Every year, The Dallas Morning News chooses one Texan they label "Texan of the Year."

This year's recipient is a man by the name of Roy Velez.

What's so special about this West Texan, Mexican-American is that his two sons, his only sons, Jose Alfredo (Freddy) and Andrew, lost their lives in Fallujah and Afghanistan respectively.


Roy Velez pays daily homage to his two sons Freddy and Andrew who is pictured in the photo.
(Source: dallasnews.com)

Andrew was only 22 years of age when his brother's death in Fallujah, coupled with his own tortuous experience in Afghanistan, propelled the young soldier to take his own life while serving in Afghanistan.

Yet, Andrew's suicide doesn't negate the sacrifice and inhumane anguish that Roy and his family have undergone.


Army Spc. Andrew Velez: Oct. 26, 1983-July 25, 2006
(Source: dallasnews.com)

The newspaper article cites Roy's enduring faith that gets him through each day while helping others who are attracted to tell their own stories of human loss to him.

Roy epitomizes what has long been known in the Latino community - we have just as fierce a loyalty and sense of duty when it comes to serving this country — no matter how far back we can trace our families' arrivals to this country.


Cpl. Jose Alfredo “Freddy” Velez: Oct. 21, 1981-Nov. 13, 2004
(Source: dallasnews.com)

The U.S. Census reports that there are 1.1 million Hispanic veterans in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Though many in the Latino community have taken issue with military recruitment practices that seem to overly target Hispanic young people, the fact remains many still sign up for the benefits they are told they will receive: education, salary, etc.

Be that as it may, Roy's sacrifice exemplifies a reality that was underscored by this weekend's hanging of Saddam Hussein — the real war on terror is nowhere near ending since Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.

With Hussein's execution and Osama Bin Laden's invisible cloak, the only certainty that remains is that more soldiers will be subjected to a war where the enemy has devolved from being a defined one to one "guilty by suspicion."

If this is the case, many more families like Roy Velez can look forward to sending their sons and daughters off to a war that only makes sense to those calling the shots.

But where this war lacks a coherent strategy, there is definitely one in place to garner support from the American people.

The most common rallying cry for an unpopular war is to invoke the memory of dead soldiers by saying "they did not die for nothing."

It's the ultimate guilt trip in recruiting support.

As we anticipate this phrase to be resurrected in the upcoming State of the Union Address, Roy Velez and the other families of the more than 3,000 troops that have died in Iraq and Afghanistan will certainly agree — their loved ones did not die for nothing; they died with honor.

And tienen razon. (they're right.)

The more important question to be answered is: How honorable are leaders who knowingly send the future of a nation into battle with no foreseeable end?

Only three days left till New Year's Day — and the annual parade of stories of the first babies born in 2007.

The U.S. Census Bureau released a press release saying that the United States is expected to register one birth every 8 seconds during the month of January.

If I were wagering a bet, I would lay some serious dinero on the chances of there being more Latino babies born after the stroke of midnight come January 1 than any other ethnicity in the United States.


In 2003, Fatima was the first baby of the New Year in Utah hospital.
(Source: University of Utah Health Science Center)

And while there will be those who bitch and whine that it's all Hispanic immigrants overflowing maternity wards across the country and running up hospital bills that they can't pay, the long-term answer is that these children will pay this country back with something far more valuable than paper currency.

According to a very interesting article in The Sydney Morning Herald, rich, developed countries with low birthrates are going to have an extremely difficult time defending themselves in the future because there won't be enough young people to recruit to serve in their military services.

Whereas, the United States, by virtue of the Hispanic birthrate, don't share the same dismal future.

The article cited how Richard Armitage, the former U.S. deputy secretary of state, told an Australian audience that this shift in global demographics means national defense policies are going to undergo some serious changes.

What will it mean in the future?

Well, if today's average age in Australia is 36.9 years and in Japan it's 42.9 years and those ages are compared to the average age in Pakistan of 19.8 years and Nigeria's 18.7 years - not exactly the strongholds of peace and tranquility - then the future global war on terror may be played out a lot more differently than it is today.

The emerging imbalance in youth populations will force developed countries into a serious rethink on many fronts - from the structure of defence forces and the reliance placed on technology over manpower, to the desirability of new immigration programs and international coalitions, to ultimately, the way force is used.

The US Census reports that 27.2 years was the median age of the Hispanic population in 2005. That's a whole 9 years younger than the 36.2 years for the population as a whole.

Since it is true that the Latino birthrate outpaces the birthrates of all other ethnicities in the United States then it's pretty predictable that US Latinos will be looked to providing the future security of this country.

Pretty ironic considering how too many are blaming Latino immigrants for violating today's security by being here illegally and having children who can claim US citizenship.

Yet, it's these children who set our country apart from the other old, industrialized nations and provide a hopeful future that our country's defense systems will remain strong.

At the least, these children deserve the best educational preparation.

After all, they truly are our future heroes.

Now before the insults begin to hurl, there is something that is not widely known on this side of the border:

In Mexico and all over Latin America, today is known as the Day of the Innocents.

In other words, it is their April Fool's Day.

To give a little background, December 28 is commemorated as the day when King Herod, fearful that a child named Jesus would supplant him as King of the Jews, ordered every male child younger than 2 years of age to be killed.

Herod lived the rest of his days thinking he had succeeded in cheating destiny.


King Herod ordering the deaths of innocent children.
(Source: esmas.com)

It's this engaño that Herod was victim to that inspired such a unique observance of a serious historical footnote.

Like our national joke day, people play tricks (engañar) on one another all day.

Instead of yelling "April Fools," there is a short verse in Spanish that is said aloud to the embarrassed victim:

Inocente palomita que te dejaste engañar, pues en este Dia de los Inocentes, en nadie puedes confiar.

(Rough Translation: Innocent dove that let yourself be tricked, on this Day of the Innocents, in no one can you believe.)

I have to admit that I forgot what this day was and so I thought it odd that such a headline would make it to a Mexican news site before it hit The New York Times or at least Lou Dobbs.

Before I clicked on the headline, I noticed the main picture of the page. It was one of the newly elected Mexican President Felipe Calderón smiling alongside his arch rival during and after the election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The headline beneath the picture basically said that the two had buried the hatchet and were going to be working together.

That's when I remembered what day it was.

But it's a well-known fact among those who monitor US immigration that it is the issue of visas driving the flow of illegal immigration.

As it stands now, only 5,000 Work visas are available every year for unskilled laborers.

When there are industries in this country: agriculture, construction, meat processing, landscape, road construction, restaurant kitchen labor, etc. needing workers, that so far have been able to sustain more than 10 million undocumented, low-skilled workers — something is wrong.

And it's no joke!

I often wonder if it was what God intended when He created earth — that man would divide and section off every piece of available space to claim as his own.

Somehow it goes against the logic of the "bigger picture."

Yet, for children, and the young at heart, there are but a few places on the planet where the only borders that exist are the ones that keep out the daily troubles of war, poverty, and hunger from what has become an American icon — Disneyland.


(Source: octhen.com)

Passports to enter these magical places home to Mickey, Minnie, Cinderella, the Seven Dwarfs, etc. are the only ones that count for those who don't understand the importance of keeping countries and people separate from one another.

That's certainly the case with children and those who will eternally see life through childlike eyes.

Teru Rodriguez, a 27-year-old native of Durango, Mexico always dreamed of visiting the Magic Kingdom where for a short while she can be just like everyone else, instead of someone with Downs Syndrome.


Drawing of a child with Downs Syndrome
(Source: Heather Spears)

Yet, maybe it's because she has Downs or the fact that she is from Mexico or maybe because she has a brother who is a U.S. citizen, whatever the reason, Teru was denied the chance to realize her dream of visiting Mickey's birthplace by an American Consulate official at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez.

Teru and her mother made the 10-hour drive to the Consulate with all the necessary paperwork that they knew were needed: visa applications, a notarized letter from Teru's father saying Teru and her mother had his permission to travel to the United States without him because he is in poor health, even a doctor's note explaining about Teru's disability and that she was released to travel outside of Mexico.

However, none of that mattered to the official who denied Teru and her mother on the grounds that Teru's mother could not prove she would not go into the United States and abandon Teru.

When Teru's mother pressed him for an explanation as to why he even thought this, she says he signaled for the guard to show them the exit.

According to a spokeswoman for the bureau of consular affairs with the State Department, every person who applies for a visitor's visa must prove that they are going to return to their home country.

Teru's mother, who is a retired elementary school teacher, says she has no reason to abandon her daughter in the United States. She and her husband are financially able to take care of their daughter and even have her attending a special school where she is learning how to better communicate.

The most troubling part of this situation is that the Consular official's decision is permanent with no way to overturn it.

Teru really wants to come and see Mickey and Minne and like any good mother, Teru's mother will try again to make her daughter's dream come true. But it's a $100 fee each time Teru and her mother re-apply and with nothing changing on the application, chances don't look good that the outcome will be any different.

So in the meantime, Teru's mother must pacify her daughter with the story of how the Magic Kingdom is in a nearby land guarded by creatures who decide which people can enter the Kingdom that was built for everyone to enjoy — except for those unlucky enough to be from the wrong side of the Kingdom's border.

If it was really a matter of determining whether or not Teru's mother was going to abandon her daughter, the issue could be solved very quickly: let only Teru travel into the United States and stay with her brother and his family who would be "authorized" to take his sister to Disneyland.

At the end of the stay, Teru's brother would return her to the border to meet their mother. If Teru's brother didn't follow through with his end of the agreement, slap monetary sanctions against him.

He is already legal and from experience, no legal immigrant is going to blatantly jeopardize their citizenship status.

Solutions are so easy to come by if people are willing.

And in the process, the innocent don't have to be hurt needlessly.

Every red-blooded American school student, while enjoying their school break, are inevitably performing a time-honored-holiday tradition as well — counting down the days till school starts again.

Too many students will return to schools where self-segregation is the norm, no matter how diverse the student body.

Unfortunately, no amount of adults pushing kids to "play nice" and "get along" with others different than themselves change the outcome of when they're in junior and senior public high schools hanging out with those who look and talk like them.

Now comes documented research that the kids really aren't to blame. After all, the students are only following the role models they see before them.

A new Harvard research paper, The Segregation of American Teachers shows teachers in K-12 public schools across the country to be just as segregated as their students.

The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University surveyed over 1,000 public school teachers and found some unsurprising things:

White teachers teach in schools with fewer poor and English Language Learner students. The typical black teacher teaches in a school where nearly three-fifths of students are from low-income families while the average white teacher has only 35 percent of low-income students.


Teacher with her students
(Source: Design for Change)

Latino and Asian teachers are in schools that educate more than twice the share of English Language Learners than white teachers.

The percentage of white teachers is lower in schools that did not make adequate yearly progress, a standard defined by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

Schools with high concentrations of nonwhite and poor students tend to have less experience and qualified teachers despite NCLB's emphasis that qualified teachers be equally distributed.


For anyone who has visited an inner-city school, it is common knowledge that teachers and administrators see those schools as being a type of punishment in their profession.

Since most of these kinds of schools lack updated materials and equipment, have such a diverse student body that learning styles are not so easy to conform into a one-size-fits-all curriculum and are located in the rougher parts of town, it's no wonder that most "white" teachers, as the survey found, would opt to work in those schools where they feel more comfortable and don't have to work so hard in a profession most teachers already feel receives substandard pay.

School districts have quietly looked the other way when staffing their schools with diverse faculties. Or adhere to an outdated philosophy that students learn better from people who look like them.

Well, it's safe to say that students learn better from those who can communicate with them, show interest and support and understand that all children can learn — as long as they're shown someone believes in them.

No matter their color.

It is now 15 minutes into my new friend Jay's vigil at the T. Don Hutto Residential facility in honor of all the families detained behind the barbed wire.

One would think, being Christmas and all, that whatever celebration they should be allowing the families to have (and in my best Miracle on 34th Street imitation of Natalie Wood: I believe, it's foolish but I believe) that they would allow some kind of news out - if they were letting the children celebrate Christmas, that is.

In our opinion, there is no justification for withholding this very special day from children. As there is no justification in detaining children within a barbed wire enclosure.

Of all people, children are the ones who need to see that life really does hold more hope, options and a path to a better future.

The only way children are going to see this is by leaving their environment and seeing for themselves.

In honor of the children of the T. Don Hutto facility, I would like to share a story about another group of children who are being given the opportunity to leave their inner-city environment and are given the kind of "hope, options and a path to a better future" that we wish for the children of the Hutto facility.

A story in today's Los Angeles Times recounts the story of a school bus driver named Tanya Walters, a Los Angeles Unified School District bus driver.

Tomorrow, Tanya will load up a bus full of 20 teenagers, who have never been out of the city of Los Angeles, and take them on an 8-day cross-country tour of the United States.


Los Angeles School Bus Driver Tanya Walters
(Source: LA Times)

The students are set to visit Hurricane Katrina victims and colleges in Louisiana, Texas and Arizona.

Some of Tanya's fellow bus drivers have chipped in to help her but as of presstime for the article, Tanya still needed quite a chunk of change.

Yet, as someone who believes in what she is doing and the benefits she is providing to children who otherwise feel powerless to change their destiny, Tanya vowed to max her own credit cards to fulfill her promise to these kids whom she handpicked and made them work to be a part of this special Holiday field trip of the nonprofit she has created.

Walters founded the GodParents Youth Organization, a nonprofit traveling mentoring program for 8- to 18-year-olds that takes children to colleges, museums and historical sites. With no public relations background and no website, Walters relies on word of mouth to raise funds. In August, she took nine kids across the country in her van for a week. This month, she planned to take a bigger group — if she could pay for it.

Not all children in this country yet are able to receive the message that they can change their destiny. Until that time comes, we ought to at least help those who are on their way to following their own Star.

If you would like to help Tanya Walters in any way with herorganizationn and/or its goals, please contact Latina Lista and I will send you her contact information.

For every child who knows of Santa, the countdown till he arrives is winding down.

Yet for the children who are being held at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, and for the children whose parents are being processed for deportation, Christmas Day is going to feel more like the Grinch arrived.


Grinch
(Source: i4.photobucket.com)

Latina Lista has received word that some concerned citizens are going to throw a Christmas Eve vigil for the children in the Hutto concentration camp.

Jay J. Johnson-Castro, a South Texas human rights activist known for his 205-mile walk from Laredo to Brownsville to protest the proposed border wall, as well as, the walk from the Capitol in Austin to Hutto prison camp last week, came up with the idea of the vigil so as "not to forget the children over the holidays who are imprisoned there."

Jay's idea also struck a chord with two Austin flamenco dancers, Teye and Belen, who will perform at the vigil which will be held across the street from the facility.

The Vigil will be held on Dec 24, from 5-6pm at 1001 Welch St., Taylor, Texas (35 miles northeast of the Texas State Capitol).

According to Jay's press release:

Teye and Belen will use their Flamenco talents to show their protest for the inhumane treatment of the inmates of Don Hutto Center in Taylor Texas, especially the 200 children that are imprisoned there. They will perform according to their best Gypsy Campfire traditions. Since there will be no campfire…it is requested that you bring your own candles.

Yet, these organizers of the vigil realize that Christmas Eve is a hard day to leave our own families. In any event, concerned citizens can still do something —

Yes — call government representatives and offices.

However, you should be forewarned that the Grinch may already have infiltrated the offices of Homeland Security.

As one reader tells Latina Lista today:

After reading your blog on the facility that holds families accused of being illegal under those terrible conditions, I decided to call Homeland Security to express my outrage through their "Citizen's comment line." What happened next is laughable though expected. I was transferred by the operator at Homeland Security to the comment line and received this automated message:

"I'm sorry, you cannot leave a message because the box is full."

When I got the operator back, I was transferred several times to be told by one person: "Call back in a few minutes, an office assistant is 'cleaning it out.'"

I replied, "What does that mean? Are you guys just deleting the comments to make more room!?"

Whereupon she hesitantly replied, "No, but we're deleting the ones...well, you know...."

I said, "I do? So am I to understand that an office aide is assigned the task of deeming messages " insignificant" versus "worthy? By the way, exactly who in the office listens to the screened messages?" "

She replied, "Um, I'm not sure..."

It sounded by the tone of her voice, that the messages left are given little weight, if at all. Perhaps you should find out the answers to the questions I listed above before people try to call only to end up with their messages getting deleted for their trouble. I'm sure that would make interesting fodder for a blog.

good luck.
Aztec

I agree with Aztec that the unfortunate interns, or whomever Homeland Security has relegated to cleaning out the Inbox, are paying scant attention to the substance of the comments.

Yet, one redeeming consequence of keeping up the calls is knowing what a pain in the ass it is for them to have to keep on top of it.

Just by virtue of the the volume of the calls, somebody is going to get the message that imprisoning children indefinitely in detention centers is unacceptable in this country.

It's a message that is bound to get passed along.

In 2004, at a company investors' meeting, representatives from Corrections Corporation of America, operators of the family immigration detention facility, the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, told their investors that business was good.


T. Don Hutto Residential facility
(Photographer: Jay Johnson-Castro)

At the time, federal prisons were experiencing severe overcrowding. Since the majority of the people behind bars were males between the ages of 18 and 24, the company's representatives told investors that since this demographic was increasing the longterm outlook for the company pointed to a very profitable future.

How right they were!

Ben, a Latina Lista reader, alerted us to the fact that Corrections Corporation of America was just named by Forbes as one of "The 400 Best Big Companies in America."

Crime pays. At least for John Ferguson, chief of $1.3 billion (sales) Corrections Corporation of America (nyse: CXW), the nation's largest privatized prison operator. If there's one thing Ferguson can rely on, it's that criminals are never in short supply and there aren't enough bars to put them behind. Ferguson's 23-year-old firm, in Nashville, Tenn., is the oldest company of its kind. And it has cells to spare. "We have seen this percolating demand for many years that we didn't sense other people saw," he says. "This company has prepared itself." Earnings per share are up 130% over the last 12 months.
(Forbes January 2007)

Back at that investors' meeting two years ago, the company directly attributed their future profits to the White House:

…CCA also noted that the national turn toward private prisons has been greatly helped by the Bush administration, which has reduced the construction of prisons in favor of contracting private companies and local governments.

Due in part to this "free enterprise" system:

- The company is the fifth largest corrections system in the nation, behind only the federal government and three states.
- CCA is the founder of the private corrections industry and is the nation’s largest provider of jail, detention and corrections services to governmental agencies.
- CCA has approximately 72,500 beds in 65 facilities, including 40 owned facilities, under contract for management in 19 states and the District of Columbia.
- The company manages approximately 70,000 inmates including males, females and juveniles at all security levels and does business with all three federal corrections agencies, almost half of all states, and more than a dozen local municipalities.
- CCA continues its market leadership position in the corrections industry managing over 50% of all beds under contract with private operators in the United States.

Some would argue "business is business" but as was reported earlier this week on Latina Lista, the CCA not just oversees the incarceration of criminals but children as young as infants too. The incarceration of children in immigrant detention facilities sheds a whole new light on the business proposition.

In an interesting article at New America Media, the author takes note of the increase in immigrant detainees.

Thanks to the Department of Homeland Security's Operation Reservation Guaranteed, the number of immigrants in detention has risen from 18,000 when the operation was launched in July 2006, to 25,000 by the end of September. President Bush's budget for 2007 includes funds to increase detention bed space by 25 percent.

Since it's been admitted that families/immigrants are detained indefinitely in these facilities without due process, the CCA and companies like it, are profiting on the false imprisonment of people - since these are noncriminals being detained.


"Play yard for children incarcerated at T. Don Hutto Residential Facility.
(Photographer: Jay Johnson-Castro)

And in the meantime, men, women and children innocent of committing/violating gross crimes against humanity are being criminalized.

It brings a whole new definition to business profits.

The quickest way to discount any candidate for political office, government appointment, job promotion, school admittance, etc. is to automatically resort to the excuse that the particular person is not qualified.

It's a reason that is all too often accepted without a fight, and it happens to Latinos more often than it should these days.

For example, right now in Port Chester, New York, a municipality that has more than 46 percent of its population identified as Hispanic, there is not one Latino elected official on its six-member Board of Trustees.

It's so obvious that there is an imbalance in representation that the U.S. Department of Justice is suing town officials to take action to change the situation.

To anyone, it would seem odd that in a town with almost half of its population designated Hispanic, there is not one single qualified Latino to win a seat on the Board.

What's ironic is that Latinos ourselves have been conditioned to believe that Latino candidates, unless they are lucky to have a pedigree degree, are not qualified to hold these kinds of positions.

As one young village resident said, "I think we do really need a little more Hispanic representation, but we also need people in there who know what they're doing," said Gabriel Hernandez, a 22-year-old registered Democrat who volunteers as a poll worker and studies business at Westchester Community College. "You can't just have people in there because they're Hispanic, or black or white, or whatever. It just makes no sense to say, 'Oh, there's nobody Hispanic in there, so let's put someone in just based on the fact that he's Spanish,' when that person might not be qualified."

Yet, what determines whether or not someone is qualified?

Good grades? Job experience? The right education? Being born into the right families? Or just delivering the right answers during the interview process?

Is two or three out of five so bad?

For too many candidates, experience is always touted as the determining factor in whether or not someone is qualified — and for some reason it always seems Latino candidates just don't have enough of it — regardless of how much they've already done.

Yet, to top it off, voters who vote for the "perceived" less qualified Latino candidate are almost always labeled as an "ethnicity voter."

That these voters would put the needs of the country beneath electing "one of their own" is a tactic that is used too often in discouraging voters in multi-ethnic races.

It is a discussion that is bound to be raised time and time again if Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico announces his run for the Presidency.


Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico

Half-Mexican, Half-Anglo - a fellow hybrid - Richardson has an impressive resume: former New Mexican congressman and former US Ambassador to the United Nations, as well as, serving as special envoy on many sensitive international missions.

Rumors are strong that Richardson will run for the Presidency in 2008.

Yet, with such an impressive resume and political experience, it is already being anticipated that there will be some who will say he is not "qualified."

The critics will contend that Richardson has the support of the Latino community because of his ethnicity rather than his qualifications.

Will Latino voters then be looked upon as ethnicity voters rather than smart voters who can evaluate not just the qualifications of each candidate, but their qualities as leaders, and vote accordingly?

Why the terms "Latino" and "qualified" are seen more as oxymorons than natural complements of one another is the result of years of circumstance and conditioning.

Circumstance when Latinos were denied access to represent and conditioning to make everyone else believe that Latino candidates were less, in all aspects, than others.

Qualified Latino candidates exist everywhere — that their ethnicity happens to be Latino just adds a new dimension to their political profile and should be seen as the asset it is, and not an indicator of their qualifications.

One of the more disturbing stories that surfaced after the Swift meat plant raids was how too many children were left without a parent and/or farmed out to friends and families with no immediate word on how they will be reconnected with their mami and papi.

But if news filtering out of one of the newly designated immigrant detention centers for families is any indication, no undocumented parent is going to open their mouth and claim their children if the whole family is going to be subjected to what is becoming known as the first known concentration camp on American soil in the 21st Century.

The T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas (on the outskirts of Austin, Texas) is a private detention facility operated by Corrections Corporation of America. It and a smaller center in Pennsylvania are the only two facilities in the country that are authorized to hold non-Mexican immigrant families and children on noncriminal charges.


Hutto family detention facility in Taylor, Texas
(Photo: Jay Johnson-Castro)

What does this mean?

It means that at the Taylor facility of the 400 people "held" there, 200 are children. And all are families that can be held there for whatever length of time without due process conducted in a timely manner.

To top it off, as long as the men, women and children are held there, the facility's operator draws a daily profit - per person.

The children range in age from infants on up.

According to the lawyers who have visited their clients in the facility, the children receive one hour of education, English instruction, a day and one half hour of indoor recreation.

Jeans and t-shirts have been replaced with jail uniforms; children are issued uniforms as soon as they can fit into them — and everyone must wear name tags, even the babies.

Lawyers are reporting that thefamiliess are receiving substandard medical care and becoming ill from the food being served them. Children are losing weight and people are complaining of migraine-type headaches.

Those clients who are asylum seekers, say the lawyers, are continually suffering trauma on top of the trauma they've already undergone in their home countries - all without receiving any kind of pyschological treatment.

Originally, the detention facilities were touted by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff as a way to keep families together while waiting for their cases to come up for court review.


Homeland Securitysecretaryy Chertoff
(Source: dhs.gov)

Well, they are accomplishing that goal - to the exclusion of being allowed any outside contact with the rest of the world, aside from those who have lawyers.

The plight of these families caught in a government-sanctioned Hell is slowly spreading (Texas Civil Rights Review, Austin's American Statesman Editorial,American Statesman article) but with Christmas less than a week away these families truly need a miracle to let them know that the outside world knows that they are there — not to mention, the children who need to know that Santa or Los Tres Reyes, or the other Holiday entities observed by those who are not Mexican or Latin American, will know where to find them.


Texans for Families Call Attention to Hutto Family Detention Center
(Source: Texascivilrightsreview.org)

The detention for a prolonged period of any child, regardless of whether or not they are with family members, is beneath what the United States used to stand for.

As of late, the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, under the direction of Homeland Security, has had too many people - on both sides of the immigration debate - shaking their heads as to what our government is capable of subjecting the children of these immigrants to.

We have felt helpless and too many times my Inbox is filled with emails of "What can I do?" or "Where do we go from here?"


Concerned citizens, led by human rights proponent Jay Johnson-Castro (center), walk in protest 35 miles from Texas state capitol in Austin to Taylor,Texas, site of the Hutto Residential facility.
(Source: statesman.com)

There are few issues that demand immediate action, and when children are concerned, it most always warrants as one of those issues.

For children to be held longer than three days, receive but one hour of instruction and only a half hour of recreational play, to be made to feel like criminals by wearing jail jumpsuits and name tags and not have any contact with anyone outside of the facility is a serious violation of the public trust we have in our government, and how we value children in this country.

What can be done?

As cliche as it sounds, it's time to contact our government officials:

Homeland Security

The White House

Members of Congress

Corrections Corporation of America


Yet, the secret of doing something, that the blogosphere discovered long ago, is that you don't stop with one email, one posting or one phone call.

The issue must be talked about and circulated until there is action, positive change and the day when all these families can see that they are not alone.

I am a Chicana and my identity was stolen by an illegal alien. Yes, an illegal alien. Not an undocumented worker, not an economic migrant, not a border crosser, not an entrant. It ruined my credit, cost thousands of dollars getting the IRS off my back when they demanded back taxes and interest, credit bureaus hounding me when the noble migrant opened a credit card account in my name and ran up over $10,000 in bills for wide screen TVs, cash advances, washing machines, and expensive clothes. I am sick and tired of our community apologizing for these lawbreakers who could care less who is harmed.

(Anonymous to Latina Lista on December 18, 2006)

In all honesty, there is no defense for undocumented migrants who delude themselves into thinking that the Promised Land means "there's plenty enough to go around" so that they not just assume a false identity to work but use it to create a lifestyle that did not belong to them.

However, though ICE has been wanting to show justification for the raids by releasing news in trickles of the number of victims who actually noticed their credit was being damaged and had the same misfortune as Anonymous, those numbers are still relatively small compared to the overall number of arrests in this Swift plant raids.

Unfortunately, the misdeeds of a few are being used to paint an unflattering picture of a whole group, who for the most part did backbreaking, stinky work to supply their families with the basics of life for a better future.

In the aftermath of the continuing bad press Immigration and Customs Enforcement is receiving over the timing of the Swift plant raids, the puzzlement remains over how many were known to be involved beforehand in the identity theft scheme that it warranted being cited as the impetus for the nationwide campaign.

Before 9/11, there was an unspoken acknowledgement by law enforcement, local communities and the federal government that there were undocumented immigrants living in our country and working jobs with false papers.


ICE agents search workers during Swift raid in Greeley, Colorado
(Source: MSNBC.com)

Every once in a while, just to flex their muscle, and maybe to justify their paychecks, a random raid by INS would be conducted where those found to be illegally here would be rounded up, put on a bus and deported.

More often than not, those same people were back the following week - at the same jobs with the same assumed identities.

It was a cycle that worked for the businesses, the local consumers and, of course, the immigrants.

When 9/11 happened and Congress, in their quest to make someone accountable for this tragedy, discovered that the murderers were immigrants, they suddenly proclaimed all immigrants as "enemy combatants."

Since then, border security, or the lack of it, has become synonymous with 9/11. Did it matter that any of these murderers had actually entered our country legally, and not by swimming the Rio Grande?

Of course not.

Suddenly, the facts of the case were replaced with the "what ifs." What if they had come through from Mexico disguising themselves as Latin American immigrants? What if they bought fake identities to worm their way into our country and attack us from within? What if…?

The sad thing is that while Congress was playing the "what if" game, Border Patrol agents were under real attack by Mexican drug smugglers getting more brazen and vicious in their ambitions to have a lucrative drug trade along our southern border.

The Border Patrol agents needed help and no one was listening.

Would Congress listen better if the word "terrorist" was thrown into the conversation?

So a group of Border Patrol agents went to Congress to plead for more money to combat those terrorists who were sure to be taking advantage of the understaffed border, but also for the ruthless drug traffickers.

Finally, the Border Patrol agents got Congress' attention, and some much needed money and equipment to do one of the most dangerous jobs in this country.

I'm not discounting that the border could and is being used by would-be terrorists but their numbers versus the drug dealers deserves to be looked at.

In other words, on any given day is a Border Patrol agent more likely to face an Al-Queda-trained terrorist or a blood-thirsty drug dealer?

All these questions came to mind when I read an interesting report by the Associated Press in today's newspaper.

The Border Patrol, in one of the five Texas sectors, seized about 50 tons of marijuana just 10 weeks into the fiscal year.

Evidently, that's a huge increase from last year.

The sector chief attributes this find to "a change in immigration policy" that allows them to "focus on drugs."

The increase in seizures of 181 percent over the same time last year can be traced in part to so-called "other than Mexican" immigrants no longer being turned loose after capture with a notice to appear before a judge, which they often ignored, sector chief Lynne Underdown said Thursday. Unlike Mexicans, other illegal immigrants can't be immediately deported.

Word apparently has reached non-Mexican immigrants that they can be detained and eventually deported, and apprehension numbers are down 70 percent, Chief Underdown said. As a result, she said, agents can spend more time chasing drug traffickers.

"We have gained control in the area of aliens," she said.

Someone who should know is saying that the border, regarding illegal entry, is under control.

Yet, why is it that we are still hearing that the border is under potential siege from terrorists?

Or that a group of undocumented workers of whom the majority are hard-working-family-church-going people are being equated and treated as Public Enemy #1/potential terrorists?

As Chief Underdown said, a change in immigration policy netted her sector great success in combating their local threat.

It just makes sense that it's time for an overall change in immigration policy to keep this country safe, families together, communities strong and industries operational without taking advantage of immigrant labor.

Dec. 15 Update: News reports this morning quote ICE officials as having charged more than 100 undocumented immigrants with identity theft. In Colorado, affidavits filed for the search warrant for a Swift plant in Greeley, Colorado showed that all of the stolen identities belonged to U.S. citizens or legalized residents of Latino background.

Reports confirm that many of the those whose IDs were stolen never knew about it before contacted by ICE. An unspecified number of victims are said in news reports to have noticed that credit accounts and telephone accounts had been opened in their names. Yet, no word on how badly impacted were victims' credit histories.



ICE arrested approximately 1,282 persons at six facilities owned by Swift & Company as part of an ongoing worksite enforcement investigation into immigration violations and a massive identity theft scheme that has victimized large numbers of U.S. citizens and lawful U.S. residents.

(Source: homepage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

In Day 2 of the aftermath of the ICE raids on six Swift & Co. meat processing plants, the federal government has changed tactics in its defense of raiding these worksites and cuffing and herding the undocumented immigrants for deportation.

Suddenly, it's not enough to just say these people were undocumented and working illegally. It used to be federal law enforcement didn't feel it had to explain its actions to anyone - and really they still don't.

Yet, with even the White House employing a PR person, image is suddenly everything. And ICE is wanting, as much as any federal department, to project an image that it is acting to secure the United States.

So, instead of focusing on their illegal status, ICE is using the explanation that these workers used fake IDs, meaning fake as it related to them.

In the ICE official release, it stated:

The investigation has uncovered criminal organizations around the country that traffic in genuine birth certificates and Social Security cards belonging to U.S. citizens. In recent months, ICE agents have arrested several members of these organizations in Minnesota, Texas, Utah and Puerto Rico. In some cases, these organizations have stolen legitimate identity documents and Social Security cards from unwitting U.S. citizens. In other cases, they have purchased these documents from U.S. citizens willing to sell their identities for money, including homeless people and individuals in jail.

I say excuse because there is no proof that has been released either to the press or in response to Latina Lista's request today from ICE officials for information on how many credit histories were affected by the use of these stolen identities.

In fact, ICE admits that In total, agents apprehended 1,282 illegal alien workers on administrative immigration violations at Swift facilities. Of these, 65 have also been charged with criminal violations related to identity theft or other violations, such as re-entry after deportation.

Being apprehended on an "administrative violation" is far less offensive, repulsive and a danger-to-society sounding than to say someone is being apprehended for a "criminal violation" related to identity theft.

By invoking such language in describing the unlawful, because they are unlawful, activities of the undocumented, ICE seems to purposely want to prejudice the public into seeing all undocumented as far worse criminals than simply people who will go to any lengths to provide for their families — even though only less than 65 were actually charged with identity theft.

Again, remember there is no information released of how many credit histories were actually impacted. In fact, ICE in its own release makes some coy admissions that has to make a thinking person wonder just why there is such a big fuss over the fake IDs.

For example:

We believe that the genuine identities of possibly hundreds of U.S. citizens are being stolen or hijacked by criminal organizations and sold to illegal aliens in order to gain unlawful employment in this country.

They "believe." They can't say with certainty and though they don't know an amount, they are speculating into the hundreds when only less than 65 were originally charged with identity theft.

ICE and the FTC are working to identify other victims who may be unaware that their identities have been stolen.

The investigation has uncovered criminal organizations around the country that traffic in genuine birth certificates and Social Security cards belonging to U.S. citizens. In recent months, ICE agents have arrested several members of these organizations in Minnesota, Texas, Utah and Puerto Rico. In some cases, these organizations have stolen legitimate identity documents and Social Security cards from unwitting U.S. citizens. In other cases, they have purchased these documents from U.S. citizens willing to sell their identities for money, including homeless people and individuals in jail.

Not to justify using someone else's identity, but doesn't it say something that when the person whose identity is stolen doesn't even know it until federal officials come knocking on their door to tell them so?

What is that saying?

It says that most of the undocumented didn't use those documents to harm anyone, but to work. Yes, they were trying to bypass our legal measures for screening them out but the majority were not using the IDs to take out loans to take luxury cruises or to go gamble in Vegas every weekend.

By ICE's own admission, they entered the Swift plants not with federal arrest warrants but civil search warrants. If there was such a big identity theft ring, why wouldn't there be arrest warrants or at least some other paperwork stronger than a civil search warrant?

It is obvious that the use of the terms "identity theft" versus "fake IDs" is used to invoke a much more negative image of undocumented immigrants.

Otherwise, the term "identity theft" would be used for every high school and underage college student who wants a night out at local clubs to drink.

In a New York Times' article, one college sophomore was blunt about the use of fake IDs: "ID's made by students tend to be much better than ID's you buy in the Village or Times Square, a 19-year-old Columbia sophomore who has a fake driver's license and asked not to be identified for fear of the police. As for the importance of having a fake ID, she said: "All of my friends have fake ID's, everyone I know from high school and all my friends at school. It's definitely a necessity."


IDs confiscated at a Boston club
(Source: New York Times)

Some would argue that I'm overreaching here because kids and fake IDs aren't the same as what undocumented immigrants are using.

Yet, both groups are presenting documents purposely misrepresenting themselves to achieve one goal: for kids - to drink; for the undocumented - to work.

And not all fake IDs are fake. The practice still goes on using someone else's ID to get into places where the underage student can't.

But with kids, we see fake IDs as a right of passage until they are legally of age to drink in public.

There is no denying that using someone else's social security number or birth certificate is just plain wrong but if there is a slight silver lining for those who have been victimized — it's the fact that double the money has been paid into their social security accounts for retirement.

At least the money is not in a federal limbo account, but going directly to someone who deserves it for having had to share their life with a total stranger.

News of yesterday's raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, at six plants owned by the meat processing company Swift & Company, greeted most of us early this morning.


(Source: ICE.gov)

With frontpage headlines or lead stories broadcasting the surprise round-up of what is now calculated to be 1,282 arrests from Cactus, Texas to Marshalltown, Iowa, the news saddened most of us and undoubtedly delighted others who equate all undocumented immigrants with deathrow-dangerous criminals.


Woman cries for her husband who was picked up during the ICE raid in Cactus, Texas.
(Source: The Dallas Morning News)

But there's a sizeable group who know that the men and women picked up in yesterday's raids are not the "blood-thirsty illegals" some want the country to believe.

And that is their children.

It is reported that 400 children have been taken in by friends and extended family members in the Cactus, Texas area alone because their parents were caught in the raid.

Needless to say, yesterday's government action scared the children, of all ages.

I know this because the first news of yesterday's raids didn't reach me through regular "news channels" but through an e-mail of a student whose life was touched in some way by yesterday's events.

I just have a question. The town I live in just had a raid today and when we were going home from school on the bus, they took us straight to an elementary school in the town and kept us there until a parent or legal guardian went to sign us out. I just want to know if they can do that. Can they take students from one school to another and keep us there until our parents go and sign us out? I don't think they can but I just wanted to ask someone that knew. I have been trying to find information on the people's rights during an immigration raid but I can't seem to find anything useful. Please contact me as soon as possible. Thank you so much for your time.

I wish I knew more but I was able to dig up a few answers — straight from the sources themselves.

In speaking with Leticia Zamarripa, the ICE Public Affairs Officer handling questions for the Cactus, Texas raid, Leticia told Latina Lista that ICE had nothing to do with ordering the children bussed to the elementary school. She said that was on the orders of the school superintendent.

Tracking down Dumas School Superintendent Larry Appel, he confirmed that he and his staff decided it was in the best interest of the children to take them all to one centralized location.

"Six busloads of junior high and high school students were transported to an elementary school to wait for a parent or their guardian or someone on their pickup list to come and sign them out. This was done to make sure every child had a home to go to," Appel said.

Superintendent Appel also disclosed that, as we can imagine, the school district's absentee rate was double today than what it is normally. From Pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, the percentage was 7.3% or about 286 children out.

Certainly these children, and their remaining family members, were afraid they would be taken away if they went outside today.

Is that the kind of fear children, not to mention whole communities, should be scarred with?

In Grand Island, Nebraska at another Swift plant raid, it's reported that the local police chief, Steve Lamken, refused to allow his officers to take part in the raids.

"When this is all over, we're still here taking care of our community and if I have a significant part of my population that's fearful and won't call us then that's not good for our community," Lamken said.

The government's justification for its multi-state sweep of the plants is information it received that an identity theft scheme was being perpetuated.

According to ICE Public Affairs Officer Leticia Zamarripa,

This investigation began in February 2006 as a result of information developed during ICE Criminal Alien Program (CAP) activities in which ICE agents process aliens incarcerated in state or local jails for administrative removal following the completion of their sentences.

During CAP interviews, agents identified aliens who had worked at Swift and who admitted that they had assumed identities in order to circumvent employment eligibility screening. In addition, ICE received referrals from outside police agencies and several calls to its 1-866-DHS-2ICE hotline from anonymous individuals who reported illegal aliens working at Swift.

In fact, in November, The Dallas Morning News ran a three-part series on the Cactus, TX plant of Swift outlining the identity theft scheme, use of immigrant labor as well as the dangerous conditions of the work itself.

Yet, as bad as those conditions are, it's safe to say that they are not as frightening as to the uncertain future felt by those family members left behind.

Undoubtedly some, if not most, of the children are US citizens — and have every right to continue their lives here in this country.

With Christmas only a little over a week away, it's a sure bet many children in towns like Cactus, Grand Island and Marshalltown, as well as the others, are praying for their own Christmas Star to lead their parents back to them.

But what it's really going to take is a whole Congress of Wise Men and Women to deal with the undocumented in a fair way so that families aren't continually being torn apart, children are not traumatized, fake documents aren't common practice, identities are not being stolen and the groundwork isn't being laid for a generation learning to resent and fear law enforcement.

This situation needs a real Savior.

There is a new survey out about Latinos.

Yet before anyone gets too excited, the survey, to the casual reader, reads more like a profile of Latinos who are recent immigrants than native born.

Titled the Latino National Survey, it is the result of a comprehensive, 4-year effort spearheaded by an impressive group of Government and Political Science academicians at several prestigious universities across the country. The survey interviewers contacted 8,643 Latino adults.

Among the survey's findings are:
61% prefer Spanish
35% prefer the term "Hispanic;" 13.4% prefer to be called "Latino"
51% don't access the Internet at all
69% if born in another country are not naturalized citizens
52% said they could carry on a conversation in English "just a little"

As you can see, any native born Latino would find it hard to say that this survey reflects their reality.

Yet Professor Michael Jones-Correa of Cornell University, one of the principal investigators of the survey, tells Latina Lista that the survey presents a more accurate picture of who comprises today's Latino community than even some of us ever imagined.


Prof. Jones-Correa
(Source: economyandsociety.org)

The survey, a representative sample of 8,643 Latino adults residing in the U.S., is about 66% foreign born — this is the proportion of foreign born in the Latino population as a whole. So although the sample is primarily composed of foreign-born adults, it reflects the reality of the Latino population: adults are largely foreign born.

However the survey has a great deal to say about the native born as well. There are about 2,838 native born Latinos in the sample. Taken on its own, this portion of the survey is still a substantially larger sample than that for many existing surveys of Latinos, including recent Pew surveys, or surveys of Latino voters. One of the unique aspects of the survey is that it allows analysis of not only second generation Latinos, but third and fourth generation as well. We'll definitely be analyzing the native born experience as well as the experience of the foreign born, and the differences between these.

It is a difference that is worth noting.

For those in the Latino community who are native born, English dominant, this survey would seem to discount these experiences. In fact, it is a rising battle among some in the media that advertisers, newspapers, television ratings researchers, etc. are ignoring the native born Latino altogether.

But there is promising news.

A recent Ad Age article found that "Work for bilingual and English-speaking Hispanics is becoming a bigger part of agencies' business."

And Professor Jones-Correa even foresees a change on the horizon when it comes to how marketers will approach the Latino community:

On the question of media strategies: there are two pieces of information which suggest that a media strategy targeted only at Spanish speaking Latinos will be insufficient. One is the data that we presented in DC tracking media use over time in the US and across generations, which suggests that even in the first generation a substantial portion of that population begins using English language media; this trend is even more pronounced across generations, with the second generation shifting away from Spanish-only media. The second is that although the adult population is largely foreign-born, the Latino population as a whole is largely native born. The reason for this is that 85% of those Latinos under the age of 18 are native-born. This young second generation — who are not interviewed in our survey — are much more likely to be English dominant than their parents.

Very true, but I guess the real crux of the dilemma is that too many native born, English dominant Latinos today are tired of being confused with our recently arrived hermanos.

And a chasm between the two groups is slowly building.

Unless more studies targeting native born Latinos are made, there will be a continuous misperception in the mindset of society-at-large that all Latinos speak Spanish, are recent immigrants, and are undocumented.

However, the only thing undocumented when it comes to native born Latinos is the part they play in the overall Latino equation.

It's funny that in the same week a movie about an indigenous people is number one at the Box Office, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples failed to be adopted so yesterday's International Human Rights Day could be celebrated with special significance.


Mayan character from Apocalypto movie
(Source: channel4.com)

Of course, the movie is Mel Gibson's creation, Apocalypto. At last count, it had brought in $15 million — and that was only after three days.

Yet, it took 24 years of advocacy from the world's indigenous populations to get the world to recognize their existence and rights with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People before it was finally adopted by the Human Rights Council on June 29, 2006.

The next step to make the Declaration "official" was for the United Nations Third Committee of the General Assembly to adopt it. Yet, some Member States on the committee, that have large indigenous populations, felt that granting such rights to their indigenous groups was empowering them too much.

In an e-mail to Latina Lista from a source at the United Nations regarding the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People:

This document is especially significant because it gives substance to the collective rights of indigenous peoples. Existing human rights agreements that deal with categories of people — such as women, children, and
immigrants — address only the rights of individuals within those groups. The
Declaration, on the other hand, recognizes that issues such as self-determination and land rights apply to the whole group, and can be addressed only at that level.

Obviously, some countries feel threatened by this and so have been successful in derailing any kind of adoption on the Declaration.

In fact, the United Nations Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) of the General Assembly, responsible for adopting the Declaration, were successful instead in adopting a resolution on November 28, 2006 that defers any adoption of the Declaration as it now reads without further review of the text.


On October 20. 2006, representatives of the Indigenous Peoples Caucus, the Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous People met with the President of the General Assembly.
(Source: UN web site)

Needless to say, this action by some countries is disturbing and disappointing and proves that discrimination of indigenous people, people of color, still exists in the 21st century - with blatant impugnity.

In a statement by the Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz:

The Permanent Forum is convinced that a declaration on the rights of
indigenous peoples will be an instrument of great value through which to advance the rights and aspirations of the world’s indigenous peoples. The Permanent Forum therefore recommends the adoption without amendments of the draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples … by the General Assembly during its sixty-first session in 2006. This would represent a major achievement for the Second International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People.

For the United Nations to not recognize indigenous people but to recognize the countries that are home to these groups seems ironic in that it is the indigenous groups whose ancestors populated and gave history to their respective countries.

In essence, without the existence of these groups, no country would be what it is today.

It is the indigenous who were the original caretakers of the land, who lived (and some still continue to do so) in such harmony with the earth that they can tell when things are not right with our planet, and what medicinal antecdotes could be picked, boiled or eaten to relieve sickness.

These people should have been the first to have been recognized for their contributions and their value in present day society.

The United Nations has been losing credibility and respect among the peoples of the world.

If ever there was a way to stem that loss, it would be with the passage of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Indigenous leaders are tired of waiting for justice, and who can blame them. The time is now for the United Nations General Assembly to act - indigenous leaders are.

Tomorrow, a press conference (viewed via the web) will be held at the United Nations headquarters in New York City at 11 a.m. There, leaders will try to impress the importance of the passage of this Declaration before the end of 2006.

It's a message that needs no translation.

Not all women are alike.

Such a simple statement but one that many in the medical research field still have trouble accepting.

Just because women share such life experiences as periods, cramps, childbirth and menopause, among others, the popular belief was that there was probably no difference among women in these experiences.

Thankfully, that belief has been found to be just plain wrong.

We now know that ethnicity does play an important part in how women experience these life experiences. Unfortunately, the research community is just waking up to the fact of how important it is to document these differences, for the health of all women.

That's why one scientist is currently conducting a $1.2 million study on the differences in menopausal symptoms among ethnically different women.



The internet-based study, A Multiethnic Internet Study on Menopausal Symptoms (MOMS) wants to collect data from 500 middle-aged Caucasian, Hispanic, African-American and Asian women from across the country.

"Increasing ethnic diversity of our population requires health professionals to practice with greater cultural competence in areas such as the management of menopausal symptoms, where cultural beliefs mediate the biology of reproduction and aging," said Senior investigator Eun-Ok Im of the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing.

Since the study is gathering data through their internet site until 2009, the researchers are actively seeking women of menopause age to complete their survey.

Studies featuring different ethnicities are long overdue. As these scientists reach out to communities that were accustomed to being ignored, or forgotten, when it came to adding relevance to any national study, it is time for these same communities to respond to this outreach and add our voices — not just to be heard, but to be counted.

A day after Latina Lista reported on the attempts by a Texas lawmaker to revoke American citizenship of children born in the United States of undocumented immigrants comes a "Special Report" from the state's comptroller that undocumented immigrants contribute more to the state coffers than any services they receive.



Billed as the first time any state has done a comprehensive financial analysis of the impact of undocumented immigrants on a state's budget and economy, the report, Undocumented Immigrants in Texas: A Financial Analysis of the Impact to the State Budget and Economy
December 2006, finds that:

The absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion. Undocumented immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion in state services they received. However, local governments bore the burden of $1.44 billion in uncompensated health care costs and local law enforcement costs not paid for by the state.


Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn
(Source: window.state.tx.us)

In its summary, the report carries an interesting chart. It chronicles what the effects would be on the Texas economy if 1.4 million undocumented immigrants, roughly 6 percent of the population, were to be removed.

Among their findings is that there would be $17.7 billion lost in the total gross regional product; $66.5 million lost in exports to the rest of the world and a labor force loss of 714,100 workers.

And for those who still insist on parroting the rhetoric that the undocumented don't pay taxes:

The Comptroller estimates that undocumented immigrants paid more than $513 million in fiscal 2005 in local taxes, including city, county and special district sales and property taxes.

Unfortunately, what is all too clear from this report and which has been the most common reason driving towns across the country into adopting overly harsh ordinances regarding undocumented immigrants, is the fact that local communities and hospitals must bear the brunt of the costs.

It was something that a group of sheriffs from several border communities tried to explain to Congress last summer.

The Southwest Border Sheriffs Coalition, formed by several gun-toting public servants more comfortable keeping the peace along the US/Mexican border than wandering the marble halls of Congress, went to appear before Congressional leaders to plead their case for money to help pay for all the extra work and costs it took to pick up the undocumented and fight the violent drug gangs crossing the border.

What did the sheriffs get for all their trouble?

A border wall.

Rumor has it that not too many sheriffs were happy with that decision — especially when Congressional leaders used the sheriffs to promote their own agenda rather than listening and hearing what was really needed.

Now with speculation that the border wall will never become a reality in the way those Congressmen who created the bill thought it would be, local communities are back at square one.

Yet, this report gives Texas the necessary data to take some positive actions to rectify the costburdenn many local communities are feeling.

For example, since there is a small surplus in state revenues courtesy of undocumented immigrants, why not put that surplus in a special fund to be doled out proportionately to local communities to help pay their costs of covering undocumented immigrants?

No, it wouldn't pay the entire amount but anything would be better than nothing.

What this report has proven is that it is possible to separate the misinformation with analytical facts and use that information in a constructive manner to relieve the situation, at least in a small way.

That is, unless politicians resort to playing the oldest political game in the world that is used to justify decisive decisions and surrender responsibility — it's called the Blame Game.

It is what is driving towns like Farmers Branch, Texas and Hazelton, Pennsylvania, among others, to pass harsh ordinances to drive out undocumented immigrants from their communities.

As these towns like to say, "Because the federal government hasn't taken the responsibility to do something about illegal immigration, we must…"

More states need to do a similar report as Texas to find what the true costs and benefits are to their states from undocumented immigrants.

Only then can the politicians who insist on repeating this misinformation be weeded out and recognized for the frauds that they are, and a real address of the situation can begin without intimidating and belittling a group that has proven in at least one state that they come to work for a better life.

Another sign of just how nasty and low the debate has gotten regarding illegal immigration, a Texas state Representative has filed the mother of all bills when it comes to intimidating, demeaning and further driving home the point that too many of these politicians are using this sad situation to further their political notoriety.

Representative Leo Berman of Tyler, Texas has filed a bill that would prevent children born in the United States to undocumented parents from receiving state benefits such as food stamps and public housing.


Texas Republian Rep. Leo Berman woke up long enough to target the most innocent victims of the immigration debate.
(Source: Austin Chronicle)

Since the vast majority of undocumented families don't take advantage of such state services that provision seems a moot point, but what really hits below the belt is that Berman wants the state to stop recognizing these children as U.S. citizens.

As is so often the case in this debate, the critics refuse to see the bigger picture.

That would entail a little compassion, having some economic foresight and just plain common sense — rare qualities among select Republicans these days.

By virtue of the fact that these children are born in the United States does not mean that their parents made the dangerous trip from their home countries just to enjoy parenthood.

If that is the popular thought among critics then they are more misinformed than originally believed.

Though I don't have any documentation, I know from personal experience that many, many undocumented parents of children who are born in this country have the children either after having met in this country and decide to marry and start a family or arrived as a couple and waited a while before having children.

Though it's true that some women, knowing how much better life would be for their children, made a point to cross over just to be able to claim citizenship for their children, the feeling is not that it is as widespread as some think it is.

The number one reason for entering and staying in the country without papers is to work; the children are a byproduct of that original intention.

To deny these children citizenship, not only penalizes them for something they had no control over but essentially makes a whole generation undereducated by denying them equitable access to higher education, if other illegal immigration reform bills should pass.

To what advantage is it to our country to have a generation of kids who are too smart to not be pursuing higher levels of study and are ineligible to work because of their legal status?

It's a sure recipe for forcing kids to get into trouble because there's no incentive not to. Gang populations would swell. Teenage pregnancies would climb higher and the high school drop out rate could accelerate because they know there's no future for them after high school.

Also, by denying these kids an affordable opportunity to pursue a deeper education and the chance to work deprives our economy from much needed labor, regardless of the industry.

Does it make sense to deny citizenship to a group of children who have the potential to contribute to this economy and society in positive, productive ways?

Or is it preferred that these children rack up their public contributions from behind bars or in the juvenile courts?

If that is the case, the blame can't be shifted so easily onto the children — but will lie solely with those lawmakers who lacked the foresight to see the bigger picture and the common sense to act on it.

Maria Elena lives in Monterrey, Mexico. She used to work in a tortilla factory. Though she didn't make a lot of money, her small salary, added to her husband's wages as a mechanic, let Maria Elena, her husband and their daughter live with a roof over their heads and food on the table.

That is, until Maria Elena's husband lost his job. In a country where 40 percent live below the poverty line, Maria Elena and her family were on the brink of making some hard decisions.

Decisions that have historically torn apart Mexican families looking for a way to just survive.

Yet, Maria Elena wasn't going to give up so easily. After all, she had experience working in a tortilla factory. She decided to put that experience to good use.

She, with some help from her parents, and the love and support of her family, opened up her own tortilla shop. The business is two years old and with her husband's help, along with three other employees, Maria Elena is making it work.


Maria Elena in her tortilla shop

But she still needs help. She doesn't need a huge amount of money but enough of a small loan to let her buy a scale to weigh the tortillas. The industrial type scale she needs costs $250.00

Maria Elena's story is but one example of the kinds of budding entrepreneurs in Mexico who are choosing to make something of their lives in their own home country rather than risk the chance of coming to the United States illegally.

To help Maria Elena and others like her who need small loans, too small for traditional lenders to bother with, the organization Matt.org (Mexicans & Americans Thinking Together) has teamed up with microlender Kiva in a program that allows everyday people to help those like Maria Elena achieve their dreams and not have to leave home in search of them.

The way the program works is if you go to the Matt.org web site, you can read Maria Elena's story and those of others who all are struggling to start their own businesses in Mexico but need just a little capital to get going or keep going.

After reading the stories, you choose which person's business you would like to invest in. The amount is up to you. It can be as little as $25 or higher.

You make the loan with your credit card. Kiva transfers the money to the local partners who then gives out the loans. But this isn't charity.

The person whose business you invested in pays the loan back over the course of the year. There is no interest collected on the loan. Whether or not you want to continue to invest in another business once you're repaid is up to you.

So far, according to Kiva officials, the repayment rate is 100 percent.

With Christmas around the corner, such a gift to someone would be priceless in its return on your investment — especially, if it prevents yet one more family from being separated by a border.

It’s funny just how small the United States has become since undocumented immigrants were declared Public Enemy #1.

Suddenly, our country isn’t big enough to house, employ or otherwise tolerate undocumented immigrants or their children — even when those kids hold American citizenship themselves.

Until it is sanctioned by Congress, children born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ citizenship status, are still U.S. citizens.

That’s why a recent revelation in Texas regarding Medicaid coverage has some people worried that this anti-illegal immigrant hysteria sweeping the country is putting the youngest victims of this debate at unwarranted risk — and possibly illegally.

Ever since states were federally mandated in July of 2006 to enforce the new Medicaid guidelines requiring everyone to prove their citizenship status before receiving Medicaid, there has been some confusion as to who is eligible for Medicaid.

Since the regulations are aimed at weeding out immigrant families from allegedly taking advantage of the system, it made sense that any woman applying for Medicaid would have to show proof of citizenship.

What makes these particular new guidelines so hard to swallow is that it is now required that families must prove the citizenship status of their newborns in order for the babies to receive Medicaid.


Premature baby needs non-stop medical attention
(Source: Nurseweek)

It’s important to note that this particular guideline of requiring proof of citizenship for newborns was not required by the federal law, but instituted by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

What the authors of this provision didn’t understand completely is that since any child born within our borders is automatically a U.S. citizen, they are already eligible for Medicaid — regardless if their parents are citizens or not.

Yet, under the new guidelines, mothers who are not citizens must submit a new Medicaid application and provide proof of citizenship and identity in order to get Medicaid coverage.

However, those moms who are citizens don’t have to worry about doing any extra paperwork for their children; they’re automatically eligible for Medicaid and don’t even have to apply for benefits.

What it means for those children who are rightfully entitled to Medicaid benefits but whose families must reapply is that there will be a lapse in coverage for them during the most crucial time of their lives, their first year of life.

In Texas, the Center for Public Policy Priorities found something disturbing when tracking the rate of Medicaid denials based on citizenship.

Among the children who were denied, about 200 children 1 year of age and younger were denied.

Anne Dunkelberg of the Center for Public Policy Priorities tells Latina Lista that she feels that of these 200 infants who were denied Medicare benefits, some were wrongfully denied.

“The mother’s status does not affect the child’s eligibility for Medicaid,” said Dunkelberg. “Unless all of these infants were born in another state and the parents didn’t have their birth certificate, it seems more than likely that some of these denials were in error.”

One has to wonder how widespread are these "denial errors" across the country and what the legal ramifications would be if denial of rightful Medicaid coverage resulted in any infant born in this country, of an undocumented mother, suffered some health crisis that could have been prevented with early detection?

Something tells me that the cost would be far higher, to the family, the state and to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, than a simple visit to the pediatrician.

Many times, readers ask what can they do help change situations, or make a positive difference in today's world.

There is only one answer: speak out!

Unless more of us do, things won't change and the complaints of today will never improve.

A recent request was made of Latina Lista that I share the following. It is the perfect opportunity for many to start our New Year's Resolutions early and do something positive for our communities.

I urge you to accept this invitation.


Help public radio cover US Hispanic business and culture



The mainstream media has a pretty spotty record when it comes to covering the real issues in the Hispanic community. Do you see trends and stories that aren’t being reported in the news media? Do you work at – or have you started – a business that’s part of the growing Hispanic American economy?

Marketplace, the leading business show on public radio with more than 9 million listeners, wants your help to provide deeper coverage of the issues and emerging trends affecting Hispanic businesses, employees and communities.

Marketplace reporter Dan Grech reports on the Spanish-speaking community and businesses: your insight can help Dan and other Marketplace reporters cover Hispanic communities and businesses more accurately, more in-depth, and with more relevance. Your knowledge can inform the news.

Have you started a business? How is Hispanic culture affecting the American marketplace? What stories about the Hispanic community do you want to see in the news?

Click here to introduce yourself to Marketplace.

What you share will help improve media coverage of Hispanic communities and businesses.

Thank you for your time.

In 2002, Building Blocks for Youth released a report titled ¿Dónde Está la Justicia?



Though the report centered on the unjust disparities in our juvenile justice system when it comes to the treatment of Latino children, there was a small paragraph in the report that virtually went unnoticed until my friend Tomás of HispanicTips pointed it out on his site.

The paragraph read:

Disparate treatment of Latino/a youth manifests itself in numerous ways. In some states, Latino/a children and youth in the child welfare system are over-represented in out-of-home placements, with percentages in placement as high as 56% in New Mexico, 32% in Connecticut, 31% in California and Texas, and 27% in Arizona (Children’s Bureau, 1998).

To be honest, I'm a bit prejudiced when it comes to referring to data that was gathered before the year 2000. Though this particular bit of information is only 8 years old, I sometimes labor under the false assumption that such data is outdated.

Surely with so much attention and scrutinty paid to Hispanic communities in the last couple of years, this sorry statistic would have been relegated to the archives of past injustices, right?

I, of all, should know better.

It wasn't until I saw a news release issued by the state of Utah's Foster Care Foundation saying that they were going to start trying to attract more Latino foster families to better service the more than 540 Spanish-speaking children they have in state custody that I began to think that maybe things haven't changed.

When we consider that Latinos only make up 10.6 percent of the state's population and children (18 and younger) of all races comprise 31 percent of the population, well the number of Spanish-speaking children in foster care seems somewhat high given the probable number of Latino children in the state.

Not to mention that having so many Latino children in the foster care system goes against the traditional value placed on our children.

So, I decided it was time to get a better picture of just how fast this cultural disintegration is occurring.

According to the report Child Maltreatment 2004 issued by the Children's Bureau at the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, the breakdown of children victimized by maltreatment are as follows:

African-American children, Pacific Islander children, and American Indian or Alaska Native children had the highest rates of victimization at 19.9, 17.6, and 15.5 per 1,000 children of the same race or ethnicity, respectively. White children and Hispanic children had rates of approximately 10.7 and 10.4 per 1,000 children of the same race or ethnicity, respectively. Asian children had the lowest rate of 2.9 per 1,000 children of the same race or ethnicity.

One-half of all victims were White (53.8%); one-quarter (25.2%) were African-American; and 17.0 percent were Hispanic. For most racial categories, the largest percentage of victims suffered from neglect.

Race and Ethnicity of Fatalities

White children accounted for 43.2 percent of all child fatalities. African-American children accounted for 27.2 percent and Hispanic children accounted for 18.6 percent of fatalities. Children