Houston City Council Member Must be Thinking about Re-Election

Houston City Council member Toni Lawrence complained that non residents should not be treated at Houston hospitals should they turn up with the flu.  Imagine a 2 year old showing up at an emergency room, having severe flu symptoms and the staff telling the parents, take him somewhere else, he is not from Houston.  That is nuts.

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Immigration debate spreads with virus

By MIKE TOLSON HOUSTON CHRONICLE

April 30, 2009, 10:04PM

Houston City Council member Toni Lawrence on Thursday called on the mayor and county judge to exert control over local hospitals accepting patients from outside the area who are seeking treatment for possible swine flu.

Expanding on comments she made a day earlier in the wake of the nation’s first swine flu-related death, Lawrence said she was not picking on people from Mexico when she said officials should place a priority on the needs of the local community and economy.

When news broke Wednesday that a toddler from Mexico who had died at Texas Children’s Hospital suffered from swine flu, Lawrence expressed indignation that elected officials had not been notified of the child’s presence in Houston. She said Thursday it would not matter to her had the patient been from Oklahoma or Canada: Local officials should be informed and have some say about the hospitals’ procedure for accepting them.

“I want to hear from the mayor and county judge what the plan is for Houston,” Lawrence said Thursday. “… We need to have a plan in place for people coming in. Just to let somebody who controls a hospital entrance individually make those decisions I think is wrong.”

White, Emmett dismiss it

Houston Mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett had a simple response to Lawrence: Forget it.

“The last thing we need is politicians deciding medical policy for hospitals and doctors,” Emmett said. “I don’t think we ought to be in the business of telling hospitals who to admit and how to admit and treat them.”

Added White: “Elected officials at all levels of government should permit the medical community and epidemiologists to make decisions and provide treatment in a manner they are trained to do. I don’t envision a day when those brought via medical transport are being cleared by political officials.”

As for Texas Children’s Hospital, its executives want no part of a political dust-up. The hospital will continue to respond to children in need, they say, in a way that minimizes risk of infection.

“We’re focusing on medical assessment and medical need, on children who can’t get the medical treatment they need wherever they are,” said Ann Stern, the hospital’s executive vice president. “We’re pretty passionate about our mission and our commitment to children. We are hoping that mission would be respected.”

At Wednesday’s council meeting, Lawrence pointed out that the child was not a U.S. citizen.

“We have jeopardized the hospital district and possibly conventions,” she said during the meeting. “I know tour boats are not leaving Galveston now because they are not going to Mexico. I’m very concerned council wasn’t told about this. We need to be aware of this and continue to do things for Houston and not for anybody else.”

Some take offense

Her statements rubbed some the wrong way.

“Those comments are misplaced and inappropriate when our focus should be on treating people and stopping the spread of this illness,” said Carol Alvarado, a former council colleague and now a state representative. “We are known all over the world for providing treatment. This issue has never been raised in the history of the Texas Medical Center.”

Immigration advocates are concerned that the spread of swine flu is giving rise to immigrant bashing, vilification of Mexico and repeated calls to close the border.

The National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group, earlier this week denounced those who blame immigrants for swine flu.

“It’s not surprising that some are implying that all immigrants are a threat to our health,” the group’s president, Janet Murguia, said in a prepared statement. “That’s standard fare on the hate group circuit.”

mike.tolson@chron.com  -  link

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April 29, 2009

NAHJ Calls for Truth and Fairness in Swine Flu Coverage

News media should resist baseless blame of immigrants as it covers a possible pandemic

Contact: Iván Román, NAHJ Executive Director, 

(202) 662-7178

 

Washington, D.C. – The National Association of Hispanic Journalists called on the media on Wednesday to be fair and prudent when covering the spread of swine flu in the U.S. and around the world, and resist the portrayal of Mexican immigrants as scapegoats for the possible pandemic.

The following is a statement from the NAHJ Board of Directors:

“We have come to expect immigrant bashing from the usual suspects – commentators who use purposefully inflammatory rhetoric to seek attention and to suit their agenda. And they haven’t disappointed, now using the swine flu as cause to decry immigration and immigrants. Immigrants, of course, have long been favorite and convenient scapegoats for some for everything from high taxes to infectious diseases. Facts haven’t much mattered.

But we trust that credible journalists will cover what is undeniably a big national story with more fairness and accuracy than we are hearing from these talking heads. We would ask that these stories be written as if facts did matter. Because they do.

The temptation even in more credible media, we know, will be to link Mexican immigrants with the spread of the disease to the United States. The consequence of too much of this will be even more anger – and perhaps even more violence – against a community no more responsible for the spread of this ailment than U.S. tourists returning from scenic, balmy vacations.

There are more than 4,000 flights per week from the United States to Mexico. Mexicans are not the only people on those flights. About 80 percent of visitors to Mexico in 2008 came from the United States. 

The Mexican immigrant community in the United States is a part of this story. But not in such narrow fashion as we’re hearing at the moment. This community is as fearful of the swine flu’s spread as anyone else. Viruses strike regardless of where you were born. And, please remember, the fear is not just for themselves but for family members and friends still in Mexico.

The World Health Organization is raising its alert from Level 4 to Level 5, an action that will cause further temptation to overreact. If the swine flu becomes a true pandemic, we ask simply that the news industry do its job. That would be covering the story, not in the breathless fashion of the talking heads, but as a story as needful of truth, fairness, accuracy and balance as any other important story. In fact, the bigger the story, the more it needs these attributes.

With such stories as this, the news media can be part of the solution or part of the problem.” link

WHO Raises Alert Level to 5

New York Times - 5:15 p.m. eastern time - April 29

"The World Health Organization raised the alert level of the fast-spreading swine flu virus on Wednesday afternoon, indicating that a “pandemic is imminent,” on the day that a Mexican toddler who had been hospitalized in Houston became the first person to die from the disease on United States soil.

Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the organization, said that the “phase 5” alert out of a possible 6 levels signified that at least two countries have spread the virus by human to human contact, and that the highest phase 6 was probably imminent."

see:  "World Health Organization Raises Swine Flu Alert," New York Times, April 29, 2009

click here for link to latest statement (in English) from WHO Director, Dr. Margaret Chan

Dr. Chan's statement in Spanish:

Declaración de la Directora General de la OMS

29 de abril de 2009 

Gripe porcina

Señoras y señores:

Sobre la base de la evaluación de todas las informaciones disponibles, y después de realizar varias consultas con expertos, he decidido elevar el nivel de alerta de pandemia de gripe desde la actual fase 4 a la fase 5.

Es necesario tomarse muy en serio las pandemias de gripe precisamente por la capacidad que tienen para propagarse con rapidez a todos los países del mundo.

Enlaces conexos

Gripe porcina

Fase actual de alerta de pandemia según la OMS

Reglamento Sanitario Internacional (2005) - en inglés

Un aspecto positivo es que ahora el mundo está mejor preparado para afrontar una pandemia de gripe que nunca antes a lo largo de la historia.

Las medidas de preparación adoptadas a raíz de la amenaza de la gripe aviar por H5N1 han sido una inversión, y ahora estamos obteniendo los beneficios.

Por primera vez en la historia podemos seguir la evolución de una pandemia en tiempo real.

Doy las gracias a los países que están poniendo los resultados de sus investigaciones a disposición del público. Ello nos facilita la comprensión de la enfermedad.

Estoy impresionada por la labor que están realizando los países afectados al afrontar los brotes en curso.

Asimismo, quiero dar las gracias a los Gobiernos de los Estados Unidos y del Canadá por el apoyo que prestan a la OMS, y a México.

Permítanme recordarles que, por definición, las enfermedades nuevas se conocen mal. Es notorio que los virus de la gripe mutan rápidamente y se comportan de forma impredecible.

La OMS y las autoridades sanitarias de los países afectados no tendrán todas las respuestas inmediatamente, pero las obtendremos.

La OMS seguirá de cerca la pandemia a escala epidemiológica, clínica y virológica.

Los resultados de esas evaluaciones continuas se publicarán en forma de asesoramiento en materia de salud pública, y se pondrán a disposición general.

Todos los países deberían activar de inmediato sus planes de preparación para una pandemia. Los países deberían mantenerse en alerta ante posibles brotes inusuales de síndromes gripales y de neumonías graves.

En estos momentos, las medidas eficaces y esenciales son la elevación de la vigilancia, la detección y el tratamiento precoces, y el control de la infección en todos los centros de salud.

El paso a una fase superior de la alerta es una señal a los gobiernos, los ministerios de salud y a otros ministerios, al sector farmacéutico y al mundo empresarial de que ahora se deberían adoptar determinadas medidas de forma cada vez más urgente, y a un ritmo acelerado.

Me he puesto en contacto con países donantes, con el UNITAID, la alianza GAVI, el Banco Mundial y otras instancias para movilizar recursos.

Me he puesto en contacto con empresas fabricantes de medicamentos antivirales para evaluar la capacidad y todas las opciones para aumentar la producción.

También me he puesto en contacto con fabricantes de vacunas que pueden contribuir a la producción de una vacuna contra la pandemia.

El mayor interrogante ahora mismo es: ¿qué magnitud va a tener la pandemia, en particular ahora en sus inicios?

Es posible que las manifestaciones clínicas de la enfermedad abarquen desde las afecciones leves hasta los casos graves. Hemos de seguir vigilando la evolución de la situación para obtener las informaciones y datos específicos que necesitamos para responder a esa pregunta.

Sabemos también, por experiencias pasadas, que la gripe puede causar afecciones leves en los países ricos y enfermedades más graves, con una elevada mortalidad, en los países en desarrollo.

Cualquiera que sea la situación, la comunidad internacional debería considerar estos momentos como una oportunidad idónea para mejorar significativamente la preparación y respuesta.

Ante todo, es una oportunidad para la solidaridad mundial en la búsqueda de respuestas y soluciones que beneficien a todos los países, a la humanidad entera. Ciertamente, es la humanidad entera lo que está amenazado durante una pandemia.

Como he dicho, ahora mismo no tenemos todas las respuestas, pero las obtendremos.

Muchas gracias. link to Spanish version

Images can Mean Powerful Things

Obama shaking the hand of a policeman in London






thanks to Matthew Countryman for sending this out

DREAMers who plan to enlist: Beware

link to image

One of the options connected to the DREAM Act is for students to enlist in the U.S. military so that they can regularize their status.  This is a real threat to DREAMers, since the current suicide rate of military (active or discharged) is extremely high.

see this democracynow.org interview:

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Why Are Record Numbers of US Soldiers Committing Suicide?

Democracy Now - April 29, 2009

The US military is grappling with a record number of soldier suicides. At least thirteen soldiers took their lives last month. That’s down from the twenty-four military suicides in January and eighteen in February, but still in line with the most number of suicides since record keeping began. As many as 143 soldiers reportedly took their own lives last year. We speak with Emma Prophet, an investigator at the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office. link

The NAFTA Flu

A scientist calls our current flu epidemic the NAFTA Flu  -  related to globalization, mass farming and improper sanitation conditions in large farms.

Democracy Now

"The “NAFTA Flu”: Critics Say Swine Flu Has Roots in Forcing Poor Countries to Accept Western Agribusiness

As the US reports its first known death from the global swine flu, the World Health Organization has raised its pandemic threat level. Several countries around the world have banned the import of US and Mexican pork products. We speak to professor and author Robert Wallace, who says the swine flu is partly the outcome of neoliberal policies that forced poorer countries to open their markets to poorly regulated Western agribusiness giants."

The Wednesday news brought information about a 23 month old child brought from Brownsville died in a Houston hospital.  The little boy in the picture accompanying the article is not that child.  This boy is a child who has already recovered from the flu.  He lives in Vera Cruz.

CDC Says Swine Flu Death is First in U.S., Houston Chronicle, April 29, 2009

Senate Committee Hearing on Immigration, April 30

Important committee hearing on Comprehensive Immigration Reform to be held on Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.  

For link to live webcast at the time of the hearing, click here

“Date Change---

Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, 

Can We Do It and How?”

Senate Judiciary Committee

Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship

View a webcast of this hearing

DATE: April 30, 2009

TIME: 02:00 PM

ROOM: Dirksen-226

OFFICIAL HEARING NOTICE / WITNESS LIST:

April 23, 2009

DATE CHANGE NOTICE

The hearing on "Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?" scheduled by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees will take place on Thursday, April 30 at 2:00 p.m. rather than the previously scheduled date of Tuesday, April 28.

Chairman Schumer will preside.

By order of the Chairman

Updated Witness List

Hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee,

Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Refugees

on

"Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?"

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Dirksen Office Building Room 226

2:00 p.m.

Panel I

J. Thomas Manger

Chief of Police, Montgomery County, MD

Director, Major Cities Chiefs Association

Rockville, MD

Alan Greenspan

Economist

Former Chairman

Federal Reserve of the United States

Washington, DC

Dr. Joel Hunter

Senior Pastor, Northland Church

Member, President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships

Longwood, FL

Red Meat, Cancer and Heart Disease

link to cartoon

While this NYT article says red meat is bad for you, continuing medical studies confirm that any type of animal product in our diet really hampers our quest for health.  See The China Study.

NYT:

"men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods."

"Paying a Price for Loving Red Meat," New York Times, April 29, 2009

With Spector, Democrats will have 60

Senator Arlen Spector is crossing over to the Democratic Party.  This changes our political landscape as if an earthquake occurred.  With the potential Senator Frankel (Minnesota) whose case looks about won - this should make the 60 total, so that Democrats can override a Republican filibuster.

Having Spector as a Democrat will make the DREAM Act possible, count on it.  While Spector voted against the DREAM Act in 2007 (he said it would make Comprehensive Immigration Reform more difficult to obtain), he was fully supportive when the bill was considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006.  He was Chair of the committee at the time.

Pennysylvania senator Arlen Spector switches party to become Democrat

London Guardian, April 28, 2009

One of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the United States Senate defected to the Democrats today, dealing a massive blow to the Republican party's ability to impede Barack Obama's legislative agenda, and opening the way for dramatic action on climate change, healthcare reform and other issues.

The defection by Arlen Specter, a veteran Pennsylvania Republican, puts the majority Democratic party closer to the 60 votes needed to pass most substantive legislation. All that remains for the party to achieve that margin, and with it, the ability to run roughshod over the Republicans, is the final confirmation in Minnesota of Al Franken's victory in a long-disputed Senate election.

Specter's switch comes as the national Republican party has struggled to find its voice and its policy foundation since Obama's election in November, and illustrates the party's decline since George Bush's 2004 re-election, when it controlled both houses of Congress and the White House.

Following the debacle over hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Bush's mismanagement of the war in Iraq, voters across the country turned on the party in the 2006 election, giving the Democrats control of the House and Senate. Since then, the Republican party's conservative base has consolidated its hold, driving moderate voices from the party and pushing centrist voters toward the Democrats. In November, the Democrats won the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time since 1994.

In a candid press conference, Specter, 79, lambasted conservative groups he said are willing to lose elections in order to "purify the party" by backing right-wing candidates.

"The Republican party has moved farther and farther to the right," he said. "I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic party."

Obama welcomed the move and told him the Democrats were "thrilled to have you".

Republican national committee chairman Michael Steele said some Republicans would be happy to see him go. "Let's be honest: Senator Specter didn't leave the GOP based on principles of any kind," he said. "He left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his leftwing voting record. Republicans look forward to beating Senator Specter in 2010, assuming the Democrats don't do it first."

In addition to giving the Democrats their strongest Senate majority since 1979, Specter's move greatly increases his chances of winning re-election next year to his sixth term. Specter faced an extraordinarily tough primary challenge from former congressman Pat Toomey, a conservative whom he narrowly defeated in the 2004 primary. Had he been able to beat Toomey, he would then have faced a challenge on the left from the Democratic party.

Specter today acknowledged the calculation encouraged his defection.

"I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate," he said.

In Minnesota, the comedian and author Franken cannot be seated in the Senate until former Republican senator Norm Coleman concedes or until his legal challenges are exhausted. Assuming Franken is ultimately confirmed, the Republicans will be hard-pressed to hinder Obama's agenda, including provisions to lessen greenhouse gas emissions, expand government health insurance programmes, his $3.7tn budget, his judicial nominations, and potentially more costly fiscal stimulus measures.

Specter, who was first elected in 1980, was one of only three Republicans to vote for Obama's $787bn fiscal stimulus package this winter, alongside two moderate Republicans from Maine. He was widely derided for what fellow Republicans deemed a betrayal.

The Senate's procedural rules mean that while the Democrats held a majority, they still had to court moderates in order to win tough legislative fights. A minority can filibuster legislation, preventing bills from reaching a vote, and 60 votes are needed to cut off debate on and force an up-or-down roll call.

Specter's switch does not necessarily mean that Congress will grant Obama whatever he wishes. Conservative Democrats in the Senate will now see their hands strengthened and may seek concessions in exchange for votes, and Specter today insisted he would not be "an automatic 60th vote".

"If the Democratic party asks too much, I will not hesitate to disagree and vote my independent thinking," he said. link

also see "What Kind of Democrat Will Spector Be?" New York Times, April 28, 2009

"Spector Leaves GOP, Changing Senate Balance," Washington Post, April 29, 2009

link to photo

Cases in Mexico began in February

A city in the state of Veracruz, near a pork processing plant, started seeing the virus in February. Ultimately, 60% of the residents came down with the virus.

According to the LA Times, the first fatality (known of) was a census taker in Mexico.

La Jornada announced that all Mexico City restaurants were ordered closed.



"World Keeps Wary Eye on Swine Flu," Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2009

"Epidemia de lucro," La Jornada (Mexico City), 29 abril, 2009

"En la antesala de la pandemia," La Jornada (Mexico City), 29 abril, 2009

"Four Year Old Could Hold Key," London Guardian, April 27, 2009

"With swine flu cases rising, borders are tightened," New York Times, April 29, 2009

Sheriff Arpaio and Other Immigration Problems in Arizona

Yes, Arpaio is a problem. He has ruined many lives and humiliated many people. Today, democracynow.org is focusing its program on immigration and has a long segment on Arpaio.

click here for link to the program.

U.S. declares health emergency due to flu outbreak

Mexican swine flu deaths spark worldwide action, London Guardian, April 26, 2009
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U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu

By KEITH BRADSHER and JACK HEALY
New York Times
Published: April 26, 2009

American health officials on Sunday declared a public health emergency over increasing cases of swine flu, saying that they had confirmed 20 cases of the disease in the United States and expected to see more as investigators fan out to track down the path of the outbreak.

Although officials said most of the cases have been mild and urged Americans not to panic, the emergency declaration frees government resources to be used toward diagnosing or preventing additional cases, and releases money for more antiviral drugs.

“We are seeing more cases of swine flu,” said Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control, in a news conference in Washington. “We expect to see more cases of swine flu. As we continue to look for cases, I expect we’re going to find them.” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, speaking at the same news conference called the emergency declaration “standard operating procedure,” and said it should be considered a “declaration of emergency preparedness.”

“Really that’s what we’re doing right now,” she said. “We’re preparing in an environment where we really don’t know ultimately what the size of seriousness of this outbreak is going to be.”

Officials said they had confirmed eight cases in New York, seven in California, two in Kansas, two in Texas and one in Ohio, and that the cases looked to be similar to the deadly strain of swine flu that has killed more than 80 people in Mexico and infected 1,300 more.

So far, there have been no deaths from swine flu in the United States, and only one of the people who tested positive for the disease has been hospitalized, officials said.

Still, officials said they expect more severe cases.

Other governments around the world stepped up their response to the incipient outbreak, racing to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases from New Zealand to Hong Kong to Spain, raising concerns about the potential for a global pandemic.

Canada also confirmed four cases of the flu. Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief public health officer, said on Sunday that four students who attend the same school in that province had what he describes as “very mild” cases of the flu, according to The Associated Press.

The United States said it would use “passive surveillance” in screening travelers from Mexico who would enter the country, isolating them only if they were ill. But other governments issued travel advisories urging people not to visit Mexico, the apparent origin of the outbreak, where 81 people have died and some 1,300 have been infected. China, Russia and others set up quarantines for anyone possibly infected. Some countries banned pork imports from Mexico, even though there is no link between food products and the flu, and others were screening air travelers for signs of the disease.

The World Health Organization reiterated that it considered the outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern” but said it would put off until Tuesday a decision on whether to raise the pandemic alert level.

Raising it to level 4 “would be a very serious signal that countries ought to be dusting off pandemic plans,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the W.H.O. The W.H.O. is historically reluctant to declare pandemics in sensitive member countries..link to complete article

The DREAMers and the Blended Family

A DREAMer and her family, originally from  Ecuador are interviewed by a NYT reporter:

see "A Family Divided by 2 Words," New York Times, April 26, 2009

Blended families are not new.  My paternal grandfather was born in Monclova, MX, my paternal grandmother was born in Laredo, Texas.  My father was born in Saltillo, MX and my mother in Laredo, Texas.  My son just married a woman from Buenos Aires.  He was born in Bryan, Texas.  They met in New York City.

Even before our global society, there were these types of blended families.  Winston Churchill's mother was American, his father a British Lord (except they had no problem with a visa).  Barack Obama's parents were a "blended couple."  The thing is, Obama's father might have had a much harder time coming to the U.S. in a post 9-11 world.  

A few decades ago, the DREAMer born in Ecuador would be doing just fine, and probably would be an American citizen by now.  But the U.S. has lost its desire for new blood.  What a terrible loss.

Influenza Outbreak a Global Matter

Statement from World Health Organization

CNN: World Health Organization is calling [epidemic]"a public health emergency of international concern."

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link to London Guardian's Live Blog on Swine Flu Outbreak

Mexico City - La Jornada's front page:

World Health Organization Sends Out a Global Alert

In Spanish:

Afp
La situación por el nuevo virus es grave, imprevisible y avanza de prisa: OMS

La Jornada - Mexico City, 26, abril, 2009

Ginebra, 25 de abril. La Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) lanzó una advertencia este sábado contra el "potencial pandémico" del "nuevo virus" de gripe porcina. Es una "urgencia" en términos de salud pública, en la medida en que se transmite de persona a persona y ha causado al menos 20 muertos en México y afecta a decenas en Estados Unidos, destacó.

La situación es "grave", "imprevisible" y "evoluciona de prisa", advirtió la directora general de la OMS en una conferencia telefónica desde la sede de la organización en la ciudad suiza de Ginebra.

El virus, de origen animal, tiene "claramente potencial pandémico en la medida en que afecta a los seres humanos", advirtió. link to complete article

Mexico City Restricting Those Who Enter City - Airlines giving ticket holders a break

Children under 12, pregnant women, the aged, and persons with respiratory infections are not allowed to enter the city this weekend.

If you are planning to fly Continental or US Airways to Mexico City, be sure to check their web pages, they are now allowing ticket holders to re-schedule their flights because of the epidemic.

see:  Continental and US Airways relax ticketing policies for Mexico City passengers over swine flu outbreak, Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2009

Durará 10 días la suspensión de clases y actividades masivas, anuncian en el GDF, La Jornada - Mexico City, 25 abril, 2009

Front page of La Jornada - Mexico City for April 25, 2009

In Spanish:

Restringen entrada a reclusorios del DF por influenza

La Jornada - Mexico City

Este sábado y domingo no podrán ingresar niños menores de 12 años, mujeres embarazadas, adultos mayores y personas con cuadros de infecciones respiratorias.

Notimex

Publicado: 25/04/2009 09:11

México, DF. El Gobierno del Distrito Federal restringió el acceso a los reclusorios capitalinos durante este fin de semana a los niños menores de 12 años, mujeres embarazadas, adultos mayores y personas con cuadros de infecciones respiratorias.

La Subsecretaría del Sistema Penitenciario informó en un comunicado que la restricción estará vigente este sábado y domingo, y hasta el momento no se han confirmado brotes de influenza en ninguno de los 10 centros de reclusión capitalinos.

Indicó que las personas que sean detenidas por alguna falta administrativa o en una revisión del alcoholímetro y que presenten síntomas de la enfermedad serán remitidos a una unidad del sector salud.

Entre las medidas que la dependencia aplica dentro de los reclusorios varoniles y femeniles de la capital del país destacan la revisión de todos los internos para verificar que no presenten síntomas de la enfermedad.

También la limpieza exhaustiva en todos los centros penitenciarios; se han proporcionado guantes y cubrebocas al personal que tiene contacto con la población y visitantes a estas unidades, y prepara y proporciona alimentos ricos en vitaminas A y C.

Finalmente, informó que en las aduanas de ingreso estará personal médico, técnicos penitenciarios y supervisores para reforzar y apoyar cualquier contingencia. link

also see: Instalan comité de emergencia a nivel mundial contra influenza, milenio.com, 25, abril, 2009

The study’s methodology was called flawed

The Houston Chronicle has done it again.  A study by a right wing anti-immigrant group is headlined "Study: Illegal immigration costs state billions" --

A Houston Chronicle article, taken from the San Antonio Express explains that a study on the economics of immigration is not accurate.  But the headline is enough to make things harder for immigrants.  Everyone knows that most people look at headlines, and don't read the articles themselves.  So they see this blanket statement and think, "we really have to get rid of those illegals."

Shame on the Chronicle.  

 

here are some details from a NYT editorial describing how undocumented immigrants have helped save our social security system.  This information is not from a "think tank"  - it is a report from our own Social Security System.:

1.  growing numbers of “other than legal” workers are expected to bolster the program over the coming decades

2. many undocumented workers pay taxes during their work lives but don’t collect benefits later

3.  undocumented workers are entering the United States at ever younger ages and are expected to have more children while they’re here than if they arrived at later ages

4.  a substantial increase in the number of working-age people paying taxes, but a relatively smaller increase in the number of retirees who receive benefits

5.  taxes paid by other-than-legal immigrants will close 15 percent of the system’s projected long-term deficit

It would be more informative to read this New York Times editorial*:

--

New York Times - April 2, 2008

Editorial

How Immigrants Saved Social Security

Immigration is good for the financial health of Social Security because more workers mean more tax revenue. Illegal immigration, it turns out, is even better than legal immigration. In the fine print of the 2008 annual report on Social Security, released last week, the program’s trustees noted that growing numbers of “other than legal” workers are expected to bolster the program over the coming decades.

One reason is that many undocumented workers pay taxes during their work lives but don’t collect benefits later. Another is that undocumented workers are entering the United States at ever younger ages and are expected to have more children while they’re here than if they arrived at later ages. The result is a substantial increase in the number of working-age people paying taxes, but a relatively smaller increase in the number of retirees who receive benefits — a double boon to Social Security’s bottom line.

We’re not talking chump change. According to the report, the taxes paid by other-than-legal immigrants will close 15 percent of the system’s projected long-term deficit. That’s equivalent to raising the payroll tax by 0.3 percentage points, starting today.

That is not to suggest that illegal immigration is a legitimate fix to Social Security’s problems. It is another reminder, however, of the nation’s complex relationship with undocumented workers. Would the people who want to deport all undocumented workers be willing to make up the difference and pay the taxes that the undocumented are currently paying?

It is also a reminder of Social Security’s dynamism. As society and the economy evolve, so does the system, responding not only to changes in immigration and fertility, but also in wage growth and other variables. As such, it is adaptable to the 21st century, if only the political will can be found to champion the necessary changes. Those include modest tax increases and moderate benefit cuts that could be phased in over decades — provided the country gets started soon. link

*before you think that the info. from the NYT doesn't count because it is just a liberal newspaper, you should read about how the NYT was considered more conservative than the Washington Post, the LA Times, and especially the Boston Globe.

The Story of Mexico: 2009

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Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt

ZNet Interview with John Gibler about his new book

ZNet

January 26, 2009

(1) Can you tell ZNet, please, what Mexico Unconquered is about? What is it trying to communicate?

Mexico Unconquered is about the ongoing social struggles that grip Mexico, the overwhelming violence of the state on the one hand and the vibrant and massive peoples' movements for land, autonomy, freedom, and dignity on the other.

The book traces contemporary social conflicts in Mexico from the period of the Spanish Conquest, through the early years of Independence, and the political chaos following the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution, when the modern state in Mexico was reconfigured from the remains of centuries of colonialism into an autocratic one party state with only minimal and cosmetic dressings of electoral democracy.

The bulk of the book is divided between the exploration and denunciation of state violence and contemporary forms of conquest and the chronicling and study of peoples' movements and contemporary forms of revolt (rebelión in Spanish).

What does the book try to communicate? Moral outrage and social dignity. The book tries to disrobe the ideologies of the state used to rationalize horrid violence (seemingly innocent concepts like the rule of law, poverty, and migration) and to awaken moral outrage at the realities hidden under the glaze of normalcy. But instead of leaving the reader with the despair of finding such brutality under the surface of everyday reality in Mexico, the book tries to communicate the immense strength and dignity of the ordinary Mexicans taking stands against the brutality. Here the book tries to communicate the urgent importance of gripping this spirit of revolt when facing seemingly intractable enemies, of risking the impossible (to quote Slavoj Zizek quoting the Paris walls in 1968). link to complete article

Dying to be Thin: Her ribs and pelvic bones were protuding

link to photo

What does dreamacttexas have to do with a thin Miss Universe contestant?  Lots.  The more Americanized our female DREAMers become, the more at risk they are to think they need to be extremely thin to be o.k.  It is one of the sad aspects of American culture.  Either we are overweight or we are paranoid about being overweight.

I just came back from Argentina.  This past year I have spent a lot of time there.  I have found that being "too thin" is what some people say is "an Argie thing."  So is plastic surgery.  Sounds like Orange County to me.  I wonder why Argentina  (maybe I should narrow it to Buenos Aires) is so obsessed...  could it be related to being a Spanish Colony that is identified as "European."  -- I would say that could cause some confusion and perhaps some insecurity.  Why else would people cut themselves up so easily and/or starve themselves?

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Outrage at 'skin and bones' Miss Universe model

London Independent/Reuters -  Friday, 24 April 2009

   

Stephanie Naumoska was well under the World Health Organisation's benchmark for malnutrition

  

Australia's Miss Universe competition found itself under scrutiny yesterday as doctors and dieticians questioned the inclusion of a finalist they claimed was severely underweight.

Dietician Melanie McGrice told Australia's Daily Mail that at 180cm and weighing just 49kg, 19-year-old Stephanie Naumoska was well under the World Health Organisation's benchmark for malnutrition.

"I would certainly want to be doing an assessment of her diet to make sure she doesn't have some type of eating disorder," she said.

The controversy surfaced after images of Naumoska parading in a bikini during the swimsuit competition showed her ribs and pelvic bones protruding.

McGrice told the Herald Sun there appeared to be "significant muscle wasting" on Naumoska's upper arm and legs... link to complete article

see "Australia's Miss Universe contestant Stephanie Naumoska 'too thin'," London Guardian, April 24, 2009

Fearing a Pandemic of the Flu in Mexico

A couple of months ago I spent a few days in Monterrey.  I visited a public hospital a few times, visiting a close friend who soon passed away.  When I came back to Houston I developed the worst case of the flu ever.  I also ended up with bronchitis and was sick for over a month.  I wonder if there was any connection to what is going on now in Mexico City.  

The entire nation of Mexico is alarmed over the Influenza outbreak.  Most of the newspaper headlines are about the epidemic

"WHO worries Mexico flu deaths could mark pandemic," Houston Chronicle/AP, April 24, 2009

GDF repartirá cubre bocas en transporte público para evitar contagios, milenio.com, 24 abril, 2009

"How Swine Flu Spreads in Humans," Los Angeles Times/Reuters, April 25, 2009

"Confirma Ssa 20 muertes por influenza y 40 probables más," La Jornada - Mexico City, 24 abril 2009

Starting the process of immigration reform

With the economy in tatters, it may not seem like the right time.  But immigration reform is a slow process.  What we start now, will make its way through Congress in the fall.  This gives us time to convince the opposition of the need to pass the DREAM Act and other important changes to our immigration policy.

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Timing Immigration Reform
Washington Post
By T. Alexander Aleinikoff
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Obama administration recently signaled interest in beginning a discussion on comprehensive immigration reform before year's end. It might seem that a severe economic downtown is not the best time for a major legislative initiative on immigration. But starting this conversation now makes sense for several reasons. link to complete article

Deportation - then losing your child

The outrageous act of separating a child from his mother, ruling she abandoned him after an ICE raid where she was detained, terminating her rights as a parent; then allowing his adoption to a white couple sounds like a bad B movie.  But how often is this happening these days?  

How convenient.  White babies and toddlers are almost impossible to adopt these days.  Instead of going to China or the Ukraine, like many white couples are doing, they only need to find the lost children of deported immigrants.

In the case described in this NYT article, it was said the mother didn't contact the child or send him money.  How could she send money if she is incarcerated?  How could she contact him if she was in a detention center where it is well known that inmates are often isolated and not allowed to contact relatives outside their prison.

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April 23, 2009 - New York Times
Some Immigrants Who Lose Freedom Face Loss of Custody
By GINGER THOMPSON

CARTHAGE, Mo. — When immigration agents raided a poultry processing plant near here two years ago, they had no idea a little American boy named Carlos would be swept up in the operation.

One of the 136 illegal immigrants detained in the raid was Carlos’s mother, Encarnación Bail Romero, a Guatemalan. A year and a half after she went to jail, a county court terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to her child on grounds of abandonment. Carlos, now 2, was adopted by a local couple.

In his decree, Judge David C. Dally of Circuit Court in Jasper County said the couple made a comfortable living, had rearranged their lives and work schedules to provide Carlos a stable home, and had support from their extended family. By contrast, Judge Dally said, Ms. Bail had little to offer.

“The only certainties in the biological mother’s future,” he wrote, “is that she will remain incarcerated until next year, and that she will be deported thereafter.”

It is unclear how many children share Carlos’s experience. But lawyers and advocates for immigrants say that cases like his are popping up across the country as crackdowns against illegal immigrants thrust local courts into transnational custody battles and leave thousands of children in limbo.

“The struggle in these cases is there’s no winner,” said Christopher Huck, an immigration lawyer in Washington State.

He said that in many cases, what state courts want to do “conflicts with what federal immigration agencies are supposed to do.”

“Then things spiral out of control,” Mr. Huck added, “and it ends up in these real unfortunate situations.”

Next month, the Nebraska Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal by María Luis, a Guatemalan whose rights to her American-born son and daughter were terminated after she was detained in April 2005 on charges of falsely identifying herself to a police officer. She was later deported.

And in South Carolina, a Circuit Court judge has been working with officials in Guatemala to find a way to send the baby girl of a Guatemalan couple, Martín de León Pérez and his wife, Lucía, detained on charges of drinking in public, to relatives in their country so the couple do not lose custody before their expected deportation.

Patricia Ravenhorst, a South Carolina lawyer who handles immigration cases, said she had tried “to get our judges not to be intimidated by the notion of crossing an international border.”

“I’ve asked them, ‘What would we do if the child had relatives in New Jersey?’ ” Ms. Ravenhorst said. “We’d coordinate with the State of New Jersey. So why can’t we do the same for a child with relatives in the highlands of Guatemala?”

Dora Schriro, an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said the agency was looking for ways to deal with family separations as it prepared new immigration enforcement guidelines. In visits to detention centers across the country, Ms. Schriro said, she has heard accounts of parents losing contact or custody of their children.

Child welfare laws differ from state to state. In the Missouri case, Carlos’s adoptive parents were awarded custody last year by Judge Dally after they privately petitioned the court and he terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to Carlos.

In February, immigration authorities suspended Ms. Bail’s deportation order so she could file suit to recover custody. Ms. Bail’s lawyer, John de Leon, of Miami, said his client had not been informed about the adoption proceedings in her native Spanish and had had no real legal representation until it was too late.

The lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, Joseph L. Hensley, said his clients had waited more than a year for Ms. Bail to demonstrate her commitment to Carlos, but the judge found that she had made no attempt to contact the baby or send financial support for him while she was incarcerated. The couple asked not to be identified, to protect Carlos’s privacy.

Ms. Bail came to the United States in 2005, and Carlos was born a year later. In May 2007, she was detained in a raid on George’s Processing plant in Butterfield, near Carthage in southwestern Missouri.

Immigration authorities quickly released several workers who had small children. But authorities said Ms. Bail was ineligible to be freed because she was charged with using false identification. Such charges were part of a crackdown by the Bush administration, which punished illegal immigrants by forcing them to serve out sentences before being deported.

When Ms. Bail went to jail, Carlos, then 6 months old, was sent to stay with two aunts who remembered him as having a voracious appetite and crying constantly. But they also said he had had a severe rash and had not received all of his vaccinations.

The women — each with three children of their own, no legal status, tiny apartments and little money — said the baby was too much to handle. So when a local teachers’ aide offered to find someone to take care of Carlos, the women agreed.

Then in September 2007, Ms. Bail said, the aide visited her in jail to say that an American couple were interested in adopting her son. The couple had land and a beautiful house, Ms. Bail recalled being told, and had become very fond of Carlos.

“My parents were poor, and they never gave me to anyone,” Ms. Bail recalled. “I was not going to give my son to anyone either.”

An adoption petition arrived at the jail a few weeks later. Ms. Bail, who cannot read Spanish, much less English, said she had a cellmate from Mexico translate. With the help of a guard and an English-speaking Guatemalan visitor, Ms. Bail wrote a response to the court.

“I do not want my son to be adopted by anyone,” she scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper on Oct. 28, 2007. “I would prefer that he be placed in foster care until I am not in jail any longer. I would like to have visitation with my son.”

For the next 10 months, she said, she had no communication with the court. During that time, Judge Dally appointed a lawyer for Ms. Bail, but later removed him from the case after he pleaded guilty to charges of domestic violence.

Mr. Hensley, the lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, said he had sent a letter to Ms. Bail to tell her that his clients were caring for her son, as did the court, but both letters were returned unopened. “We afforded her more due process than most people get who speak English,” Mr. Hensley said.

Ms. Bail said she had asked the public defender who was representing her in the identity theft case to help her determine Carlos’s whereabouts, but the lawyer told her she handled only criminal matters. “I went to court six times, and six times I asked for help to find my son,” she said. “But no one helped me.”

Ms. Bail got a Spanish-speaking lawyer, Aldo Dominguez, to represent her in the custody case only last June. By the time he reached her two months later — she had been transferred to a prison in West Virginia — it was too late to make her case to Judge Dally, Mr. Dominguez said.

“Her lifestyle, that of smuggling herself into the country illegally and committing crimes in this country, is not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child,” the judge wrote in his decision. “A child cannot be educated in this way, always in hiding or on the run.” link to NYT article

Dracula, the Republicans, and the DREAMers

Thank you to Vicente Duque for this interesting piece on Immigration and the Republican Party.

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The Vampire Dracula of Transylvania and the vampiresque Republican Party - Drinking the Blood of Youth - Immigration Reform 

by Vicente Duque

Bela Lugosi as Dracula

The Vampire Dracula has a zombie life, he gets out of his tomb in the dungeons of the castle in order to drink blood and get some life out of it.

Dracula can not drink the blood of old people, those that are sick and in Geriatric Homes or Gerontological Asylums. Those crippled and sick of old age in wheelchairs have a blood that is useless for the purposes of Dracula.

Dracula needs the Hematocites and Leucocites of Young People, those in elementary schools, high schools, colleges and universities.

And the Republican Party is having a zombie life in its tomb, half death, half alive, and needs a "Common Enemy" and an "Enemy of America" in order to resurrect and have a "revival", a word that charms its very conservative and religious extremist base.

America has millions of Decent, Noble and Kind People, Hearts of Gold, and they are the big majority, but there are many other losers that need hate as revenge for their failed lives.

And what "Common Enemy" and "Enemy of America" can be the best for those racists, haters, losers and failed lives in the streets of America ??

The Republican Party needs the Hate against Latinos in order to revive, revitalize and reinvigorate, for a "Republican Revival". That is the Blood of Youth, because Latinos are mostly in Elementary Schools, in High Schools, and now want Higher Education in Colleges and Universities.

Image from Harper's Weekly

Latinos are "Youth Blood" and a big part of a Great Future for America. But Republicans want to drink that blood with their Racism and Hatred. Even if they expulse and evict those Youngsters out of America.

So, Mr Obama should be careful not to paralyze Government and his Administration Legislative Agenda with a "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" because that is what these Merchants of Hatred in Racist TV want in order to agitate the masses of ignorants, of fools, idiots and losers, the boxes of Inferiority Complexes.

The "Immigration Reform" would increase the profits of the Merchants of Hate, the Peddlers of Fear, in Racist TV.

When you are a failure in life, nothing is better than to choose a defenseless victim and become a bully, then you are the Superior Race, and suddenly you got a lot value and self respect, even if you are trash.

"Immigration Reform" is a "Pandora's Box" for Mr Obama, because there is too much Racism and Hatred. This needs a much more mature country, and a more mature Republican Party in times of Economic Prosperity and not of Economic Suffering.

When the Republican Party has adults in it, when it is not led by the Media Racists of Histrionic Radio, and Histrionic TV, with ridiculous gestures and grimaces and tears, while crying "God !!!, God !!!, God !!"

These TV Racists are like Hysterics and Possessed, the most Hypocrite People in the World, the masters of Hypocrisy.

Let these Hypocrites TV anchors claim in the desert while there is no "Immigration Reform" until the day that there is more resposibility in Congress and the Economy is recovered, stable and strong.

"Immigration Reform is Kryptonite for Mr Obama and the Democratic Party.

Milenials.com

Vicente Duque

Some Fairness is Returning to the Immigration Process

The are many DREAMers who lost their chance at regularizing because the family member sponsoring them died.  Other immigrants lost their hope for a Green Card when their spouses died.  Now a judge in LA has ordered some cases reopened.  Immigrant widows and widowers will now have a chance to get a Green Card.  Who knows, maybe DREAMers will be next.

see Judge in LA orders green card cases reopened, Washington Post/AP, April 22, 2009

More on the College Board and DREAMers

Here is the LA Times take on the College Board's endorsement of the DREAM Act 2009.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig22-2009apr22,0,2185805.story

From the Los Angeles Times

College Board steps into the immigration debate

Trustees of the association that administers the SAT vote to support the Dream Act, which would offer some undocumented youths a path to citizenship through college or the military.

By Ben Meyerson

April 22, 2009

Reporting from Washington — The College Board is supporting legislation that would offer some undocumented youths a path to citizenship through college or the military.

The association best known for the SAT and AP tests it administers is stepping into the contentious issue for the first time, just as President Obama is signaling that he may encourage lawmakers to overhaul immigration laws this year. The board's trustees have voted unanimously to support the legislation, known as the Dream Act.

"These are students who have gone through our K-12 system and have achieved in a very high manner," said James Montoya, a vice president of the College Board.

But Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the Dream Act allows illegal immigrants to take scholarship opportunities away from native U.S. residents. It's unfair, he said, to reward those who violated the law to get to this country.

"If you ask any illegal alien why they came to America, the answer, invariably is, 'Well, I wanted to do better for my family,' and this gives them precisely what they broke the law to achieve," Mehlman said.

The bill would allow students who illegally entered the U.S. when they were 15 or younger to apply for conditional legal resident status if they have lived in the country for five or more years and graduated from high school or received a GED. If they attended college or served in the military for two or more years, they could be granted citizenship.

Conditional legal status could make the immigrants eligible for in-state college tuition, depending on local laws, and would allow them to compete for some forms of federal financial assistance. A 2007 UCLA report estimated that 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools every year.

The Senate voted on the Dream Act in 2007, winning a majority but lacking the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. The measure was then folded into more comprehensive immigration legislation, which died. It was reintroduced in the House and Senate last month.

California is one of 10 states that currently provide in-state tuition to certain undocumented students and other non-residents who attended California high schools...link

bmeyerson@tribune.com

Times staff writer Gale Holland contributed to this report.

Ah - The Bush Administration. Did that really happen to us?

Before Obama was President, dreamacttexas would occasionally have problems.  We would get these weird gray boxes on some immigration posts, and a couple of times the blog became inaccessible.  It didn't make any sense.  But then, after Obama came in, things changed.  dreamacttexas no longer shows the gray boxes.  The blog no longer burps.  I wonder why.

Although Obama said he would not push to punish the Bush people for having tortured prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Graib, the bad stuff inevitably surfaced.  Today the papers said that Condi approved the torture.  Of course she would.  She was so cozy with Bush, she couldn't say no.  The others couldn't say no either.  It would be interesting to know why they agreed to such a terrible thing.  Was it pressure from Bush or Cheney? Was it some kind of black mail?  Or are they just bad people (outright malice)?

A detailed Congressional report on the Bush Administration on torture was released today.  Click here for link to entire report.

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Senate implicates Bush aides in prisoner abuse

* Ewen MacAskill in Washington
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 April 2009 18.05 BST


A Senate inquiry published today directly implicates senior members of the Bush administration in the extensive use of harsh interrogation methods against al-Qaida suspects and other prisoners round the world.

The 232-page report, the most detailed investigation yet into the background of torture, undercuts the claim of the then deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq was the work of "a few bad apples".

The report's release added to the debate raging within the US after Barack Obama, who regards the techniques as torture, opened the way for possible prosecution of members of the Bush administration.

Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the senate armed services committee, which ordered the inquiry, said today: "The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots." The report shows a paper trail going from the then defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq.

The report says: "The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorised their use against detainees."

The report reveals pressure for the adoption of more aggressive interrogation techniques came from the uppermost reaches of the Bush administration. Rumsfeld gave the go-ahead for the use of 15 interrogation techniques.

The mood within the administration at the time is caught in a handwritten note attached to a memo in December 2002 from Rumsfeld, on the use of stress positions. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" Rumsfeld asked.

The report, the result of an 18-month inquiry, reveals the administration rejected advice from various branches of the armed services against using more aggressive techniques. The military questioned both the morality and the reliability of information gained.

The report condemns the techniques adopted: "Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."

The report discloses that waterboarding and other techniques used were based on a faulty premise. The methods were lifted from a military programme known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (Sere) but the armed forces pointed out that this was intended to train troops in resisting torture rather than establishing whether these were useful interrogation methods.

Bush administration memos released by Obama last week were confined to interrogations at Guantánamo and CIA secret prisons round the world, but the senate report goes wider, including prisons run by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report could reopen the Abu Ghraib cases, involving sentenced military prison staff who claimed that authorisation for the techniques came from higher up. Colonel Janis Karpinski, an army reserve brigadier general demoted because of prisoner abuses at the jail in Iraq, said the Senate report backed claims that staff became "scapegoats" for the US interrogation policies.

The report says that Sere instructors trained CIA and other military personnel early in 2002 on the use of harsher interrogation techniques but warned that information obtained might be unreliable.

The internal debate also suggests that the definition of what was acceptable was flexible. The report notes that a senior CIA official attended a meeting of staff at Guantánamo in 2002. The minutes tell of a discussion of interrogation techniques, and the official saying that the legal statutes were vague. "It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong," the official said.

In a separate development, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, giving evidence to the House foreign affairs committee, further stirred up the debate with the former vice-president, Dick Cheney, saying he should not be regarded as a "reliable source" on torture. Cheney has being saying that classified memos he has seen show that valuable information was obtained through the harsher interrogation techniques.

Obama's head of intelligence, Dennis Blair, appeared to concur with Cheney in a memo released last week but his assessment was blacked out. link to Guardian article

Arpaio's interview on the Colbert report-

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Joe Arpaio
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Gay Marriage Commercial

College Board urges Congress to offer tuition aid, citizenship

Ok, so i have been following the comments for this article throughout the morning. It still amazes me to read this crazy anti-immigrant rhetoric, which only makes me think that we have so much to work on, so many people to educate on this issue.

This article is a good feedback on the press release but the actual report you can find here.

Congratulations and thanks to our Roberto Gonzalez and everybody else who keeps fighting for DREAMers in academia in order to make our DREAM a reality.

DREAM!

College Board urges Congress to offer tuition aid, citizenship
By HOPE YEN Associated Press
April 21, 2009, 9:19AM

WASHINGTON — Wading into the politically charged immigration debate, a group of colleges and universities is urging Congress to give illegal immigrants tuition aid and a path to citizenship in light of efforts in several states to block them.

The College Board, made up of 5,000 schools and best known for its SAT college admission tests, released a report today that cites a need for federal legislation that would open up in-state college tuition, financial aid and legal status to many illegal immigrants in the U.S.

Speaking publicly on the issue for the first time, the board is making its push after states in recent years have moved to bar illegal immigrants from paying in-state tuition and, in some cases, enrolling in their public colleges. Public colleges typically charge students from other states much higher tuition rates than in-state residents.

It also comes as opponents are warning that immigration reform now could reduce already-scarce jobs and college enrollment slots in the ailing economy.

"This is a new area for us, but it was an easy call," said Thomas W. Rudin, a senior vice president for the College Board.

He noted the contradiction in which illegal immigrants who are legally entitled to a public education from kindergarten to high school suddenly hit barriers when applying to college, even when many are "honor roll students, athletes, class presidents and valedictorians."

"We absolutely believe it's important for opening up economic opportunities," Rudin said.

Under House and Senate bills known as the Dream Act, illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. as children — defined as age 15 and under — and have lived here for five years could apply to the Homeland Security Department for conditional legal status after graduating from high school.

Such legal status would make the immigrants eligible for in-state college tuition rates and some forms of federal financial aid. Then, if they attend college or participate in military service for at least two years, the immigrants would qualify for permanent legal residency and ultimately citizenship.

The legislation, which has been introduced in various forms since 2001, comes as President Barack Obama is preparing to address the contentious issue of immigration reform later this year. The Dream Act has previously passed the Senate but failed to become law as it was folded into proposals for more comprehensive immigration reform.

"The College Board is forgetting which side their bread is buttered: How can they purport to represent the interest of students while supporting legislation that promotes more competition from illegal aliens?" said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which seeks to restrict immigration.

"It's a massive amnesty effort being laid for this fall," Dane said. "Since many of these illegal aliens and their families are overwhelmingly on the lower end of the economic scale, they're going to take the lion's share of need-based financial aid."

Among the College Board's findings:

• About 360,000 illegal immigrants who have a high school degree could qualify for the tuition aid. Another 715,000 immigrants between the ages of 5 and 17 would also benefit if they are motivated to finish high school and pursue a college degree.

• Roughly 10 states which offer tuition aid to illegal immigrants generally saw increased college revenue by enrolling these additional students, rather than financial burdens caused by an influx of immigrants paying cheaper tuition.

• Only a fraction of the 65,000 illegal immigrants who graduate from high school each year go to college. Their ability to receive a higher education and move into better-paying jobs would help the U.S. economy in the form of increased tax revenue and consumer spending.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that illegal immigrants are entitled to a public education from kindergarten through high school, , but federal law is silent as to their college rights. As a result, states have been divided over providing benefits, and in many cases leave it up to individual colleges to decide.

South Carolina bans illegal immigrants from enrolling at any of its public colleges, and Alabama blocks them from its two-year colleges. Missouri and Virginia are also considering laws that deny enrollment.

At least four states — Georgia, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona — prohibit illegal immigrants from paying in-state tuition rates.

The 10 states which offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrants are California, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Washington. New Jersey is now reviewing whether to offer in-state tuition, while California is considering whether to allow immigrants to compete for financial aid.

Article

Four Mayoral Candidates Target Houston Hispanics

Competition is good. This is just a small taste of what they have to offer...

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Four Mayoral Candidates Target Houston Hispanics

Houston mayoral contenders Peter Brown, Annise Parker and Roy Morales appeared at City Hall Tuesday to address a forum hosted by the National Hispanic Professional Organization. The candidates presented their proposals for dealing with the education, economic and safety issues facing the Hispanic community. All three candidates emphasized their interest on lowering the dropout rate among Hispanic children and promote diversity in City Council. The contenders agreed on the need to invest in after-school programs and partner the business community with school districts to create mentorship programs.read more

Most residents favor citizenship for illegal immigrants

I am happy to see this type of attitude in Houston. I was very positive about results like these. My neighbors are not that mean, although those surveyed said that they do not support health and welfare services but they to favor a path to citizenship...
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Houston Chronicle
April 20th, 2009
Mizanur Rahman

We talk a lot here about the mood of the region and country onimmigration. It's rare, however, to actually quantify people's opinions on the matter. We can get a peek into residents' attitudes locally thanks to the 2009 Houston Area Survey, conducted by Stephen Klineberg, the Rice University sociology professor who has directed the annual surveysince 1982.

Klineberg says his survey, released this week, shows that the recent negative views of immigrants in general have begun to turn around. However, it's a bit more nuanced than that. The data does show that the majority of residents in the Houston area support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. However, half ofthe survey respondents said they support a law that would deny health and welfare services to illegal immigrants in Texas.

Here's a summary from Klineberg on the survey: The numbers of area residents who believe that the new immigration"mostly strengthens American culture" increased from 39 percent in1997 to 57 percent in 2005, and then dropped to 44 percent in 2007,before recovering to 49 percent in this year's survey.

The percentage of area residents who favor "granting illegal immigrants a path to legal citizenship if they speak English and have no criminal record" dropped from 68 percent in 2007 to 56 percent in2008, and then recovered to 61 percent in this year's survey.

The numbers saying that the increasing ethnic diversity broughtabout by immigration is a "good thing" dropped from 67 percent in 2005to 62 percent in 2007, and remained unchanged (at 61 percent) in 2009.

In the 2009 survey, 64 percent agreed that, "The children ofillegal immigrants should have the right to attend the publicschools," down from 71 percent in 2007.

68 percent today are in favor of "imposing fines and criminalcharges against employers in this community who hire illegalimmigrants," up from 56 percent two years ago.

In 2007, 44 percent were in favor of "a law that would deny healthand welfare services to il-legal immigrants in Texas." In 2009, 50percent were in support of that proposal.

This survey of 706 randomly selected Harris County adults was conducted Feb. 3 through Feb. 25 by the University of Houston Center for Public Policy.

The margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Posted by Mizanur Rahman at April 20, 2009 11:29 AM

Fight Ahead for In-State Tuition for DREAMers in New Jersey

The winds of politics are changing, but the foes of In-State Tuition keep thinking that DREAMers don't give to their state.  dreamacttexas  just received a comment this morning that stated undocumented college students take from a pot they didn't contribute to.  It is amazing how people don't seem to hear when told that immigrants pay taxes - 

1.  the money that goes for their social security goes into a black hole... they are not eligible for social security benefits if they are not documented.  

2.  They pay sales tax if they live in states that have a sales tax.  

3.  They pay real estate taxes through the rent they pay - their landlord has to charge enough rent to cover the real estate taxes on the rental property.  

4.  As for the IRS - their wages are subject to Federal Withholding Tax- just like everybody else that lives in the  U.S.  

Everyone has these obligations if they live here:  residents, citizens, and undocumented people.

But as usual, politics rules.  If the New Jersey lawmakers are worried about re-election, and they come from conservative districts, then they have to think twice.  Of course it is more important to worry about re-election than to take a chance by helping some kids go to college.  

The idea of "public service" for legislators (at least when it comes to immigration) has become more like "self-service."

In New Jersey, Bills Offering In-State Tuition to Illegal Immigrants Face a Fight , New York Times, April 20, 2009

Deporting a DREAMer is like burning a book

link to image

Of course, a book is not worth a person's livelihood.  However, if a DREAMer has to leave the U.S., they lose not only the potential for a career (should the DREAM Act pass soon), but their family - who would probably stay behind, their culture - since they have been here most of their life, and their friends.

In a symbolic sense, deporting a DREAMer is like burning a book, - because a book symbolizes knowledge and learning and work. Having written a couple of books myself, I can say they are heart wrenching things to produce; its like giving birth.  The words in the books contain what the author has learned, what she thinks, and what is going on in the world around her (from her perspective and those she is trying to represent).  In some countries it is against social rules to place a book on the floor.

Burning a book means many tragic things.  It means the end of knowledge.  For a DREAMer to be deported means the end of his/her road to an education.

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An Open Letter from a DREAMer who is in danger of being deported  -

My name is Rigoberto Padilla and I have been in this country since the age of 6. I started the first grade in this country and have been in school ever since. I was never aware of my undocumented status until I was a senior in high school. At the time, I could not understand what made me so different from the rest of my friends that I grew up with. In applying to colleges, the issue of being an undocumented student became a reality and it started to directly affect me.  I realized that because of my status, I would never be granted the same resources that the rest of my class was entitled to. link to complete letter

thanks to dreamactivist.org for originally publishing Rigoberto's letter

The Pulitzer & the Pink Underwear

Journalists Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin of the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, AZ won the Pulitzer Prize for investigating Sheriff Arpaio - the guy who makes his inmates wear pink underwear.  

Maybe the notice Sheriff Arpaio will get from this will help shut down his unethical and dehumanizing operation.
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From Immigration Policy Center

Journalists Who Revealed Sheriff Arpaio's Activities Win Pulitzer Prize

Series Reveals Negative Impact of Local Police Taking On Immigration Enforcement

April 20, 2009

Washington, D.C. - Today, reporters Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin of the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Arizona (Giblin is now with the Arizona Guardian) were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their local reporting on Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  Over the past several years, "Sheriff Joe" has transformed his police department into an immigration-enforcement agency -- running up costs, conducting large-scale neighborhood sweeps, and neglecting other crime-fighting activities.  The award-winning series revealed the Sheriff's "focus on immigration enforcement and how it endangered investigation of violent crime and other aspects of public safety," says the Pulitzer website. 

 

The Immigration Policy Center (IPC) congratulates Giblin and Gabrielson for this deserving acknowledgement. Their public service journalism serves as a model to reporters around the nation. Since the series published, the Sheriff has come under fire from local, state and federal lawmakers, and he is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

 

IPC produced a fact check highlighting the details about Sheriff Arpaio and his controversial partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as reported in the East Valley Tribune. link to IPC

Laying the Smackdown on Misinformation

A DREAMer from Duke lays down arguments that have been twisted by FAIR.

Read on:

This would my first time writing about my status but I think I can bear it no longer. I am an undocumented alien in the US and I go to Duke University.

Recently I came across the FAIR Press Release that lists the arguments against the Dream Act. I’ll reproduce it here and show how these arguments are simply ridiculous. Americans should no longer be blindfolded by the darkness of the sugar-coated rhetoric. Be welcome to the light but painful truth of us 'illegal' youths:

Argument 1: Dream Act rewards parents who violated immigration laws through their children, and provide a powerful incentive for more illegal immigration.

The Dream Act only legalizes existing 'illegal aliens' currently residing in the US and who are within a certain age range. It does not apply for any future illegals. Yes, it might have encouraged more people coming to the US because it gives them the illusion that US immigration laws are loose. But what is most loose is not the Dream Act, it’s the gross ambiguity in United State’s current immigration policy. The US has never been decisive and committed to protecting its borders or in deterring illegals from entering. Immigration does not take place in a vacuum and 'illegal immigration' is certainly inextricably linked to the demand for cheap labor. Our justice system has never been objective in deciding which asylum cases to accept and which to reject. For example, I’ve seen so many affluent families coming to the States to give birth and have their kids growing up as US citizens. Is this fair? Aren’t they taking the same resources that illegals are taking? But do they really deserve everything US has to offer and illegal aliens are left in darkness, just because their parents are not rich enough? I have known some immigration judges who turn down 85% of the asylum cases (including mine) while other judges accept 90% of them (Link to study). Really? Are you serious? You see, really a lot of our fate depends on chance, and before US can justifiably say that it never rewards wrong-doing, it has to say it has been just in its immigration policies. I could have won the asylum case long time ago and go on with my life.

If you want consistency, take a look at the model of Hong Kong and Japan. Ten years ago, they legalized all the existing irregular immigrants in their region, but since then they’ve put in the most stringent laws to deter future immigration violations. It is really a change of perspective: We would respect the people already here, but we also need to send a firm, clear message to other nations that we do not tolerate any more illegal immigration. We will a humane act in legalizing, then we can (and justifiably) say that we can deport any future out of status immigrants back to their home country, because that way we will act with rationale, determination, and clarity. Yes, our borders are bigger than that of Japan or Hong Kong and we have a lot more people but it is still a much cleaner solution than the one we have. Status quo immigration laws allow people in deportation to 'voluntary departure' but most stay indefinitely. Think about it: what is better? Until US does something humane, it does not have any justification to something bold and daring.

Additionally, we are only talking about several hundred thousand youth here who could probably qualify under the DREAM Act and are spread out in 50 states to minimize any negative impacts. It is not like we are legalizing all the 'illegal aliens' who you might think are trouble-makers. You are getting the best of the crop, the greenest of your investment portfolio, and who will give the US more returns than anything you could ask for in the last 10 years.

Argument 2: Transfer seats and tuition subsidies to illegal aliens at a time when state higher education budgets are being slashed, admissions curtailed, and tuitions increased.

To me education against undocumented youth is the most ridiculous form of argument ever. I came here when I was 11 and since then I’ve given all of myself to learning. I got so far not because how smart I am or how hard I work, but I believe that only in America I can get what I deserve.

Here’s my life: I started learning the English alphabet at age 11. In three years, I enrolled in an all English school. By 10th grade I exhausted the math curriculum in my high school - I took AP calculus AB while I was taking Algebra 2 and got a 5. I took 15 AP exams at the end of my senior year, making me the only AP scholar male representative in my state. I won the state science fair and went on to International Science Fair. I did national math Olympiad. Heck, I even had a 2280/2400 on the SAT. None of my friends knew I was an 'illegal immigrant' and I did not tell anyone. To them, I was just someone normal, possibly someone who has a heart and wants to serve humanity. At Duke, I got A+’s in graduate level math and compsci classes (if you know anything about Duke, you know those classes are no jokes) and had offers from several top technology companies, but could I accept any of them? No, I respectfully declined them. You see, for all I care is this: I would be perfectly content if someone who is smarter than me and has worked harder than me gets a Microsoft job, even if he/she is illegal. Because he deserves it more than I do. Because he could change the world. And he would pay twice the tax he could have paid working in a restaurant. He could even support your children's education because he would be rich and would pay accordingly to his ability. Why can’t Americans think like that?

Argument 3: By broadly defining "student" it gives amnesty to large numbers of illegal aliens who may be pursing any sort of education.

Again wrong interpretation. The Dream Act only legalizes those who pursue two years of college education or military service, and only applies to people falling into an age range. It does not apply to anyone who is under 12 or above 35. The student in question MUST have been brought here before the age of 15 and have no criminal record. That provision eliminates a good majority of the undocumented population.

The DREAM Act applies to people who are currently graduating with honors from their high school, star athletes competing in NCAA, pianist prodigies who will rock your socks off in the concert, people attending UCLA Berkeley, Harvard, and Duke. They are brilliant, and there are more of those than you would ever dare to estimate. You are not just amnestying anyone; yes the brightest of us could go back to where we came from, whether it be Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, England, China. But do you seriously think that would be a better thing for the US? If you don’t, then don’t use economics and pragmatism as your argument.
Argument 4: Accelerate chain migration and exponential population growth because illegal aliens who are granted green cards will be able to petition the Department of Homeland Security in the future to grant their parents and relatives legal status too.

To refute the last point, Damn Mexicans has raised two important issues:

If you catch someone saying this, flick their forehead for me, they have no comprehension of how current immigration laws work.

1) Only American citizens who are at least 21 and can prove they can financially support their parents can sponsor them for a green card. DREAMers will have to wait 6 years plus a few years of paperwork processing before they can become citizens.

2) More importantly, the parents they sponsor cannot have entered the country illegally. This would disqualify most parents.

Therefore, I am not so sure it would cause exponential population growth, but it might have a chance of causing exponential technological growth because if the people who are 'illegal' are motivated and smart enough to get to where they are, and if given the opportunity, they can do something very rewarding for America. This is our only way of paying back. All you need to do now, America, is lift the cap for the returns of your investment to pour in.

Originally posted here.

Soccer, Immigrants, and America

OUTCASTS UNITED

A Refugee Soccer Team, an American Town

By Warren St. John

Spiegel & Grau. 307 pp. $24.95

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Lost in America - Found in a Field

April 18, 2009

by Steven Roberts

New York Times

...The foreign-born population of the United States stood at 12.6 percent in 2007, up from 7.9 percent in 1990. One in four Californians and one in five New Yorkers come from other countries. Immigration is closely related to race, and today four states (Hawaii, New Mexico, California and Texas) are majority non-white, and six others -- including Swaney's Georgia -- are close behind. As Jon Huntsman Jr., the Republican governor of Utah put it, "We're fundamentally staring down a demographic shift that we've never seen before in America."

That shift is not just about cassava powder; it's about political power. The entire electorate last year was 74 percent white, down from 88 percent in 1980. John McCain handily won white guys, 57 to 41, but three in five Asians and two in three Hispanics backed Obama. No wonder Karl Rove calls the Republican Party's anti-immigrant attitude "suicidal."

That death wish is not just political, it's economic. The xenophobes and protectionists who argue that immigrants cost jobs have it exactly wrong. Newcomers create jobs and they always have. A report by the Center for an Urban Future recently described immigrants as "entrepreneurial sparkplugs," and the reason is obvious. If they weren't risk-takers, they wouldn't be here. The single stupidest measure enacted since Obama became president was a provision in the stimulus package that makes it harder for companies that receive federal funds to hire employees holding temporary work permits called H-1B visas. One-third of Microsoft's patent applications last year were filed by immigrant innovators, and general counsel Brad Smith is right when he writes, "The future success of Microsoft and every other U.S. technology company depends on our ability to recruit the world's best talents."...link to complete article

Obama and Cuba

In Spanish:

Obama ofrece a Cuba “un nuevo comienzo,” Milenio.com, April 18, 2009

Texas Politicians Acting Like Gerbils (Republicans that is)

Can you believe it?  Texas Governor Rick Perry wants to secede from the Union.  He says that Texas reserved the right to do that when it became a state.

Now that Perry has said this and so many of his friends agree with him, the New York Times has decided they are just a bunch of gerbils.  With Perry's current actions, there should be no criticism of Obama's hesitance about wearing a U.S. Flag pin - Perry probably wears a flag pin when he tells everyone Texas should succeed -  an interesting message - Perry, a patriotic American who doesn't want to be American.*

--

"Twitters from Texas," New York Times, April 18, 2009

*no more criticism about Mexican flags either!  After all, Texas was part of Mexico long before it was a Republic.

Ex-valedictorian hopes for a DREAM come true

Benny is a perfect example of the type of people that must be integrated in our society...Please call your congressional representatives now!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Facing possible deportation, she turns to bill that would provide a path to citizenship

By MELISSA LUDWIGSAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
April 13, 2009, 6:31AM

SAN ANTONIO — In elementary school, Benita Veliz dreaded substitute teachers. Her classmates would act up and the sub would threaten to call the principal, a prospect so upsetting to Veliz that her regular teacher began placing her in a colleague’s classroom on days the teacher could not make it to class.
Imagine how Veliz, now 23, reacted this January when she was thrown into jail after a traffic stop because she is an unauthorized immigrant.
“To go from that to being in jail was surreal,” Veliz said.
Her parents brought her across the border when she was 8 years old. She worked doggedly in school, graduating valedictorian of her class at Jefferson High School in 2002 and later from St. Mary’s University. She works as a secretary for a church and dreams of going to law school.
However, if Congress doesn’t change immigration laws, Veliz most likely will be deported to Mexico. She has an immigration hearing scheduled in June.
Trying again
Like the estimated 65,000 unauthorized immigrants who graduate from U.S. high schools each year, Veliz has pinned her hopes for the future on the DREAM Act, a bill that would provide a path to citizenship for children brought here by their parents before age 16.
Under the act, immigrants must serve in the military or earn a college degree to stay permanently. Lawmakers reintroduced the bill last month.
With a Democratic-controlled Congress and a supportive president, advocates say the stars could align this year.
“The (presidential) election was a real game changer on this,” said Paco Fabian, a spokesman for America’s Voice, a national campaign for comprehensive immigration reform.
As in years past, the DREAM Act will face opposition from groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform. According to director Ira Mehlman, the act creates an incentive for parents to break the law. Children must pay for their parents’ actions, he said.
Giving up isn’t in Veliz’s vocabulary.
“You don’t have to accept that,” she said. “You can make a conscious decision to fight for justice.”
The consequences of Veliz’s status didn’t hit until high school, when her friends began getting drivers’ licenses and jobs at McDonald’s.
People have said she should have gone back to Mexico and applied for residency.
“Honestly, put yourself in my shoes,” Veliz said. “At 14, was I going to drive over to Mexico? And do what? Stay with who?”
Instead, Veliz worked feverishly to pack her résumé with achievements, from joining Future Farmers of America to performing in the class musical.
Claiming she’s not naturally smart, Veliz took the hardest classes Jefferson had to offer, getting to school early and staying late for extra tutoring.
A testament to her tenacity, Veliz did all this with a tumor growing in her nose, making her persistently sick with what doctors told her was allergies.
When doctors finally diagnosed and removed the benign tumor, Veliz realized she had been breathing through her mouth for five years.
Her hard work paid off with a full scholarship to St. Mary’s University. But after graduation, her options were limited.
In January, a police officer stopped her for rolling through a stop sign. Veliz didn’t have a driver’s license or residency documents, and the officer handcuffed her and turned her over to immigration officials.
Mixed feelings
Veliz assumed she would find a legal avenue to stay, but a lawyer quickly dashed her hopes. That’s when she decided to go public.
Her story appeared in a New York Times column, and her friends started a Facebook group called “Don’t Deport Benita Veliz.”
Several television stations picked up on the story and in a couple of weeks, she is scheduled to appear on a national Spanish language show called Al Punto.
Veliz has mixed feelings about the publicity. “It’s not about Benita Veliz getting deported,” she said. “It’s about kids all across the nation in this situation who are not free to speak out. It’s wasted potential.”
More than anything, Veliz just wants to work. And pay taxes.
“I want to give back,” Veliz said. “By deporting me, I will never have that opportunity.”

DREAMers becoming Doctors

A few weeks ago a frantic message was traveling through DREAMer websites. A DREAMer from California had been accepted to a private medical school in Texas. When the school found out she was undocumented, they rescinded her acceptance. Without the funds to support her hiring a good lawyer, she is in a hopeless situation. In addition, since she is in California and the school in Texas, things become even more complicated.

Other DREAMers have been able to enroll in graduate school at private universities and public medical schools. It is no surprise that a medical school in Dallas (a haven of xenophobia) is saying no to this DREAMer.

This DREAMer's predicament reminds us of the necessity of passing the DREAM Act.

Below is an article (with video) about another DREAMer in California who wants to be a doctor.

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Undocumented Students Struggle Toward College

'DREAM' Act Could Make College Degree Reality for Undocumented Students

By DESIREE ADIB

April 12, 2009 

ABC News

On a bright day on the campus of the University of California-Berkeley, 21-year-old Victor squints into the sun as another student comes up to him for a breezy chat.

Undocumented students fight financial battles, stigma to get higher education.

In most ways Victor is like any other college student. He has a 3.4 GPA and he majors in ethnic studies. He wants to go to medical school. His dream is to be a pediatrician one day...link to video and complete article

Thanks to nilc.org for letting us know about this report

Speed Bumps in Houston: an impossible quest

Six years ago I tried to get speed bumps on my street in Houston.  We live in what is called "East End"  - a poor neighborhood  full of factories and railroad tracks.  It is a great place to live, with old houses that have great front porches, nice people and a real sense of community.  It is also only a mile from my job.  Unfortunately, the City of Houston thinks the place doesn't deserve speed bumps or stop signs.

The cars drive by like they are in a NASCAR race.  There are kids in all the houses on the street, but people don't care.  Four accidents occurred there the first year after we bought the house.  Not too long ago a teenage boy in a SUV ran a stop sign and hit another SUV on the driver's side.  I never found out if the man died or not.  He was unconscious in his car and the Fired Dept. had to cut the car open to get him out.  The accident caused serious damage to my fence and my new orange tree.

The boy was so scared he ran away.

Even with photos and repeated calls to city offices there are still no speed bumps or stop signs on my street.  It is hard not to be angry whenever I go to more affluent neighborhoods in the city and see speed bumps everywhere.  

Now that a few years have passed, I have come to think of things creatively.  After Hurricane IKE some kids I know offered to bring me a few of the displaced stop signs, but my husband kept insisting I would get arrested for using city property without permission.

There is a big pot hole next to my house and I am so glad the city has not fixed it.  It slows down the traffic.  I have even wished for more holes, thinking that every hole could save a child's life.

Apparently a city in the UK has a similar idea.

see dreamacttexas post: "A Simple Thing Like Speed Bumps," March 10, 2007

see:  English Village May Use Pot Holes for Speed Control, NYT/AP, April 16, 2009

A Devilish Payment for French Kindness

The law discussed in the articles below is similar to the House Bill 4437, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in December 2005, when even the Catholic Church got involved, blasting Congress because those helping undocumented immigrants could be charged with a felony.
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see "Protests Against Solidarity Crime," The Connection, April 9, 2009

“Offence of solidarity” – Délit de Solidarité
a term used to describe a French law that criminalizes those assisting illegal immigrants.
Schott's Vocab Blog
New York Times
April 14, 2009

...According to The Connexion, “anyone who, by direct or indirect help, facilitates or tries to facilitate the entry, the circulation or the unlawful residence of a foreigner in France” is liable to a five-year prison sentence or a $39,000 fine...

In March, the A.P. reported that a 59-year-old volunteer had been arrested by French police and questioned for three hours after allowing illegal immigrants to recharge their cell phones in her home. Although the woman was not indicted, the A.P. said that the incident “exemplifies what humanitarian associations and others contend is a concerted effort to harass volunteers who provide a lifeline, or a simple kindness, to illegal aliens.”...link

Undocumented Immigrant's Child: Poverty and No Health Insurance

Undocumented immigrants are having lots of kids.  That is no surprise.  Especially since people can't go back and forth to their home countries like they used to.  

What seems to bother many people is that the kids born here are American citizens.  If it was a non-issue, the Washington Post wouldn't put it on the front of their web page.

It isn't surprising is that at least 25% of these kids don't have health insurance and 33% are living in poverty.  This shouldn't be a shock because our system makes it near impossible for working people to have health insurance for their kids - its got to be much harder for undocumented immigrants.  For one, the cost of insurance is sky high, nearly a thousand dollars a month.  In addition, many undocumented people are now working on a cash basis because of employer's concerns about ICE raids, which means no insurance for sure.

As for poverty, what can be expected if people are not able to drive.  That severely limits the possibility of a good job.  Most American cities do not have good mass transit.  In addition, "living in the shadows" is not conducive to having any kind of a career.

In Western society, being poor usually means that something is wrong with a person.  We rarely look past the immediate evidence.  We are blind to the larger issues behind immigrant poverty.  We think they are poor because something is wrong with them; that they are uneducated because they are not intelligent or they didn't want an education.  The truth is that poverty is about larger societal issues.  It is about the value of human beings and is it about our country, who doesn't think of much of having millions of poor children around (born of U.S. citizens or of immigrants).  If it really mattered to us, we would do much more to erase poverty in America.

As for immigrants, even with all the problems, the desire to have children never goes away.  Of course there will be children.  They are the hope of the future for many families.  They are the kids that will go to college, even though their parents cannot read or write.  They may not have health insurance, but they will eat better and live better than their parents.  Remember that many people who immigrate come from places where it has been impossible to have enough food to eat.

If you don't believe me, look on the web for photos of the shanty towns in Mexico City and Monterrey.  One look should convince you.

link to image

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Number of Children Born to Illegal Immigrants Grows Rapidly
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 14, 2009; 1:42 PM

The number of U.S.-citizen children born to illegal immigrants has dramatically increased over the past five years from 2.7 million in 2003 to 4 million in 2008, according to a study released today.

The report by the nonpartisan, Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center also found that more than a third of such children were in poverty in 2007, compared with about 18 percent of those born to either legal immigrants or U.S.-born parents. Similarly, one in four U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants went without health insurance in 2008, compared with 14 percent of those born to legal immigrants and 8 percent born to U.S.-born parents...

link to article

2 Major Unions Join Together to Work for Immigration

This is a major development for immigration reform:

Immigration Accord by Labor Boosts Obama Effort


By JULIA PRESTON and STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: April 13, 2009

The nation’s two major labor federations have agreed for the first time to join forces to support an overhaul of the immigration system, leaders of both organizations said on Monday. The accord could give President Obama significant support among unions as he revisits the stormy issue in the midst of the recession. link to complete article

Immigration, the Unions, and Obama

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New York Times - April 14, 2009
Editorial
Immigration Reform and Hard Times

The Obama administration said last week that it would begin a major push for immigration reform this year. The country’s two big labor federations just announced that they are joining forces to support that effort, which includes a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. That’s double good news.

The administration is saying that it will keep its promise to fix the broken system, even if it means pushing the hottest of hot buttons: legalization, the dreaded “amnesty” that sets the Republican right wing ablaze and makes many Democrats quiver.

We are also heartened that American labor is speaking with a united voice in hard times, rejecting the false claim that fixing the immigration system will somehow hurt American workers. Even in a bad economy — especially in a bad economy — getting undocumented immigrants on the right side of the law only makes sense.

Administration officials said President Obama planned to speak publicly about the issue next month and would convene working groups this summer, à la health care, to begin discussing future legislation. Immigrant advocates were ecstatic, though it is important to note that this was not a promise to move a bill, only to start the debate. Even that is not going to be easy. Reform was thwarted in the last two Congresses by obstructionist Republicans committed to the delusion that expelling 12 million people amounts to a realistic policy.

The country has suffered mightily in the meantime. American workers and businesses continue to be undercut by the underground economy. The economic potential of some of the country’s most industrious workers is thwarted. Working off the books — and living in constant fear of apprehension — they earn less, spend less, pay less in taxes and have little ability to report abuses or to improve their skills or job prospects.

The ingredients of reform are clear: legalization for the 12 million, to yield bumper crops of new citizens, to make it easier to weed out criminals and to end the fear and hopelessness of life in the shadows; sensible enforcement at the border that focuses resources on fighting crime, drugs and violence; a strengthened employment system that punishes businesses that exploit illegal labor; and a future flow of workers that is attuned to the economy’s needs and fully protects workers’ rights.

The last point has been a sticky one with some unions. The agreement between the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win — a rival federation that includes service employees, the Teamsters and carpenters — will center on a new approach to future immigration, a compromise in which an independent national commission calibrates the size of temporary-worker programs each year, based on conditions in labor markets. It may not be a perfect plan, but after years of vitriol, it’s encouraging to hear calmer voices outlining smart reform.

We expect to hear more from Mr. Obama soon. It will take courage to defend the wisdom and necessity of fixing the immigration system. It will take even more courage to engage in the serious fight to do so. It is what the country needs and what American voters elected Mr. Obama to do. link to NYT article

Microsoft Endorses the DREAM Act

From the blog -  "Microsoft on the Issues:  News perspectives and analysis on legal and polity issues"

Microsoft Letter to DREAM Act Sponsors

April 3, 2009

The Honorable Richard Durbin
United States Senate
309 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510


The Honorable Richard Lugar
United States Senate
306 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510


Dear Senator Durbin and Senator Lugar:

We are writing to express Microsoft’s strong support for your recent re-introduction of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (The "DREAM Act"). We applaud your efforts to ensure that America fully empowers – and reaps benefits from – bright students who are dedicated to education and hard work. To maintain its position of leadership in the global economy, America must be the locus of the world’s best minds. It is essential to our nation’s competitiveness and success to nurture the talent we have and to incorporate bright, hardworking students into the workforce to become the next generation of leaders in this country.

As you know, strengthening education is one of Microsoft’s highest priorities. Microsoft sees great synergy between the DREAM Act and Microsoft’s initiatives to support education and workforce training in the United States. The DREAM Act reinforces and protects America’s substantial investments in the education of its youth, and ensures that America will reap the benefits of those investments. The DREAM Act rewards those who place high value on education, on hard work, and on service to country.

Microsoft is putting its dedication to work through a host of initiatives, including:

* Through our Unlimited Potential Community Technology Skills program, in the US, we’ve invested $85 million in cash, software and training support to more than 4,500 community technology since 2003;
* Through our Partners in Learning program in the US, we have invested $35 million in resources and training in K-12, touching more than 2.3 million students and teachers to actively increase access to technology and improve its use in learning; and
* Through our recently launched Elevate America program we will offer 1 million learning vouchers for no cost that provide the skills needed for people of all ages who are preparing for job opportunities in today’s changing economy.

The overarching goal of all of these initiatives is to invest in and improve the education and skill levels so that America’s workforce can be the best in the world. This goal is frustrated when America loses that investment by turning the educated away when they are poised to enter the workforce – and when America is poised to reap the powerful benefits these bright individuals stand ready to offer.

Opening the door to the best intellectual resources our country can muster is essential to our future strength. Your introduction of the DREAM Act is an important step toward that goal, and an important sign of momentum toward the broader reforms that our country so urgently needs.


Sincerely,
Fred Humphries
Managing Director, U.S. Government Affairs
Microsoft Corporation

link

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If you see an article you really want to read and the link no longer works, you can obtain it through a library.  If you are student, you can find it through the newspaper databases  (Lexis-Nexis etc) at your university library.  If you are not a student, go to your public library - someone there can help you find it.

A soldier in Iraq part I

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After Basra, a fight for life: The story of a 'broken soldier' of the Iraq War
by Audrey Gilian
London Guardian - April 14, 2009
The electric pruners make light work of the bare cox's apple branches as David Bradley strips them back, preparing the orchard for a new season and the harvest to follow. The farmer cuts and thins out the trees but when he removes the chamois leather glove protecting his right hand, the loss of his index finger, ligaments and skin tissue is laid bare.

This is not the only lasting injury from the former British army major's time in Iraq. Sometimes, Bradley, 40, has to step out of the direct sunlight as his damaged iris no longer dilates and contracts in the way that it should.

The right side of his face is lightly peppered with black shrapnel marks but seeing him now on the family farm, it is hard to imagine that in the summer of 2004 he was so badly injured that doctors gave him only a 5% chance of survival.

His right hand and eye were shredded when his Warrior - an armoured infantry fighting vehicle used to carry troops - was hit by rocket-propelled grenades.

He was, he says, "blown up". In the four years that followed, the soldier would first have to fight to live, then fight to rebuild his broken body and then create a completely new life outside the army.

"As soon as the doctors say they can't operate on you any more you have a choice - stay in and do a desk job or leave. I left. It was the right thing for the army and for me. I am a soldier, I joined to command soldiers. With the injuries I have sustained I can't do that. I was medically discharged and suddenly became mister, not major, Bradley."

So, he and his wife Lara and his two children, Philippa, 10, and Alexander, eight, moved out of their military accommodation in Tidworth, Wiltshire, and returned to Bradley's family farm in Kent. There are times, he admits, when he wishes he was back with his company, which is currently in Iraq, preparing for the British withdrawal. But instead of men, the former major will spend his days this spring marshalling apples, pears, cherries and asparagus.

Sitting in the study of the farmhouse that once belonged to his grandparents, it's easy for Bradley to conjure the events and mood of Iraq five years ago just as it might be easy for many to forget just how dangerous it was in the country at that time.

By the summer, the Shia insurgency was beginning to sweep across Basra and southern Iraq and in the months to come crude, but deadly, improvised explosive devices would become the weapon of choice against British soldiers, tearing through ineffectual armoured plating on vehicles, killing and maiming scores of soldiers.

Bradley had been in the country since April and was commanding B Company, the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, a group of 116 men attached to the Cheshire Regiment. This was their first tour of Iraq. The company was based in the grounds of the Shatt al-Arab hotel in the northern part of Basra. Before the war, the art deco hotel had boasted a four-star rating and had been a favourite haunt for foreign businessmen who had come to the comparatively prosperous and cosmopolitan southern port... link to complete article

Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform

From the Immigration Policy Center

Experts Extol Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform
Data Shows Legalizing Immigrants Would Help Boost Income, Working Conditions, and Economy

April 13, 2009

Washington, DC - During an event hosted by the Immigration Policy Center (IPC), economic and labor experts affirmed the benefits of comprehensive immigration reform in the wake of a renewed commitment from both the White House and members of Congress to introducing immigration legislation this fall. Today's speakers asserted that now is the time to bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and level the playing field for all workers -- fair and square.

In conjunction with today's event, the IPC has released a wide-ranging review of academic and government data that shows what legalizing undocumented immigrants would mean for the U.S. economy. The data helps confirm today's overwhelming conclusion that comprehensive immigration reform which includes a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants would pay for itself in the form of increased wages, buying power, and tax contributions that would benefit all working people.

In addition to reducing the exorbitant cost associated with an "enforcement-only" approach to immigration, legalizing undocumented workers would eliminate the "trap door" that artificially suppresses wages and allow workers to compete fairly for the first time. Labor leader Esther Lopez (United Food and Commercial Workers Union) confirmed: "Comprehensive immigration reform is the only way we can level the playing field for all workers. By bringing people out of the shadows and by having legalization be part of a broader immigration reform, we can create an immigration system that works for the American worker. We can't, in this economy, leave 12 million undocumented workers out in the shadows."



Comprehensive immigration reform would also bring in critical new revenue by integrating more people into the economy as workers, taxpayers, and consumers. According to Dan Siciliano, Associate Dean at Stanford University, "We know, from experience and analysis, that a legalization program helps grow the economy. Being undocumented causes immigrants not to invest in themselves, in their community, or their skills. Enfranchised consumers who are part of the above ground economy are more invested consumers. They are more likely to invest extra time, money, and effort into their children and themselves."



David Dyssegaard Kallick, Senior Fellow at the Fiscal Policy Institute, also added "...people don't just vanish and imagine what would be involved in driving out 12 million undocumented immigrants. Mass deportation isn't realistic. What is realistic is making sure immigrants work in the above-ground economy. Immigration reform isn't about being pro-immigrant or anti-immigrant -- it's about having an immigration system that functions and addresses what I think everyone recognizes as a broken system."

During this time of economic hardship, Americans are seeking real solutions to our nation's problems. There is no better place to start than protecting our workers, raising wages, and getting our economy moving again with immigration reform.

Google Spends $20 million on immigration issues

 

Google's Immigration Fixer

by Matt Richtel

April 13, 2009

New York Times

My article in Sunday’s New York Times on immigration and the tech industry left out a central character, Google’s immigration fixer. Her name is Christine Doyle and her job is to help Google employees who are seeking visas, or caught in limbo with the U.S. government, or facing other problems...complete article

DREAM Act Action in Houston April 15th

What: DREAM ACT Action in Houston

When: Wednesday April 15th

Time: 9:30 a.m.

Where: Press conference to be held at the CRECEN Office 6601 Hillcroft Ste. 125 Houston, TX 77081. After the press conference we will visit our local Congressional Representatives.

Please call Cesar Espinoza if you have any questions (713) 459-8923

This Wednesday April 15th we will be holding a day of action for the DREAM Act. We will meet for a press conference with all of the DREAM Act supporters and then from there we will caravan to our Representatives and Senators offices and lobby on behalf of the DREAM Act. It is during this crucial stage that we need your help. Unity is crucial. We must have the community's support. It is our moral obligation to pass the DREAM Act, for the stability of our state, country, but more importantly, the stability of millions of families and for what is right. I ask you to join us on Wednesday April 15th so that as one we can say YES to the DREAM Act and we can share our knowledge and passion for this Act so that we may make the DREAMs of millions of students a reality. All people and members of All organizations and DREAM Act supporters are invited!

For those who cannot attend, we will send out another e-mail with the e-mail, fax, and phone numbers of our Representatives and Senators. As we visit their offices you can be contacting them in support of the DREAM ACT.

Cesar Espinoza

We need to revisit immigration GLOBALLY, some things are just NOT RIGHT!

Watching these images really wrenches anybody's heart, it does not matter who you are. Some things are not right, separating children from their parents is one of them.

When are we going to get past our pride and understand?

The Real Melquiades

The Mexican film director, Guillermo Arriaga, who produced "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" titled the film after a real Melquiades Estrada.  I know it was an honor, but I would find it very uncomfortable for a movie to named after me when the main character was a dead man whose body was dragged across Mexico.

While Arriaga is very sympathetic to the family, I guess he isn't aware that the term "illegal" is offensive.  Either that or the NYT told him he had to use the word.

Either way.  Arriaga writes an op-ed in the New York Times about the Estrada family and all they have gone through because of immigration.  It's worth reading.

"My friends the illegal immigrants," New York Times, April 10, 2009

Obama and Mexico

Obama is meeting with Mexican President Calderon this week.  He will also be attending the meeting of the Fifth Summit of the Americas.  There is hope he will discuss U.S. immigration policy and the Cuban Embargo.

see "Obama seeks new relationship with Latin America," Washington Post/Reuters, April 12, 2009

Americans Detained by Mistake

The U.S. citizens listed below had their stories published by an AP article in today's Miami Herald:


HUGO ALVARADO JR., 22
Tulsa, Okla.

JUAN MANUEL CARRILLO, JR., 19
Mount Pleasant, Texas

RMG CASTRO, 6 (full name not used because citizen is a child)
Corpus Christi, Texas

KENRICK FONCETTE, 38
Brooklyn, New York

HEIDY HAZEL BAIRES LARIOS, 32
Brownsville, Texas

LEONARD PARRISH, 52
Houston, Texas

DUARNIS PEREZ, 36
San Antonio, Texas

OMAR JORGE PEREZ MORENO, 23
South Bend, Wash.

ALICIA RODRIGUEZ, 30
Mansfield, Texas

JOSE MANUEL GONZALEZ VILLAVICENCIO, 28
Gresham, Ore.

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Profiles of citizens detained or deported

Miami Herald/AP

April 12, 2009

Iraq Six Years After the U.S. Destroyed It

link to image

Nir Rosen has spent most of the last six years in Iraq.  This long article is worth reading.  He tells us about things we don't normally hear or pay attention to.

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The Gathering Storm
The National in Abu Dhabi

by Nir Rosen

* Last Updated: April 10. 2009 3:06PM UAE / April 10. 2009 11:06AM GMT

Six years to the day since the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad, the war that has dominated American politics for half a decade and upturned an entire regional order is being not-so-gently forced from centre stage. Iraq specialists at the National Security Council in Washington have hung signs on their office doors declaring that theirs is now “the good war”; the Obama administration is eager to declare victory in Iraq and shift its attention to the long-neglected conflict in Afghanistan.

It is difficult to predict what will occur as the Americans reduce their troop numbers, but few Iraqis feel optimistic, despite the recent reduction in violence: whatever comes next, it is unlikely that Iraq will recover quickly from six years of chaos and bloodshed.

Iraq’s economy remains in tatters. The central government has bought a provisional peace by placing hundreds of thousands of military-age men on its payroll. But the drop in oil prices has forced the state to slash its budget at a time when it is almost the only source of employment.

The oil sector, still Iraq’s most significant industry, is plagued by a rotting infrastructure. Pipelines in Basra are being kept together by “duct tape and spit”, according to one concerned American official. “They can burst at any minute.” Most Iraqis today might say much the same about their country. They are grateful for the temporary respite from extreme violence, but certain it will not take much to reignite the flames.

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I have spent most of the past six years inside Iraq, but when I returned to Baghdad last month the city had unquestionably changed. The random violence that once took anyone and everyone as its target has subsided and conspicuous displays of wealth, unthinkable a year ago, are everywhere. Baghdad’s roads are full of Hummer H3s, 4x4s and other expensive and large vehicles that cost tens of thousands of dollars in cash. New restaurants have opened, expensive eateries that cater to a new elite – or one that has been in hiding. The girls at Baghdad’s universities are dressing more fashionably than ever before, while young men have adopted the trendy styles common in Lebanon...complete article

If you are undocumented, don't run a red light in Prince William County

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Arrest Data Add Fuel to Debate on Illegal Residents
Most Pr. William Cases for Minor Crimes
A Contrast in Crime Statistics

By Jonathan Mummolo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 12, 2009; Page C01

About 2 percent of the people charged with major violent crimes in Prince William County last year were illegal immigrants, but they were arrested for a larger portion of secondary offenses, according to newly released statistics and a Washington Post analysis that offer the first comprehensive look at criminal activity since the county implemented its controversial anti-illegal immigration measures...

...George E. Tita, an associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine, said the charges against illegal immigrants are, in part, due to their circumstance. They can't get driver's licenses and often can't get legitimate work, so arrests for prostitution and driving without a license are to be expected, he said.

"If you can't find a legitimate job, you're going to enter the underground economy," Tita said. "It's really easy to create some sort of moral panic or demonize some sort of group when you have a couple of high-profile murders. . . . . Illegal aliens are like the rest of us in the sense that there's a distribution. . . . There's a lot of good people, and then there are some people that are not so good." - link to complete article

U.S. Immigration Policy Does Not Support Marriage

There is a graduate student at the University of Houston that is admired by many people, including professors. He immigrated from Mexico years ago and is now an American citizen. In 2005 he married a teacher in Monterrey. She has not been able to immigrate. Now she cannot even obtain a visa to visit him, even though they have a child who is an American citizen.

He is writing his dissertation now. Every few weeks he returns to Monterrey to see his wife and child. Writing a dissertation is really hard, especially when you have a baby who is 500 miles away and living in another country.

The following article is about a Harvard educated engineer whose wife, who is from India, cannot immigrate to the U.S. - so the engineer who works for Google, lives in Toronto. Why is Canada so much more open than the U.S.? Why can't the U.S. appreciate one of the inventors of Facebook and let his wife come here?

Why can't the graduate student at UH complete his PhD and live with his wife and baby here in Houston while he completes his studies? Why can't the Google engineer bring his wife to Mountainview, CA?

Bush and Cheney may be living peacefully somewhere out of sight, but they (and their Republican colleagues) left a big mess behind.

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April 12, 2009

Tech Recruiting Clashes with Immigration Rules
By MATT RICHTEL

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Where’s Sanjay?

The question comes from one of dozens of engineers around a crowded conference table at Google. They have gathered to discuss how to build easy-to-use maps that could turn hundreds of millions of mobile phones into digital Sherpas — guiding travelers to businesses, restaurants and landmarks.

“His plane gets in at 9:30,” the group’s manager responds.

Google is based here in Silicon Valley. But Sanjay G. Mavinkurve, one of the key engineers on this project, is not.

Mr. Mavinkurve, a 28-year-old Indian immigrant who helped lay the foundation for Facebook while a student at Harvard, instead works out of a Google sales office in Toronto, a lone engineer among marketers.

He has a visa to work in the United States, but his wife, Samvita Padukone, also born in India, does not. So he moved to Canada.

“Every American I’ve talked to says: ‘Dude, it’s ridiculous that we’re not doing everything we can to keep you in the country. We need people like you!’ ” he said.

“The people of America get it,” he added. “And in a matter of time, I think current lawmakers are going to realize how dumb they’re being.”

Immigrants like Mr. Mavinkurve are the lifeblood of Google and Silicon Valley, where half the engineers were born overseas, up from 10 percent in 1970. Google and other big companies say the Chinese, Indian, Russian and other immigrant technologists have transformed the industry, creating wealth and jobs.

Just over half the companies founded in Silicon Valley from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s had founders born abroad, according to Vivek Wadhwa, an immigration scholar working at Duke and Harvard.

The foreign-born elite dating back even further includes Andrew S. Grove, the Hungarian-born co-founder of Intel; Jerry Yang, the Chinese-born co-founder of Yahoo; Vinod Khosla of India and Andreas von Bechtolsheim of Germany, the co-founders of Sun Microsystems; and Google’s Russian-born co-founder, Sergey Brin.

But technology executives say that byzantine and increasingly restrictive visa and immigration rules have imperiled their ability to hire more of the world’s best engineers.

While it could be said that Mr. Mavinkurve’s case is one of a self-entitled immigrant refusing to live in the United States because his wife would not be able to work, he exemplifies how immigration policies can chase away a potential entrepreneur who aspires to create wealth and jobs here... link to complete article

Diabetes and your brain

The UK considers itself in a diabetes epidemic.  The U.S. is already there, but by looking at all fast food places around, you would think we don't care.

Just remember, if you are a guy, you can become impotent, and now it seems they have found that not controlling your diabetes can lead to lower brain functioning...

How do we prevent diabetes?  eat better - less meat (or no meat), fewer dairy products, fewer sweets, more exercise -  

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Failure to control type 2 diabetes may have a long-term impact on the brain, research has suggested.

BBC World News -  April 11, 2009

Severe hypoglycaemic episodes - hypos - occur when blood sugar levels drop dangerously low.

A University of Edinburgh team found they may lead to poorer memory and diminished brain power.

The study, based on 1,066 people with type 2 diabetes aged between 60 and 75, was presented at a conference of the charity Diabetes UK.

HYPOGLYCAEMIA

Hypoglycaemia is caused by a lack of sugar (glucose) reaching the brain, which uses it as fuel

Symptoms can include sweating, fatigue, hunger, feeling dizzy, feeling weak, a higher heart rate than usual and blurred vision

More severe episodes can led to temporary loss of consciousness, convulsions and coma

The volunteers completed seven tests assessing mental abilities such as memory, logic and concentration.

The 113 people who had previously experienced severe hypos scored lower than the rest of the group.

They performed poorly in tests of their general mental ability, and vocabulary...link to complete article

Taking on Netanyahu

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April 9, 2009
On the White House
With ‘Annapolis,’ a Warning to Israel

New York Times
By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON—Watchers of Middle East politics were quick to take note of a line in President Obama’s address before the Turkish Parliament on Monday in Ankara, in which he mentioned “Annapolis.”

By bringing up the word, Mr. Obama was sending a warning to the government of new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that reneging on the goals outlined during the Annapolis Middle East peace conference in 2007 would put Mr. Netanyahu on the wrong foot with the Obama administration.

The issue sprouted last week when Israel’s hawkish new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said that agreements reached at the American-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Md., have “no validity.” Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament.”

The aim of the Annapolis process, as it became known, was to agree on the framework for a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008, a goal which was never reached.

Mr. Obama had not referred to the Annapolis conference in any of his major public remarks on Mideast peace since he took office.

But there he was on Monday, directly rebutting Mr. Lieberman’s comments in his most high-profile address about America’s relationship with the Muslim world, before Turkish legislators. He would push for a two-state solution, Mr. Obama said, despite the view of many foreign policy experts that such a goal will be even more difficult to reach because of the makeup of the new Israeli government under Mr. Netanyahu, not to mention the fractured state of internal Palestinian politics.

“Let me be clear: the United States strongly supports the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security,” Mr. Obama said. “That is a goal that the parties agreed to in the road map and at Annapolis. That is a goal that I will actively pursue as president.” The road map refers to a 2003 outline of steps toward a peace agreement.

Asked why Mr. Obama suddenly decided to start tossing the word “Annapolis” around, Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, did not elaborate much, apparently deciding to let his boss’s statement speak for itself. “I think the president is speaking directly about his views and his hopes for relations among Israelis and Palestinians, as well as his hopes for a broader Arab-Israeli peace,” Mr. McDonough said.

But privately, several administration officials and Middle East experts said that Mr. Obama is girding for a protracted showdown with the new Israeli government over the pursuit of Palestinian statehood...link to complete article

New Congressional Sponsors for DREAM Act 2009

From the National Immigration Law Center:

As of April 8, 2009

NEW HOUSE COSPONSORS: NEW SENATE COSPONSORS:
Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (NY-5) Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
Rep. Lois Capps (CA-23) Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Rep. Michael Capuano (MA-8) Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
Rep. Eliot Engel (NY-17) Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Rep. Sam Farr (CA-17) Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand (D-NY)
Rep. Bob Filner (CA-51) Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Rep. Charles Gonzalez (TX-20) Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)
Rep. Raul Grijalva (AZ-7) Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (TX-15) Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (NY-4) Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Rep. Linda Sanchez (CA-39)


Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)
Chairman of Immigration Subcommittee in the Senate
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

* Note: Both Senators from the following states CT, CA, MA, FL and NY have already cosponsored the DREAM Act.

Obama Finally Makes a Public Statement on Immigration Reform

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Obama to Push Immigration Reform Bill Despite Risks
By JULIA PRESTON
Published: April 8, 2009 - New York Times

While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.

The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation.

Mr. Obama will frame the new effort — likely to rouse passions on all sides of the highly divisive issue — as “policy reform that controls immigration and makes it an orderly system,” said the official, Cecilia Muñoz, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs in the White House.

Mr. Obama plans to speak publicly about the issue in May, administration officials said, and over the summer he will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration groups, to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall. link to complete article

"Obama to Attack Immigration Reform this Year: Report," Washington Post/Reuters, April 9, 2009

UK Obesity Increases by 48% in 3 years

This is not just a UK problem, it is a Western problem - Europe, the U.S. and every country influenced by the American lifestyle. If you see a McDonald's nearby, you know there is trouble.

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NHS [UK National Health Service] trusts see spending on obesity rise seven-fold in three years

London Guardian

April 9, 2009
Obesity data collated by NHS shows high demand in many trusts for stomach surgery and gastric bypasses

Many NHS trusts have seen spending on obesity increase more than seven-fold in just three years, data released today suggests.

High demand for stomach surgery for obese patients as well as the cost of specialist equipment – such as larger examination couches – means the costs to primary care trusts (PCTs) have shot up.

The new statistics come after official figures published in February revealed that weight-loss stomach surgery for obesity has risen 40% in a year.

The data, from the NHS information centre, showed there were 2,724 hospital admissions in 2007-08 for bariatric surgery, which includes stomach stapling and gastric bypasses.

Overall, hospital admissions for obesity also increased, reaching 5,018 in 2007-08, a 30% rise on 2006-07 and almost a seven-fold increase on 1996-97.

Today's data, obtained from 60 PCTs by GP newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act, showed 48% were now treating more patients for obesity than three years ago. link to complete article

The Tragic Mistakes ICE Has Made

This is a Los Angeles Times article

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-citizen9-2009apr09,0,3056253.story?page=2
From the Los Angeles Times

U.S. citizens caught up in immigration sweeps
The detentions, which in some cases have nearly led to the deportation of citizens or legal residents, are drawing increased attention.
By Andrew Becker and Patrick J. McDonnell

April 9, 2009

Reporting from Tacoma, Wash., and Los Angeles — Rennison Vern Castillo thought his legal troubles were nearly over at the end of a jail stay for harassing his ex-girlfriend. But then a U.S. immigration hold order blocked his release.

"They think you're here illegally," a jailhouse guard said to him.

Castillo, mystified, insisted it was all a mistake. Though born in Belize, he had come of age in South Los Angeles, spoke fluent English, served a stint in the Army and had become an American citizen about seven years earlier.

He had some legal problems, but being in the country unlawfully was not one of them. Castillo said he wasn't worried -- not until he was shackled and transferred to a federal detention center. He spent months in custody before an appeals panel blocked his deportation and an immigration judge finally ordered Castillo set free.

Although his case is an extreme example, mistaken detentions are drawing increased attention as immigration officials mount workplace roundups and jailhouse sweeps in search of undocumented immigrants.

Immigration raids of factories and other work sites often result in at least a short-term detention of lawful residents and even citizens, as agents seal targeted businesses and grill workers about their status.

Officials in Washington said last month that the Obama administration was expected to rein in the controversial workplace raids -- shifting enforcement emphasis to target employers rather than workers. Immigrant advocates have long pushed for such a change, while others say easing workplace enforcement will encourage illegal immigration.

Castillo is one of many citizens and legal residents held for suspected immigration violations -- some for a few hours, some for much longer. No agency tracks such incidents, so statistical totals are not available.

Officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement downplay the problem.

"ICE does not detain United States citizens," said spokesman Richard Rocha, adding that agents thoroughly investigated people's claims of citizenship. "ICE only processes an individual for removal when all available facts indicate that the person is an alien."

He declined to comment on Castillo's case or others, citing privacy concerns or pending lawsuits.

The surge in ICE workplace actions during the Bush administration spawned fierce complaints from employees caught up in dragnets at factories, slaughterhouses and poultry farms.

Mike Graves, a two-decade veteran of the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, said he was handcuffed and held for eight hours in December 2006 when ICE agents raided Swift plants throughout the heartland.

"My government treated me like a criminal, and I didn't do anything wrong," said Graves, a native of Iowa.

An ICE raid last year at a Van Nuys printer cartridge manufacturer, Micro Solutions Enterprises, generated wrongful-arrest claims from more than 100 citizens, said Peter Schey, chief lawyer at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles. All were held for two to three hours before being released, Schey said.

Americans seldom carry proof of their legal status, which can be a factor in the confusion about detainees' citizenship. There is no comprehensive database or list of all citizens for agents to check.

Official investigations may miss crucial documents such as birth certificates and naturalization papers. In some cases, names have been jumbled or misfiled and records lost. Confused detainees have signed their own removal orders. Some in custody may even be unaware of their citizenship or unable to prove it without a lawyer's help.

Unlike suspects in criminal matters, however, immigration detainees have no right to government-appointed counsel -- and, in some cases, have no access to paid lawyers. Fast-track deportation procedures enacted by Congress in recent years also limit court review once the expulsion process is underway.

In border regions like Southern California, residents on both sides of the international boundary have for generations moved back and forth without regard for passports, status or birth certificates. Many U.S. citizens by birth or parentage have no proof of their status.

Frank Ponce de Leon, a native of Mexico who lives in La Puente, got out of ICE custody Dec. 31 after spending almost three months locked up -- all the while insisting he was a citizen. The longtime California resident had never sought citizenship because he was the son of an American-born parent. His father was a New Mexico native and U.S. serviceman during World War II.

"I knew they couldn't hold me forever, and sooner or later they would see it my way because I had every right," said Ponce de Leon, 47, whose five California-born children include a daughter, Deanne, 22, who served in Iraq as an Army nurse.

On occasion, the uncertainty can lead to mistaken deportation, as was the case with Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen living in Lancaster.

U.S. immigration officials shipped Guzman to Tijuana in May 2007 from the Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles, where he was being held on a misdemeanor trespassing charge. The Los Angeles native, then 29, spent three months rummaging for food in dumps and sleeping in the Mexican borderlands as his desperate mother, a fast-food cook, searched for him in hospitals, shelters, jails and morgues, his family said.

Eventually Guzman, a cement finisher with limited Spanish and a second-grade reading ability, was reunited with his family in the border town of Calexico.

The Guzman case sparked Washington hearings at which immigration authorities were chastised by Congress members and accused of "stunning incompetence." ICE officials called the case an aberration and vowed to review all citizenship claims before anyone was detained or deported.

Out of more than 1 million detentions, ICE officials say, Guzman was the only citizen known to have been shipped out of the country. But others dispute that claim.

Rachel E. Rosenbloom, supervising attorney at Boston College's Post-Deportation Human Rights Project, cited at least eight cases of wrongly deported citizens and said she expected the number was substantially higher.

One such case, detailed in an upcoming report by Rosenbloom's group, is the curious saga of Duarnis Perez. He is a native of the Dominican Republic who became a U.S. citizen at 15 when his mother was naturalized. But he didn't know citizenship had been conferred on him as well. He assumed he was illegal, and so did everyone else.

Perez was deported and subsequently arrested trying to sneak back into the United States from Canada. He spent almost five years in prison for unlawful reentry. It was only upon his release in 2004 that an ICE official reviewed his file and informed Perez that he had been a citizen all along.

In Castillo's case, he was an infant when his mother left Belize and sought work in Los Angeles. She later became a nurse and sent for her son. Castillo attended elementary school in South L.A. and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1996. He became a naturalized citizen in 1998. He joined the Army and served in Korea, then was posted to Ft. Lewis, Wash. He was honorably discharged in 2003.

After domestic disputes with a girlfriend, he was convicted in 2005 of felony harassment and violating a no-contact order, and was sent to Pierce County Jail in Washington state for eight months. He was in a holding area with inmates about to be released when a corrections officer held him back.

Castillo was handcuffed and whisked off in a van to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. A federal officer said records showed he was an illegal immigrant.

"Your records are wrong," Castillo said he replied. He said he told the officer that he was a citizen but that his naturalization certificate had never arrived. It was sent to the wrong address, he later learned.

Castillo went before an immigration judge, who appeared via video conference, a common procedure in the crowded immigration court system. Again, he claimed citizenship. The judge didn't believe him. He was ordered deported on Jan. 24, 2006.

The nonprofit Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a legal advocacy center based in Seattle, provided a lawyer to handle Castillo's appeal. The lawyer searched for Castillo's naturalization documents and records of his military service.

The Board of Immigration Appeals blocked Castillo's deportation, noting proof of his military service. A month later, he was released without further explanation. It turned out Castillo was the victim of a paperwork mix-up: His name was spelled wrong in immigration records. And he had been assigned more than one "alien number," causing further confusion.

Castillo, now 31, is still incredulous.

"If it had taken 30 days to figure it out, I wouldn't be upset. But seven months?" he said in an interview.

He, like Guzman and others with similar experiences, has filed suit against the ICE.

"I want them to recognize they made a mistake," Castillo said. "Something needs to change. If it can happen to me, it's going to happen to someone else."

patrick.mcdonnell@ latimes.com
abecker@cironline.org

This story was reported and written in collaboration with the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, a nonprofit news organization. Andrew Becker is a CIR staff reporter. Patrick J. McDonnell is a Times staff writer.

Now he's for the DREAM Act: Martinez changed his mind

Senator Mel Martinez is one of the co-sponsors of DREAM Act 2009.  What a different a couple of years (and a new presidential administration) makes.  He was against the DREAM Act in 2007 - but he feels differently this time.

see dreamacttexas post "Senator Mel Martinez Against the DREAM Act," September 17, 2007

ICE mistakenly goes for one of its own

In a leftover from the Bush Administration Wild West, ICE made a mistake and stormed into the home of one of their own - thinking an undocumented person was living in the house.  

They got the address wrong.  They looked for 26 St., but the actual address was 26 Place. The person they went for was an ICE officer.  Maybe it happened because this is Arizona - which continues to be immigration no-mans land since Sheriff Arapaio is still not under control.

The guys who made the mistake are being sued - and one undocumented immigrant was kept from deportation.

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Immigration Raid at Customs Officer’s Home Leads to Suit

By SOLOMON MOORE
New York Times - Published: April 8, 2009

James and Sheila Slaughter said that when they answered the door of their home in San Luis, Ariz., on a July afternoon last year, they were surprised to find five armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers strapped into bulky bulletproof vests accusing them of harboring an illegal immigrant....The couple said they complied, and the officers prepared to search their home. Mr. Slaughter, a six-foot, 285-pound former Marine, said he then told them, “Look fellas, do you guys realize that I’m a U.S. Customs K-9 officer at the San Luis land port?”

“The lead officer’s eyes got about as big and round as silver dollars, and the three guys who were standing just inside the door went straight outside,” said Mr. Slaughter...  link to complete article

"Racism" - the ugly word

Funny how the word "racist" gets people so excited.  Its one thing people have real trouble with.  Especially people who are not of color (i.e. white people, anglos, WASPS, ethnic whites, etc).  Sometimes you don't even have to say the word itself, and people get crazy- if they think you mean that they are racists - they get angry and want you to take it back.

Why is that?  Is the anger about fear?  Many times people who are accused of being racist say their accuser is "enraged" or "made them fearful."  A number of people who have been "accused" tell me they didn't even raise their voice.  But people react anyway.

Its a very old story... going back over 200 years...  the Haitian Revolution (in the Caribbean on a French colony) happened when thousands of slaves revolted and killed thousands of white plantation owners.  The story traveled all over the western world and terrified people.  Diaries, novels, newspapers and other printed text are testaments to how people were so afraid.  Even Stephen F. Austin said it could happen in Texas if our slave population got too big.*  

The fear continues.  People believe that groups who have been oppressed for a long time can turn around and fight back  and bad things can happen.  Its in the deep recess of our memory - and hasn't gone away.  

The fear does something else.  It also makes us think that what we do is OK.  All in making sure things stay "safe" - like the officer in Bellaire, TX  who shot the young man in front of his own home (not the officer's home).   You can be so concerned with "safety" that you do things that can surely be called "racist," but think you are really a reasonable person who doesn't hate anybody.  Maybe someday Officer Jeffrey Cotton will figure out what he did.  It could take him a really long time.

see "Bellaire Officer not a Racist, Spokesman Says," Houston Chronicle/AP, April 8, 2009

*I wrote about this in my book Cemeteries of Ambivalent Desire:  Unearthing Deep South Narratives from a Texas Graveyard.

Could Obama say no to Israel?

Last update - 00:46 09/04/2009
Obama team readying for confrontation with Netanyahu
By Aluf Benn

Haaretz.com

In an unprecedented move, the Obama administration is readying for a possible confrontation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by briefing Democratic congressmen on the peace process and the positions of the new government in Israel regarding a two-state solution.

The Obama administration is expecting a clash with Netanyahu over his refusal to support the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

In recent weeks, American officials have briefed senior Democratic congressmen and prepared the ground for the possibility of disagreements with Israel over the peace process, according to information recently received. The administration's efforts are focused on President Barack Obama's Democratic Party, which now holds a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The preemptive briefing is meant to foil the possibility that Netanyahu may try to bypass the administration by rallying support in Congress.

The message that administration officials have relayed to the congressmen is that President Obama is committed to the security of Israel and intends to continue the military assistance agreement that was signed by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

However, Obama considers the two-state solution central to his Middle East policy, as he reiterated during a speech in Turkey on Monday, and he intends to ask that Netanyahu fulfill all the commitments made by previous governments in Israel: accepting the principle of a Palestinian state; freezing settlement activity; evacuating illegal outposts; and providing economic and security assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

Administration officials made it clear to congressmen that the Palestinians will also be required to fulfill their obligations in line with the road map and the Annapolis process.

According to the reports received in Israel, the U.S. administration is not concerned about recent statements by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman calling for a rejection of the Annapolis process or overtures made by Netanyahu during the election campaign.

U.S. officials say they will wait and hear Netanyahu's position from the prime minister himself when he meets Obama in Washington next month.

No hurry to play mediator

The Obama administration is also not opposed to the resumption of negotiations between Israel and Syria but will insist that the Syrian track not be used in Jerusalem as a way of evading obligations undertaken by Israel as part of the Annapolis process.

Obama is in no hurry to bring the U.S. in as lead mediator between Israel and Syria. American involvement, which both Israel and Syria consider essential for substantive progress, will remain conditional on progress in the dialogue between Washington and Damascus.

Regarding Iran, the Obama administration is preparing the ground for a policy distinguishing between Iran's right to have nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment done under international supervision, and the actual building of a nuclear weapon...link

A college dream course

Well at least its a dream for me.  Seventeen years ago I began studying photography.  It turned out that I could actually take decent photographs (see mythologyandreality.blogspot.com).  My professor was amazed at what I could do with such little preparation.  Now that I've written a couple of books I think about it sometimes and wonder to myself "Renaissance Woman!" - well maybe not that much, but certainly not what I expected growing up in Rosenberg Texas in the 1950s and 1960s.

When I began my graduate program in Cultural Anthropology at Rice University I thought I would incorporate my photography into my research.  Ultimately I did that.  My two books have lots of photos of my field work.  But I hadn't found a way to fit it into college teaching, since I am not in an art department.

Thanks to the open-mindedness of University of Houston administrators I am now going to teach a course that a few years ago would have been a dream.  A photography course! with stories!  Its perfect -- because my research is about "stories" - (Mexico, Texas, the Virgin, Immigration, Crypto-Jews, Spain) -  so the students are going to take pictures and write stories about their pictures (in the style John Berger describes in Another Way of Telling).

This blog is not about ourselves, its about DREAMers, the world, and how to try and make things better.  However, I think that once in a while it is OK to do something different.  So here is a flier for my course that will be taught at the University of Houston in fall 2009.  

Photography

Fall 2009

University of Houston

World Cultures & Literatures 4396 

Visual Stories: the Local and the Global

5:30 -7:00 Tuesdays with Dr. Marie-Theresa Hernandez

An exciting new hybrid course where UH non-art majors spend the semester learning about the globalization of Houston.  Students will chose a country or region and photograph people from that area, telling stories with images and words.  They will take photos and write text and upload a computerized photographic essay that will be posted on a UH linked web site. Checkout uh.edu for more information on registering as a student at the University of Houston.* Lots of good things are happening there.

thank you to Kent PhotographyUK for letting us use this image

*UH didn't ask me to do this and is not paying me either.  As we have mentioned before, dreamacttexas is not about money.

DREAM Act Symposium

TX DREAM Coalition

The Texas DREAM Coalition cordially invites you to the DREAM Act Symposium - Challenge & Opportunities: Conversation about Immigration, Education and Public Policy

When: April 9, 2009 - 8am-5pm
Where: Southern Methodist Univ, Hughes-Trigg Student Center, Dallas, TX

The Symposium will bring academics, students, educators, business leaders, proponents, policy makers, opponents together to dialogue on What is the economic and public policy impact of having well-trained graduates unable to work? What is a suitable blueprint for immigration reform in the Obama Administration?

Immigration Expert, Frank Sherry, Founder of America's Voice, a national immigration policy and advocacy organization, is the Keynote Speaker.

To register, email your name, school/title, email address, phone number and contact information to fsalazar@smu.edu. Registration fee $10 for profes- sionals taken at the door. Lunch provided.

The Pressure to use Botox - Part I

link to image

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Age shall not wither them  

Unlined foreheads, bagless eyes, supple skin: today's celebrities have stopped ageing. Some admit to treatments such as Botox - but many deny it. But why do women in the public eye feel they cannot age - and what pressure does it put on ordinary people? Kira Cochrane reports

by Kira Cochrane - The London Guardian, Tuesday 7 April 2009

A couple of months ago, a photograph was hungrily circulated around gossip magazines and websites, and at a glance you would have had trouble explaining why. It showed an ordinary-looking woman in her mid-40s, out shopping in California, her specs on, cardigan buttoned. The clue was in the picture of Madonna that ran beside it. The anonymous woman was identified as the singer's younger sister, Melanie Henry, and readers were encouraged to compare and contrast.

The difference was striking. Because while Henry, snapped unawares, looked as good as any woman could hope, Madonna seemed to have been beamed from another planet. Where Henry had the natural features of middle-age - mild creases beside her nose and beneath her eyes, for instance - Madonna's face was eerily unlined, skin glowing, cheeks conspicuously plump. It's not so much that, at 50, she looked much younger than her sister, as that she had no signs of age whatsoever. Not a crinkle on her brow, crow's-feet by her eyes, or the slightest sag to her cheeks.

Of course, Madonna isn't the only famous woman to look, quite literally, ageless. Over the last 10 years, the public face of ageing seems to have changed completely, and many of the world's most prominent women hardly seem to grow older at all. It's not so much that they always look young, exactly, or that they have the tightly pulled skin of traditional facelifts. But they do look completely different to their non-famous peers. Where other women's lips recede, theirs stay mysteriously plump. Where others have laughter lines, they remain undimpled. And when describing how they stay so taut, the explanation is generally this. They moisturise. They drink water. They work out. They eat well. They avoid the sun. They don't smoke. Which is enough to make the average healthy-living woman wince while inspecting her own wrinkles.

Occasionally someone does break rank, and admits to having had treatments - in the past. Last week Kylie Minogue ended speculation when she admitted to UK Elle magazine that, "I've tried Botox ... But I'm preferring to be a lot more natural these days." Minogue added that she's "definitely not one of those people who says, 'You shouldn't do this' ... Everyone individually can do what they want."

Geri Halliwell says a similar thing in the latest edition of Red magazine ("I had some [Botox] squirted into my forehead and it gave me a headache"), echoing the comments of Jennifer Aniston earlier this year, who said she had "tried Botox once and it was really not good for me. I felt like I had a weight on my head." Aniston's former Friends co-star, Courteney Cox, told US Marie Claire magazine late last year that, "I went to this doctor once, and he was like, 'Oh, let me do it just here and here and here.' And I was miserable ... It's not that I haven't tried Botox - but I hated it."

For other performers, though, the rumours persist. Heat magazine has asked "Has Madonna had cheek implants?" while Grazia speculated "Has Madonna had the ribbon lift?". (This procedure apparently involves a "flexible, tube-like device" covered in tiny hooks being inserted beneath the skin on the face. The hooks then attach themselves to the subject's tissue, before the device is hoiked upwards.) But the source of most speculation is probably Nicole Kidman. The smoothness of her skin has caused the salon.com film critic, Stephanie Zacharek, to wonder whether her forehead is made of melamine, and Dr Martin Braun - who runs the biggest Botox clinic in Canada - to say he believes she has been an "enthusiastic user" of Botox.

Kidman has denied this. In 2007 she told US Marie Claire magazine that, "To be honest, I am completely natural. I have nothing in my face or anything. I wear sunscreen, and I don't smoke. I take care of myself. And I'm very proud to say that." Madonna, meanwhile, has stated she is "not going to have a press conference if I have plastic surgery. But I have said many times that I think about it, like everybody, and I sure don't rule it out."

What is beyond doubt is that, in general, the aesthetic of ageing has changed, and that many women in the public eye are having extensive cosmetic work done, starting ever younger. Speaking to the cosmetic doctor, Tracy Mountford, who specialises in "non-surgical skin rejuvenation" - including Botox and other injectables - she says that many well-known women will "have had quite a bit done to maintain that 'natural' good look. People would be staggered ... The majority of people [in the public eye] will be having something done."

And in some ways, this is completely understandable. After all, ageism is alive and well. As Anna Ford said after leaving the BBC in 2006: "How many presenters do you know on television who are over the age of 60?" In 2002, the actor Rosanna Arquette made the documentary Searching for Debra Winger, in which she and other Hollywood stars questioned the paucity of roles for older women. Madonna has also commented on age discrimination, saying that, "Once you reach a certain age you're not allowed to be adventurous, you're not allowed to be sexual. I mean, is there a rule? Are you supposed to just die?"

Until very recently, older women were simply expected to fade from view. As Susie Orbach, the feminist psychoanalyst and author of Bodies, says: "Thirty years ago, a woman of my age [62] wasn't really in public space or contributing - you were terribly exceptional if that happened." And the result is that women are still in the earliest stages, historically, of negotiating how to remain in the public eye.

So far, the most popular approach seems to be to deny the ageing process altogether. Professor Virginia L Blum, author of Flesh Wounds, an analysis of cosmetic surgery culture, points out that a performer's looks are "their livelihood, and we do know that actors - and especially actresses - can't even really appear on screen unless they look a certain way. So they're constantly forced to manufacture the look of youth and keep producing it."

It's also true that performers are under more scrutiny than ever before, at the mercy of both high-definition TV - which lays bare the tiniest "imperfections" - and tabloid culture. It's an environment that is at once trashy and highly exacting: every hangnail a sin, every eye-bag a crime.

In the face of such constant surveillance, it's not surprising that women would want to erase marks that might otherwise be circled with an exclamation of disgust. And the tools are now widely available. The stereotype of a woman who has work done was once of someone in their 50s or more, who visited a cosmetic surgeon in the hope of having a decade or two erased through a facelift - her skin sliced open, pulled tight and stitched.

But since Botox was first used for cosmetic purposes 20 years ago - and particularly since 2002, when it won approval in the US from the Food and Drug Administration for the removal of frown lines - the landscape has been transformed. Now the onus is increasingly on "non-invasive" treatments that don't require scalpels but involve substances being injected into the face, whether it's botulinum toxin (of which Botox is the best-known brand name), which reduces wrinkles by temporarily paralysing the muscles; Juvéderm, a wrinkle-filler made of hyaluronic acid; or Restylane Vital, also made of hyaluronic acid, which promises to "counter the effects of sun damage and provide deep dermal hydration". (Juvéderm and Restylane Vital are also approved by the FDA.) Non-invasive treatments have boomed over the last decade. While cosmetic surgery procedures in the US increased by 114% between 1997 and 2007, non-surgical procedures increased by 754%. In 2007, 55,000 Botox injections were administered in the UK....continued

Driving while undocumented in Maryland

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Maryland's License Dilemma
A limited ID for illegal immigrants is the least-bad choice.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009; Page A22 - Washington Post

WE'VE SAID before that it makes little sense to deprive illegal immigrants of drivers licenses: It only will encourage more people to drive without proper training or insurance, endangering everyone. At the same time, as other states have tightened their laws, Maryland reportedly has become a magnet for illegal immigrants seeking licenses. This is unacceptable, too, given the possibilities of fraud and abuse. The Maryland General Assembly is wrestling with this dilemma.

To comply with a federal law known as Real ID, which requires stricter identification for boarding a plane or entering a federal building, Maryland has to change its law. The state Senate passed a bill that would prevent all undocumented immigrants from obtaining licenses; the House passed a bill that would do the same but would allow immigrants who already have licenses to keep them and, when those licenses expire, replace them with a second-tier document that would allow driving but not qualify as federal ID. The House bill, which has Gov. Martin J. O'Malley's (D) support, is preferable. link to complete article

The Pressure to Use Botox - Part II

link to image

Age shall not wither them  - Part II continued

by Kira Cochrane - London Guardian - April 7, 2009

When it comes to these procedures, the focus isn't necessarily on rolling back time, but on starting in your 20s or 30s and achieving stasis. Dr Jean-Louis Sebagh (also known as "King Botox") recently said that "preventing the ageing process is better, where possible, than correcting it, non? If a woman comes to me at 35 or 40 and we treat her every three to four months, I can keep her looking that way for 20 years or more."

It's a question of vigilance. Non-invasive procedures appeal to both the famous and the less so because they're not radical but incremental, meaning there's less chance of a sudden, major change in one's looks. The downside is that they have to be regularly updated.

Mountford says hyaluronic acid products require a top-up every six to nine months, so once you embark on these procedures, you enter an ongoing process of revision, your face an endless work in progress. And the cost can be astronomical. While a year's worth of Botox treatments and dermal fillers might cost, say, £2,000 (£1,200 for the fillers, £300-£500 every six months for Botox injections), over 20 years that comes to £40,000. And that's not taking into account either inflation, or the chance that you will be tempted by some of the many other procedures available.

Not that the cost affects the Hollywood set. These new procedures are now so popular that they've been credited with a whole new aesthetic for women in the public eye - a specific "face" shared by many female stars. Where facelifts were often synonymous with the "windtunnel" look - a person's features pulled tight and distorted - the era of injectables is all about filling out the face, replacing lost contours. It's a look that was described in New York magazine last year as The New New Face, with the writer, Jonathan Van Meter, pinpointing "the Mount Rushmore cheekbones, the angular jawline, the smoothed forehead, the plumped skin, the heartlike shape of the face" as defining this aesthetic. That, and volume. Van Meter described these faces as not being "pulled tight in that typical facelift way; they seemed pushed out", while Mountford explains it thus: "If you have a prune, and you tighten the prune, you don't get a grape. You get a tight prune. But if you restore volume back into the prune, you get a grape back."

The sad thing is that, while these cosmetic procedures are supposed to lengthen a performer's career, they often cut them short. We all know of actors who suddenly appear with painfully enlarged lips, weirdly raised eyebrows, or stunned foreheads, and who become very difficult to take seriously. Over the last few years, casting directors have talked about the difficulties they experience as a result, with Richard Hicks, who cast Hairspray, telling Radar magazine that, "There's no way to light them so that they don't look hideous. For the most part, what I find moving is the truth, and once you've had your face worked on, it's often not the same thing." The Wall Street Journal has reported that Warner Bros has had to double its casting staff in Britain and Canada, because Botox is so common in the US. And directors Martin Scorsese and Baz Luhrmann have reportedly complained that the vogue for surgery has undermined actors' ability to express emotion.

What does this culture mean for ordinary women? Well, for one, the beauty standard we're expected to live up to is, specifically, a surgical one - which is complicated by the fact that this is so rarely acknowledged. The result is that we are presented with image after image of women (and, increasingly, men) who are astoundingly unlined, and are forced to compare ourselves with them. If we buy into the idea that these people are "naturally" unwrinkled, the comparison is always likely to come up wanting. As Blum says of the current face of ageing, "I think it puts women on high alert all the time. I think it's just very anxiety-inducing and it causes a certain amount of unhappiness because it's asking people to hyper-scrutinise themselves."

Of course, these images also encourage women to have cosmetic procedures, which can sometimes go horribly wrong. In Britain, the use of cosmetic fillers is largely unregulated, and there are many stories of rogue treatments leaving strange, floating lumps beneath the skin. Nottingham solicitor Paul Balen spoke in the Daily Mail recently about representing six people who have experienced problems with filler treatments: "Clients who have lumps of this stuff erupting out of their faces. Others are dreadfully scarred, or they have strange bags of these filler products appearing under their eyes." In the same article, Karon Kitchener explained that an injectable water-based filler treatment she had to enhance her cheeks had left her with "a moving layer of custard under the skin. Every morning I wake up not knowing how I am going to look." A specialist told her that it would cost £50,000 to correct the damage.

These treatments also involve us buying into a culture that invites us constantly to critique how we look, what we'd like to change, and then holds our happiness just beyond arm's reach. "The cycle of gratification is endless," says Blum, "because what will happen? 'Oh, I get an extra 17 years' - but then what happens at the end of the 17 years? I think, again, it puts people on high alert all the time." She also believes that once you start having cosmetic procedures, it's very difficult to stop. "If you have a good result, you're in it. And if you have a bad result, you're in it, because you have to fix it. So either way it's addictive."

Do we want these to be the terms on which we're allowed to participate in public life? Last year, the author, Charla Krupp, reached the New York Times bestseller list with How Not To Look Old, and argued in interviews that her "whole focus is about the workplace ... [the book is] for the boomer woman who is finding herself looking older than everybody else at work, and realising that she's very vulnerable". While Krupp doesn't favour plastic surgery, she is a strong advocate of non-invasive cosmetic procedures, saying that, "We are so fortunate to be coming of age at a time when we can go to a dermatologist and get Botox, and get the wrinkles in our forehead and the crow's-feet to disappear in a week, 48 hours sometimes." Krupp's outlook is echoed in a series of articles that have recently hit newsstands, which suggest that older people are having cosmetic procedures to help them remain "relevant" in a recession-era workplace. These include one by Judith Newman, for US Marie Claire, who described the blood leaking out of her puncture wounds after liposuction.

It's natural to hold actors and performers up as role models, but to do so in this case is faintly ridiculous, since, of all of us, they are under the most intense pressure regarding their looks. It is understandable that they would bow to the most punishing ideals, but that doesn't mean that the average woman or man should.

Instead, we have to ask ourselves whether we really want to paralyse our facial muscles, wipe away all signs of age and accept that only by looking oddly youthful for as long as possible are we allowed any place in public life. If we do, then we're bending to a viciously sexist and ageist ideal. And, let's face it, obedience is never a good look....link to complete London Guardian article

Colorado Lets Down Its DREAMers

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Tuition equity' bill fails in Senate
By Tim Hoover
The Denver Post
Posted: 04/06/2009 03:41:35 PM MDT


The Colorado Senate today narrowly rejected a bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants in-state tuition after five Democrats joined with Republicans to vote against it.

A disappointed Sen. Chris Romer, the Denver Democrat who sponsored the bill, said it was hard for some lawmakers to support the bill in the current tough economic times.

"You don't make these decisions overnight," Romer said, adding that he would try to bring the legislation back next year.

Controversy had followed the legislation, Senate Bill 170, from its introduction all the way to the Senate floor. The bill only made it out of the Senate Appropriations Committee last week after Democrats called a meeting in the absence of one Republican member on the committee, setting off angry accusations from GOP senators that Democrats had pulled a sneaky maneuver to get the bill approved.

Today, though, Democrats delayed debate on the bill long enough to allow Sen. Jennifer Veiga, D-Denver, to make it back from the airport to participate in the debate.

Sen. Ted Harvey, the Republican who was absent from last week's Appropriations meeting while caring for an ailing family member, sarcastically applauded Democratic leadership for waiting for Veiga's arrival.

"I think it's great that we're getting back to the premise of senatorial courtesy," said Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch.

The bill would have allowed any student who had attended a Colorado high school for at least three years and graduated to attend public colleges and universities at the in-state tuition rate, regardless of their immigration status.

Similar bills had failed in previous years, but this year's legislation had the backing of some top Republicans, including Alex Cranberg, chairman of Aspect Energy and a top GOP donor; and Dick Monfort, co-owner of the Colorado Rockies and chairman of the University of Northern Colorado Board of Trustees.

Republicans argued that the bill would run afoul of a 1996 federal law that prohibits illegal immigrants from getting college benefits that are not available to all U.S. citizens. However, nine other states have passed laws allowing in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, and whether the federal law specifically prohibits that practice has not been squarely decided in court.

A challenge to a similar law in California is now pending in that state's supreme court.

Proponents of the Colorado bill said that children of illegal immigrants had no say in their coming to the United States and should not be punished by being required to pay out-of-state tuition, which is two to four times higher than the in-state rate.

Romer said a "cancer of hopelessness" exists among such students, who can't afford college.

Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, said his Hispanic ancestors had come to Colorado generations ago, but he said all newcomers had the right to aspire to be something more than "ditchdiggers and dishwashers."

And in an at times angry speech, Senate President Peter Groff, a Denver Democrat and one of only two blacks in the legislature, hearkened to the civil-rights era and to the country's "dark past."

"I hope we can live with ourselves if we vote 'no' today," Groff said, accusing those who opposed the bill of not having the "courage" to do the right thing.

Sen. Joyce Foster, a Denver Democrat who is the descendant of Jewish immigrants, invoked the Holocaust and appealed to senators' compassion.

"I understand rules, and I understand laws, but sometimes we have to think with our hearts," Foster said, "and I beg you today to think with our hearts."

But Republicans said Democrats' compassion was misplaced. They said Democrats lacked a sense of fairness because foreign students who entered the country legally could not receive the in-state rate.

"By rewarding those people who come here illegally with government services, we will only beget more illegal behavior in the future," Harvey said.

A Republican amendment to give all foreign students the in-state rate failed as did another that would have given the lower rate to all students in Colorado.

Sen. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, said that granting students who are illegal immigrants in-state tuition was like saying "if their parents robbed a bank, their kids could keep the money."

Though the bill would require students who get the in-state tuition rate to sign an affidavit stating they would seek legal residency, Sen. Mike Kopp, R-Littleton, said the affidavit "is worth probably less than the paper it's printed on."

In hopes of attracting more Democratic votes, proponents added an amendment that said the bill would only become effective upon passage of the federal DREAM Act. That measure being considered in Congress would provide a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants who serve in the military or attend college in the United States.

It wasn't enough. Democratic Sens. Morgan Carroll of Aurora, Jim Isgar of Hesperus, Moe Keller of Wheat Ridge, Linda Newell of Littleton and Lois Tochtrop of Thornton voted against the bill.

Carroll, after the debate, referred reporters to a statement on her website that said she could not support the bill "in a climate where the state is cutting or eliminating over $1 billion of benefits to the people and is facing a $300 million cut to higher education, which virtually ends higher education as we know it in the state of Colorado."

Isgar and Tochtrop made similar comments about cuts to colleges, while Keller declined comment on her vote.

Newell, who was elected in November by a razor-thin margin, simply said "I listened to my constituents" when asked about her vote. link

Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com

Anti-DREAMers complain about DREAM 2009

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From - Conservatives with Attitude

April 6, 2009 Monday 7:14 AM EST

Amnesty Supporters D.R.E.A.M.ing Again
by Michael Illions
Apr. 6, 2009 (Conservatives with Attitude delivered by Newstex) --



Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand continued her change in tone on illegal immigration Thursday when she announced she was cosponsoring the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. Gillibrand joins 14 of the Senates more liberal Democrats as well as two Republicans and Independent Joseph I. Lieberman as co-sponsors of the bill (S 729).


The DREAM Act, which was introduced March 26, would amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to allow states to provide higher education funding for children who came to the United States as illegal immigrants. œCurrent law is unfairly punishing thousands of young people who have spent nearly their entire lives in this country, Gillibrand said in a statement. œThis legislation says that if they work hard and play by the rules, then they will have the opportunity to get a good education and earn their way to legal status.

Gillibrand has taken heat for her stances on immigration policy from progressives in the state since being appointed to the Senate in January. Hispanic leaders and downstate Democrats have objected to tough positions she took on illegal immigration while representing the upstate 20th District in the House. Gillibrand has worked to soften her tone and broaden her understanding of the issues in her new post, and pledged to support the DREAM Act after meeting with Hispanic elected officials in February.

The issue that just wont go away or stay defeated, with the try after try to give more rights to illegals, drivers licenses, and outright citizenship, comes back again with the nightmarish D.R.E.A.M. Act. The 2 Republicans referred to above are Mel Martinez, the thankfully out-going Senator from Florida and Senator Richard Lugar.

The main thrust of the article is the œsudden turn towards the left on this position of former Congresswoman, now Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, who since leaving her perch as a Democrat Congresswoman in a Conservative District, has changed her tune on many issues, since becoming Senator, replacing Hillary Clinton.

Afraid of facing a Democrat primary in 2010, Gillibrand has apparently seen the light after meeting with Hispanic elected officials.

Newstex ID: CATT-0001-33950024

NJ Governor's Panel Endorses Driver's Licenses for Undocumented Immigrants

An Immigration task force appointed by New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine recommends that undocumented immigrants be allowed to obtain driver's licenses.

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The Associated Press State & Local Wire

April 6, 2009 Monday 12:11 AM GMT

Panel urges driving rights for illegal immigrants

BYLINE: By SAMANTHA HENRY, Associated Press Writer

... The panel recently recommended the state extend driving privileges to illegal immigrants. Corzine opposes the move, saying it's up to the federal government to set national guidelines. Washington, Illinois, Maryland and New Mexico are the only four states that do not require proof of lawful U.S. residency to get a driver's license, according to The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. Agency spokesman Jason King says Utah also issues driving certificates to undocumented workers, but they are not accepted as official identification, and Hawaii will issue an illegal immigrant a state ID, but not a driver's license.

Supporters say granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants makes the roads safer, because applicants are tested, and they say it cuts down on the number of uninsured drivers. They also argue it helps law enforcement efforts to have more people registered in state databases...

(1 Click HERE for the link to the April 30, 2009 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on immigration. This video is over 3 hours long, however, it is worth watching if you want to know what the Congress is considering in relation to changing immigration policy................. (2 Click HERE for link to the May 6, 2009 Oversight Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This hearing is 1hr. 48 min. long. Try to hang in through the grandstanding. The real meeting starts over 20 minutes after they begin talking.

Obama on the Middle East

He is endorsing a separate Palestinian State. He wants to establish diplomatic ties with Iran. It will be interesting to see how Israel reacts to his statements.

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The stress of being an immigrant's child

link to photo

What happens to a child when her mother is detained?  What happens to a child who knows that other undocumented immigrants are being picked up and that it could happen to their father at any time?

A Washington Post article talks about the consequences of stress on poor kids - who have to deal with constant worries.  How about the kids affected by our recent push on immigration enforcement?

Many of these kids are American citizens.  But that didn't stop ICE from taking their parents (as in the case of Oscar Urbina, who has two U.S. citizen children - see yesterday's post "Auto Dealership Helps Deport Its Customer")  What happens to the kids after their parents are taken away?  They not only lose their parents, but the financial life of the family it turned upside down.  How do they react to not having contact with their parents? - Since ICE often uses the tactic of not letting inmates communicate with anyone on the outside?

Two years ago on a trip to Washington, D.C. I made with a group of DREAMers, I found that many of them had experienced one of their parent's being deported.  While they had still been successful in school, their emotional lives had been scarred, not only from being DREAMers, but also from having been forcibly separated from a parent.  Their cognitive abilities were not affected by the stress (most are very successful in school), their strong emotional constitution helped them keep going.  But at what cost?

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Research Link Poor Kids Stress, Brain Empairment
by Rob Stein
Washington Post
April 6, 2009

(excerpt)

...When the researchers analyzed the relationships among how long the children lived in poverty, their allostatic load and their later working memory, they found a clear relationship: The longer they lived in poverty, the higher their allostatic load and the lower they tended to score on working-memory tests. Those who spent their entire childhood in poverty scored about 20 percent lower on working memory than those who were never poor, Evans said.

"The greater proportion of your childhood that your family spent in poverty, the poorer your working memory, and that link is largely explained by this chronic physiologic stress," Evans said. "We put these things together and can say the reason we get this link between poverty and deficits in working memory is this chronic elevated stress."

McEwen said the findings are consistent with earlier research in animals and brain imaging studies in people indicating that the body's response to stress, such as chronically elevated levels of cortisol, can adversely affect the brain, including the regions involved in working memory.

"This fits into a whole network of research," McEwen said. "It's a really exciting story."

Other researchers cautioned that more work is needed to explore and confirm the findings, and that chronic stress is probably one of the many factors affecting a child's development. But they said the results provided insight into the connection between poverty and achievement.

"One of the questions that health psychologists have been very interested in exploring is how is it that something outside the body literally gets under the skin and into the brain," said Avshalom Caspi, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. "What this article says is that one of the reasons that poverty does make such an important difference is that it affects many physiological systems, and those systems, once stressed, may compromise brain development."
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The findings indicate that education standards and other government policies that aim to improve poor children's performance in school should consider the stress they are experiencing at home, Evans said.

"It's not just 'Read to our kids and take them to the library,' " he said. "We need to take into account that chronic stress takes a toll not only on their health, but it may take a toll on their cognitive functioning."  link to complete article

Want to help a Latino kid go to college?

Latino kids need help going to college because they have the highest high school dropout rate in the country. Inner City schools are not the only culprits. The "nicer" suburban schools have a problem with not treating many Latino kids decently - just go to most any suburban school and see what teachers mumble softly so that not too many people will hear.

Whether its poorly equipped schools, or teacher and/or administrators who have problems with stereotypes they carry around - many kids aren't getting the education that all kids living in the U.S. should have.

This makes college harder -

If you really want to do something Latino kids go to college, you can help out the Academic Achiever's Program at the University of Houston. I have known about this program since the mid 1990s. It is an outstanding program - really takes care of the students, provides scholarships, tutoring if needed, mentoring - everything they need to be successful. They have a high rate of success with a significant percentage who make the Deans List every semester.

This is a program really worth helping. If you want to donate to the program, or establish a scholarship, contact the program director Rebeca Trevino -  rtrevino@uh.edu or call her at 713 743 3140. Ms. Trevino does not know I have posted this on dreamacttexas.  

I decided to do this on my own because I think the program really makes a difference - and I know there are people out there who want to help in some way.  

Hispanics travel rough road to higher education
Ethnic group is the fastest growing, but the least likely to enroll in college
By JEANNIE KEVER
Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
April 5, 2009, 12:12PM


WHY COLLEGE?

What are the benefits of a college education?

• More wealth: The National Center for Education Statistics says college graduates earn $1.2 million more during their lifetimes than non-graduates.

Less poverty: Unless more people earn a college degree, the Texas State Data Center warns that average household incomes will drop $3,000 by 2030.
RELATED REPORT
Meet 3 young Latinos determined to beat odds

The future of Texas is sitting in room 318 at Austin High School, and right now, it could go either way.

Students in the after-school program — Hispanic and from low-income families, the group least likely to enroll in college — are optimistic.

But who knows?

“I hope to go,” says Neri Gamez, 17, a high school junior who dreams of being a doctor.

Gamez has an advantage: She is in a program run by the Center for Mexican-American Studies at the University of Houston, designed to help Hispanic students enter college and, once there, earn a degree. Academic Achievers is among dozens of programs that address one of the state’s most intractable education problems.

But Hispanics, the state’s fastest-growing ethnic group, have fallen behind in some key areas, and efforts to change that remain piecemeal:

• Statewide, 68 percent of Hispanics graduate from high school within four years, 10 points below the overall rate.

• Just 42.5 percent of Hispanics who graduated from high school in 2007 enrolled in college or a technical training program the following fall, compared with 45.3 percent of black students and 57.5 percent of white students.

• Texas is “well below target” in raising the number of Hispanics in college, according to a 2008 report by the Higher Education Coordinating Board. Enrollment of both white and black students was “somewhat above target.”

And there are no consequences for schools that don’t raise Hispanic enrollment.

“The good news is, there’s a state goal,” said Paul Ruiz, co-founder and senior advisor to the Education Trust, a national group that advocates for at-risk students. “The bad news is, the institutions don’t get it. They set goals for Latino kids at about half the rate the state says we need.”

The issue is complicated by the rapid growth of the Hispanic population; about 36 percent of the Texas population is Hispanic.

“We’ve made progress,” said Raymund Paredes, higher education commissioner for Texas. “Our challenge is, we started so far behind, and the Latino population is growing so fast.”

Unless the numbers change, the state will be unable to field a well-educated work force. “The Hispanic community is key to the economic future of Texas,” Paredes said.
Enrollment edging up

The state plan, known as Closing the Gaps, began in 2000 with the goal of increasing college enrollment to 5.7 percent of the population by 2015. That would raise college-going rates to the national average. link

Gaza 4 months later

Democracy Now's video on Gaza four months after Operation Cast Lead. 

Land of Ruins: A Special Report on Gaza’s Economy
April 6, 2009

Democracy Now! producer Anjali Kamat files a report on the state of the Gazan economy, where unemployment and poverty rates are among the highest in the world. Despite international pledges of over 5.2 billion dollars to rebuild Gaza, in the four months since Israel"s assault, the siege has not been lifted and only one truck carrying cement and other construction materials has been allowed entry into the Gaza Strip.

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Santamania in Mexico

Photo by Javier Garcia, milenio.com

The article boasts of a holy war, but what is really going on is that altars to la Santa Muerte are being built all over the place.  Stories that sell esoteric objects (usually called herberias) are selling more and more of her statues and other paraphernalia.  Some even specialize in la Santa Muerte.

As the article states "the cult of the Santa Muerte is growing like a virus, like a rhizome.  Many people are setting up altars in their homes and at their place of work - so they can easily pray or offer devotions.  No one will be able to stop this cult in a country like Mexico that has so much injustice - that needs so much hope.  Destroying altars will not make any difference."

(In Spanish)
Milenio.com
April 5, 2009

Santamanía: La nueva devoción mexicana
La Guerra Santa de la Santa Muerte

Auto Dealership helps deport its customer

Oscar Urbina came to the U.S. when he was 19, in 1993.  He did all the things Americans are supposed to do.  He worked hard.  He married, had a family, bought a house, and had a steady job that supported him well.  In a time when our auto-makers are struggling to stay alive, Urbina even bought an American made truck. 

Unfortunately, his desire to "buy American" has led him to possible deportation.  As the New York Times explains:

"after buying a Dodge Ram truck at a local dealership, he had been summoned back to deal with some paperwork problems. And shortly after he arrived, so did the police, who arrested him on charges of using a false Social Security number."

The city of Irvine, Texas has their priorities backwards. Two years ago city fathers passed a law that everyone jailed had to go through an immigration check. That is harsh in itself. But the dealership!!!! What were they thinking? American car dealers are on their last breathe - and they jail their customers for buying a car while undocumented? This is really irrational.

There is only one Dodge dealership in Irving - Frank Parra Autoplex. If you are planning to buy a car or have repairs done, a good show of support for Mr. Urbina would be to avoid doing any business with this company -


see "Texas Mayor Caught in Deportation Furor," New York Times, April 5, 2009

What part of illegal don't you understand?

The part of 'illegal' that I don't get

by E. J. Montini - Apr. 5, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

QUESTION: "What part of 'illegal' don't you understand?"

This particular query has been posed to me dozens of times over the past week or so by way of telephone calls, e-mails and blog responses on azcentral.com. It isn't really a question, of course, but a philosophical statement, a way of informing the person at whom it is aimed that there is no need to discuss illegal immigration with him because he obviously is an idiot.

The people who asked this rhetorical question were responding to a column I wrote about the DREAM Act, which would afford illegal residents who were carried into the country as children the opportunity to stay and work here by attending college for two years or joining the military.

Let's pretend for a minute that the questioners want an answer, however. Because there is one. In fact, there are several.

QUESTION: "What part of 'illegal' don't you understand?"

ANSWER No. 1: I don't understand the part that applies to a local woman who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico as a baby and recently graduated with honors from nursing school.

She wrote me to say, "I have my license to work as a registered nurse, but current immigration policy does not really cover people like me who want to come out of the shadows and become a contributing member of the country I love and grew up in."

I don't understand laws that exclude such a person from working here when the need for qualified individuals like her is so high that health-care institutions are recruiting nurses from countries like Korea, the Philippines and (ironically) Mexico.

ANSWER No. 2: I also don't understand the part in which politicians don't listen to educators like Dr. Allan Cameron, a retired teacher who helped to create the robotics team at Carl Hayden High School in Phoenix. These are the kids whose underwater robot defeated a machine designed by MIT students. Cameron told me, "Last year, one of our students graduated with a secondary-education teacher degree in mathematics. A bilingual, intelligent young man from the Hayden neighborhood, who is now hanging drywall."

Meantime, American high schools, including many in the Arizona, recruit foreign teachers in science and math.

ANSWER No. 3: I don't understand the part that treats "illegal" as a state of being, like original sin. It is like declaring a child a criminal for having been pushed around a department store in a stroller by a shoplifting mother. Faridodin 'Fredi' Lajvardi, who currently mentors the Carl Hayden robotics team, put it this way, "Passing the DREAM Act would help focus our resources on deporting those who are not contributing, law-abiding members of society. . . . Preventing qualified, undocumented students from pursuing higher education is akin to throwing away our investment . . . We spend approximately $70,000 per student to educate them from kindergarten through high school."

Cameron and Lajvardi keep in touch with former members of the robotics team. Among them is a soon-to-graduate engineer (another profession recruited from foreign countries). He was brought to the U.S. as a child. Since he can't work here, the young man may move to Canada, from which he has received several offers. Who knows? Maybe we'll recruit him back.

ANSWER No. 4: I don't understand the part that refuses to differentiate between drug dealers or gang members and these high-achieving, motivated and (yes) patriotic kids. In the end, perhaps those who parrot that overused question about immigration should answer it themselves.

What part of "illegal" don't YOU understand?

Reach Montini at 602-444-8978 or ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

At Least 12 kIlled at Immigration Center in Binghampton, NY

Lone gunman has killed at least 12 people at an immigration services center in Binghampton, NY

Binghampton Shootings

April 3, 2009

(CNN) -- A lone gunman began shooting Friday in an immigration services building in Binghamton, New York, killing at least four people, a law enforcement source close to the situation said.  Armed law enforcement officers gather at the scene of Friday's shootings in Binghamton, New York.

The source said more than a dozen were wounded.

Police on the scene told CNN affiliate WBNG that up to 12 people were killed in the shooting. Two people were seen being led from the building in plastic handcuffs, WBNG reported.

The man began shooting in the American Civic Association, which helps immigrants and refugees, the source said.

The source said a citizenship test was being administered in the building, but it was not immediately clear whether the shooting occurred in the area where people were taking the test.

The source said there may be 20 to 40 people who have been taken hostage.

The local newspaper, the Press & Sun-Bulletin, said on its Web site that at least four people were shot and 41 people had been taken hostage. 

It said sharpshooters from the city's SWAT team were poised outside the building ..link

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Hostages Taken in Binghamton, N.Y.
New York Times
By LIZ ROBBINS
Published: April 3, 2009

At least four people were shot on Friday morning and an undetermined number of others were being held hostage by a gunman at the American Civic Center in Binghamton, N.Y., according to several news reports.

The condition of the shooting victims, who were taken to a nearby hospital, was not known.

According to police reports, about 40 hostages were being held in the building.

The Binghamton Police Department confirmed the shootings took place, but would not give further details as officers and members of local SWAT teams surrounded the building.

Binghamton High School, only blocks from the scene of the shootings, was locked down, and nearby apartment buildings were being evacuated, according to a local newspaper, the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin.

The newspaper quoted the mayor of Binghamton, Matthew Ryan, as saying the gunman has a high-powered rifle.

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Cuatro muertos en tiroteo de centro de migrantes cerca de NY
Milenio.com
Viernes, 03/04/2009 - 10:42
La policía de la localidad se atrinchera en la balacera. Foto: AP/WBNG-TV

Binghampton, Nueva York.- Trece personas muertas, cuatro heridos y varios rehenes en centro de inmigración en estado de Nueva York, tras un tiroteo.

La policía tiene rodeado el edificio donde un sujeto de características asiáticas tiene en su poder al menos 20 personas en el sótano.

Había por lo menos 41 rehenes en la sede de la American Civic Association (Asociacion Cívica Estadounidense), informó el periódico The Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin.

De acuerdo a las primeras versiones, el tiroteo fue hecho por una persona de aproximadamente 20 años, quien acudió al centro para presentar un examen para adquirir la nacionalidad estadunidense.

El sujeto mantiene en su poder a los rehenes.

Investigation into 287G should help Benita Veliz

Information on Hearing and links to testimonies

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House Hearing Will Examine Illegal Profiling and Police Misconduct By Local Law Enforcement Acting As Federal Immigration Agents (4/1/2009)

U.S. Department Of Homeland Security Should Suspend Agreements With Local And State Law Enforcement, Says ACLU

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312; media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON – Two House Judiciary Committee Subcommittees will hold a joint hearing tomorrow to examine civil rights abuses committed by state and local police functioning as federal immigration agents. As part of the hearing entitled, “The Public Safety and Civil Rights Implications of State and Local Enforcement of Federal Immigration Laws,” the American Civil Liberties Union in written t