I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
While parts of the Georgia immigration law haven’t taken effect because of a federal injunction, one did on July 1: Use false identification for a job and receive up to 15 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. The offense is called “aggravated identity fraud.”
Jose Antonio Vargas, who wrote for the Washington Post and shared a Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, came out as an undocumented immigrant in a New York Times Magazine story that went live this morning.
New Mexico, Washington and Utah are currently the only states that allow undocumented immigrants to drive. But in all three states, immigrants face threats to their right to drive as agencies step up residency proof requirements or politicians argue for eliminating illegal immigrants’ driving privileges altogether.
Democrats will still hold a majority in both chambers during the lame-duck session, when leaders hope to pass the DREAM Act to give some undocumented young people and military service members legal status. But after January, immigration reform efforts that include paths to legal status for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States seem next to impossible, meaning the next few years will see little progress for immigration reform advocates.
Affordable housing and financial literacy are always issues for undocumented immigrants who may not speak English fluently and may be suspicious of the federal government. But contrary to what you might think, the mortgage collapse has not driven the state’s immigrant community into mass foreclosure and bankruptcy, according to Marcela Diaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a Santa Fe-based immigrants-rights organization.
