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Walkout

Report: Hispanics Could Solve California Shortage of Professionals

One Giant Step Forward: Labor Groups Reach Accord on Immigration

Latinos Drive Record Surge in U.S. Naturalizations

Increased Security on US Mexico Border Leads to more Immigrant Deaths

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Walkout

On March 18, the HBO cable television network premiered “Walkout,” a film based on the 1968 protest by thousands of Mexican American students from five East Lost Angeles high schools.

On March 27, some 40,000 high school students in Southern California walked out to protest of anti-immigration legislation. “Walkout” director Edward James Olmos was right when he said the struggle for equality and civil rights is far from over.

Back in 1968, Latino students were tired of racial injustice, discrimination in the school system and lack of equal opportunities. The youth came together and led a multi-school walkout that became part of the rising Chicano movement. “Walkout” shares that historic story.

The movie shows how students organized walkouts after lobbying the school board for improved facilities, bilingual education, revised textbooks and the ability to speak Spanish in class without being reprimanded.

The youth-led movement, inspired by the civil rights movement, also demanded implemention of a curriculum that included Latin American history, and elimination of janitorial work as punishment.

“Our schools are the back of the bus,” yelled one student leader in the movie.

The walkouts were peaceful demonstrations that erupted into unnecessary acts of violence when an overzealous and aggressive racist police force beat and arrested unarmed students.

An outraged community was awakened and a fight for justice was born that first got parents involved, then community leaders, eventually forcing the school board to pay attention.

In the end the Chicano movement produced real changes, increasing Latino college enrollment by nearly 25 percent two years after the protest.

Moctesuma Esparza, who produced the film, was a college student at the time.

He was one of the main organizers of the student walkouts of that time and was arrested with 12 others — “East L.A. 13,” as they became known. All were eventually acquitted.

“I remember, growing up in the ’50s, when someone said you were ‘Mexican’ it was almost like being slapped in the face,” the 57-year-old recalled in a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle.

Esparza went on to say, “How one’s ancestry could be pejorative is hard to grasp today, but there have been people who have experienced discrimination and overcame it, and that’s one of the things we were looking to do, to stand up for our rights and be treated like all other Americans.

“The free speech movement of ’64 at Berkeley, the civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King, what Cesar Chavez was doing in the fields and the growing women’s movement were all very vivid examples to us.

“There was a feeling we could change the world,” he concluded. “That’s what protected and motivated us.”

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Source pww.org

Author: Pepe Lozano

Report: Hispanics Could Solve California Shortage of Professionals

California will face a shortage of close to a million university-graduate professionals by 2025, according to a new report that attributes the phenomenon to the retirement of baby boomers and the increase in the Latino population.

“California’s Education Skills Gap: Modest Improvements Could Yield Big Gains,” a study by the Public Policy Institute of California, reveals that many of those born between 1946 and 1964 will have retired by 2025, leaving a shortage of professionals.

Meanwhile the new generations of Californians include a high number of Latinos who historically have a low level of university education.

The California economy will need nearly a million more university graduates by 2025 than what demographic studies now foresee.

The state’s public institutes of higher learning currently produce a little more than 110,000 graduates per year, while private colleges contribute another 40,000.

California colleges and universities must increase their number of graduates by close to 60,000 a year, around 40 percent above the present level in order to fulfill expected demand by the year 2025, a very difficult goal according to the study.

“California faces a critical challenge,” according to PPIC Associate Director Hans Johnson, who co-authored the report with Ria Sengupta.

“But the good news is the state can dramatically improve the prospects for its economic growth and the futures of its young adult residents with relatively modest investments in the pathways students take to college graduation,” Johnson said.

In 2005 there were some 5.7 million university graduates between the ages of 25 and 64, and the PPIC analysis estimates that between 2005-2025 the state will produce 5.4 million new professionals with bachelor’s degrees, of which 3.3 million will come from California universities while 2.1 million will come from out of state.

In the same period, 3 million university graduates will retire from the work force because of their age, for a net total of 8.1 million graduates in 2025 aged between 25 and 64.

“Increasing graduation rates is also a promising fiscal approach. The state has already invested in these students’ higher education, and keeping them in college a bit longer is less expensive than other options,” the report says.

It also stresses the need to raise the number of high-school graduates who go straight into university in California, which is in 40th place among all the states in the country in that regard with 55 percent.

“Gradually raising the first-time college attendance rate to 61 percent — the national average - would increase the number of college graduates by more than 100,000 by 2025,” the study says.

It also mentions the need to offer greater economic aid to finance university costs — calculated at $25,000 per year for UC universities — as well as improving students’ grade scores and preparation. 

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Author: Luis Uribe

Source: EFE

One Giant Step Forward: Labor Groups Reach Accord on Immigration

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.

John Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and Joe T. Hansen, a leader of the rival Change to Win federation, will present the outlines of their new position on Tuesday in Washington. In 2007, when Congress last considered comprehensive immigration legislation, the two groups could not agree on a common approach. That legislation failed.

The accord endorses legalizing the status of undocumented immigrants already in the United States and opposes any large new program for employers to bring in temporary immigrant workers, officials of both federations said.

But while the compromise repaired one fissure in the coalition that has favored broad immigration legislation, it appeared to open another. An official from the United States Chamber of Commerce said Monday the business community remained committed to a significant guest-worker program.

In the new accord, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and Change to Win have called for managing future immigration of workers through a national commission. The commission would determine how many permanent and temporary foreign workers should be admitted each year based on demand in American labor markets. Union officials are confident the result would reduce worker immigration during times of high unemployment like the present.

Thousands of immigrant farm workers and other low-wage laborers come to the United States through seasonal guest-worker programs subject to numerical visa limits and have been criticized by employers as rigid and inefficient. Many unions oppose the programs because the immigrants are tied to one employer and cannot change jobs no matter how abusive the conditions, so union officials say they undercut conditions for American workers. Highly skilled foreign technology engineers and medical specialists also come on temporary visas.

Advocates for immigrants said a unified labor movement could substantially bolster their position as they push for legislation to restructure the ailing immigration system.

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Authors:  Julia Preston and Steven Greenhouse 

Source: New York Times

Latinos Drive Record Surge in U.S. Naturalizations

Nearly half of the record-setting 1 million new U.S. citizens sworn in last year were Latino immigrants — a 95 percent increase among that ethnic group from the previous year, according to an analysis by an Hispanic advocacy organization.

Department of Homeland Security data shows the number of immigrants naturalized in the U.S. grew from about 660,000 in 2007 to more than 1 million in 2008 — an increase of roughly 58 percent. The Houston metropolitan area saw more than 28,000 naturalizations last year, an increase of roughly 54 percent from 2007.

Nationally, Latino naturalizations jumped 95 percent from about 237,000 in 2007 to 461,000 in 2008, according to the analysis released Tuesday by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. NALEO used data from the DHS’ Office of Immigration Statistics, counting immigrants who hailed from predominantly Spanish-speaking countries as Latinos.

Sociologists cited a number of factors for the naturalization increase, including the desire to vote in the historic 2008 presidential election and a rush to beat a naturalization fee increase in summer 2007. The increase in naturalization applications also coincided with a high-profile outreach campaign with the slogan, “It is time — Citizenship!” which was supported by organizations including NALEO, unions and many in the Spanish-language media.

Nestor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas, said the growth in naturalization applicants was expected based on the level of legal immigration to the U.S. in the 1990s. More than 9.7 million people were admitted as legal permanent residents during that decade, he said, roughly 80 percent of them from Latin America and Asia. Although it takes only five years for a green-card holder to be eligible for citizenship, many historically have waited to take the oath.

Rodriguez added that some new citizens may have been spurred to action by the fee increase that took effect in July 2007 and raised the cost of a citizenship application from $330 to $595.

Tom Janoski, an associate professor of sociology from the University of Kentucky who has researched international naturalization trends, said some new citizens may have been driven to apply because of a fear of deportation in many immigrant communities.

“One factor that causes people to naturalize is that they’re scared,” Janoski said.

To read full article click here. 

Author: Susan Carroll

 Source:  Houston Chronicle

Increased Security on US Mexico Border Leads to more Immigrant Deaths

TUCSON - Illegal immigrant deaths are continuing to rise along the U.S.-Mexico border despite a nearly 25 percent drop in Border Patrol arrests in the past six months that suggests far fewer people are entering the country unlawfully.

The number of migrant deaths along the roughly 2,000-mile border increased by nearly 7 percent between Oct. 1 and March 31, the first six months of the 2009 federal fiscal year. The biggest increase occurred in the patrol’s Tucson sector, the nation’s busiest corridor for illegal immigrants coming through Mexico.

In all, the remains of 128 people were found, compared to 120 in the same six-month period the year before, according to just-released Border Patrol statistics.

Yet apprehensions of people crossing illegally from Mexico into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California dropped to less than 265,000 - a decrease of more than 24 percent from the comparable period a year ago and 37 percent from the first six months of the federal fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, 2006. The number of arrests is generally considered an indication of how many people are illegally crossing the border into the U.S. The more apprehensions, the more people are thought to be coming.

Migrants rights groups say there’s a direct correlation between the number of deaths and increased enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“What we’ve seen is that the death rate has gone up even though the number of people crossing has gone down, the direct result of more agents, more fencing and more equipment,” said the Rev. Robin Hoover, founder of the Tucson-based group Humane Borders, which provides water stations for migrants crossing the southern Arizona desert. “The migrants are walking in more treacherous terrain for longer periods of time, and you should expect more deaths.”

Tucson sector Border Patrol spokesman Omar Candelaria said it was hard to say why deaths increased in his area, especially because they’re not being found in summer, when most deaths occur.

Hoover said he’s measured where the bodies are being found, and the average death locations are farther and farther away from roads than in previous years.

“So they’re going around the fences, the technology and where the agents are,” he said. “And the farther you walk from a safe place, the more likely a broken ankle becomes a death sentence.”

Source: Associated Press