Latin America: Week in Review, North America, United States
Arizona To Deny Licenses To Undocumented Youth
August 16, 2012 By Staff
Top Story — As thousands of young undocumented immigrants across the U.S. applied for deferred status and work visas on Wednesday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer ordered state agencies to deny them driver’s licenses and other public benefits, arguing that the federal government has no right to give immigrants legal status. Wednesday was the first day that U.S. President Barack Obama’s new “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” policy took effect, which provides undocumented immigrants under age 30 who entered the U.S. as children the right to relief from deportation proceedings and makes them eligible for work visas. A spokesman for Brewer said that the young immigrants “are able to remain in the country and not be deported, and not be prosecuted, but they do not have lawful status” under the new policy. Brewer, who took Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 to the Supreme Court in June, said she was following the intent of Arizona state law, but the Arizona DREAM Act Coalition said that Brewer was “bullying defenseless young people.”
Read more from CBS News.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- Two U.S. congressmen in a letter suggested that Wal-Mart of Mexico may have engaged in money laundering and tax-evasion, on top of reports that the company passed bribes to obtain store permits.
Caribbean
- Puerto Rican authorities arrested fugitive Erasmo Cruz on Wednesday, three decades after he killed a woman and her teenage daughter in central Pennsylvania in 1980.
- Cuban state security agents released former political prisoner Angel Moya on Wednesday after he was detained with other dissidents at a protest on Sunday.
- The Haitian government has hired a former U.S. trade official to help lobby for financial support that would stem the country’s deadly cholera epidemic.
Central America
- The Guatemalan Defense Ministry said that it had forcibly evicted 32 families from their homes in the Jacobo Arbenz squatter’s settlement because they were living on government land.
- Before the International Court of Justice, Nicaragua accused Colombia and Costa Rica of altering disputed maritime borders in order to “own” the Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal.
- A jury in Vermont found Mennonite minister Kenneth Miller guilty of helping Lisa Miller flee to Nicaragua with her young daughter without informing Miller’s ex-wife.
Andes
- Two Brazilians suspected of shooting three Bolivians in a border town on Tuesday were removed from prison by a mob that beat and burned the suspects alive.
- An Ecuadorean official said that the country was willing to let WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remain in the country’s embassy in London indefinitely, and accused Britain of threatening to enter the embassy if Ecuador does not hand over Assange.
- Venezuelan authorities have arrested 26 people, including National Guard troops, allegedly linked to a drug flight that reached Spain.
Southern Cone
- The Brazilian government is seeking up to $66 billion in private investment to improve the country’s rail and highway infrastructure.
- A talented Russian soccer player arrested for cocaine possession in Santiago is being permitted to leave his jail cell for soccer practice every day as he serves his sentence.
Image: Neighborhood Centers @ Flickr.
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