Portside

The first week of the new year brought hope and cheer for some. But for many Southern immigrant communities, it brought fear.

During the 1860's, Chinese laborers were brought in to help construct the first U.S. trans-continental railroad between the Atlantic & the Pacific coasts. They worked long hours & were underpaid, and most of the time in extreme weather conditions. Many lost their lives in this historic epic, but their contributions were buried & their history untold.

When people think of immigrant hubs in the country, Arkansas is probably not the first state that comes to mind. But the influx of immigrants there, though small in total numbers, is dramatically re-shaping the small, rural state.

UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education has just published the third book in a series Dreams Deported edited by Kent Wong and Nancy Guarneros. Utilizing the Center's politically powerful approach that ensures that people speak and act collectively for themselves seeking justice, Dreams Deported is a significant contribution to the movement for immigrant and worker rights here in USA and internationally. Buy this book -- and use it!

With Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention, Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist and migrant rights organizer Tings Chak peels away the invisibility of massive immigration detention facilities. In graphic novel form, she walks the reader through these physical spaces step by step.

The act of illegally crossing the border into the United States used to be treated as a civil offence resulting in deportation. But the decision of the federal government several years ago to treat illegal crossings as a criminal offence has led a mass incarceration of immigrants in segregated facilities.

The furor in Murrieta illustrated the conflict between protecting the borders and the safety of immigrant families and children. "If these children were from Canada, we would not be having this interview," immigration rights advocate Enrique Morones told CNN.

Freedom University students desperately want to attend this conference so that they can continue their movement education and come back to Georgia with new skills and renewed energy to continue their fight for immigrant rights in the South. Let's work together to get them there.

Change won't come to America's broken immigration system from policymakers. It will come from organizers.

Thirty years after the great Marseilles to Paris march against racism in 1983, police violence and racist acts have not abated and still go unpunished.