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Kelly Hartzell Pd.3 2/16/12

"US settles suit over '07 Conn. immigration raids" by Michael Melia [|www.msnbc.com]

__Summary__ Eleven men from an immigration raid scuffle in 2007 have finally received settlement for their unjust treatment in the raid. The day after Fair Haven, Connecticut, a mainly Latino area, passed a law to give out indentification cards to illegal immigrants, officers stormed that houses of local residents in the night. These immigration officers had no warrants and no reason to raid the houses like they did. At the end of the night, 30 people were arrested. In the summer of 2009, an immigration judge ruled that four of the immigrants had their Constitutional rights violated in the raids. Just last week, eleven of the men receives a settlement of around $350,000 for their troubles and have had their deportation cases thrown out.

__Relevance__ This relates to what we learned in the very beginning of the course. Immigration became a big deal in the Progressive Era when everyone from everywhere was coming to America to have a better life. Usually this entailed having a decent place to live and a job to earn money from. Because they were so eager to work, the immigrants would work for meager amounts of money. This idea is still true today. Not only Latinos have been scrutinized in the past for immigration reasons. Japanese-Americans were brought under fire after WWII broke out. They were sent to "war relocation camps" in 1942 to keep them from interfering and potentially aiding or making contact with the Japanese. Of course this raid was on a much smaller scale and was not as drastic as this, the Japanese-Americans were mistreated and were wrongly stereotyped, just like the Latinos in this case. In both cases, virtually all of these immigrants were leaving peacefully and not trying to start something, but the U.S. government and immigration agents hopped into action, unjustly imprisoning them. These kind of problems are, as made obvious by this article, still prevalent today and need to be solved.

__Explanation__ Demographic changes involve changes in birth, death, and marriage rates, population size, internal migration, and immigration. This obnoxious immigration raid is a demographic change for many reasons. Immigration means people from other countries are moving to the United States. It is safe to assume they bring a different ethnicity and culture to the table as well. They are their own, unique person, even in America. When millions of people immigrate, millions of combinations of different cultures and races combine to create an ever-changing "face" of America. There will always be different mixtures of different countries throughout the U.S. now because of that, which can change our demographic from time to time. Also, immigration can help increase our population size. Everyone knows that the more people that live in an area, the faster they will multiply. These millions of immigrants nationwide contribute to our overall population, whether anyone wants to accept it or not. These are indubitably demographic changes.

__Questions__ 1. Why did the agents bust into all of the houses to being with? 2. Did the barge into the houses based on stereotypes? 3. Did they have prove that the people arrested were indeed illegal immigrants? 4. What happened to the others that got arrested since only 11 received settlements? 5. Were any of the agents fired because of their unreasonable actions that night?

"Japanese American internment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." //Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia//. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2012. [].

Melia, Michael. "US settles suit over '07 Conn. immigration raids - US news - msnbc.com." //msnbc.com - Breaking news, science and tech news, world news, US news, local news- msnbc.com//. N.p., 14 Feb. 2012. Web. 16 Feb. 2012. [].