Unemployment For Blacks: A New Great Depression

It won't surprise many to learn that the weighty toll of joblessness falls unequally on Americans, or that blacks and Latinos are unemployed at rates that far exceed those for whites.

But new figures from the Economic Policy Institute illustrate these inequities with jaw-dropping clarity. According to the report "Downcast Unemployment Forecast":

- We can expect that by the third quarter of this year, 17.2 percent of blacks will be unemployed, though in Alabama and Illinois the numbers are projected to reach 20 percent. This, says Kai Filion, author of the report, will contribute to a staggering 50 percent poverty rate for African American children.

- In California, unemployment among Latinos is projected to reach 17.6 percent.

"There is no reason why we should tolerate such outcomes," said Filion, a policy analyst at the Institute. "Elected officials can and must put millions of Americans back to work with bold, targeted job creation policies."

Unemployment nationally is at a 25-year high, averaging around 10 percent. But Filion's point is that this figure encompasses a huge range of realities. At the low end, only 3.3 percent of white North Dakotans are without work, compared 27 percent of African Americans in Michigan. (That is higher than the national unemployment rate that prevailed during the Great Depression.)

With all this in mind, the hope for solid, sustainable green jobs means even more -- and the mounting disappointment surrounding realization of that promise is becoming even starker. Stay tuned.

Ammo for Advocates of Immigration Reform

It's not every day that the U.S. government bluntly announces its own shortcomings. But the Dept. of Homeland Security has done so in a report on current detention policies for undocumented immigrants.

In short, the study notes that of the approximately 379,000 people held by U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement at some point last year, only 5.6 percent had committed violent crimes and half had no criminal record at all. Yet almost all were detained in former jails and prisons, and processed accordingly.

Though fights were infrequent and assaults on staff even rarer, most detainees were forced to spend the majority of their time in cells. Access to recreation, translation, legal, medical and religious services was substandard.

All this, at costs approaching $2.6 billion.

The prison-style standards "impose more restrictions and carry more costs than are necessary," says the report, written by Dr. Dora Schriro, former director of the Office of Detention Policy and Planning. "Numerous changes could be made to improve the care and management of the detainee population."

President Obama has promised to tackle immigration reform this year, and this report provides advocates with 35 pages of reasons to hold him to his word.