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Immigration : An American Story

05/09/2013 Nativegrl77

Cecilia Muñoz Director,

Domestic Policy Council

The White House

Hi, everyone —

This is the start of a national debate. Across the country, we’re having a serious discussion about how we can build a fair and effective immigration system that lives up to our heritage as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.

And we need your help to make sure that genuine, personal perspectives are part of the conversation. The truth is, that if we go back far enough, nearly every American story begins somewhere else — so often with ancestors setting out in search of a different life, carving out a future for their children in this place that all of us now call home.

We want to make sure that idea isn’t far from the minds of policymakers here in Washington as we work to reach an agreement to reform immigration.

To kick things off, one of the President’s senior advisors sat down to share his story with you.

Watch David Simas tell his American story, then tell us yours.

When Americans from all over the country — each with different backgrounds, each from different circumstances — all speak out with the same voice, it’s powerful in a way that’s hard to ignore. We’ve seen it again and again, in debate after debate.

And this is the kind of issue where putting a face on the push for reform takes an abstract concept and makes it real. So share your American stories with us, and we’ll put them to use.

We’ll publish them on the White House website. We’ll share them on Facebook and Twitter. We’ll do everything we can to make sure they’re part of the debate around immigration reform.

Get started here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/immigration/stories

Thanks, Cecilia

Cecilia Muñoz Director, Domestic Policy Council The White House

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Calling All Healthy Recipes

05/09/2013 Nativegrl77

The White House

Calling All Healthy Recipes

Let’s Move!, First Lady Michelle Obama‘s initiative to raise a healthier generation of kids, is thrilled to announce the Second Healthy Lunchtime Challenge & Kids’ State Dinner — a nationwide recipe challenge just for kids.

We invite parents or guardians and their kids, ages 8-12, to create and submit an original lunch recipe that includes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, or low-fat dairy foods. The creators of the winning recipes will have a chance to come to the White House for their very own Kids’ State Dinner.

Submit a recipe for the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge here.

the Franks bill is bad for D.C. women

05/09/2013 Nativegrl77

Does Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona think he rules D.C.?

Stand up to Trent Franks

Rep. Franks doesn’t speak for D.C. and shouldn’t get to ban abortion for women he doesn’t represent.

Help us stop Rep. Franks by taking action!

As we await the verdict in the trial of Kermit Gosnell, Rep. Trent Franks and his colleagues in the House are quietly pushing a bill that could ban abortion after 20 weeks for women in Washington, D.C. – even if the pregnancy puts a woman’s health or ability to have children in the future at risk.¹

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots. A bill like this will block women in desperate circumstances from getting abortion care they need and could force women to seek help from dangerous, back-alley predators like Gosnell.

Rep. Franks pushed this bill before, and we managed to beat it. He already has the backing of scores of other anti-choice members of the House and the National Right to Life Committee.

pro-choice people like you need to make your voices heard if we’re going to block it again. Even if your lawmaker is anti-choice, we need you to speak out against this bill now.

I’m really concerned about what Rep. Franks’ bill could mean for low-income women in our city.

Congress bars D.C. from paying for low-income women’s access to abortion care – even for women who rely on the city for their health care. This means that low-income women must find a way to come up with the resources on their own, which is extremely difficult and too often delays them from getting an abortion early in pregnancy.

These women don’t even have a lawmaker who can vote to protect their interests. So it’s up to us. Tell your member of Congress that banning abortion at 20 weeks in D.C. is dangerous for women’s health.

Rep. Franks may say he is concerned about the conditions that would lead a woman to seek help from someone like Gosnell in the first place.

But we know his true motives. Rep. Franks wants to ban abortion. Period.

Franks’ bill contains no exceptions for situations where continuing a pregnancy will place a woman’s health or ability to have children in the future at risk. A woman would have to be on death’s door before a doctor could provide the abortion care she needs.

Making abortion harder for a woman to get doesn’t actually change a woman’s mind. It only makes it more likely that she’ll consider taking desperate measures.

I believe that we can convince enough members of Congress that abortion bans will drive more women to underground, dangerous abortion providers if enough of us speak up. Tell your lawmakers that the Franks bill is bad for D.C. women.

Thank you for making choice real for all women,

Ilyse Hogue

Ilyse G. Hogue President, NARAL Pro-Choice America

1 – “D.C. Anti-Abortion Bill Introduced By GOP Congressman Trent Franks…Again,” Huffington Post, April 29, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/29/dc-anti-abortion-bill_n_3180578.html

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URGENT: Cancer Patient About to be Evicted!

05/09/2013 Nativegrl77

MAKE THE CALL

Ocwen CEO Ron Faris: 561-682-8560 ronald.faris@ocwen.com Make these points:

Please stop the impending eviction.
Please suspend the foreclosure process
Please offer a deal Jacqueline Barber can afford in order to stay in her home (she’s already offered $160,000 for her own home).

I wanted to share this story of Jacqueline Barber with you. Our Allies at the Home Defenders League and Occupy Homes asked us to get involved to stop the imminent eviction of a very sick woman and her family. Your action could help tip the balance.
People like Jacqueline Barber are the reason we are taking the fight to Washington for the May 18- 23 Week of Action to end “Too Big to Jail”. We just can’t allow heartbreaking stories like this to continue.
Here’s the story. – Brian K.
Dear Carmen,
20-year Atlanta Police Department veteran. Grandmother of four. Car crash survivor. Bone cancer patient. Foreclosure fraud victim. Jacqueline Barber is all those things, but most importantly, she’s a fighter. And right now she’s fighting for her home.
Jacqueline Barber spent 20 years on the Atlanta police force, only retiring when injured by a car in the line of duty. In 2009, the predatory loan on her house caused her payment to go up $1500. Then she was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer and had to undergo aggressive treatment to save her life. She fought back against the disease, and spent months filling out forms and asking for modifications to her mortgage. When her loan was sold to Ally Bank and its servicer GMAC, she started the fight again, and was close to victory when nearly 21,000 supporters signed a petition to Ally to finalize their negotiations and end Jacqueline’s eviction.
We thought we’d be writing you soon with good news, since the banks and servicers (including GMAC) had started what we thought were good faith negotiations as a result of your actions.
Then the unthinkable happened: Ally admitted to Jacqueline her loan was now in control of A DIFFERENT company.

Yesterday Jacqueline Barber got a call from Ocwen, a financial institute she’s never heard of, informing her that she had 2 days to vacate her home. She had just gotten out of the hospital after having a procedure done on her back, leaving her walker bound when not bed ridden. The news from Ocwen was not the news a cancer patient fighting their second bout of multiple myeloma would want to hear.

Jacqueline Barber found out that her mortgage has transferred from GMAC to Ocwen Financial Services, and Ocwen is refusing to honor any of the deals arranged with GMAC over the last 6 months.

Call Ocwen CEO Ronald Faris at 561-682-8560 and tell him to make a deal that Jacqueline can afford, or have her blood on his hands. (sample script below). To make sure he gets the message, also send him an email at ronald.faris@ocwen.com

Ocwen Financial services is a company notorious for shipping jobs overseas, creating tax havens in the Virgin Islands, and defrauding customers. The stress of an eviction would not only leave Jacqueline, her daughter, and four grandchildren homeless, it would also serve to accelerate her cancer.

Call and email Ocwen CEO Ronald Faris at 561-682-8560 and ronald.faris@ocwen.com and tell him to make a deal that Jacqueline and her family can afford, or have her blood on his hands. (sample script below)

Script: “Hi, my name is _________ and I’m calling on behalf of Jacquline Barber at 160 Stearman Road in Fayetteville, GA 30214. I understand that Ocwen aquired GMAC in February and will not honor the negotiations that have kept Jacqueline and her family in her home to this point as she undergoes chemotherapy. I demand that you offer Jacqueline and her family a deal they can afford to keep them in their home, and relieve Jacqueline of the stress of eviction while she bravely fights bone cancer.

Jacqueline worked hard in her professional life to keep people safe through her work as a police detective. She was even injured on the job. Now, facing a recurrence of bone cancer and an eviction foreclosure, she’s on the verge of having her home stolen by the same bankers who destroyed our economy, put 16 million homeowners underwater and 7 million families into the foreclosure process.

Please make the call. You can report what happened on the call by clicking here and leaving a comment on the blog post.
Also please take a moment to sign our petition in support of Jacqueline’s fight.
In solidarity,

Brian, Campaign for a Fair Settlement

http://www.campaignforfairsettlement.org/

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Heartless

05/09/2013 Nativegrl77

| By ThinkProgress War Room

11 Awful GOP Amendments to the Immigration Bill

Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee officially kicks of the process of amending and working through what could be an historic reform of our broken immigration system.

The Republican members of the Gang of 8 — Sens. McCain (AZ), Flake (AZ), Graham (SC), and Rubio (FL) — deserve credit for their hard work and willingness to compromise on a plan that includes a pathway to earned citizenship. That said, other Republicans have offered dozens of offensive, mean-spirited, and just plain heartless amendments that serve no other purpose than to cause trouble, score cheap political points, demonize immigrants, and/or generally gum up the works for as long as possible in order to try and kill the bill.

ThinkProgress has rounded up 11 of the worst of these GOP amendments:

1. Undocumented immigrants can never become citizens. “No person who is or has previously been willfully present in the United States will [sic] not in lawful status…shall be eligible for United States citizenship.” Offered by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

2. Mandatory DNA testing. Registered provisional immigrant applicants must submit a DNA sample to the Department of Justice to compare against the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) at the FBI. Offered by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT).

3. Zero assistance. Would prohibit undocumented immigrants who earn provisional legal status from applying for permanent residence if they qualify for state means-tested assistance, the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP), the temporary assistance for needy families program (TANF), or supplemental security income benefits (SSI). Offered by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

4. Bans humanitarian travel. Immigrants who are in provisional legal status but have to go back to their home countries for a humanitarian reason (to visit a sick relative, for instance) would be prohibited from re-entering the United States. Currently, the provisional legal status includes an authorization for travel.Offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

5. Guts family re-unification. The green card distribution for some foreigners relies on a point allocation system in which a certain number of points must be accumulated before those individuals can qualify for a merit-based visa. This amendment would eliminate points for siblings of U.S. citizens and points for individuals from low-sending countries from counting towards merit-based immigrant visas. Offered by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

6. In-person interviews for 11 million immigrants. Sure to slow down the process time for 11 million immigrants, an in-person interview would be required to determine one’s eligibility requirements for provisional legal status. Offered by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

7. Limits visas to South Korea. In an effort to force South Koreans to buy beef from the United States again, this amendment threatens to withhold E-5 visas from South Korea immigrants until the country removes its age-based import restrictions on beef. Offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

8. Enforces head-of-household deportation and causes family separations. Under the current bill, immigration judges have the authority to decline to deport individuals if they believe that the immigrant’s removal will result in hardship for his or her U.S. citizen child. This amendment would waive this judicial discretion and allow the deportation to occur. Offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

9. Prevents low-income undocumented immigrants from seeking legalization. The amendment would require individuals applying for provisional legal status to maintain regular employment and a “regular income or resources” above 400 percent of the poverty line (more than $92,000for a family of four). Under the current bill, immigrants must earn at 100 percent of the poverty line or show regular employment. Offered by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

10. Restricts visas for refugees. This amendment would prohibit individuals from applying for refugee and asylum status until one year after the Director of National Intelligence submits a review related to the Boston bombings to Congress. Offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

11. Allows for racial profiling. Would allow Federal law enforcement to take into account an individual’s country of origin when allowing them into the country. Offered by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

Finally, in a very Downton Abbey-esque move, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) filed an amendment to allow undocumented immigrants to be hired, but only as domestic workers, specifically including cooks, waiters, butlers, governessess, maids, valets, gardeners, footmen, grooms, and chauffeurs.