Latin America: Week in Review, North America, United States
California’s American Legion Wants Police To Enforce Immigration
February 8, 2012 By Staff
Today in Latin America
Top Story— Members of California’s American Legion branch are campaigning to require the state’s police officers to enforce immigration law. If the veterans’ group collects the necessary signatures, the measure will be put to a vote in California’s November elections. In the past, the American Legion successfully campaigned to prevent Japanese immigrants from owning land and supported national immigration quotas in the 1920s. At its 2010 national convention, the American Legion passed a resolution stating that the group “has expressed concern that legal and illegal immigrants arriving in this country in large numbers would be unable to effectively assimilate into our society unless numerical quotas were established and enforced”. The deadline for the group to submit the more than half a million signatures necessary for the proposed California ballot measure is June 28.
Read more from the San Jose Mercury News.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- U.S. authorities are constructing $4.3 million maritime border fence off the coast of San Diego to stop U.S.-Mexico border crossers.
- The Knights Templar cartel reportedly raised banners in Guanajuato, Mexico warning rival drug gangs to stay out during Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the country in March.
- Eleven people, most of them Peruvian immigrants, were killed when their van collided with a truck on a highway Monday in Ontario.
Caribbean
- A boat full of Dominican migrants that capsized Saturday has now killed an estimated 21 people, but more than 30 remain missing.
- The 50th anniversary of the U.S. embargo of Cuba was Tuesday.
- Boston-based nonprofit Partners in Health is launching a cholera vaccine campaign to combat the outbreak of the disease in Haiti.
Central America
- According to the Presidential Commission against Racism, 705 Guatemalan women were killed in gender-related violence last year, a rise since 2010.
- A U.N. expert on indigenous rights has asked the Panamanian government to negotiate with indigenous protesters as violence in the country escalates.
Andes
- A judge in Quito ordered two journalists to pay $1 million each to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa for defamation.
- Venezuelan authorities are investigating the deaths of 11 newborns in a hospital in Maracay over the last four days.
- Bolivian coca growers on Monday drove away members of a government eradication team with whips.
Southern Cone
- A biotechnology group said Tuesday that Brazil is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s lead producer of biotech crops.
- Rains in Argentina are expected to continue throughout the week, helping to staunch the drought that has affected corn and soy.
- A Paraguayan radio station is sending moving Internet cafes located on buses to poor outlying neighborhoods of Asunción to help young people acquire computer skills.
Image: circulating @ Flickr.
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