Posts Tagged ‘Centro Legal de La Raza’
Oakland grapples with tenant protections and pitfalls
Housing advocates in Oakland are warning that the current tenant protections enacted and expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic contain loopholes that leave renters vulnerable to evictions and even lawsuits. The Alameda County Board of Supervisors issued a temporary eviction ban to protect residents from being evicted in March. It covered renters, homeowners and those living…
Read MoreOakland council votes in an emergency moratorium to protect duplex renters
Oakland city council voted in an emergency moratorium to temporarily protect duplex renters from rent control exemptions. These exemptions apply to housing units where a landlord lives within the duplex or triplex with the renters.
Read MoreFor East Bay immigrants, notary fraud is a common legal threat
Notary fraud is a common set-up in which notaries unlawfully give legal advice to immigrants, and in many cases, pretend to be immigration attorneys. The scam often involves the notary reviewing a victim’s case, choosing which legal documents are appropriate for their case, helping complete these documents, and submitting them to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Office—all acts only lawyers have the authority to do.
Immigration experts and advocates say that notary fraud is one of the biggest issues facing the undocumented community. “It is also a big problem in the East Bay and surrounding areas in Northern California,” said Barbara Pinto, an immigration senior staff attorney at the Centro Legal de la Raza, a legal service agency for immigrants’ rights, located in Oakland.
Read MoreSenate Bill 63 passes, guarantees small business workers unpaid leave
Senate Bill 63, signed by Governor Jerry Brown on October 12, will make about 2.8 million small business workers in the state qualified to take the unpaid leave to bond with their newborn, or with a child they have recently adopted or are fostering. They will have a guaranty of job security when they return. The new law will come into effect January 1, 2018.
Read MoreBay Area organizations move quickly to support DACA recipients
As Lily Woo, age 23, got off of her 12-hour flight from Korea, she felt relief to be back home in the Bay Area. Even though this was Woo’s first time visiting the birthplace she had left at age 3, she felt like she was returning from a foreign country. As she approached U.S. Customs,…
Read MoreEmployees file lawsuit against popular Bay Area restaurant
About 100 current and former employees of the popular Bay Area restaurant chain Burma Superstar have filed a lawsuit claiming pay and benefit violations. The workers claim that Burma Superstar—in its three restaurants in San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda—routinely failed to pay minimum wages or overtime, while denying mandatory breaks and sick leave. The lawsuit…
Read MoreUndocumented Bay Area youth attend fair for DACA applicants
Centro Legal de La Raza and other organizations provided a free Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) fair in the Fruitvale on Saturday to help applicants navigate the forms for the program announced by President Obama in June.
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