More than 20 people, including several children, attended an immigration reform vigil in Carmel yesterday. The event coincided with one in Washington D.C. where thousands descended upon the capital calling for a renewed push in reform.

The peaceful Carmel gathering, sponsored  by the Hudson Valley Community Coalition and the lower Hudson Valley chapter of the New [...]

An alleged illegal immigrant gets arrested for drunken driving and heading the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway. Henry Garcia told police he worked at the Olympic Diner as a busboy. Diner owner Michael Skirianos claims Garcia never worked there.

Here’s Skirianos talking about what impact the incident has had on his diner: http://www.lohud.com/article/2009910050328

Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian physician and renowned author, will be in Ossining Thursday night to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The speaking tour coincides with the release of the second-edition of her 2002 memoir “In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story.”
Karmi was born in Jerusalem but forced to leave in 1948. She was raised in Britain. [...]

Historian and North Salem resident John Steele Gordon will host a series of book discussions on “Immigration and the Idea of America” at the Ruth Keeler Memorial Library in North Salem.
The New York Council for the Humanities awarded the library another grant as part of their “Reading Between the Lines” program. Gordon will lead a [...]

Two Southeast Town Board candidates were angered by allegations that their party line was likened to the Ku Klux Klan and called for the removal of a recently-appointed Architectural Review Board member.

Matthew Neuringer and Joseph DePaola said they were deeply offended by Lynne Eckardt’s comments concerning their Save our Southeast party line. Last month, Eckardt [...]

The Southern Poverty Law Center says it will release a report Wednesday examining “violent, anti-immigrant climate” in Suffolk County.

The report, entitled “Climate of Fear: Latino Immigrants in Suffolk County,  N.Y.,” documents numerous hate crimes committed against Hispanics and a volatile environment created, in some instances, by community leaders. Researchers for the Center spent months interviewing [...]

Time magazine has an interesting article on immigrants and stereotypes.

Two scholars conducted a study, asking 2,100 Ohioans about their attitudes toward four particular groups: Europeans, Asians, Middle Easterners and Latinos. The survey asked specifically about “each group’s intelligence, income levels, self-sufficiency, ability to assimilate, and proclivity toward violence.”

The results are not as predictable as one [...]

The city of Danbury has been approved to participate in the 287(g) program. City officials announced this week they received a memorandum of agreement that would allow its police department to enter into a partnership with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The program will provide some Danbury police officers with federal training to enforce immigration [...]

Last night, state Assemblyman Greg Ball convened a forum on drunken driving and the hiring and housing of illegal immigrants.  The meeting comes more than a month after a mother and daugther were struck and killed by suspected drunken driver, who police say is unlicensed and undocumented.

During the meeting, Ball presented a list of plans [...]

It appears that federal enforcement efforts have been stepped up against undocumented drunk drivers.

Since the June 8 crash in Brewster that claimed the lives of a mother and daughter at the hands of a suspected drunk driver who police say is unlicensed and in the country illegally, there have been a deluge of DWI arrests [...]