by the El Reportero’s wire services
Barack ObamaThe Obama Administration’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget proposal is of two minds about how to deal with the broken U.S. immigration system. On the one hand, the document calls for the creation of “a pathway to earned citizenship for hardworking men and women” who are in the United States without legal status. On the other hand, the budget would continue to devote significant sums of money to the detention and deportation of many of the same people for whom the administration would like to create a path to citizenship. In other words, the administration pledges that it will do its best to deport from the country the very same people it wants to help stay.
The budget’s commitment to continued deportations is evident from its proposed spending on immigration enforcement (found in the DHS Budget in Brief). Although the budget does contain little nuggets of pro-immigrant spending—such as “$10 million to continue support for immigrant integration grants that assist lawful permanent residents in preparing for naturalization and citizenship”— the fact is that a few million dollars spent on integration pales in comparison to the billions spent on enforcement: $2.6 billion for Enforcement and Removal Operation within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). $124 million to expand the E-Verify employment authorization system. $24 million for ICE’s 287(g) program, which deputizes local and state law -enforcement of – ficials to enforce federal immigration laws. A reduction of only 10 percent—from 34,000 to 30,539—in the controversial “bed quota,” which specifies how many immigration-detention beds must be filled every day.
Cuba allows users to access E-Mail on mobile devices
Cuba announced Saturday a new service that will allow access to a local e-mail account on mobile devices, a novelty on the island due to existing restrictions on Internet connections for cell phones and home computers.
“For now the only email that can be read on a mobile phone must arrive on a nauta.cu account, which is obtained by signing up for an e-mail account on the Nauta service,” the daily Juventud Rebelde said.
“It is still not possible for a mobile to access other services like free webmail or e-mail on the Internet, so it is recommended that messages received on them be redirected to the Nauta account,” the newspaper said.
According to the published rates, Cubans will pay 1 convertible peso (CUC, the equivalent of $1.00) for each megabyte of e-mail received or sent, a high price for most inhabitants of the island, where the average monthly wage is around $20. In Cuba, the government grants the “social” use of Internet in public centers.
Last June, 100 new state cyber-centers were opened where, through the national portal Nauta, permanent and temporary accounts are offered for navigating the Internet, among other services.
The appearance of these centers initiated a series of small steps by the government in recent months to improve Internet access in a country where the percentage of people with connections is around 15 percent, and where the great majority of inhabitaants are not allowed access to the Web at home.
Up to now, that possibility is only permitted for certain professionals like doctors, journalists, academics, intellectuals and artists.
Brazil discovers 17 Peruvians working in slave-like conditions in Rio
Officials of the Labor and Employment Ministry found 17 Peruvians working in conditions of slavery at a sewing workshop in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, officials told Efe on Saturday.
According to the consul general of Peru in Sao Paulo, Arturo Jarama, some of his compatriots had their documents confiscated and severe limitations imposed on going outdoors, particularly the ones who had been working there only a short time and had yet to win the trust of the owners, who are of Peruvian descent.
“I got the impression that some of the workers were kidnapped, above all those who have been there less time,” Jarama said, adding that “some had freedom and others didn’t.”
The complaint was filed by the Peruvian Consulate before the Justice and Defense of Citizens Secretariat after one of the workers escaped from the sweatshop and spilled the whole story.
