Reviews for Power And Poverty

The average rating for Power And Poverty based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-09-12 00:00:00 Andrew Chen Wei Wen "On Being Here and Not Here: Noncitizen Status in American Immigration Law" by John S.W. Park This essay examines a legal fiction in which persons physically in the united States are considered not admitted and thus not in the United States and not due the legal protections of equal protection clause of the 14th amendment or the due process clause of the fifth amendment. This category of parolee did not include undocumented persons until 1996. Until 1996,undocumented persons had more legal rights that parolees. Yet this 'discrepancy' was ended with the 1996 immigration law, making it easier to remove undocumented persons. **Warning -- this essay is full of heart-breaking examples. "Acts of Resistance in Asylum Seekers' Persecution Narratives" by Connie G. Oxford Take home point: "How stories of persecution are told is as important as the story itself" (53). "U.S. policy makers have capitalized on Americans' fear of terrorists in order to weaken immigration polices that admit asylum seekers" (40). To gain asylum both pre and post 9/11 asylum seekers had to provide a particular narrative of persecution. "When a persecution narrative reproduces hegemonic power, it limits the possibilities about what may be considered harm and how stories about the harm should be told in the context of asylum interviews and immigration court hearings. One problem with hegemonic narratives is that they circumscribe asylum seekers' agency by restricting their ability to tell their own stories of persecution" (41). "According to Ewick and Silbey, the content of a particular story tends to be legally recognizable when it reproduces existing power relations and to be unrecognizable when the content challenges taken-for-granted hegemony. Therefore, the narrative itself emerges as either hegemonic or subversive" (41). The story that is told is mediated by a number of individuals other than the asylum seeker including asylum officers and interpreters. Part of this article counters a reading of human rights as a universalizing force that constricts state sovereignty by recognizing the diversity of positions within the state and within human rights organizations (48-49). In U.S. asylum office right now there is an conflict between " asylum officers who understand asylum within a human rights framework and those who view adjudicating claims as a gatekeeping function" (49). "Family, Unvalued: Sex and Security: A short history of Exclusions" by Scott Long, Jessica Stern, and Adam Francouer. This article tells the immigration history through the lens of LGBT exclusion. Lesbian and Gay immigrants were officially bared from the US by law starting in the McCarthy era. Specifically, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 pushed through by Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada is to blame. The ban was overturned in 1990. "The United States was the last industrialized country to cling to a complete ban on homosexuals' entry" (58) However, because of DOMA, lesbian, gay, bixsexual, and transgender people's relationships are not recognized and cannot be used for immigration purposes. The 1990 Immigration Act also overturned a ban in effect since 1987 on entry of foreign nationals with HIV. However, Congress returned this ban in 1993 and it is still in affect today. "Every applicant for permanent residence over the age of fifteen is required to undergo HIV testing, and largely without informed consent or pre- and post-testing. Applicants for nonimmigrant entry are questioned on their HIV status, and if they admit to being positive, can be refused admission. If the government suspects them of HIV infection, it can require an HIV test; people entering the United States with HIV medications in their luggage can be questioned or expelled. **Also includes heart-breaking stories. "Beyond the Day Without an Immigrant: Immigrant Communities Building a Sustainable Movement" by Eunice Hyunhye Cho The immigrant rights protests of 2006 against HR 4437 (Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005)were historic. This article "examine(s) the political context for these protests, including anti-immigrant trends and policies in recent years" (95). "Throughout its history, U.S. immigration policy has served as a way to regulate the 'character of the nation,' by limiting entry, citizenship, enfranchisement, and economic access. Immigration policy not only reflects whom the state views as a model subject or potential citizen but also serves as a vehicle to exclude those who do not fit into the ideal. In addition, immigration policies serve to control the flow of labor of the needs of capital (95). "immigrants have become the scapegoat for social ills such as unemployment, crime, environmental devastation, failure of public institutions and services, and most recently, terrorism" (96). "Since the administrative creation of the 'illegal alien' in 1921, immigrants living in the United States, particularly those who are undocumented, have faced increasing peril" (96). "Post-1996 legislation views immigration policy primarily as an enforcement regime. . . .In the aftermath of the 1996 reforms, a call for amnesty, or legalization of undocumented immigrants, emerged as a priority at the grassroots level" (97). "This demand gained added viability in 2000 as the executive council of the AFL-CIO issued an appeal for blanket amnesty to undocumented immigrants and for an end to employer sanctions" (97). The article then talks about the 2006 protests, the backlash against immigrants, and the debates within the immigrant rights movements about strategies. "The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now the largest armed law enforcement agency i nthe United States, surpassing both the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons; immigrants and asylum seekers are now among the fastest-growing incarcerated population in the United States" (97).

Review # 2 was written on 2016-10-27 00:00:00 ART HIGHTOWER If you're interested in women's suffrage, this is simply a "must read." The speeches and essays in this book were clearly selected with care to form a complete picture of the history of women's suffrage in the United States, beginning long before the Seneca Falls convention. The works of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of America's truly great rhetors, are featured prominently but not without thought. One can trace the origins of the rhetoric, the splintering of the movement in the late 1800s, and then the final push for voting rights, including all the critical final efforts of Carrie Chapman Catt. Totally comprehensive with only minimal (but excellent) editorializing. Put together just perfectly.