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Professor Hung-En Sung, Ph.D., of the Department of Criminal Justice of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, will have an excellent article on wage theft published in Outside Justice: The Criminalization of Immigrants in Policy and Practice (Springer).  The article, “Tyrannizing Strangers for Profit: Wage Theft, Cross-Border Migrant Workers, and the Politics of Exclusion in an Era of Global Economic Integration” is based on research done in Palisades Park, using survey data collected from 160 day laborers.

Dr. Sung cites CoFiA as one of several organizations that are working to assist the laborers.

The article concludes that “incoherent immigration legislation without a vision of a good society generates unintended consequences that derail law and order and distort labor markets.  It is time to bring rationality and morality back to our immigration practices.”

Pre-publication copies of the article will be available at the CoFiA annual meeting on December 13, 2012, at 6:00 p.m. at the Presbyterian Church in Leonia.

On Friday, December 7, 2012, our friends in G.U.D and MIGUA are sponsoring a “Gran Baile” at La Elegancia Centro Americana, 572 57th St., West New York, NJ 07093.  The event will feature La Marimba Lira Huehueteca and DJ’s.  Guatemalan snacks will be available for purchase.

Tickets are $20 in advance, and $25 at the door.

For information call 201-362-3928.

The Annual Meeting of the Community of Friends in Action, Inc., will be on Thursday, December 13, 2012, at 6:00 p.m. at the Presbyterian Church in Leonia, 181 Fort Lee Road, Leonia, NJ 07605.  The evening will begin with a brief business meeting including election of officers, followed by a potluck supper and program.  Please call Carolyn Sobering at 201-543-1652 to let us know what you will bring to the supper.

Several of our Guatemalan members will share their stories of growing up in Guatemala and coming to the United States, and their hopes and dreams for the future.

We recently received this nice testimonial from a householder in Leonia:  “I needed a small job done–moving some very heavy furtniture upstairs.  I called the Community of Friends in Action yesterday, and this morning two able, careful, really lovely men showed up as promised and did the job beautifully!  A great resource for us all.”

And from Teaneck:  “Thanks to the Community of Friends I can count on reliable, competent assistance from a Workers Link person whenever I need help.  He does many things–cleans gutters, washes windows, trims the bushes, paints–whatever I need to have done!  It is a pleasure to have him here.  The work he is doing in the U.S. is giving his children in Guatemala opportunities he never had–completing their public school education, going to university, training to be teachers!”

For more information or to request help call CoFiA at 201-598-2253.

Our friends in G.U.D. (Guatemalans United for Development) have invited all of us to a dance at La Elegancia Centroamericana, 572 57th St., West New York, NJ, 07093.  The dance is to raise money for the Guatemalan float in the Hispanic Day Parade on October 12.

Checks payable to CoFiA may be mailed to Joan Kramer, 322 Park Avenue, Leonia, NJ, with “Dance” on the memo line.  Tickets are $15 each, but donations of any size are very welcome.

For information call 201-362-3928 (Spanish) or 973-873-4217.

The June, 2012, issue of SOJOURNERS magazine includes an article, “Can These Bones Live?” The author, Rev. Emilie Teresa Smith, who is a Canadian Anglican priest living in Guatemala, reports on her visit to the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG) site where workers are laboriously attempting to identify bones of people who were thrown into “bone wells” during the Guatemalan civil war, 1978 – 1984. The U.N. commision that investigated the war and genocide estimates that 200,000 people lost their lives.  FAFG believes that some 44,000 people were detained and disappeared.

Many of the people in the Guatemalan community in Bergen County experienced these atrocities, which were carried out under the training and direction of the U.S. CIA.  This story, from the point of view of “Mr. Elias”, is told in the CoFiA/Grupo Ella Tu video, “Why I Am Here.”   Many other people tell us they have similar stories.

For more information on the video, or to order, go to “Contact Us.”  The videographer and subject are also available to present public screenings.

Starting August 15, DREAMers will be able to submit a request for consideration of deferred action, to USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services).  The permit costs $465 and lasts two years.  It is renewable.

It is NOT what we had hoped–a path to citizenship or regularized status–but it will make an incredible difference in the lives of these young people who have grown up in the U.S., pursued their education, and are only wanting the right to work and contribute to society.

TODAY, President Obama is finally granting DREAMers relief from deportation.  DREAM Act youth ages 15-30 will be able to apply for protection from deportation and work permits, which will grant DREAMers a way to contribute to the country they call home.  This is a HUGE milestone for DREAMers, who have been fighting for years for the chance to lead successful and prosperous lives here in America.

Now it’s time to take the next big step and have comprehensive immigration reform.  Good for the migrants, good for the citizens, good for taxpayers, and good for the country.  Let’s all let the President hear from us–we CARE and we VOTE!

According to a report released by the Applied Research Center, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 46,000 parents of U.S. citizen children in the first six months of 2011–1 in 4 of all deportation cases.  Already an estimated 5,100 children who are currently living in foster care have detained or deported parents.  Nearly 15,000 more children are expected in the next five years.  The researchers found that programs such as Secure Communities, which allows federal authorities to screen fingerprints of those arrested by local police in order to detect undocumented immigrants, greatly contributed to this trend.

The number of cases has flooded the child welfare system, all at the expense of the U.S. tax payer.  The U.S. spends an average of $40,000 per child for foster care.  Child protective services claim they cannot place children of detained or deported parents with undocumented family members because they “could be deported at any time.”

Child protective services are legally required to reunify children with able parents, but immigrant children face enormous barriers.  Parents who are detained have great difficulties in communicating with the services, and may actually give up their parental rights without realizing it.  Sometimes the children are put up for adoption even before the parent’s rights are terminated.

The report urges federal, state and local governments to implement policies that protect children.  For more information on this sad and serious issue, see Shattered Families, The Perilous Intersection of Immigration Enforcement and the Child Welfare System, November 2011.

CoFiA, along with Grupo Ella Tu, sponsored a screening of Juan Pablo Morales Estrada’s moving documentary “Why I Am Here” on June 10 at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck, NJ. The event was a great success and saw quite an emotional response from the audience who attended. The documentary, which focuses on the life of Elias Garcia now and during the war in Guatemala in the 1980s, was very well received and was lauded as an exemplary film presented by first-time director Morales Estrada. A bilingual Q & A session with the director and with Mr. Garcia followed. A moving performance by the Grupo Folklórico Tikál of a traditional Guatemalan folk dance, which included narration of the story of the dance in Spanish, also followed the screening. DVDs of “Why I Am Here” are on sale for $15 on the CoFiA website at the following link: Video now available for purchase.

A partial recording of the Guatemalan folk dance can be viewed on YouTube through the following link: Performance by el Grupo Folklórico Tikál