Next February 10, a month after the unrest in Rosarno that showed the whole world the conditions under which poor foreigners live in Italy (exploited, hounded, rejected, deported), the appeal trial in Lecce of some anarchists who fought against modern slave masters a few years ago will come to an end.

Histadrut, the biggest Israeli trade union federation, has declared that it will be allowing legal migrant workers to become members as early as March 2010. Sources from Kav LaOved claim that this is a result of pressure from competing federation Koach La Ovdim, as the latter gains ground in traditional Histadrut areas and is also starting to make headway into the migrant labor section.

"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International's Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report "Jailed Without Justice" and said in an interview, "It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn't believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren't anything wrong."

Please don't be fooled. If anything, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 is lip service at best. If you review the bill (the complete bill, not the summary), you will see a glaring lack at anything like a solution to the "crisis" so many speak of. Worse, it maintains that border security (read militarization) is important, includes employment verification, and also leaves out any mention of same-sex couples. It is unlikely to pass as is, or probably not even close, but I am concerned with so many people blindly celebrating this bill.

Monday morning, tea-party prankster Robert Erickson - who last week infiltrated a right-wing "Tea Party Against Amnesty" at the Minnesota State Capitol, sparking an internet sensation - attempted to turn himself in for self-deportation at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Bloomington. Along with eight other illegal European immigrants wearing orange jumpsuits and about 25 supporters, the pranksters chanted "Columbus go home!" and "Deport us now!" to stubborn ICE officials.

The last couple of years has seen two interesting convergences in Arizona politics. First, the constantly expanding control grid, consisting of cameras and other measures for the regulation of movement, has finally burst into the popular consciousness in the greater Phoenix area, thanks primarily to the spread of highway photo radar and both fixed and mobile roadside units (including red light cameras). These particular cameras, much more visible than the thousands of smaller cameras comprising the broader surveillance grid that has been set up largely under a similar public safety argument, are contracted out to private – sometimes foreign -- companies by the state and other government institutions, and represent a recurring and concrete intrusion into the lives of drivers.

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The South Korean government deported Minu (Minod Moktan) to Nepal at 5pm, Friday, October 23. Minu lived in South Korea for 18 years while working in factories, singing songs and working as a media activist at Migrant Worker's Television. Many friends, comrades and supporters of Minu wrote a petition for his release, held press conferences and demonstrations in order to prevent his deportation.

Hundreds of people turned out yesterday in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to protest the cabinet's decision to deport 1,200 children of foreign workers and their parents next summer.

On September 26 at 1:30 am, 15 cops broke in the appartment of the young man, beating him and his family, alleging that Mohamed had beaten a greek adolescent. According to neighbours the cops dragged Mohamed by his feet down the stairs banging his head on his steps till he fainted.