Immigration news – June 30, 2015

I publish an immigration newsletter about once a month. You can subscribe to this newsletter by clicking here. I also use Flipboard to collect immigration stories throughout the month. Just click here and bookmark the link to see these stories every day. 

Reports and in-depth stories:

• New and updated: A Guide to Children Arriving at the Border: Laws, Policies and Responses from the American Immigration Council
• The Integration Outcomes of U.S. Refugees: Successes and Challenges from the Migration Policy Institute highlights challenges, but concludes that “most refugees become self-supporting over time—a core goal of the U.S. resettlement program.”
• New America Media has published the first and second installments of David Bacon’s exposé of the low wages and difficult working conditions of migrant farm workers in California. NAM editors summarize:

“California farmworkers once made a decent living but according to NAM contributing writer, David Bacon, those days are long gone. Now the majority is struggling to survive. More than a third of the farmworkers population makes less than the minimum wage, while the other third earns the exact minimum. Many suffer from various health issues as the result of years of backbreaking work. Undocumented farm laborers find movement back and forth across the militarized border far more dangerous and expensive than before, and many are stuck even when picking season has ended.”

In the U.S. and along the border

• Fewer immigrants are entering the United States. The New York Times reports: “Even as the economy bounces back from recession, illegal immigration flows, especially from Mexico, have kept declining, ­according to researchers and government data.”
• The Obama administration announced a change in policy aimed at reducing the length of time that families spend in detention centers. According to the New York Times, “Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson expanded policies he ordered last month that were designed to shorten family detention but that had only limited effect.” The changes include lower bonds for families with pending asylum applications, and improved access to legal representation.
• The changes don’t come soon enough for many immigrants already in jails. After a hunger strike and protest by inmates at Eloy Detention Center, Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) called for an investigation of two recent immigrant deaths and allegations of abuse there. Eloy Detention Center is located in Arizona and run by the private, for-profit Corrections Corporation of America.
• Also in the news, but barely worth mentioning: Donald Trump’s idiotic comments on Mexican immigrants

Around the world

• Resistance to immigrants continues in Europe, with Hungary planning a thirteen-foot fence along its entire 109-mile border with Serbia. According to the Hungarian government, the number of immigrants and asylum seekers has increased sharply this year.
• Migrants continue to flee from violence in their home countries, by sea and by land, with thousands crossing Turkey on foot to enter the European Union via Bulgaria. Others, having arrived in Italy by boat, try to take trains into Germany.
• Refugees from Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka fall prey to human traffickers who take their money for false promises of safe passage. They continue to be turned away from Australia, and find little welcome anywhere in the region.
• A 2013 court decision in the Dominican Republic stripped citizenship from many people born there, but of Haitian ancestry. The government implemented new immigration rules, including a requirement for Haitians to register by June 17, and a threat to deport any who failed to do so. Thousands of Haitians fled ahead of the deadline, burdening the resources of the poorest country in the hemisphere. More than half a million Haitians and Haitian descendants living in the Dominican Republic are affected by the new laws.