Bakersfield,
California conservative radio talk show host Inga Barks invited me to be
on her show after reading an article I wrote on the hypocrisy of hiring
undocumented workers instead of initiating a guest worker program
particularly in the agricultural industry, and blaming all our economic
ills on the illegal immigrants. She obviously wanted me on the show to
argue with my reasoning, to show her audience how wrong I am, and how
un-American this thinking is. After all, her call to success is in
attracting an audience that thinks like her, and of those who love to
hate her. Ratings is the name of the game.
So there I was, but
I was not arguing and in fact suggested that I didn’t know anybody who
is for illegal immigration, including me. That we differ on the methods
used to solve the problem…
By Pablo Kasun
April 13, 2005
Can we ask the question: Why are there
6.9 million Americans on probation, parole or serving time in prisons
and jails? If we can’t answer that question, can we ask another: What
can we learn from this, which represents 3.2% of the American adult
population? Can I try your patience and ask yet another question: Why
does the labor movement find itself under attack by our government just
as intensely as the so-called terrorists?
The answer to these questions goes
beyond something that the Bush Administration is doing, or what the next
administrations will do. Or, for that matter, what our Legislative and
Judicial Branches of government will do. Could it be that the root of
this problem can be found in both the fabric of our society as well as
the kind of society that we live in?
To
Americans living in the US there are things concerning the Mexican
political system that would defy belief. So first, a little score card.
AMLO stands for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the elected mayor of what
is known as México City. The main political parties are the PRD "center
left", the PRI "center" (the party that ruled México for 71 years until
2000) and the PAN "center right" (the now ruling party under President
Vincente Fox).
The title
of this (The AMLO Caper) would imply some sort of a criminal act. It is.
As of now,
AMLO has been striped of his political immunity and the case is now
before a judge to review for formal charges. It is anticipated by almost
all that he will be charged.
To better
understand, a local paper printed a diagram of the legal process for
the public to FOLL. This diagram looks a lot like the old board game
"Monopoly", complete with "pay fine", go "to jail" and "go back 10
spaces". It almost looks like a worm ball in mating season.
By Jorge Mariscal
April 14, 2005
When in the summer of 1968 President Lyndon Johnson's Attorney General
stood up before an audience of Chicano, African American, Puerto Rican,
American Indian, and poor white activists, he had no idea he was about
to receive a knockout punch delivered by a former Mexican American
flyweight contender. When the stocky man with a moustache rose to ask
his question, Attorney General Ramsey Clark dismissed him by saying he
would not take questions until after his statement. Refusing to be
silenced, the man stood again and forced Clark to listen to what he had
to say.
That man was Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales.
He had come to Washington, D.C. as part of the Southwest delegation of
the Poor People's Campaign, the project planned by Martin Luther King,
Jr. to force the issues of poverty and economic injustice on to the
national agenda. Gonzales did not mince words, telling Clark that if he
would not admit that there was racial discrimination in housing he was
either naïve or blind. Although this was the first time the national
media had seen Gonzales, in the Southwestern states especially among
young Chicanos he was already a legend.
By now you know that at times I write
about issues that might ignite someone’s fire. Well, today I just need to
speak about something that I tend to see more in this country than
others. I have been fortunate enough that in the last two years I have
traveled to seven different countries and five different U.S.A. States.
What I have noticed is that many Americans do not like to hear someone
speak Spanish in their presence.
I can understand if we are in an office of
three people and two of us are speaking Spanish this might be rude. But
what I am talking about is when it is out in the open or in an office
where there are many employees and two fluent Spanish speaking associates
or friends start speaking Spanish with each other. In the other countries
that I have visited this has not been an issue.
By Adam Chavarria
April 15, 2005
In recent weeks, much has been said and
written about the president’s commitment to Hispanic education. Most of
the comments have been positive. However, there also have been some
misunderstandings of the policy and its implications. It is high time we
examined what the state of Hispanic education truly has been over time and
why it must be changed.
We should all be
alarmed that, until recently, only 17 percent of Hispanic children could
read at grade level, the high school dropout rates for Hispanic students
have hovered around 27 percent, and only 10 percent of Hispanic Americans
graduated from four-year colleges and universities. The functional
illiteracy rates among Hispanic Americans have remained exceedingly high
for far too long.
I have an ongoing nightmare that I must
share with you.
Nine score years ago, a great American, in
whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This
momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro
slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came
as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one
hundred-forty years later, we must face the tragic fact that the millions
of U.S. residents are still not free.
One hundred-forty years later, the life of
the resident, undocumented immigrant is still sadly crippled by the
manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One
hundred-forty years later, the undocumented immigrant in the U.S. lives on
a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material
prosperity. One hundred-forty years later, the undocumented immigrant is
still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an
exile in this, the Promised Land.
By Roberto
Rodriguez
The cultural clash we are living - the one represented by Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice-Wolfowitz-Bolton
vs. virtually the rest of the world is not so much a clash as it is a
crisis. A cultural crisis - a cultural crisis whose epicenter is the
United States, involving ethics and values, and the very vision of the
future of humanity.
This cultural crisis is being abetted by the very language being employed
in this conflict. It involves a monumental struggle over the meaning of
precepts and words, including those at the core of our very existence:
peace, truth, democracy and life itself.
The
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld vision is one of U.S. worldwide military and economic
domination, yet outside of the Bush 2002 doctrine, this scheme has been
painted more recently as a vision of worldwide democratization
As I take a look at
the landscape of the United States and see Latinos and Latinas running for
office, more times than not they are not getting elected in cities where
the demographic landscape would dictate a landslide success. I have to
take a step back and ask the question: Why?
Some would say it’s
because we are more critical of our own leaders than we are anyone else.
Others might even say that we are caught up in the theory of the Cangrejo
or crab theory that mainstream society do not worry about Latinos because
they will inevitably pull each other down when the time comes.
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
April 15, 2005
Like a bad cold, anti-immigration
legislation is back again. Last year, the GOP tried to attach
anti-immigrant provisions to the legislation on 9/11 intelligence reform,
even though the 9/11 commissioners and the vast majority of the 9/11
families opposed their inclusion. This year, House Republicans have
repackaged their anti-immigrant agenda into the so-called "REAL ID Act,"
which they attached with little notice to the House version of the Iraq
Supplemental Appropriations legislation.
Facts almost always
destroy the Mexican and immigrant haters among us, as do their stupid acts
and "thinking" processes.
For example, Mexican
hater Steve Sailer of Vdare.com (a noteworthy "hate site" as categorized
by the Southern Poverty law Center) has written extensively that Hispanic
voters don’t matter, that President Bush did not do well with them last
year and that claims he did are without foundation. He uses funny math and
assumptions he makes without a single study of the actual Hispanic vote.
By Roberto Miranda It was two years ago that American troops invaded Iraq, and still they
have yet to find those murderous weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s). In
truth, it appears that the troops are having more success finding GMD’s
(Genuine Miller Draft beers).
Indeed, Saddam Hussein, British Prime
Minister Tony Blain once proclaimed, had the ability to lob a weapon of
mass destruction onto western soil in only a matter of minutes.
So, in order to avoid a
mushroom shaped cloud from growing atop some city in the west, and to
protect our borders from the national security dilemma Saddam presented...
Although we
constantly complain about the increasing racism, discrimination and
poverty that Hispanics face in the USA, Indigenous Mexicans suffer the
same problems in Mexico.
In a nation devoted to celebrating its Indian heritage, the terrible irony
is that Indians are despised. "Don't behave like an Indian," are common
sentences heard among the white mestizo (person of mixed race or blood,
specifically a person of mixed European and Indian) and the criollo
(direct Spanish descendants) families. The Indians are despised for their
physical appearance, their poverty, and their language. Racism enters
every criollo and mestizo family, defining the value and the place of the
children according to their color. The darkest one may become the
outsider, while the fair-skinned one is a prize.
Editorial Washington Post
April 12, 2005
IT'S SAD BUT
perhaps not surprising that so many in the Senate have rushed to attach
pork to emergency spending legislation designed to pay for military
action in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a must-pass bill, and so an ideal
vehicle. Now, because the House version of the bill contains a host of
immigration provisions, it seems that senators may rush to attach their
immigration bills and amendments to the legislation too.
As we've written
before, the House provisions, known as the Real ID Act, are an
unfortunate mishmash of policies, none of which constitutes a solution
to the problem of illegal immigration. Instead of tackling the issue
head-on...
Patrick
Osio, Jr. has written a short but intensive manual on the Mexican
perspective on numerous issues between our two countries. The manual is an
in depth primer on the culture and protocol for better understanding
Mexicans that in turn allows establishing personal and business
relationships, and how to avoid the most common faux pas that can ruin
relationships and business deals.
The manual is available through Electronic delivery for $9.95
making it possible to download the manual to save on your hard
drive, printing its entirety or particular sections while
reaping considerable savings over printed copies.
Increased technology along the Texas
border cannot replace the "boots on the border" necessary to address
homeland security, Democratic House members from Texas were told during a
session on the federal budget at the Texas Capitol on Monday.
Criminals who want to cross the border
into the United States are not stupid, said T.J. Bonner, president of the
National Border Patrol Council, a labor group that represents U.S. Border
Patrol workers. If the United States had announced, with great fanfare,
that border agents would be massed along the Arizona border, then those
looking for safe passage will turn to other states, Bonner said.
Last week, Education Secretary Margaret
Spellings gathered together state education chiefs from across the country
and announced changes to the No Child Left Behind Act. The Department of
Education will now allow more flexibility on NCLB regulations for states
showing a "committed effort" to raising the achievement of all
students. The first example of this flexibility is allowing schools to
offer more special education students tests that are designed for their
ability level.
For a major speech
hinting at big changes, lots of questions remained—and maybe this was the
point of the exercise.
A senior Republican lawmaker expressed
frustration Tuesday with the Justice Department's failure at a closed-door
briefing to provide information about its use of the sweeping
antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.
The lawmaker, Senator Arlen Specter of
Pennsylvania, who leads the Judiciary Committee, said he and others in the
Senate sought details from senior intelligence officials at the Justice
Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation about their demands for
records and their use of roving wiretaps, secret search warrants and other
provisions in the law.
Area Latinos are up
to three times more likely to repeat a grade compared to their white
peers, according to a state report released this week.
The report, released
by the Massachusetts Department of Education, shows a 6.7 and 6.4 percent
retention rates for Latino students in the Fitchburg and Leominster school
districts for the 2003-2004 academic year.
Whites were held back
at a rate of 3.9 percent in Fitchburg, and 2.1 percent in Leominster.
Leominster High
School Principal William Hart said retention rates could result in high
dropout rates for the area's rapidly growing Latino population.
The academic growth that students experience in a given school
year has apparently slowed since the passage of No Child Left Behind, the
education law that was intended to achieve just the opposite, a new study
has found.
In both reading and
math, the study determined, test scores have gone up somewhat, as each
class of students outdoes its predecessors. But within grades, students
have made less academic progress during the school year than they did
before No Child Left Behind went into effect in 2002, the researchers
said.
That finding casts
doubt on whether schools can meet the law's mandate that all students be
academically proficient by 2014. In fact, to realize the goal of universal
proficiency, the study said, students will have to make as much as three
times the progress they are currently making.
President Bush said
Thursday that he had been surprised to learn in the newspaper of his
administration's decision last week to require Americans to have passports
to enter the country from Mexico or Canada by 2008. He said he had asked
the State and Homeland Security Departments to look into other means of
tightening border security.
Citing concerns about
the long lines that the new rules might create at crossings, Mr. Bush said
that after reading of the change, he asked Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice to determine whether the law that mandated the tighter controls would
allow fingerprint imaging or some other technique instead.
By
Patrick Osio, Jr. HispanicVista.com
By Domingo Ivan Casañas/HispanicVista.com
By Daniel Gutierrez
By
Raoul Lowery Contreras
By
Erika Robles