This was a great panel on November 7, with speakers in four countries (the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia). We talked about challenges for dignified migration at a time of hardening borders and more military and police involvement in migration control throughout the region.
Many thanks to Hispanics in Philanthropy and Open Society Foundations for organizing it and inviting me to participate.
Here’s an 1,100-word statement recalling and highlighting some of the basic principles underlying our border and migration work. Backed up with lots of numbers and data, of course.
The main points:
Read it here. It comes with an embedded video:
I think I’m getting better at making these? Obtaining a cheap teleprompter helped.
In this week’s WOLA U.S.-Mexico Border Update:
In this week’s WOLA U.S.-Mexico Border Update:
We hear a lot that people at the U.S.-Mexico border are being allowed into the United States “illegally.” Well, no.
For decades, U.S. law has stated that if you fear for your life or freedom if returned to your country, you are entitled to due process. Asylum seekers are doing something legal. And many of them qualify.
Here’s a two-minute explanation:
Here’s an 8-minute segment that aired yesterday on France24 Español. A conversation in Spanish with anchor Rosa Pérez about the possible future spread of fentanyl into Latin America, and why the United States has been unable to contain the spread of the compact, highly addictive opioid.
Here (en español) is an episode of DemocraciaAbierta’s #Unboxing program, in which host Sandra Borda (of Colombia’s Universidad de los Andes) and I discuss the Biden administration’s post-Title 42 changes to immigration policy. We recorded this in late May, so it’s not razor-sharp current, but we do go into some detail that you don’t often get in a video interview.
In this week’s WOLA U.S.-Mexico Border Update:
In this week’s WOLA U.S.-Mexico Border Update:
I’m angry at Ratboys (a group I’ve seen twice, because they’re always touring and open for everybody) for writing a song that’s absolutely brilliant and instantly catchy—but I can’t seem to hear without tearing up.
Stereogum explains why:
“I wrote this song a few days after the death of my grandma in June 2020,” says Ratboys’ Julia Steiner. “She didn’t have COVID, but because of the pandemic my grandpa wasn’t able to visit her in person at the nursing home to say goodbye. He ended up standing outside her room and saying goodbye through an open window. A lot of the lyrics are direct quotes of things he said to her in those final moments.”
Gorgeous but gutting. Damn it, got something in my eye again.
This makes four weeks in a row that I’ve tried using my new office space at “renovated WOLA” to make quick little mobile-friendly promo videos for things we’ve published. This is the first one with the teleprompter setup that I’ve jury-rigged: a fast overview of the latest Weekly Border Update.
These are “experimenting in public,” figuring out the production, the hardware, and the software as I go. They’ve performed modestly on Twitter and invisibly on Mastodon, but reasonably well on TikTok (where they reliably attract obnoxious far-right commenters) and on Instagram.
The Border Update is here at WOLA’s site, and also on this site.
Here’s another foray into brief video, as I continue practicing use of some very complicated software.
This one is about the border with Arizona. During a very hot summer, the busiest part of the U.S.-Mexico border has made only 100 appointments per day available to asylum seekers.
Instead of reporting to a point of entry, thousands are crossing in dangerous desert during record heat. The number of CBP One appointments needs to increase in Nogales.
I’m trying something new here. If I don’t manage to keep it up after a few weeks, I’ll never mention it again.
It’s a quick overview of this week’s WOLA Border Update, for use in social media.
I’m trying out both my brand-new office space (WOLA just completed a renovation), and my low-on-the-learning-curve Adobe Premiere skills.
Here’s video of this afternoon’s launch of WOLA’s and the Kino Border Initiative’s event this afternoon where we launched our big new report, Abuses at the U.S.- Mexico Border: How To Address Failures and Protect Rights.
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