Economic, Social & Racial Justice for ALL!

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On Monday, Jan. 16 2012, during a protest on EZ Money Payday Loans at EZCORP 2911 W. State Street in Boise, members of the Idaho Community Action Network released a report titled “Predatory Lenders Trap Idahoan’s in a Cycle of Debt.”

According to the report, Idaho families are: “increasingly struggling to make ends meet. Affordable small scale loans, which could tide families over, are hard or impossible to come by. Finding no alternative, families are turning to “payday” and title loans that come with high interest rates and often wind up trapping them in a cycle of debt.”

ICAN member Diana Corcorran from Downey, Idaho shared her story in the report:

“I took out payday loans to pay our bills and for my son’s medical care. Right now I owe money on two payday loans and have taken out others in the past. For a 1,000 dollar loan we pay 120 dollars each month for a year, which has proven to be a significant drain on our finances.”

Payday and title loans are big business for corporations representing the country’s wealthiest one percent. This includes many of the same Wall Street banks, such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, which were bailed out after crashing our economy in 2008. These large financial institutions receive money from the Federal Reserve at a rate currently below a tenth of a percent , loan money out to payday lenders at over ten times that to a rate of about three percent , who then loan money to consumers at a rate several hundred times larger at over 400 percent. Meanwhile, payday lending corporations and their CEO’s pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into political contributions. In the period between 1996 and 2006, the payday lending industry gave $93,400 to state-level candidates in Idaho. Virtually all of this money ($90,900; 97 percent) came from outside of the state.

The report identifies specific policies that lawmakers can pursue in the 2012 Legislative session to show that they stand with Idahoans—and not with the payday and titled lenders backed by Wall Street Lawmakers.

Rule Change Eases Prolonged Separations

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Boise, Idaho— The Idaho Community Action Network today applauded the Obama Administration’s proposed rule change allowing spouses and children of U.S. citizens to stay together in the United States while family members work to gain permanent U.S. residency.

Under current law, undocumented immigrants have to leave the United States and apply for a waiver to lessen the 3-year to 10-year bar they face before they can re-enter the country. Often, the process to obtain a waiver can take months or even years, meaning families have to endure severe prolonged separations.

The rule change would allow spouses and children of U.S. citizens to file their waivers in the United States. The action does not require congressional approval.

“Keeping families together is one of our greatest values in this country, and the Obama administration is moving in a positive direction to ease the difficulties that our families face on a daily basis,” said Alicia Clements, board member of the Idaho Community Action Network. “Families should not be torn apart because of our broken immigration system. This proposal gets rid of unnecessary red tape, and instead it focuses on family unity.”

The rule change would help families like Miguel and Lorena Reyes of Idaho Falls, Idaho. Miguel Reyes had to go back to Mexico in August 2011 to apply for his waiver. He is still waiting for it. Meanwhile, Lorena Reyes, a U.S. citizen, is working hard to maintain a normal family life for the couple’s two-year-old daughter, Ruth.

“This immigration process has been so stressful and devastating for me and my family,” said Lorena Reyes, who told her story to the Idaho Community Action Network, “Our life is on hold, our family’s future is on hold, as we wait for his visa to be approved. I am struggling financially and also suffering emotionally and so is our daughter. I want my husband to come back home now to wait for his waiver.”

ICAN hopes the policy is extended to immigrants with lawful permanent resident status. Families should not have to wait in other countries for prolonged periods of time to be reunited with their families in the United States.

Stateside Processing for Family Unity Waivers

The government announced this week that it will begin a new process in the coming months that will direct certain visa applicants to file their applications for family unity waivers in the U.S.

Currently, U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents face unnecessary and dangerous bureaucratic hurdles in obtaining lawful permanent resident status for their spouse or child. They have to file a visa petition, and once the petition is approved and the visa appointment scheduled, the spouse or child has to travel to a U.S. consulate in their home country to be interviewed. Departure itself triggers a 3-or-10 year bar to re-entry to the U.S. for many applicants (those who are undocumented and who have been living in the U.S. for more than 6 months). The necessary waiver of the bar must be applied for while the applicant is waiting in the home country. The decision on the waiver often takes weeks, months or even over a year to be completed. Meanwhile, families are separated and spouses and children are forced to wait in potentially dangerous situations until a waiver decision is made and then can complete their visa processing and return to the U.S. with their lawful permanent resident document (“green card”).

• This week’s announcement is a limited, common sense processing change: The new procedure will allow husbands, wives and children of U.S. citizens to remain united with their family members while their waiver application is being adjudicated. They will then have to spend only a short time in Ciudad Juarez or at another U.S. consulate abroad, where they will still have to go to have their final visa interview and obtain their lawful permanent resident status.

• In-country processing should be extended to lawful permanent resident family members: While the government announcement indicates that the new procedures will apply only to spouses anda children of U.S. citizens when they go into effect, there is no valid reason not to extend the same processing to immediate family members of lawful permanent residents whose spouses and children face the same obstacles and dangers when required to wait abroad for their waiver adjudications.

• Government bureaucracy shouldn’t stand in the way of keeping families together: The American people understand the importance and value of family unity. That’s why our immigration laws provide that U.S. citizens and lawful residents can apply for “green cards” for their foreign-born spouses and children and unite their families. But government bureaucracy has created decades-long backlogs and put up other obstacles that keep husbands, wives and children separated for years. One of these bureaucratic obstacles is the current waiver process that requires husbands, wives and children to wait outside the U.S. for weeks, months, or even years before getting a decision on their waiver application.

• Stateside waiver processing is a rational solution to a simple problem: Waiver applications are often referred by U.S. consulates abroad back to DHS offices in the U.S. for adjudication. Processing these applications “stateside” in the first place will save consular resources abroad, allow U.S. consulates to focus staff resources on their core mission of serving U.S. citizens in foreign lands, and will allow a professional cadre of DHS staff in the U.S. develop the expertise to adjudicate cases and apply uniform legal standards to those adjudications.

• Husbands, wives and children should not have to risk their lives to get their lawful visa: There is no rational reason to make a husband, wife or child of a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident wait for months in a dangerous place for lawful status for which they qualify. Tragic cases of family members being assaulted or killed as they await their waiver decision should never happen in our legal immigration system.

Source: http://americasvoiceonline.org/

On Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011 more than 55 community members from Boise attended our Thanksgiving Potluck. People from England, USA, Japan, Mexico, Palestine, Morocco, Taiwan, Pakistan, Italy, Ecuador, D. R. of the Congo, Bosnia and Somalia shared food, stories and celebrated diversity in our city. As a cultural event, the Boise Capoeira Group performed and explained the origins Capoeira, a Brazilian art form that combines elements of martial arts, sports, and music.

Welcoming Idaho is coalition of faith, civic, business, and community leaders who have come together to address the need to create welcoming communities for all to flourish. For more information about this event or if you would like to bring the Welcoming Idaho Initiative to your city, please contact Renato Castelo at 208-385-9146 or renato@idahocan.org

Click here to view our newsletter for December.