ICAN members Emma, John, Kathy, and Yuliana with the broken heart valentines outside of a payday lending store in Nampa. Photo Credit: Greg Kreller/Idaho Press Tribune (Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2012)

On February 14th this year, members of Alliance affiliate Idaho Community Action Network (ICAN)  had some very specific valentines to deliver to payday lending stores across the valley.  These over-sized valentines with broken hearts of pink and red symbolized a message and a demand: stop breaking our hearts and stop breaking our budgets.

The ICAN Valentine’s Day demand was simple and follows the legislative regulation ICAN wants in Idaho: voluntarily reduce interest rates to a cap of 36% from upwards of 400% and reduce the maximum loan amount from $1,000 to $300.  And so with valentines in hand, we visited many payday stores and allowed our members to share their stories and educate the public. Our members were also interviewed by the press and got to tell their stories and spread our message to an even bigger audience. The member stories spoke of the unfair cycle created by unregulated payday loans which trap community members in debt and thus insure their repeat loan business.

ICAN’s Valentine’s Day action was met with mixed responses, from passionate members to defensive businesses. On a few occasions, we were asked to leave a store, but as we loaded up our giant valentines and drove to the next location, one thing was clear: we will not allow more broken hearts and broken budgets.

To read media coverage of the day, please visit these links:

The Lewiston Tribune:  Protestors Target Lewiston Wells Fargo Office

The Idaho Statesman:  Idaho consumer group targets payday lenders with valentines

The Lewiston Tribune:  Valentine Protestors Have No Love for Payday Lenders

LocalNews8:  ICAN Delivers ‘Broken Heart’ Valentine to Payday Lenders

The Boise Weekly:  ICAN To Deliver Heart-Shaped Activism to Payday Loan Stores

Do-It- Yourself Deportation

ONE of my happiest childhood memories is of my parents at my First Communion. But that’s because most of my memories from that time are of their being absent. They weren’t there for my elementary school graduation, or for parent-teacher conferences.

 From the time I was just a baby in Mexico, I lived with my grandparents while my parents traveled to other Mexican states to find work. I was 6 in 2000 when they left for the United States. And it took five years before they had steady jobs and were able to send for me. We’ve been together in this country ever since, working to build a life. Now I am 17 and a senior in high school in New York City. But my parents have left again, this time to return to Mexico.

Last week, when asked in a debate what America should do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants living here, Mitt Romney said he favored “self-deportation.” He presented the strategy as a kinder alternative to just arresting people. Instead, he said, immigrants will “decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here.”

But really this goes along with a larger movement in states like Arizona and Alabama to pass very tough laws against immigrants in an attempt to make their lives so unbearable that they have no choice but to leave. People have called for denying work, education and even medical treatment to immigrants without documentation; many immigrants have grown afraid of even going to the store or to church.

The United States is supposed to be a great country that welcomes all kinds of people. Does Mr. Romney really think that this should be America’s solution for immigration reform?

You could say that my parents have self-deported, and that it was partly a result of their working conditions. It’s not that they couldn’t find work, but that they couldn’t find decent work. My dad collected scrap metal from all over the city, gathering copper and steel from construction sites, garbage dumps and old houses. He earned $90 a day, but there was only enough work for him to do it once or twice a week. My mom worked at a laundromat six days a week, from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m., for $70 a day.

But the main reason they had to leave was personal. I have a brother, 16, a year younger than me, still living in Mexico. He was too little to cross the border with me when I came to the United States, and as the government has cracked down on immigration in the years since, the crossing has become more expensive and much more dangerous. And there was no hope of his getting a green card, as none of us have one either. So he stayed with my grandparents, but last year my grandmother died and two weeks ago my grandfather also died. My parents were confronted with a dilemma: Leave one child alone in New York City, or leave the other alone in Mexico. They decided they had to go back to Mexico.

Now once again I am missing my parents. I know it was very difficult for them to leave me here, worrying about how I will survive because I’m studying instead of earning money working. I’m living with my uncles, but it is hard for my mother to know that I’m coming home to a table with no dinner on it, where there had been dinner before. And it’s hard for me not having my parents to talk to, not being able to ask for advice that as a teenager you need. Now that they are in Mexico, I wonder who will be at my graduation, my volleyball games or my birthday? With whom will I share my joy or my sad moments?

I know a girl named Guadalupe, whose parents have also decided to return to Mexico, because they can’t find work here and rent in New York City is very expensive. She is very smart and wants to be the first in her family to attend college, and she wants to study psychology. But even though she has lived here for years and finished high school with a 90 percent average, she, like me, does not have immigration papers, and so does not qualify for financial aid and can’t get a scholarship.

People like Guadalupe and me are staying in this country because we have faith that America will live up to its promise as a fair and just country. We hope that there will be comprehensive immigration reform, with a path to citizenship for people who have spent years living and working here. When reform happens, our families may be able to come back, and if not, at least we will be able to visit them without the risk of never being able to return to our lives here. We hope that the Dream Act — which would let undocumented immigrants who came here as children go to college and become citizens and which has stalled in Congress — will pass so that we can get an education and show that even though we are immigrants we can succeed in this country.

If, instead, the political climate gets more and more anti-immigrant, eventually some immigrants will give up hope for America and return to their home countries, like my parents did. But I don’t think this is something that our presidential candidates should encourage or be proud of.

Immigrants have made this country great. We are not looking for a free ride, but instead we are willing to work as hard as we can to show that we deserve to be here and to be treated like first-class citizens. Deportation, and “self-deportation,” will result only in dividing families and driving them into the shadows. In America, teenagers shouldn’t have to go through what I’m going through.

Antonio Alarcón is a high school student and a member of Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy group. This essay was translated by Natalia Aristizabal-Betancur from the Spanish.

On Monday morning, the group gathered at the Capitol Building for scheduled meetings with key legislators from the Health and Welfare and Business Committees. Later in the afternoon, ICAN members and supporters participated in an action against payday lenders at the EZ Money Payday Loans located on State St. To start the action, about 20 people occupied their office for a couple of minutes while chanting “Payday Lenders, Criminal Offenders”. After that, a group of around 50 individuals stood outside the building holding signs and making sure drivers and people passing by knew about the bad practices these loan sharks have.

For videos and photos of the action, please visit our Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/IdahoCAN

ICAN, The Alliance for a Just Society and CID also unveiled the “Medicaid Matters in Idaho: Real Stories, Real Impacts, Real Communities” storybook. The storybook connects the reader to the real stories of Idahoans who are impacted by these cuts.

For more information about this event and how cuts in Medicaid are impacting Idaho families, please contact Yuliana Nogales at Yuliana@idahocan.org or 208-385-9146.

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.”

For more information about immigration trainings and recent updates on federal and state immigration issues, please contact Yuliana Nogales at Yuliana@idahocan.org or 208-385-9146

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.

Para información en español, has clic AQUI.

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.

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/