Asociación Guatemalteca Morazanecos Ausentes en USA (AGMAUSA), Red por La Paz y el Desarrollo de Guatemala (RPDG), Mujeres Iniciando en las Américas, Mujeres Abriendo Caminos, Alianza de Organizaciones Guatemaltecas de Houston, Texas: Consejo Comunitario Guatemalteco, Comité Guatemalteco, Posadas Guatemaltecas, Unity Soccer League, Voces Unidas por los Inmigrantes, Congarigua, Juventud Garifuna, La Nueva Juventud con Fé, the Bronx, NY, América Calderón, Washington, DC, Leonor Hurtado, San Francisco, Dora Pimentel, Denver, CO, Lic. Marvin Pinto, Los Angeles, CA, Oscar Sandoval, Chicago, IL, Casa de los Migrantes, Las Vegas, NV, Alas de Justicia, Los Angeles, Fundación Sobrevivientes, Guatemala, UDEFEGUA, Guatemala.

URGENT ACTION: SUPPORT REQUEST FOR TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS (TPS) FOR GUATEMALANS LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES

Dear Friends of the people of Guatemala, Guatemalan immigrants need your support to request Temporary Protection Status (TPS) due to the devastation and state of emergency declared in Guatemala in the aftermath of the passage of tropical storm Agatha. Guatemalan immigrant organizations sent a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to consider the current state of emergency and recommend granting TPS to Guatemalans living in the United States. The Government of Guatemala has officially requested a Temporary Protected Status for Guatemalans.

Granting TPS to Guatemalans does not correct the underlying injustice in economic and immigration policies, but is an acknowledgement of the enormous humanitarian crisis caused by tropical storm Agatha.

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

• ENDORSE THE LETTER: You can sign online at: The Petition Site. If you or your organization would like to sing on to the letter please respond via e-mail to Erasmo Morales (631)786-7048 erasmo@agmausa.org with the following information:

NAME OF ORGANIZATION:__________________________

CONTACT PERSON:_______________________________

Address:________________________________________

Phone:____________ E-mail:________________________

This first letter will be sent on Monday, June 14th with copy to Attorney General Erick Holder. DEADLINE TO SUBMIT YOUR NAME TO SIGN INTO THE LETTER IS Sunday, June 13TH. If needed a second letter will be sent by Wednesday July 7th However if you or your organization do not want to sign into the letter, you can use the same format provided and send your own letter.

DONATIONS:

MUJERES INICIANDO EN LAS AMÉRICAS is collecting money donations. M.I.A. is a registered 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation and all donations are tax deductible, where applicable.

You can mail your contribution to: MUJERES INICIANDO EN LAS AMÉRICAS, 1256 Conway Ave.
Costa Mesa, CA 92626 — U.S.A.

• CONTACT YOUR SENATOR/CONGRESS REPRESENTATIVE

Send them a letter requesting they support the petition of a Temporary Protected Status for Guatemalans.

Contacting the Congress in English? http://www.contactingthecongress.org/index.html

¿Quiere ponerse en contacto con miembros del Congreso en Español? http://www.contactingthecongress.org/index.es.html

Letter proposal to the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano

July 7, 2010

Ms. Janet Napolitano

Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Washington, DC 20528

Dear Ms. Napolitano:

We are writing to you to fully support the request by Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry, presented to the United States Government on June 4, 2010, that in the wake of tropical storm Agatha, Guatemalans in the United States be granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS). We urge you to positively respond to this petition as early as possible.

As portrayed in the media, on the last week of past May, extremely heavy rainfall caused by tropical storm Agatha fell over Central America and southern Mexico. Guatemala was most affected by this disaster, with loss of life, widespread damage to infrastructure, and agricultural losses.

In Guatemala, there are more than one hundreds confirmed deaths, and many other persons are missing, with entire communities buried. We have been informed that more than 120,000 people have been displaced, and that some 700 communities have been affected. Thousands of homes have been destroyed, and tens of thousands have been damaged.

According to the Washington Post article on June 2, 2010, Guatemala suffered“… huge losses in the agriculture sector. The country’s association of exporters reported a 75 percent drop in production in the vegetable and shrimp industries, while the National Coffee Association forecast a loss of 122,000 bags this season.”

The government statistics so far of the damage caused by Agatha are: 88, 971 homeless people; 142,959 persons were evacuated, and 152,488 affected; 497 schools and 107 towns were damaged, and damage to 400 bridges has made communications difficult. The Pan American Health Organization has issued a health alert due to different illnesses that can affect the population from diarrhea to dengue. Last year, because of a drought 136,000 families were affected with malnourishment. The Pan American Health Organization reports that Agatha just increased the risk of this population due to the loss of crops, and that famine will affect the area.

As you are well aware, Guatemalan communities and citizens here in the United States send more than $4 billion a year in remittances that help maintain social stability and provide basic needs to relatives in Guatemala. These remittances take on added importance while Guatemala recovers from the storm. We recall that when TPS has been granted in the past to nationals of other countries, remittances immediately increased by not less than 25%. This would amount to the most significant aid to recovery and reconstruction, and it would be provided by our own nationals.

Therefore, until the country can get back on its feet, we believe that granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Guatemalans in the United States will help to ameliorate the desperate situation of those victims that may benefit from funds sent by relatives in the United States. We also believe that it is in the interest of this country not to return people so soon after this natural disaster, because that action may generate further instability in a country where poverty was already very high before the storm. Such a grant would certainly not be without precedent, as Nicaraguans and Hondurans were granted Temporary Protected Status after suffering widespread destruction from Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

We believe that the conditions that justify this request for TPS –a significant calamity in a country, high risks for nationals of that country if they are forced to return, and an official appeal from the government of the affected country—have been satisfied. Therefore, we strongly support granting TPS to Guatemalans, and we ask that you give this request your most serious consideration.

Sincerely,

Signatures of sponsors and endorsers

CC: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,  Attorney General Erick Holder

…

]]> http://miamericas.info/2010/06/09/mia-supports-tps-for-gua/feed/ 0 http://miamericas.info/2010/06/09/trip-report-on-establishing-the-hombres-contra-feminicidio-program-in-guatelinda/ http://miamericas.info/2010/06/09/trip-report-on-establishing-the-hombres-contra-feminicidio-program-in-guatelinda/#comments Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:24:15 +0000 MIA http://miamericas.info/?p=891 Twelve Weeks in Guatemala City

I arrived in Guatemala on Feb 20, and dove straight into starting programs. Was very fortunate to find a a place to live right smack in the middle of the action, zona 1. I am subletting a room at a friends house. I wanted to stay in zona 1 for many reasons. 1st to not have to wake up to traffic every morning to zona 1 where all the networking needs to be done and almost everywhere I need to go to work is within easy walking distance.

In Guate I felt the need to walk with the pueblo and bump into people and talk to them. It was a surreal experience for me. It was almost like going back to the 3 years i lived in Guate as a teenager.

We did two 4 day workshops at USAC. Sadly, during the course of the workshops two of the students were killed while getting snacks near the university. So sad.

We also started our annual programs at the all boy’s school in Zona 8.

You may remember that we did workshops in the PNC academy in 2009. Since then, they had a complete change of leadership both at the academy and in the PNC overall. Thanks to our work nurturing relationships, we were able to get in again this year. This year we are year round. Remember MIA”s goal is to get in the curriculum and this time we actually are in the midst of signing an agreement to be part of the curriculum on an ongoing basis. This is HUGE!!!

The PNC is in the middle of construction, there is a interium director who does not have the power to sign anything, but does have the power to allow us in every other Friday. We go in 5 classes per Friday and each class has between 40 and 60 students. I feel very optimistic that we wil be signing an agreement with the PNC Academy to adopt our campaign. I have been sitting with instructors and all of them want our manuals. It is a matter of time for the academy to have a stable director and then i think we be able to get a contract.

We’re finding that there are plenty of places ready to take us in to give the workshops. The biggest challenge for us is to find funding to make our work happen. I want to share with much pride that we were also able to get in with an agreement adopting our campaign. The department of health at USAC has welcomed us to their programs. I signed the agreement only days before my departure last May 15. This means that every single student that signs up to go to college will have to go through our classroom *as a requirement*. I am so new inside the USAC system that I still dont understand how this is going to unfold, but during my time here i am in constant contact with their personnel that we are are going to plan it out. USAC is the model and when MIA is able to hire permanent staff, we will be moving in to some of the satellites of USAC. We will become a BIG movement within the university.

I’ve also been dealing with the challenges of getting MIA recognized at a nonprofit in Guatemala. The latest was that my name was misspelled on some paperwork and I had to get it corrected and resubmitted, adding two weeks to the process. In addition, I had to get an ID card at the Guatemalan DMV, and in the process learned that my fathers name on my birth certificate was some stranger, a name I’d never heard of before. This opened up an old wound, my not really knowing who my birth father was. During this trip, I also was spending some time tracking down my birth father. Apparently I’m the result of an Immaculate Conception, which sounds better than not knowing who my father is. My blood father, according to the latest story I hear, was a boss in a bus company where my mother’s then-ex-husband worked. My father had been a bus driver and worked his way up to being the boss. Later, he was killed when returning home from work.

Also met with the Association of Widows of the bus drivers killed while working. As you may know, there have been hundreds of bus drivers killed on duty in the last few years. A reporter asked me why I was getting involved with the bus driver widows and I started crying: I realized right then it was through what happened to my blood father that leaves me feeling so closely connected with the widows.

We are working on a program to help the widows get into small businesses by creating micro loans. In a micro loan program, we would sponsor the women to get basic training on how to make a business work, and a small amount of funding, about $100, to get the means to make their business happen. This is the newest cause MIA adopted, and stuggled with it, because we barely have money for the campaign, but to see the widows going in circles trying to help themselves I could not look the other way. When I visited their little whole in the wall there were five women that for some reason I connected stongly and asked if they would be willing to attend a workshop on Sundays at Jenny’s house. They all come from a distance, one comes from a 2 hour and a half distance and tends to be the one who arrives first. They have been meeting for four Sundays in a row except last Sunday because of the Pacaya volcano and Tropical Storm Agatha. Through Jenny we were able to find them counseling for free on Saturdays too. These women have had no time to grieve. They were forced over night to pick up the pieces for their children and have not had the chance to be swallowed by their pain., and allow themselves to grieve.

I want to end with telling you a little about our facilitators. They are six young men who come from different schools within USAC. Two are artists, who are studying to become music teachers. Our longtime friend Randy from Colectivo Rogelia Cruz is going to school to become an archeologist. William is going for a teaching degree, Gary is going for business administration and Derick is about to graduate as a civil engineer. They are all volunteering and we give them a small stipend for their time and expenses. We meet twice a week.

Our chapina volunteer from Canada, Maria Luisa, is working with them while i am here to support the facilitators in their readings on gender issues and to train them to become strong facilitators.

When the academy called me, I was not prepared with facilitators and told the interim director that MIA was ready to go. I walked out of there with Randy who is a long time supporter, and asked him what to do. He said we (volunteer facilitators) have to go forward and MIA has to train us overnight. We started calling people we have worked with in the past and 5 accepted immediately. I feel I have been training a little too rapidly, but I had no choice.

When we met with the academy they wanted to start that same week I said we couldn’t start that quick, but to give us 2 weeks and we would be ready. Never told them it was because we didn’t have workshop facilitators trained yet. It was exciting to make this happen over night. The facilitators are loving the work and the hands-on training / workshops. We all read and discuss the readings. Then, the next day they train to present, and they all facilitate to the rest to make sure they understand the curriculum.

I can go on and on about the facilitators, I am very fond of them. Because we are meeting so often we have become like a family. They look forward eating together while exchanging ideas on how else they can contribute to a Guate without violence and day dreaming when we have an office. We are meeting at my friends house where I sublet a room, but sometimes we can get loud and we don’t want her to kick us out. I am hoping come next year we can get some serious donations and can have an office and employ them full time.

Unfortunately we were not able to get funds from the private company we were hoping from. As a matter of fact, it was them who prompted my trip in February and decided to stay for so long. But it is all good, we were able to network and find us BIG place to work in where we have a captive audience and helps us from running around all over the city. This private company asked that we revisit the project in July., wish us good luck.

Lastly, we were able finally meet with close people to the first lady again. As you may remember, we met with the first lady last July. She delegated the job of assisting us to certain subordinates, then her words were forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. Being there for so long, allowed me to sit on it and finally got a person with the power to remind the first lady to revisit our conversation. I will be meeting soon with someone in a position to make this happen, to discuss the national school system adopting our curriculum. This reconnection with the first lady talk from last July delegation happened thanks to assistance from Norma Cruz. Norma picked up the phone and put us in contact with the right people within the Avocado House (Palacio Nacional).

Helping girls in the path of education is an on going project. Because of limited fundsy we are presently only helping 5 young girls. Please help us help them keep them on track.

And now to end, I want to announce that I will be going back to Guate for at least another 3 months if not more. Maybe till the school year ends., that is in October. Chris and I have been talking for the last two years and finally both us are o.k. with me living long period of times in Guate. He will be visiting me a lot .

Don’t forget that we are a 501(c)(3) non profit, and so all donations are completely tax deductible.

ABOUT THE HOMBRES CONTRA FEMINICIDIO CAMPAIGN

Hombres Contra Feminicidio is an educational campaign in Guatemala which objective is to train teachers, students and people in power on how to prevent and erradicate violence against women. M.I.A. strive  to bring the campaign to teachers nationwide in order to bring the topic into the schools curriculum.

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a temporary immigration status granted to eligible nationals of designated countries or parts thereof.

During the period for which a country has been designated for TPS, TPS beneficiaries may remain in the United States and may obtain work authorization. However, TPS does not lead to permanent resident status (green card).

When the Secretary terminates a TPS designation, beneficiaries revert to the same immigration status they maintained before TPS (unless that status had since expired or been terminated) or to any other status they may have acquired while registered for TPS. Accordingly, if an immigrant did not have lawful status prior to receiving TPS and did not obtain any other lawful status during the TPS designation, the immigrant reverts to unlawful status upon the termination of that TPS designation.

TPS is not granted to persons that try to register after the first registration period ends, so if a person of a country that is currently under TPS did not register the first time TPS was assigned, then that person does not qualify for TPS.

2. Who is eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status?

You may be eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) if:

• You are a national of a country designated by the Attorney General for TPS. You may also be eligible if you are a person who has no nationality but last habitually resided in a designated country

• You apply for TPS during the specified registration period. The registration period is stated in the Federal Register notices of designation and is also generally noted in USCIS press releases

• You have been continuously physically present in the U.S. since the TPS designation began, or since the effective date of the most recent re-designation

• You are admissible as an immigrant and are not otherwise ineligible for TPS

• You have continuously resided in the U.S. since a date specified by the Attorney General

Note: This date is listed in the Federal Register notice of designation and may be different than the date TPS became effective.

3. Who is ineligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status?

You are ineligible for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) if you:

• Have been convicted of any felony or two or more misdemeanors committed in the U.S.

• Are a persecutor, terrorist or otherwise subject to one of the bars to asylum

• Are subject to one of several criminal-related grounds of inadmissibility for which a waiver is not available

For a Spanish version, see this link.

The program was divided in two parts. The first one was the launch of the Hombres Contra Feminicidio Campaign in the U.S. with the presentation of the first workshop, la Vida Dentro de una Caja. The second part was a testimony presentation by Maria Luisa Rosal and women in the audience regarding their immigrant experience and why the reform matters to them.

Workshop participants in NYC

THE WORKSHOP

The workshop was applied as it is in the MIA’s HCF manual. The group had 10 participants from different parts of NY and NJ. See the following images that illustrate the workshop development.

Byron Izaguirre from AGMAUSA talks about machismo.

Participants work together on an exercise.

List of responses from the exercise.

FEEDBACK:

What did you learn today?

_ give equal treatment to men and women

_ the importance of educating our own communities

_ how to improve family relationships and give equal treatment

_ roles have changed

_ the obstacles that roles create for people

_ women can be independent and find success on their own

Will this lesson help you improve the way you see and to things in life? How?

_ yes, communication helps the family thrive, bring up the good and bad things and understand how make things better

_ yes; I have seen more Latino men and women with more liberal views.

_ yes; make people aware of women rights

_ yes; create awareness among women of how equal we all must be

The posters were kindly donated to the HCF Campaign by Mary Wong at Women Ink — U.N. Church Center in New York City.

Published: January 18, 2010

The Guatemalan government has issued a public protest after three Guatemalans were arrested this month by immigration agents at a Federal Express office in Florida, when one of the immigrants went to pick up a package containing his newly issued Guatemalan passport.

Suspecting that the passport was fraudulent, Federal Express officials called Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to alert them when the Guatemalans arrived to collect the package, officials of the immigration agency said. Two of the Guatemalans were illegal immigrants who have been deported, and one is in deportation proceedings.

Guatemalan diplomats said that Federal Express and American officials had examined and seized legitimate passports without notifying them and had improperly disrupted their dealings with Guatemalan citizens living in this country. Felipe Alejos, the Guatemalan consul in Miami, said the events appeared to violate basic diplomatic protocols.

“They seized official documents, and they did not let us know,” Mr. Alejos said. “There was coordination between FedEx and ICE to detain people.”

Federal Express officials said they had followed routine company procedures when they contacted immigration authorities after detecting packages that suggested organized document fraud. Officials from the immigration agency, known as ICE, said they arrested the Guatemalans only after two of them tried to flee from the Federal Express office. Both the company and the immigration agency denied that they had collaborated to lure the immigrants to the office.

The arrests started a rumor mill of fears in communities along the Florida coast, where many immigrants, both legal and illegal, have settled.

“When people in the community perceive that FedEx acted as an agent for immigration, it undermines their belief that they can collect their mail and trust in their government,” said John De León, a lawyer for the Guatemalan consulate in Miami.

The now disputed chain of events began in November when Guatemalan consular officials based in Miami held a daylong session in Jupiter, Fla., to help Guatemalans in the area resolve problems with birth certificates, passports and other documents. Dozens of Guatemalans signed up for new or renewed passports, which are useful as a form of identification in this country.

The Guatemalan government prints and distributes passports for its citizens living in the United States through a private company, De La Luz, in Metairie, La. In December, the company sent the new passports in Federal Express packages to the Guatemalans who had applied for them.

At least 30 packages could not be delivered to the addresses listed, said a Federal Express spokeswoman, Allison Sobczak, and the shipper in Louisiana did not respond to telephone calls. FedEx employees opened several packages searching for better address information, she said.

“This was a normal routine for us to open a package and inspect it to try to get a correct shipping address,” Ms. Sobczak said. Since the passports included no paperwork indicating they were official, Federal Express contacted ICE “to make sure the documents were legitimate,” she said.

Damaris Roxana Vasquez, 21, a Guatemalan living in Jupiter, said that on Jan. 6, she and three Guatemalan men drove to a Federal Express office in Riviera Beach to pick up a new passport for one of the men. When they arrived, she said in an interview, Federal Express employees told them to wait because they could not locate the package.

Federal Express employees called ICE agents, who were already on their way to the office, to advise them that customers had come to pick up a suspect package, ICE officials said. When the agents arrived, two of the men tried to flee, said an ICE spokeswoman, Nicole Navas. One escaped; the other two men and Ms. Vasquez were detained, and the men later deported. Ms. Vasquez has been released while her deportation case proceeds. Her 5-year-old son, who was with her, was not detained because he is a United States citizen.

ICE seized the undelivered passports, agency officials said. After an investigation showed they were legitimate, ICE officials returned them to the Guatemalan consulate last week.

“Document fraud poses a severe threat to national security and public safety,” Ms. Navas said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19immig.html?scp=1&sq=Guatemala%20Protests%20Arrest%20of%203%20in%20Florida%20Over%20Passports&st=cse

In an unusually protracted and closely watched case, the Obama administration has recommended political asylum for a Guatemalan woman fleeing horrific abuse by her husband, the strongest signal yet that the administration is open to a variety of asylum claims from foreign women facing domestic abuse.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times. Rody Alvarado is shown at a lawyer's offices in San Francisco. The Obama Administration has recommended a granting her asylum.

The government’s assent, lawyers said, virtually ensures that the woman, Rody Alvarado Peña, will be allowed to remain in the United States after battling in immigration court since 1995.

Immigration lawyers said the administration had taken a major step toward clarifying a murky area of asylum law and defining the legal grounds on which battered and sexually abused women in foreign countries could seek protection here.

After 14 years of legal indecision, during which several immigration courts and three attorneys general considered Ms. Alvarado’s case, the Department of Homeland Security cleared the way for her in a one-paragraph document filed late Wednesday in immigration court in San Francisco. Ms. Alvarado, the department found, “is eligible for asylum and merits a grant of asylum as a matter of discretion.”

An immigration judge’s order granting the asylum is still required, but Ms. Alvarado’s lawyer, Karen Musalo, said that since the government had raised no new opposition, it was highly likely that the judge would approve her claim.

Ms. Musalo, director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings College of the Law at the University of California, said Ms. Alvarado’s “has been the iconic case of domestic abuse as a basis for asylum.”

Jayne Fleming, a lawyer specializing in asylum at the San Francisco office of the law firm Reed Smith, called the recommendation “a giant step forward.” Advocates and immigration judges, Ms Fleming said, “now have some pretty solid guidelines from D.H.S.”

In a phone interview Thursday, Ms. Alvarado, who has not been detained and lives in California, where she is a housekeeper at a home for elderly nuns, said she was pleased but also a little dazed and disbelieving.

“I thank God it came out well,” she said, speaking in Spanish. “But it wasn’t easy to wait this long for immigration to make a decision.”

She said she hoped the outcome in her case would mean that other abused women would receive quicker decisions from the courts.

Homeland Security Department officials were cautious in assessing the implications of the administration’s recommendation. The department “continues to view domestic violence as a possible basis for asylum,” a department spokesman, Matthew Chandler, said. But such cases, Mr. Chandler said, continue to depend on the specific abuse. The department is writing regulations to govern claims based on domestic violence, he said.

After enduring a decade of violence by her husband, Francisco Osorio, a former soldier in Guatemala, Ms. Alvarado came to the United States in 1995. Over the years, immigration judges have not questioned the credibility of her story. According to court documents, she married when she was 16, and became pregnant soon afterward. In a beating that he apparently hoped would induce an abortion, Mr. Osorio dislocated her jaw and kicked her repeatedly. He also “pistol-whipped Ms. Alvarado, broke windows and mirrors with her head, punched and slapped her, threatened her with his machete and dragged her down the street by her hair,” a court filing states.

In 1996, an immigration judge in San Francisco granted Ms. Alvarado’s asylum petition, but an immigration appeals court overturned that decision in 1999. In 2001, Attorney General Janet Reno threw out the appeals court decision, but did not grant Ms. Alvarado asylum. (Because the immigration courts are part of the executive branch, not the judiciary, the attorney general is the highest legal authority.)

In 2004, the Department of Homeland Security, which represents the government in immigration cases, argued for the first time in favor of asylum for Ms. Alvarado. Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered a new review but did not reach a decision. In September 2008, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey sent the case back to the immigration appeals court, encouraging the court to issue a precedent-setting ruling. Such a ruling can come only from an immigration appeals court or a federal court.

The large legal question in the case is whether women who suffer domestic abuse are part of a “particular social group” that has faced persecution, one criteria for asylum claims. In a separate asylum case in April, the Department of Homeland Security pointed to some specific ways that battered women could meet this standard.

In a recent filing, Ms. Alvarado’s lawyers argued that her circumstances met the requirements that the department had outlined in April. Now the department has agreed, in practice making the case a model for other asylum claims.

In a declaration filed recently to bolster Ms. Alvarado’s argument that she was part of a persecuted group in Guatemala, an expert witness, Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey, reported that more than 4,000 women had been killed in domestic violence there in the last decade. These killings, only 2 percent of which have been solved, were so frequent that they earned their own legal term, “femicide,” said Ms. Paz y Paz Bailey, a Guatemalan lawyer. In 2004 Guatemala enacted a law establishing special sanctions for the crime.

“Many times,” she said, violence against Guatemalan women “is not even identified as violence, is not perceived as strange or unusual.”

The resolution of her case is coming too late for Ms. Alvarado to be able to raise her two children, whom she has not seen since she left them in Guatemala. The children, now 22 and 17, were raised by their paternal grandparents, whom they call Mama and Papa.

“It has been tremendously painful for me to know that they do not see me as their mother,” Ms. Alvarado said in court papers.

Migration

The two initial bills were presented to Congress last week by the Guatemalan Migrant Commission. The bills seek to reform the Law of Migration and create a new decentralized entity to oversee migration: the Guatemalan Institute of Migration (IGM). The proposed IGM would have its own director and resources which would be dedicated to better controlling entrances and exits out of Guatemala. The bills also include an initiative that would create electronic visas for foreigners entering the country. These bills are separate from the one that was presented last week by the National Board of Migration which focused more on the protection migrant rights.

The airport is currently undergoing massive remodeling set to be completed within two years. Included in the plans is a special area for receiving Guatemalans who have been deported from the United States.

15,570 Guatemalans have been deported from the United States this year. Most of the deportees come from the departments of San Marcos, Huehuetenango and Retalhulea.

One Guatemalan citizen along with 96 Mexican citizens were detained in the United States after being found in a freight truck in Arizona. The group was traveling among crates of fruit being transported at 34 degrees Fahrenheit. The group was largely comprised of women and children ages 9-12.

In response to North American bishops decision to call on President Obama for migration reform, Central American bishops gathered last week to make the same call to the US president in the form of letters and calls to their parishioners on both sides of the border.

In an effort to tighten security along the Mexico-Guatemala border, stricter documentation requirements are being asked of Guatemalan citizens. Rather than using local passes, as border residents were allowed before, citizens residing in border departments are required to apply for a formal migration visa. All other Guatemalan residents must have their passport. These new requirements have hurt Chiapas economy as tourism from Guatemala has been down substantially since the requirements were enacted.

Health

Thirty one new cases of H1N1 (gripe A) were identified last week, bringing the national H1N1 count to 528 cases. The death of a one year old boy brings the flu’s death toll to 10. There are now 30,000 doses of Tamiflu in the country, though the Ministry of Health has declined to comment on the possibility of a much larger outbreak, as there has been in the countries Mexico and El Salvador.

Honduras

Regional commerce has fallen 17 percent since the Honduran coup. Part of this drop has been attributed to the difficultly trucks have had crossing the Honduran border. But the European Union has announced that it will restart commerce with Central America, minus Honduras, in September.

Climate Change

El Niño has begun to form over the Pacific Ocean. The weather phenomenon is expected to bring storms, floods and drought. The upside of El Niño is that its presence lowers the frequency of hurricanes, say experts. The effects of El Niño will likely not been seen until late October. Agricultural production will be severely affected by the droughts and floods produced by El Niño.

Community Consultation

The population of Churrancho in the department Guatemala voted 87.2 percent against the construction of a hydroelectric dam in a nearby river. Residents believe the dam will negatively impact their community and leave them with no water. Generdora Nacional, the owner of the proposed dam, complains that they were notified only two weeks before that the consult was going to take place. Generador Nacional already has the permission of the Ministry of Environment to construct the dam as the company has already turned in its required environmental impact study.

Food and Nutrition

The Canadian activist group Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC) warns that Guatemala and other countries like it are in danger of losing their native corn plants to genetically-modified super breeds. Guatemala has come under a lot of pressure to completely switch to genetically-modified seed since the largest seed was bought out by transnational company Monsanto’s Seed last year. ETC says genetically-altered crops and use of petrochemicals is a false solution to the food shortages caused by global warming. Agroindustry consumes 14 percent of the world’s fuel consumption, the same amount as cars and other forms transportation.

Mining

The Ministry of the Environment prohibited the mining company Montana Exploradora from importing cyanide as it has failed to pay proper import taxes for the last two years. Montana has been paying 3 Quetzales per kilogram where the tax is at 5 Q/kg. The Ministry has banned Montana from importing the chemical until it pays the difference. A Montana spokesperson has said that the company is preparing its lawyers for legal countermeasures.

Montana Exploradora S.A. Guatemala is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GoldCorp, a Canadian company that mines precious metals. Montana currently has several projects active in the Western highlands of Guatemala. It’s most notorious project is the Marlin mine in the department San Marcos. The Marlin mine has been opposed by local communities since its inception in 2005. Several community members have been jailed and threatened over the course of the mine’s operation and several protests of the mine have turn brutally violent. Montana is currently the largest bidder for exploration licenses in another region of San Marcos, which has sparked protests, marches and roadblocks nationwide.

The Pastoral Commission of Peace and Ecology (Copae) of the Catholic diocese of San Macos recently undertook a study of five rivers around the Marlin Mine. Copea, using its own equipment and laboratory, found large concentrations of metals near mining disposal sites.

The Mining Guild denounced Copea’s methods unscientific and declared its finding unreliable. Montana Exploradora assured the press the rivers near Marlin mine are not contaminated.

Bishop Álvaro Ramazzini of San Marcos diocese said he hopes the study serves an alert to environmental authorities and that it moves authorities to conduct more extensive environmental impact studies. Bishop Ramazzini has spoken out against the mine both from the pulpit and in public forums since the mine’s beginning, for which he has received death threats and law suits for ‘provoking violence among peasants toward mining activity.’

EFE | CHICAGO – La cara del flujo migratorio ha cambiado y ahora son las mujeres las que enfrentan riesgos y obstáculos y encabezan las familias que llegan a Estados Unidos en busca de mejores oportunidades.

Jefas de familia

Según el estudio “Mujeres inmigrantes: Guardianas de la familia del Siglo 21″, debatido en Chicago, la historia de la migración dejó de ser una épica masculina y las mujeres se mudan ahora tanto como los hombres.

Al presentar su estudio, el encargado Sergio Bendixen dijo que las mujeres no emigran como individuos solitarios, sino como “líderes decididas a mantener los lazos familiares intactos”.

En la actualidad, más de la mitad de los inmigrantes que ingresan a Estados Unidos son mujeres, y en el mundo las mujeres también suponen más de la mitad de toda la población migratoria, afirma el estudio.

Resultados de sondeo

Los datos presentados fueron recogidos entre agosto y septiembre de 2008, en una encuesta a 1,002 mujeres inmigrantes que nacieron en América Latina, Asia, África y países árabes.

En la presentación del estudio, patrocinada por la Coalición de Illinois para los Derechos de Inmigrantes y Refugiados, estuvieron presentes mujeres inmigrantes latinas, africanas, chinas, árabes y coreanas que compartieron sus experiencias.

Bendixen dijo que los datos presentados podrían ser útiles en el debate migratorio, porque “suavizan la imagen del inmigrante”.

Cada vez más las mujeres deciden “cruzar océanos y fronteras”, ya sea para unirse a sus esposos una vez que se han asentado, o para “preservar la familia”.

“Cuando las mujeres vienen a América, vienen como madres y esposas”, agregó.

En 2007 había 18,9 millones de mujeres inmigrantes en Estados Unidos, de las cuales 53 por ciento tenía origen latinoamericano y un promedio de edad de 35 a 49 años.

El estudio señala además que el 65 por ciento de las inmigrantes latinas nacieron en México, 12 por ciento en Centroamérica y 10 por ciento en Cuba.

Unidad familiar

Según el estudio, un 90 por ciento de las mujeres inmigrantes encuestadas (de las cuales 30 por ciento son indocumentadas) dijeron que la unidad de sus familias sigue intacta y sus hijos nacieron en Estados Unidos o se unieron a ellas aquí.

Para ello, las mujeres inmigrantes superan la barrera del idioma que más del 60 por ciento de las latinas, vietnamitas, coreanas y chinas no dominan.

Asimismo, la discriminación, falta de seguro médico y salarios bajos, muy lejos de los puestos profesionales que muchas ocupaban en sus países de origen, agrega.

Cambio de roles

El estudio señala que las mujeres inmigrantes cambian radicalmente sus roles, asumiendo el liderazgo en las responsabilidades del hogar y compartiendo con sus maridos la toma de decisiones económicas y de planificación familiar.

“En su nueva ciudad, son las mujeres las que mantienen a la familia intacta, actuando como la voz y rostro de la familia, garantizando la salud y educación de los hijos, y su entrada en la nueva sociedad”, dice el estudio.

Agrega que en un momento en que más de un tercio de las familias en los Estados Unidos son mono-parentales, el 90 por ciento de las familias inmigrantes tienen matrimonios intactos.

El indicador más relevante en su rol de administradora familiar es el hecho de que las mujeres digan que son las líderes en sus familias en el momento de decidir la ciudadanía, según el estudio.

Las encuestadas nombraron “asegurar la estabilidad familiar” como la primera razón por la que persiguen la ciudadanía estadounidense, y la segunda es votar en las elecciones.

”En el Siglo 21, el rostro del inmigrante es el de una madre”, afirma el trabajo encabezado por Bendixen.

http://www.univision.com/content/content.jhtml?chid=3&schid=278&secid=0&cid=2022404#1

Cover picture in El Periodico, Guatemala, of Norma Cruz during a hunger strike demaning the return of Guatemalan children illegally adopted in Guatemala by U.S. families.