March 17, 2008

New Mexico State University to Host Immigration Forum

By Kent Paterson

For the fourth year in a row, New Mexico State University's Center for Latin American and Border Studies (CLABS) will sponsor the J. Paul Taylor Symposium.  Scheduled for April 2-4 at the NMSU campus in Las Cruces, the theme of this year's event is "Justice for Immigrants." Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America along with Cesar Chavez, is slated to be the opening speaker.

Dr. Neil Harvey, CLABS director, said the symposium will "offer a timely analysis of current challenges of ensuring fair treatment of immigrants." As Dr. Harvey underscored, the symposium will take place at a moment in history when "the lack of comprehensive immigration reform has created new problems and uncertainties."

Locally, the Las Cruces conference will convene at a time of controversies over an Immigration Customs and Enforcement raid last year in the southern New Mexico community of Chaparral, and the expansion of the US Border Patrol's "no tolerance" policy of incarcerating undocumented immigrants detained in the area between downtown El Paso and the Santa Teresa, New Mexico, border crossing.

Nationally and internationally, immigration remains a burning question in 2008.  In Latin America, the US economic downturn is prompting concerns about the impact of slimming remittances, while in the United States immigrants could well prove a strategic swing vote in this year's elections. At the same time, connections between migration and the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] are back on the public agendas in Mexico and the United States. Meanwhile, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants are closely scrutinizing US immigration policies.

The NMSU symposium will explore the immigration issue from broad national and international perspectives. The planned sessions will look at the many different dimensions of the migration phenomenon, with panels focusing on youth, women, indigenous peoples, agricultural workers, media, and law. A panel featuring Fernando Garcia of El Paso's Border Network for Human Rights, and Ira Mehlman of the Washington, D.C.-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, promises to be polemically hot.

Among the many speakers scheduled for the conference are: Oscar Chacon, National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities; Carlos Marentes, Border Agricultural Workers Union; Diana Bustamante, Colonias Development Council; Julienne Smreka, New Mexico Children's Cabinet; Alfredo Corchado, Dallas Morning News; Alfredo Quijano, Ciudad Juarez's Norte daily; Carlos Spector, El Paso immigration attorney; and Olga Pedroza, Centro Campesino Legal of Las Cruces.

Academic specialists from New Mexico State University, the University of Texas at El Paso, Arizona State University, and the University of California-Berkeley will offer their analyses of historical and contemporary events, and cultural presentations will be delivered by Youth Poets on the Border, filmmaker Bill Jungels, and photographers Diana Molina and Julian Cardona.

The symposium's events are free of charge and open to the public. For more information, interested persons can e-mail event coordinator Scott Anderson at scanders@nmsu.edu

——————————

Kent Paterson is the Editor of Frontera NorteSur, a free, on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news source.  FNS can be found at http://frontera.nmsu.edu/.

——————————
Frontera NorteSur (FNS)
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico