This week has been a big week in news for the crisis at the border.
President Obama sent Congress a request for $3.7 billion in aid money, and traveled to Texas for a meeting with Governor Rick Perry and a group of public officials and faith leaders to discuss potential solutions. Despite the partisan bickering, people in Washington from both sides of the isle seem to be narrowly focused on a discussion of how best to process and deport the masses of Central American families and children who are fleeing violence in their home countries. But are we living up to the international standards for protecting refugee and asylum seekers that we as a nation have helped establish?
Host Melissa Harris-Perry will speak with a representative from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to discuss the United States’ responsibility to asylum seekers. She and her panel will also discuss the role language plays in our refugee and immigration debate and dive into the domestic politics of reform.
We’ll also have the latest on the violence between the Israelis and Palestinians in which more than one hundred lives have been claimed. Harris-Perry will ask her panel if the hopes for a two state solution are dead and what, if any, alternative paths forward are available.
Plus, news from the front lines of the voting rights battle in North Carolina where a broad coalition of activists is challenging Governor Pat McCrory and the Republican-led legislature’s panoply of restrictive new voting laws. Those include everything from new photo-ID requirements that could disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters to a measure that would stop early registration for new 18 year old voters. Harris-Perry will talk with The Nation’s Ari Berman, and University of North Carolina law professor Irving Joyner about the constitutional arguments against these laws, and what this case will mean for the future of the Voting Rights Act as we know it.
We’ll also bring you the story of an 11-year-old activist fighting poverty in his community, and our host’s open letter of the week!
Be sure to read what we’ve linked above, and watch Melissa Harris-Perry Saturday at 10am ET on msnbc! Also, don’t forget to join us on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #nerdland.
Andrew Joyce