By Gayatri Patnaik

One of my sharpest memories as a girl was when an immigration officer came to our house in rural Finzel, Maryland when I was about nine years old. He showed up at our house unannounced and I still remember the stunned look on my mother’s face when she answered the door. I didn’t realize until much later how high the stakes were or how very close we had come to being deported. While I can’t share specifics, I can say that one of the things the officer asked for was the phone number of people my mother knew who could attest to her character. And I remember sitting there in our kitchen hearing the one-sided conversation as he called friends or acquaintances or colleagues of my mother’s, one after another. When he left, I walked with him to the door and he shook my mother’s hand and told her she was a remarkable woman and that if she didn’t hear from him in the next six months, she wouldn’t have to worry about her citizenship status further. Read more →

"Deportation relief is a stopgap measure," says David Bacon, author of THE RIGHT TO STAY HOME: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration. "We need permanent solutions so that those receiving deferred status are not vulnerable." Read more →

The UUA and other religious organizations have reignited the Sanctuary Movement, an interfaith campaign that encourages congregations to open their doors and offer sanctuary to immigrants facing deportation... Read more →

Since nothing beats getting cozy and having some quality time with a new paperback, we put together a list of seven recent releases that you can lose yourself in as the weather turns cold. Read more →

An indigenous community leader from Oaxaca reports on the struggle against economic policies that drive migration, in an excerpt from David Bacon’s The Right to Stay Home (now available in paperback). Read more →

A new book,The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration by activist David Bacon, that brings a fresh perspective to the current immigration debate. Read more →

The recent collapse of a building housing a sweatshop in Bangladesh highlights the human cost of cheap goods. Read more →

We need an immigration policy that brings people together, instead of pitting workers against each other, as our current system does. Read more →