Tracey Washington and her 13-year old son heard today that their green card applications have been approved. This means that they will not be deported to Australia, and their personal immigration nightmare is over. Read more »

It's hard to find the logic in ICE's announcement that it is going to use quotas, again, coming relatively so soon after that other announcement that it was ending quotas.

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By Adrián Castañeda

Federal Census forms are being mailed out today, March 15. It’s a massive government effort to count everyone who lives in the United States that comes every 10 years, and it’s being matched by an equally strong effort by nonprofit groups to ensure that even marginalized residents get counted.

In a country that once counted slaves as 3/5 a person and did not count Native Americans at all, it appears that the 2010 census will come the closest to counting all people living in the U.S. Millions of dollars are being spent to inform people of the importance, and the function, of responding to the decennial census – and saving the feds from spending further millions on door-to-door enumerating. 

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I just got a call from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement advising me that ICE has decided to postpone deporting the wife and son of MUNI bus driver Charles Washington for 60 days. Read more »

“They used our son as bait, just to get the mother to come in,” Washington said.

When San Francisco native and MUNI bus driver Charles Washington married Tracey, his Australian girlfriend in Reno last April, he never imagined that she and her sons would be deported after her 13-year-old bullied another kid at school for 46 cents. Read more »

By Rebecca Bowe

An event will be held this evening (2/18) at the Mission Dolores Basilica to urge Sens. Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein to push for nationwide immigration reform. The gathering of people from the immigrant community and faith-based organizations, which is being put together by the San Francisco Organizing Project, will be held in conjunction with the national Reform Immigration for America campaign.

Pat Bregant of SFOP told the Guardian that a turnout of around 1,000 is expected. Several families whose lives have been turned upside down by deportations will share their stories.

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Yesterday, Sup. David Campos called for a status report on steps taken by San Francisco’s Juvenile Probation Department to implement an ordinance that the Board passed last fall to protect the confidentiality of juveniles’ immigration status.

And it already sounds like JPD has done nothing to implement it—and isn’t planning to, either, any time soon.

Campos announced that he met with Juvenile Probation Department (JPD) Chief William Siffermann today, and Siffermann told him that he had no intention of complying with the ordinance, which the Board passed Nov. 10, 2009.

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