Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW) and the Mississippi Economic Policy Center have released The Basic Economic Security Tables for Mississippi as part of a larger strategy to build economic security beyond low-skilled and low-wage jobs. Ed Sivak, Director of the MEPC, explained that “The findings of the report affirm the ongoing strategy within the state to replace low-skill jobs with high-skill high-wage jobs. In the process, it is essential that we provide support services and access to training for in-demand jobs for low-skill, low-wage Mississippians.”

Ten years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a major national survey by the Public Religion Research Institute finds America continuing to struggle with what it means to be American and wrestling with how to resolve political, religious and ethnic differences including issues of security, tolerance, and pluralism. Specific topics include relations with Muslims, ambivalence on the subject of immigration, support for deportation of illegal immigrants, but even more solid support for the basic tenets of the DREAM Act: allowing illegal immigrants brought to the U.S.

A study by two law schools of government immigration data indicates that a deportation program that is central to the Obama administration’s immigration enforcement strategy has led disproportionately to the removal of Latino immigrants, arrests by immigration authorities of hundreds of United States citizens, and that about a third of around 226,000 immigrants who have been deported under the program, known as Secure Communities, had spouses or children who were U.S. citizens.  See report here.

Maria Hinojosa’s documentary “Lost in Detention” airs October 18, 2011, on PBS’ Frontline program. “Lost in Detention” explores the secretive world of immigrant detention and investigates the Obama Administration’s enforcement strategies. A documentary trailer is online here.

“Discipline Policies, Successful Schools and Racial Justice,” a study by Daniel J. Losen of the Civil Rights Project finds significant disparities in school discipline that breaks down along racial, gender, and disability lines. The study is available here and it finds that discipline “may have a harmful and racially disparate impact.”

“The long, vicious assault on voting rights in America” continues in 2011 writes Gary L. Flowers for the Louisiana Weekly. At least thirteen states have curtailed voting rights by requiring proof of citizenship (Kansas and Alabama), restricting the ability of nonprofits to register voters (Texas and Florida), reducing the early voting period (Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia), repealing election day registration (Maine), and requiring photo identification at polling places (Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, and South Carolina).

By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.

If we are to understand the intersection between race, so-called “illegality,” and the immigration industrial complex (as some immigration scholars are now naming it), I suggest that we need to understand the historical dynamics of whiteness in relation to who is welcomed to become American.

By Sue Weishar, Ph.D.

In the July JustSouth E-news we reported on Alabama’s new harsh anti-immigrant law, HB 56, and the Church’s response to that law. Today we provide an update on HB 56.

by Fred Kammer, SJ