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E-mail Digest: Subscribe/Unsubscribe Home / Letters to Editor / Announcements / Columnists / Past Issues / About Us /Links THE OSIO REPORT The Connection Column Archives, December 13, , 2010
Immigration hypocrisy in Georgia	Thanks Jimmy Hoffa for Nothing
By Patrick Osio, Jr. Editor/HispanicVista.com December 13, 2010 In 1998, the then INS raided Georgia’s $200 million a year Vidalia sweet onion fields at the start of the harvest season. Within the hour of the start of the raid, the region’s Congressional representatives were on the telephone demanding the INS (predecessor to ICE) stop the raids. The INS had barely netted 28 workers and 20 Georgia counties scheduled to conduct raids. Many of the not apprehended workers fled the site and word got out to other fields causing panic among field workers who fled leaving onion to rot on the fields. But the raids stopped and to date no others have taken place.	By Richard N. Baldwin T. /HispanicVista.com November 25, 2010 Even after living in the México City area for almost 20 years, I still have a taste for some American style foods. And bacon is one of them. Mexican bacon is much leaner and less “smoked” than the American style. And when fried up, less “crispy”. But no problem. Oscar Meyer bacon along with Hormel has been available in my supermarket here for many years. This along with many imported foodstuffs from the US.
Is Mexico Burning -- II?	Time for a New Approach to Mexico
By Raoul Lowery Contreras December 13, 2010 Previously in this space, we have written that the stupidity and personal megalomania of millions of dollar–rich illicit drug consuming Americans is the root cause of the rise of Mexican drug lords, their cartels and the chaos and murderous mayhem in Mexico that has cost the lives of over 28,000 Mexicans. No American druggies…no Mexican drug cartels…is that Right? Slightly wrong! Mexico shares in the drug stupidity because there are many stupid Mexicans	As 2010 ends, U.S. diplomats have spent less energy on holiday festivities and instead are working overtime to prevent trust with foreign governments from evaporating after thousands of leaked documents became public. Despite the outcry over the consequences of secret U.S. government activities being made public, the released diplomatic cables offer surprisingly little new information about events occurring in much of the world. Interested observers already know Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is a hedonistic cad and Vladimir Putin is the power behind Russia's kleptocracy. Instead of stunning secrets, most of the messages show the limitations of U.S. policy as leaders confront messy and all too real twenty-first century geopolitical dilemmas.
The Dream and the Nightmare	Our bad habits feed Mexico's
By Linda Chavez The Dream Act, which provides a path to citizenship for those children who were brought to the United States illegally by their parents, passed the House by 216-198 this week, but will likely die in the Senate for lack of bipartisan support. Democrats knew they have no chance of passing the Dream Act, but tried to force the issue to a vote so they could hammer home their message to Hispanics: Democrats are your friends; Republicans are not. When it became clear Thursday they didn't have the votes in the Senate to block a Republican filibuster, they tabled the measure.	By Mary Sanchez The Kansas City Star Over the border and through the cartels to Abuelita's casa we go. A scary new reality arrived with the long Christmas season in Mexico. For generations, families have driven across the border from the United States to spend much of December -- on into January -- visiting relatives. This year, the Mexican government put out stark warnings to such merry travelers. Travel in convoys, in daylight, and if possible, contact federal authorities for a military escort through the portions of Mexico where the drug-cartel violence has been particularly gruesome.
Border Security	Democrats playing games with immigration?
By Sal Osio, JD *Mi Punto de Vista* From the Publisher’s Corner Every nation has the sovereign right and obligation to secure its borders - to prevent any unauthorized entry by any person or any property. The United States has that fundamental right and obligation. And so does Mexico. This has never been the issue.	Jeb Bush, Too? “Let me get this straight. The Republican Party runs on a nationwide anti-immigrant platform in 2006; Republican Senators abandon their President in his quest for comprehensive immigration reform in 2007; Republican presidential nominee John McCain opposes his own immigration bill in 2008; and Republican senators walk away from the negotiating table on comprehensive immigration reform in 2010, and it’s the Democrats who are playing politics with the issue?
Redefining 'American'	Republicans need Straight Talk on Immigration
By Lisa García Bedolla Congress has not been able to act on immigration reform because the debate is really about defining Americans as a people. Until 1965, our immigration policy engaged in racial engineering, admitting into the United States only those who were seen as shoring up “traditional” American stock, namely, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The architects of the 1924 National Origins Act were quite explicit about this goal. The only real debate at the time was how restrictive the new law would be in terms of keeping out southern Europeans and privileging those of northern European descent.	Opinion By Ruben Navarrette, Jr. Republican elected officials could use coaching on how to talk about the immigration issue — and, just as importantly, how not to talk about it. (SIC) The folks in the last camp don’t realize that every time they talk about immigration, they succeed in repelling Latino voters and send them into the waiting arms of Democrats, who generally proceed to neglect or manipulate them.
Education Reform Goes Virtual	Villaraigosa takes on teachers union
By Rachel Sheffield Last week at the Excellence in Action National Summit on Education Reform, former Governors Jeb Bush of Florida and Bob Wise of West Virginia released proposals to allow states to “put digital learning front and center in their strategies.” Said Governor Wise earlier that day on MSNBC: "We’ve got a situation where state budgets are going to be tanking for the next several years. We’ve got a demand for much greater student outcomes … and so what we’ve got is … a demand for greater product [with] less money. We’ve got to become much more productive and innovate, and that’s what digital learning’s about."	By Patrick J. McDonnell and David Zahniser Los Angeles Times With a hard-hitting speech that branded the city's teachers union as an unyielding obstruction to education reforms, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa set the stage this week for a new battle over control of the troubled Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second-largest. In a Sacramento address to state leaders, Villaraigosa — himself a longtime teachers union employee before launching a career in public office — declared that education in Los Angeles stands at "a critical crossroads," and he assailed United Teachers Los Angeles for resisting change
Spanish lessons for the GOP	Mainstream Media Exposes Anti-Immigrant Movement in America
Op-Ed By Edward Schumacher-Matos *Washington* *Post* December 9, 2010 Newt Gingrich is learning Spanish. Bless his heart. This is the same person who three years ago called Spanish "the language of living in a ghetto." He quickly apologized and last week hosted his own forum on Latino issues. The only profile in semi-courage among the Republican presidential wannabes, Gingrich even says what no other major Republican is willing to utter. "We are not going to deport 11 million people," he said at the forum. "There has to be some zone between deportation and amnesty." There it is. It is called comprehensive immigration reform.	By Wendy Sefsaf The mainstream media is finally exposing “the man behind the curtain” of America’s anti-immigrant movement. This week, Village Voice Media published a piece entitled, “FAIR-y Tales ” by Terry Greene Sterling, an award winning journalist and Writer-in-Residence at Arizona State University. Sterling’s in-depth investigative journalism blows the lid of off the John Tanton network and its anti-immigrant organizations—CIS, FAIR, IRLI (drafters of SB1070), Social Contract Press and Numbers USA. It even includes an interview with John Tanton, the unapologetic architect of the anti-immigrant movement in America.
Electronic Medical Records in the Age of Wikileaks	Piracy: The Real Economic End Game?
By: Alieta Eck, MD Will you trust the government to keep all of your personal medical information private and are they even capable of this? With Wikileaks, a master hacker was able to bribe a disgruntled government worker to help him access millions of very sensitive documents and e-mails and send them into cyberspace for all to see. The US government is embarrassed but worse yet, our national security and the lives of our agents overseas may be jeopardized. So if top-secret documents are now accessible to unauthorized viewers, what would stop this same hacker from putting all of your personal medical records out there?	Mexico Commerce News Frontera NorteSur December 11, 2010 All across Mexico, roving vendors, street stands, storefronts and even trendy bars peddle pirated DVDs, masquerade tequila, copy-cat fashion brands and other untaxed goods. With hefty price hikes in store for cigarettes next month, tobacco is emerging as the latest pirated, hot commodity. Overall, the value of the so-called underground economy, which is anything but subterranean, reaches nearly $75 billion annually, according to a prominent Mexican business leader.
Thomas Jefferson	A Summary View of the Rights of British Americans
John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time… He made this statement: "This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Thomas Jefferson was a very remarkable man who started learning very early in life and never stopped.	By Thomas Jefferson Resolved, that it be an instruction to the said deputies, when assembled in general congress with the deputies from the other states of British America, to propose to the said congress that an humble and dutiful address be presented to his majesty, begging leave to lay before him, as chief magistrate of the British empire, the united complaints of his majesty's subjects in America; complaints which are excited by many unwarrantable encroachments and usurpations, attempted to be made by the legislature of one part of the empire, upon those rights which God and the laws have given equally and independently to all.