Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff
Yessica Ramirez, a 25-year-old expectant mother who has resided in this country for 23 years, and who is married to a U.S. citizen, faces imminent de-portation to Mexico, accord-ing to an Immigrant Legal Resource Center bulletin.
If Yessica’s fi ght to stay in this country is unsuccess-ful, she faces the prospect of choosing between breaking apart her young family or uprooting them from ev-erything with which they are familiar. Yessica must fi ght deportation as a result of the unconscionable ac-tions of an attorney who victimized her parents when she was just a child,by scamming them into fi l-ing bad asylum claims, says the bulletin.
Jessica is a college stu-dent who took Advanced Placement courses at Mills High School. She serves as the primary caregiver to her 20-year old brother, who is a U.S. citizen and suffers from epilepsy.
Yessica also possesses an overriding sense of duty to this country such that she applied to enlist in the U.S. Army. In short, Yessica is exactly the type of indi-vidual that lawmakers had in mind when drafting the Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act).
Yessica, who has been married for over fi ve years,is seven months pregnant and is due in August.
As a result of her quali-fication for the DREAM Act, and the exceptional and extremely unusual hardship posed to her fam-ily by deportation, Yessica is asking Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to grant her request for stay and deferred ac-tion. Likewise, Yessica is requesting that the Board of Immigration Appeals reopen her case before the immigration court so that she can set forth evidence which warrants cancellation of the deportation order.
SFUSD Graduation Requirements Updated
This week the San Francisco Board of Educa-tion approved changes to the school district’s credit and course graduation re-quirements.
In the fall of 2008,the SF Board of Educa-tion approved the new graduation requirement to complete the University of California/California State University “a-g” course sequence. Students enter-ing San Francisco’s public high schools this fall will be the fi rst class in SFUSD to be required to complete the “a-g” coursework.
Human trafficking in United States now bad enough to be put on peport
As the United States fi nds itself perilously close to falling off of Moody’s AAA Credit rating report,it’s fi nding itself on another report that is far more dis-turbing – the Annual World-wide Human Trafficking Report. It is the first time the United States has been included in the yearly as-sessment. Seemingly more embarrassing is the fact that the report is produced by the U.S. Government, said a Special Guests report.
Sold into slave labor or prostitution, victims of these heinous crimes should not look to the courts for com-fort; only 1 in 3000 cases were prosecuted last year and there were over 12 mil-lion cases worldwide. The United States was founded and has prided itself on be-ing a beacon of freedom.Shockingly, the U.S. is now identifi ed as “a source, transit, and destination coun-try for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor, debt bondage, and forced prostitution,” accord-ing to the report.
Yessica’s imminent deportation will most cer-tainly cause exceptional and extremely unusual hardship her husband, her brother,and unborn child, all of whom are U.S. citizens.
