Immigration officials raided a meat plant in Postville, Iowa this Monday. The New York Times called it the “biggest workplace immigration raid this year.” Over 300 workers were arrested under suspicion that they were working under false documents.

Considering how a raid in 2006 was handled in a different town in Iowa, it’s very likely that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested people who are innocent of any criminal wrongdoing. It is likely that many families will end up struggling, not only emotionally over the loss of relatives and loved ones, but economically as well.

Raids like these are dangerous for many reasons, one of which can be serious social repercussions. These kinds of raids continue to stigmatize Latinos and other minorities; it makes them all out to be criminals in the eyes of many US citizens and perpetuates anti-immigration myths.

Criminalizing immigrants is definitely not the solution to the immigration reform problem. The National Latina Institute believes that the particular needs of immigrant women must be taken into account. To read more about this, check out the guiding principles of the National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights.

For those in New York City, go here to get info about an upcoming May 1st Coalition event on immigration taking place May 31st.

–Raquel Namuche, NLIRH Community Mobilization Intern

Today’s New York Times headline article highlights the ongoing health care disparities within the migrant farmworker population. Clearly, health care coverage and access is a larger discourse in national politics, but one might just as easily overlook the physical health of the laborers working in our agricultural fields.

The people need help because they are in the United States illegally and because they are poor. Few have health insurance, but the backbreaking nature of their work, along with the toxicity of American poverty, insure that many are ailing.

They may visit a clinic or hospital if they are severely ill. But for many undocumented immigrants, much of their health care is provided by a parallel system of spiritual healers, home remedies and self-medication.

Data from National Argricultural Worker Survey further illustrates the ongoing health disparities and explains that 70% of farmworkers do not have health insurance.   As a result, there is a reliance on non-conventional and traditional remedies. Ultimately these medical alternatives are not sufficient on their own. The NYT article focuses on this issue, tracking the work of a spiritual healer (curandera).

Women make up 19% of the farmworker community, and face very particular challenges to their health caused by the labor. They are frequently impacted by occupational health hazards (i.e. overt sun exposure, pesticides and other toxic substances) that directly impact their reproductive health. 

Traditional remedies cannot be the only option for immigrants in the United States. While Western medicine could increase its culturally competency by incorporating these non-conventional methods and perspectives, all people in the United States deserve the right to the same standard of health care. Fortunately, organizations like Farmworker Justice and Migrant Clinicians Network frequently acknowledge the severity of this dilemma. Spread the word and spread awareness.

For more on the reproductive health of migrant farmworkers, check out this fact sheet.

–Edith Gonzalez Flores

Today, May 1st is a day of solidarity amongst movements throughout the nation: from labor and workers’ rights, to immigrants’ rights, and for NLIRH, reproductive rights and justice! Today we will march in solidarity with friends, colleagues and activists from various social justice movements.

The New York City May 1st Coalition has organized thousands of workers and immigrants from around NYC to march in solidarity against the raids and deportations that are devastating immigrant families across the nation. Thousands will also march to protest the exploitation that has resulted from the passing of NAFTA and to recognize that police brutality and over-policing is adversely impacting all of us, immigrants and non-immigrants alike.

At NLIRH, we always include the perspectives and needs of immigrant Latinas in each of our programs and initiatives. We aim to raise awareness and promote policies that will improve the lives of Latina immigrants in the US. NLIRH believes it is crucial that immigrants’ and women’s rights organizations support fair and just immigration policies that protect the rights of immigrant women.

If you are in the New York City area, come to the March! For more information: please visit the NYC May 1st Coalition’s website. For other events in the country, please click here.

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York City is offering a free English-as-a-Second-Language class for LGBT immigrants!  In a country in which homophobia, transphobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment are unfortunately common, The Center is providing an important service free of cost and in a space where queer immigrants can feel safe and learn an important skill.  The next round of courses start on April 28; to learn more about this and The Center’s other services and events, call 212-620-7310 or visit The Center’s website.

(Via VivirLatino)

–Veronica Bayetti Flores

Check out the great work of MI-LOLA (the Miami based activist group affiliated with NLIRH) featured in the Reproductive Justice Week of Action hosted by the Third Wave Foundation.

MI-LOLA (Miami International Latinas Organizing for Leadership and Advocacy) will be hosting a party during the National Week of Action for Reproductive Justice on Saturday, April 19, 2008. The event will focus on celebrating reproductive justice with conversation, idea-sharing, action-step making, and lots of good food, music, and drinks. If you would like to find out more about them, please contact mi-lola@gmail.com.

Congrats MI-LOLA! For more information on the work of the Miami activists, email mi-lola@gmail.com

On Friday, March 21st, the New York City Latina Advocacy Network (NYC LAN) held a discussion on the subject of health care.  The discussion was sponsored by Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.  The discussion was facilitated by the lovely Eesha Pandit, Director of Advocacy at MergerWatch and Kelly McIntyre, who is currently an intern at the same organization, took notes.

Raising Women’s Voices is a national initiative supporting quality and affordable health care for all.  They have been hosting discussions throughout the United States asking women to share stories about their experiences with the health care system.  These small group discussions have informed five guiding principles on which to base health care reform that addresses the concerns of women.  The NYC LAN discussion was part of this effort.

For this discussion, six members of the NYC LAN got together and shared stories about the problems they have encountered with doctors and hospitals, the insensibility and lack of judgment from health care workers, and the inaccessibility of medical records, among other things.  From all the stories the members shared, Eesha Pandit helped the group draw out common themes, which made it obvious to see that problems we often feel are isolated, are actually problems all women go through when dealing with the health care system.

To read more about Raising Women’s Voices’ principles for quality and affordable health care for all, click here.  Raising Women’s Voices has also been hard at work organizing a national conference taking place in Boston on April 17-18.  If you would like to attend, it is not too late!  You can go here to register. 

The Latina Institute’s own Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas will be in attendance and speaking in a panel titled, “Uninsured or Under-Insured: Who is Left Out of the System Now?”  Our colleagues, Diana Salas from the Women of Color Policy Network (and member of the NYC-LAN) and Lucy Felix from Migrant Health Promotion, will also be presenting at the conference.

Interested in getting involved with the NYC Latina Advocacy Network? Email intern3@latinainstitute.org

–Raquel Namuche

As many New Yorkers walk freely about in our day to day activities, we might often forget about our sisters of color who are incarcerated. A recent report by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) recognizes the current inadequate reproductive healthcare access and the high rates of breast and cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory diseases and sexually transmitted infections among women who are incarcerated. The research also shows that when compared to women who have not been incarcerated, those who have been incarcerated have higher rates of domestic and sexual violence.

[NYCLU] found that although women incarcerated in New York State are legally entitled to reproductive health care, few county jails have policies ensuring comprehensive access to such care. The county jail system, which houses about 3,000 women at any given time, is governed at the local level with little state oversight. Without a uniform policy, the quality of health care a woman receives in a county jail depends on where she is incarcerated.

To combat this gap in services, the New York State Commission of Correction has published a legal memorandum enforcing county jails to improve reproductive health services. These new standards include reproductive health screenings, breast exams, pelvic exams, pap smears and mammograms. The memo similarly addresses an incarcerated woman’s right to contraception, abortion, prenatal care and delivery services. 

–Edith Gonzalez

On a Thursday morming Adriana Torres-Flores, an undocumented Mexican woman in Arkansas, pleaded not guilty to charges of selling pirated CDs and DVDs.  She was taken to a holding cell to await transportation to the Washington County Jail.  The bailiff that was in charge of arranging her transportation, however, forgot she was there, and she was left in the holding cell without food, water, or access to a toilet for four days.  The news of this negligence on the part of the bailiff is enough to shed light to the way that immigrant women and women of color are regarded in the legal system, but the cherry on top of this story comes with the slap on the wrist that the offending bailiff got for his actions: just a 30-day suspension:

I realize some people may have expected Hankins to be terminated. However, my philosophy is if an employee makes a mistake while trying their best to perform their duties, I will try to salvage them, [Washington County Sherriff Tim] Helder said in a statement.

A typo is a mistake; forgetting a woman in an empty 9’ by 10’ concrete cell for four days can have serious physical and mental health consequences, represents gross negligence and should not be taken lightly.  Even if the bailiff genuinely did forget that Torres-Flores was in that cell, the Sherriff’s blasé dismissal of the episode as a simple mistake is not lost on those of us who are constantly hearing the stories of discrimination and human rights violations against immigrant women and women of color. 

For more information on immigrant’s rights as women’s rights, see the National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights Guiding Principles.

-Veronica Bayetti Flores

Contributed by Edith Gonzalez, Policy and Communications Intern 

¡Que Viva La Justicia!

In celebration of International Woman’s Day, which was Saturday, March 8th, I think we should briefly acknowledge the United Nations global campaign: UNite to End Violence Against Women.  In an effort to increase awareness, the UN’s Secretary General stated in his opening address:

Violence against women is an issue that cannot wait. A brief look at the statistics makes it clear. At least one out of every three women is likely to be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Through the practice of prenatal sex selection, countless others are denied the right even to exist. No country, no culture, no woman young or old is immune to this scourge. Far too often, the crimes go unpunished, the perpetrators walk free.

The campaign will build upon the decades of work by women activists and civil society organizations. It will run until 2015 and calls for the cooperation of the UN, national governments, and society in general to end global violence against women. However, such a global agenda reflects many international complexities, where “violence against women” can be manifested in many different forms, including many that are connected to women’s reproductive rights and health.

For example, data from the World Health Organization denotes that young women worldwide are particularly vulnerable to coerced sex and are increasingly being infected by HIV/AIDS. In fact, over half of new HIV infections worldwide are occurring among young people, and more than 60% of HIV positive youth between the ages 15-24 are female.  Morevoer, acknowledging violence against women domestically and internationally provides further momentum and consciousness raising around gender inequality.

P.S. Happy Women’s Herstory Month!

Contributed by Edith Gonzalez, Policy and Communications Intern 

The media today is awash with the news that a national study found 1 in 4 teenage girls has a sexually transmitted infection.  This statistic is certainly alarming and incredibly unfortunate, and this issue certainly requires media attention.  The study, however, has been covered in problematic ways that serve not to inform but rather create and reinforce stereotypes. 

First, the coverage has been inflammatory and is taking the form of a sex panic; The New York Times’ headline for the news story, Sex Infections Found In Quarter of US Girls, uses non-medical terminology (sex infections?) presumably for curiosity and shock value (the NY Times has been known to do this before), and phrases such as “infections from sexual activity of teens” are clearly used to demonize girls’ choice to engage in sexual activity.  The news stories make little or no distinction between the words “infection” and “disease,” and most don’t even mention boys. 

Most importantly, though, the study has found a huge disparity in the burden of disease, with the rates of infection in African-American girls as high as 50%.  This alarming data is a clear indicator of just how pervasive the obstacles that women of color face in healthcare really are, and this report should be followed by a discussion of these obstacles.  Instead, most articles merely report the statistic and move on without any discussion of the systematic reasons why African-American girls carry such a heavy burden of disease, leaving it up to the reader and the general public to surmise why this might be. 

The result of such carelessness is not trivial, and could contribute to increased discrimination and stigma, in turn increasing the obstacles women of color already face in healthcare and possibly exacerbating this disturbing trend. 

–Veronica Bayetti Flores