendly people -- we are very warm and passionate. We like music; we talk a lot. We're very noisy."

That raucousness is apparent at communal celebrations for Mexican Independence Day and for Cinco de Mayo, when the whole community gathers to eat, dance and listen to mariachi music. On Independence Day, "no matter where we are, if we go to Surrey and we are playing in a garage or a warehouse, we'll fill that place," said mariachi band leader Octavio Carillo. "They have to celebrate that evening. Even if they are in the North Pole, they will celebrate."

But in general, "I think that Mexicans, we are funny," Ms. Gleeson observed. "We miss Mexico a lot -- we miss a lot of things about our culture. But when we come here, we try right away to meld with the Canadian population -- we want to be part of the Canadian people, the community."

Mr. Carillo said that when he first moved here with his wife and two young children, "there were only about 500 Mexican families. And now, that number has really increased. In the 17 years that I have been here, that number has gone to the sky. I think it is more than four times [the number]. And there are 3,000 students coming here every six months. So this community comes and goes: One is leaving, one is coming."

He remembers vividly the way Vancouverites won his heart on his first visit in 1989.

"I was walking on the street," he recalled, "and people, without knowing me -- I wasn't wearing my charro [mariachi] costume, of course, because when I wear my costume, everybody goes 'Ahhh!' -- [but] they noticed that I wasn't Canadian immediately, and they said hello to me. And that was so nice, I fell in love with that, and I said, 'This is the city that I want to be in.' "

THE NUMBERS

According to statistics from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Mexico was the No. 1 source country for foreign workers coming to Canada last year. More than 10,000 Mexican workers came here, compared to 8,000 from the second-biggest source country, the United States. More foreign students -- many of them Mexican -- come to British Columbia than to any other province. Mexican immigration to the Vancouver area has been steadily increasing over the past three years. In 2003, 289 Mexicans applied for landed-immigrant status here; by the first quarter of 2006, the number was close to 350.

Immigrants upset over credentials process!

Immigrants upset over credentialing process
The lack of a new agency to assess skills is a broken promise, support groups say

ALEX DOBROTA

Read the full article at The Globe and Mail

OTTAWA — Stephen Harper's government has abandoned its promise to create a federal agency to examine and recognize the work credentials of newcomers and will instead set up an office to direct immigrants to provincial bodies that assess their skills.

The reversal, outlined in Monday's federal budget, could hurt the Conservatives in immigrant communities, where the Tories hope to gain support in the next election.

"I am disappointed," said Joshua Thambiraj, president of the Association of International Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, which represents more than 5,000 foreign-trained doctors in the province. "We find that there is a kind of dissonance between acknowledging the problem and finding a solution. That dissonance has manifested again."

Mr. Thambiraj, a native of Malaysia, has been trying for five years to get status as a pediatric surgeon in Canada. But while he passed all the exams required in Ontario, his credentials have yet to be recognized, he said.

During the last election campaign, Prime Minister Harper pledged to speed up that process for Mr. Thambiraj and the estimated 350,000 immigrants in similar situations. The Tories said they would create an agency to assess and to recognize credentials at the federal level. They enshrined that promise in the 2006 budget and buttressed it with a $18-million investment over two years.

But Monday's budget said that instead of assessing and recognizing, a new foreign-credential office will "provide immigrants with pathfinding and referral services to identify and connect with the appropriate assessment bodies."

The funding for the initiative for this year also fell from $12-million planned in 2006 to $6-million.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Diane Finley denied the government was breaking any promise, even as he acknowledged that foreign-credential assessment recognition is a provincial responsibility.

"Foreign-credential recognition is a complex system in this country," Mike Fraser said. "Our new office will provide newcomers with a clear path to where to get their credentials assessed."

Opposition critics lambasted the proposal.

"A campaign promise made is not a promise delivered," said Olivia Chow, the New Democratic Party immigration critic.

"They have just decided to create a storefront to pass the buck," echoed her counterpart in the Liberal Party, Omar Alghabra.

The Conference Board of Canada estimates as many as 350,000 immigrants have taken jobs below their qualifications, which is costing the economy between $3-billion and $5-billion a year.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Not only Australia, also USA, Germany and Canada!

Why we need more migrants: author Philippe Legrain at Sydney Ideas

20 February 2007

Australia needs more migrants, not less: Philippe Legrain.
Australia needs more migrants, not less: Philippe Legrain.

Controversial UK-based author, media commentator and economist Philippe Legrain will voice a rarely heard view in the immigration debate at the first Sydney Ideas event of the year next Tuesday, 27 February, 2007.

In his lecture titled "Globalisation and why your country needs immigrants", Legrain will argue for an increase in international migration. According to Legrain, governments should not only free up their borders for trade, but should also make the movement of people easier in order to improve the global economy and the livelihoods of people world-wide.

The author of the recently released Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them (Little, Brown) and 2002's critically acclaimed Open World: The Truth About Globalisation (Abacus) will explore whether or not migration is a burden on developed countries, the hidden costs of immigration controls and the growing necessity in developed countries to increase the non-skilled labour force to do what he describes as "the jobs that people in rich countries no longer want to do."

In this timely Sydney Ideas lecture, co-presented by Gleebooks, Legrain promises to shed new light on the immigration debate, exploring how immigration can bring huge cultural and economic benefits to both rich and poor countries at a time when the Federal Government is set to introduce "citizenship tests" for new immigrants. Legrain, who takes a close look at the Australian experience in Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, will argue that rather than turning immigrants away, we should embrace them.

Philippe Legrain is a contributing editor to Prospect magazine and a freelance writer for TheFinancial Times, The Guardian, The New Republic and Foreign Policy. He blogs at www.philippelegrain.com and is a frequent media commentator on the BBC and Fox News. He is a former trade and economics correspondent for The Economist and a one-time special adviser to the World Trade Organisation director-general.

Philippe Legrain will be introduced to the Sydney Ideas stage by Dr Stuart Rosewarne, senior lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Sydney's Faculty of Economics and Business.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Masacre de delfines en Japon, horrendo!

LA MASACRE DE DELFINES EN JAPON !

Si puedes mira este video (ponte comodo, es absolutamente insostenible, horrendo, aterrador), protesta y deja tus comentarios, aunque no sea en ingles, no tiene importancia, lo que importa es que esta peticion de la vuelta al mundo.

Gracias a todos!

Video: Almas sensibles abstenerse no lo vean (de verdad): este es un video, muy duro........!

http://www.glumbert.com/media/dolphin

Monday, March 12, 2007

Community protest

National Immigrant Solidarity Network
webpage: http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org
e-mail: info@ImmigrantSolidarity.org

May Day 2007 National Day of Immigrant Rights! http://www.MayDay2007.org


*to join the immigrant Solidarity Network daily news litserv, send e-mail to: isn-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
or visit: http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/isn
3/10 San Rafael, CA: ICE Arrest Immigrants, Community Protest
(March 9: community to protest ICE raid at San Rafael, CA)

At the dawn of Tuesday, March 6, federal immigration officers swept into the Canal neighborhood in San Rafael, CA and arrested 30 immigrants at early Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. More arrests were made in Novato.

"They went right into buildings and pulled people from their homes," said Edgar Hernandez of the sweep, which began about 5 a.m. and lasted until 8:30 a.m. "These are just working people, not criminals. Everyone in the Canal is now afraid."

Caught up in the sweep was 7-year-old Kevin Reyes, an American citizen, who was with his family in an apartment on Belvedere Street when officers made the arrests, according to his uncle, Rey Reyes.
Immigrant activities accuse THE HEAVYHANDED tactics used by federal immigration agents in Marin this week simply were not appropriate.
Local activists have expressed outrage at what they viewed as unacceptably harsh tactics.
They have reason to be angry. The immigration raids have created a climate of fear in the Canal neighborhood. This is wrong. Even worse, some of the undocumented immigrants arrested in San Rafael and Novato this week may have been deported the same day.

On September 9, about 75 community members and clergy leaders clogged San Rafael's Canal district sidewalks at dawn Friday to offer solidarity for the community - with plans to continue morning protests until the immigration raids which began this week are stopped.

3/7 San Rafael, CA: 30 immigrants targeted in Canal neighborhood raid

Armed with 30 arrest warrants, federal immigration officers swept into the Canal neighborhood in San Rafael at dawn Tuesday and arrested immigrants....