The League of Iowa
Human & Civil Rights Agencies

Branstad: Immigrants should have to prove status

CLARINDA, Iowa (AP) -- Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad says people in Iowa stopped on traffic violations should have to prove their citizenship status.

Branstad made the assertion during a visit Wednesday to Clarinda. He said if a per...

Minority babies set to become majority in 2010: Year could be tipping point when non-white newborns outnumber white

Updated March 10, 2010, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Minorities make up nearly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which minorities are expected to become the U.S. majority over the next 40 years. I...

In Jury Selection for Hate Crime, a Struggle to Find Tolerance

By Manny Fernandez, New York Times

Published: March 8, 2010

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — Over the last several days, Justice Robert W. Doyle has heard the typical excuses from potential jurors. One woman mentioned her husband’s medical problems. Another woman complained about her back.

But other prospective jurors, seeking to be excused, have bro...

Blind violinist injured in Haiti quake fighting the odds, once again

By Darryl Fears, Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, March 7, 2010

MIAMI -- As darkness fell on what was left of his music school in Haiti, Romel Joseph found a distraction for his pain and fear. He imagined himself performing Tchaikovsky's Violin C...

Census Confidentiality Assured 

By Julia Preston

Published: March 4, 2010 (New York Times)

The Justice Department reassured minority leaders in Congress on Thursday that confidential personal information gathered in this year’s census count would not be shared with the Department of Homeland Security ...

School Is Linked To Visa Fraud

By Carmen Gentile

Published: March 4, 2010 (New York Times)

MIAMI — More than 80 people have been arrested in connection with a language school here that the government says was a front for the sale of fraudulent applications for student visas, immigration authorities said Thursday. Two of th...

Earlier today Casey B. Mulligan wrote about how the entry of more women into the work force has helped sustain the solvency of Social Security, which has been otherwise stressed by the size of the retiring baby boom generation and longer life expectancies. The decisions by many more women to trade in their aprons for pantsuits in the last few decades meant that there were more workers paying Social Security taxes — taxes that financed the Social Security paychecks given to this growing ...

When the Obama administration vowed to overhaul immigration detention last year, its promise of more humane treatment and accountability was spurred in part by the harrowing treatment of two detainees who died in the Bush years. In one case, captured by security cameras in 2008, a Chinese computer engineer was dragged from a Rhode Island immigration jail and mocked by guards as he screamed in pain from undiagnosed cancer and a broken spine. In the other, a Salvadoran detainee held for two yea...

News of the ending of refugee resettlement by both the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services and the nonprofit Lutheran Services in Iowa is like a death. It is a death that affects opportunities for refugees who will no longer have Iowa as a destination of hope. It is a death for refugees here, who have experienced hope fulfilled. It is a death for dedicated staff who have felt both fatigue and joy as they worked with refugees to find a home here.

MIAMI — Marie Violande Guerrier-Cavalier arrived in Florida from Haiti on Jan. 16, with little more than her feverish infant son, Marcley, his tiny legs in casts because of a birth defect. She left her husband and four other children behind, living in the yard outside their broken house. Because Marcley is a United States citizen, born here, his mother was allowed to evacuate with him after the earthquake, and can stay in the United States for six months. But Ms. Guerrier-Cavalier has f...