NewsTaco » Immigration

Harvard students seek probe of PhD thesis on Hispanics’ IQ

NewsTaco — Tue, 21 May 2013 06:05:18 +0000

Harvard University students signed and delivered a petition to President Drew Faust last week demanding an investigation into how the school awarded a doctorate in 2009 based on a dissertation that claimed that Hispanics are not as smart as whites.

The degree was awarded to Jason Richwine, who recently was in the news when the Heritage Foundation, where he was working, released a paper he co-write claiming that the immigration reform bill being debated in Congress would cost the government $5.3 trillion. (It won’t.) It then came to light that Richwine had written a dissertation, for which he received a PhD in public policy from Harvard in 2009, titled “IQ and Immigration Policy”, which claimed that Hispanic immigrants generally have lower IQs than non-Latino white Americans.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo courtesy Harvard University]

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Arizona’s limits on immigrant driver’s licenses upheld

NewsTaco — Tue, 21 May 2013 05:55:35 +0000

By Cindy Carcamo, Los Angeles Times

TUCSON — Young people granted immigration relief and work permits under a new Obama administration program still won’t be able to obtain driver’s licenses in Arizona, a federal judge has ruled.

Although the decision is a win for Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, who issued the executive order denying driver’s licenses to this particular group, it’s just the first battle in a case that will probably be argued on constitutional grounds.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by labanex]

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House Immigration Group Reaches Deal

NewsTaco — Fri, 17 May 2013 07:07:54 +0000

By Ashley Parker, New York Times

A bipartisan group in the House working on an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws reached a deal in principle Thursday evening, aides said. The group plans to introduce its bill in June.

Details of the compromise were not released, but, much like a bill introduced in the Senate, the House legislation will include a path to legalization for the 11 million undocumented workers already in the country, as well as increased border security measures. The House version, though, is expected to be more conservative in its approach to granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, among a number of central issues.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by Glyn Lowe Photoworks]

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Judge refuses to stop Arizona from denying driver’s licenses to immigrants

NewsTaco — Fri, 17 May 2013 06:40:01 +0000

Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Philip Barbar, Reuters

(Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge refused on Thursday to block Arizona’s Republican governor, who has long clashed with Washington over immigration reform, from denying driver’s licenses to young immigrants granted temporary legal status by the federal government.

Civil rights groups had filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Phoenix in November against Governor Jan Brewer and two state transportation department officials on behalf of five Mexican immigrants who qualify for deferred deportation status under a program pushed by President Barack Obama.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by Gage Skidmore]

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“Pro-English” Group Launches Campaign Against Immigration Reform

NewsTaco — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:02:28 +0000

By Buzz Feed

WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham is the first target of a new broadcast ad campaign from an anti-immigration reform group with reported ties to the white nationalist movement.

The minute long radio ad campaign by ProEnglish, comes at a particularly bad time for opponents of comprehensive reform: last week the Heritage Foundation was forced to sack a researcher for his racially tinged comments about Latinos and there are growing questions about the anti-reform movement’s connections to radical population growth groups.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Image screenshot courtesy Pro English]

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A Vague Approach to Border Security Should Worry Everyone

NewsTaco — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:02:27 +0000

By Ted Hesson, ABC News/Univision

An immigration reform bill in the Senate would create goals for border security over the next 10 years, and tie those goals to legalization of undocumented immigrants.

But we can’t say whether the goals are feasible for a few reasons:

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by CBP Photography]

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Immigration Advocates to Obama: Suspend Some Deportations

NewsTaco — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:26:44 +0000

By David Nakamura, Washington Post

Immigration advocates called on President Obama on Monday to suspend deportations of undocumented workers who would qualify for legal status under a comprehensive immigration bill being debate in the Senate.

With an estimated 1,100 illegal immigrants per day being deported from the United States, the advocates said Obama has a moral obligation to stop breaking up families when lawmakers are considering legislation that would allow most of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by CBP Photography]

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Heritage Foundation Between a Rock And a Hard Place

NewsTaco — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:03:16 +0000

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

If you’re looking for the Heritage Foundation today, look behind the rock next to the hard place. You’ll find the Heritage between the two, acting like it doesn’t have a care in the world. You get the sense of it by the silence.

The Heritage Foundation has been through a difficult week, to put it delicately. First the foundation put out a report that claimed the net bill for immigration reform would total more than $6 billion over 50 years. That report was criticized by the expected Heritage opponents (namely people and groups on the left of center) and also by folks on it’s own side of the political court. The study’s conclusion was built on flimsy stacks that stretched 50 years into the future. No reputable organization or researcher would toss a lot that far ahead – anything could happen in five decades to sway even the best researched prophesy.

But if that wasn’t bad enough, that same week the reputation of one of the study’s co-authors quickly became the center of a very public storm. Jason Richwine, a Harvard educated PhD, helped crunch the Heritage study numbers. He also wrote a controversial dissertation while at Harvard in which he claimed that immigrants had inherently low IQ’s and that their offspring and subsequent generations would also have low IQ’s. All this is recent but very widely known history. The latest news was that the heat generated from the IQ dissertation was too much for Dr. Richwine, so he resigned his position at Heritage.

My concern is with the silence coming from the Heritage Foundation. You’d get the sense that it’s a jittery silence – or that it should be.

Any PR consultant worth his or her reputation would advise Heritage to do exactly what it’s doing – defend the study and ignore Richwine’s dissertation as having nothing to do with the foundation or the immigration study. That’s the best of a number of bad options. The problem is that, like it or not, Heritage tied it’s wagon to the dissertation when it hired Richwine. And whether Richwine quit Heritage or not doesn’t separate the foundation from his work – his name is all over the study already. And by default, Richwine is tied to the people who hired him because in the end they didn’t fire him.

Again, a PR tightrope. Do you fire Richwine and by so doing admit faulty research? Do you stand by the research and by default stand by his prior writing? So Richwine quit, Heritage looked the other way, then crawled to that place between the rock and the hard place.

Does anyone want to take a wild guess as to how Heritage’s next research will be received?

[Image courtesy The Heritage Foundation]

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Gender and Undoc Immigrant Experiences

NewsTaco — Mon, 13 May 2013 17:23:27 +0000

By Blanca Guillen-Woods, Latino Decisions

Discussions about immigration reform largely focus on immigrants as workers. In fact, immigrants come to the U.S. for both work and family reasons. Understanding the factors that drive a decision to immigrate—and how immigrants organize their lives in the United States—is crucial to developing an immigration law that provides a real solution for undocumented immigrants.

Last month we released key findings from a Latino Decisions study of 400 undocumented Latinos in the United States, conducted in February and March 2013 on behalf of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund andAmerica’s Voice Education Fund. While this data was previously released in the aggregate, the analysis here focuses on gender group differences, adding a layer of texture to the policy debate underway, and highlight the important role of our Mamás in Latino families.

Coming to America

More than 75% of undocumented Latinos identify one of two primary reasons for immigrating to the United States: economic opportunity, or to build a better life for their families. A smaller percentage (12%) came primarily to reunite with family members in the United States.

Obviously these motivations are often intertwined. For women, though, supporting or reuniting with family is the primary factor; 52% of undocumented Latinas said they came to the U.S. either to build a better life for their family, or to reunite with loved ones. They are twice as likely as their male counterparts to migrate for the purpose of reuniting with family (16% vs. 8%).

A majority of undocumented Latinas live in the U.S. with their spouse (65%), and children (88%). These figures are higher compared to undocumented Latinos (58% and 60% respectively). In addition, women are less likely to come to the U.S. alone, and more likely to arrive with children.

The vast majority of respondents to our survey have lived the U.S. ten years or more. Men are more likely to have arrived more than two decades ago, and many Latinas followed later to join spouses and other family members in the mid- to late-1990s.

Work and Family

While jobs and economic opportunities are the main reason that immigrants come to the U.S., areas of employment are fairly narrow. Perhaps not surprisingly, there are also gender differences in the types of jobs undocumented men and women hold.

Undocumented Latinas are most likely to work as childcare providers (19%) and housekeeping/house cleaners (26%), while undocumented Latinos are more likely to work in construction (33%). Gender differences are less persistent in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing.

In terms of family relationships, undocumented Latinas have more family members who are American citizens (75% vs. 68%) or permanent residents (62% vs. 56%). Still, it is notable the majority of both sexes have close relatives who hold American citizenship.

As illustrated above, a greater share of undocumented Latinas have children who live with them in the United States (88%). More than half of these women (57%), have U.S. born children (American citizens). An additional 15% have one or more child born in the U.S. and one or more born in another country.

The vast majority of undocumented immigrants have relatives in the U.S. who are citizens (71%). Polls of Latino voters confirm the fact that mixed status families are a reality in America, and many Latino citizens have family members, relatives, and friends who would benefit from immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented residents. There are especially close ties, and strong support among Hispanic women voters. In our February 2013 survey of Latino voters, 63% of Latinas said they know undocumented immigrants, and 75% of Latinas are following the immigration debate in Congress. Among Hispanic women voters, 74% believe it is “very” or “extremely” important that Congress passes immigration reform in 2013.

Perhaps these strong connections between theses two communities (i.e. the undocumented Latino population and the U.S. citizen Latino population) is a key reason 68% of undocumented Latinos remain optimistic that immigration reform will finally pass this year.

About the poll: Latino Decisions interviewed 400 Latino adult immigrants self-identifying as non-citizens and not “Legal Permanent Residents” or not having any other type of visa or documentation. The poll was conducted between March 4 and March 29, 2013, and all respondents were selected at random in both landline and cell-phone only households. The nominal margin of error is +/- 4.9%. Interviews were conducted in Spanish and English at the subject’s discretion. Additional data points will be released later this week.

This article was first published in Latino Decisions.

Blanca Guillen-Woods is a senior project manager at Latino Decisions.

[Photo by C. Elle]

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Standout DREAMer Thanks Educators: ‘I’m Here Because of You’

NewsTaco — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:08:16 +0000

By Félix Pérez, Education Votes

Gaby Pacheco is a tireless advocate for DREAMers. She’s testified before the U.S. Senate, was profiled by Time magazine, walked 1,500 miles from Miami to Washington, D.C., and has been interviewed on more news programs and by more newspaper reporters than she can remember.

But when all is said and done, she gives credit to educators for whatever she’s been able to accomplish.

“I’m here because of you,” Pacheco told educators from across the nation gathered in Washington this Saturday.

“I’m here because I had great and amazing educators and school personnel, counselors and coaches who loved me and cared for me and educated me. I’m here because of great public schools.”

Pacheco, like the 60,000 DREAMers who graduate from U.S. high schools every year, had no say in the matter when she was brought to the United Sates by her parents as a young child. Her life and her aspirations are uniquely American. Pacheco earned a degree in special education and fulfilled her teaching internship at Florida’s Miami Senior High School.

Arizona math teacher Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, said educators are “on the side of the angels” when it comes to immigration reform. “Compassion compels us to act.”

Van Roekel continued:

We call them DREAMers because they’re aspiring young Americans who dream the American Dream. They are valedictorians, honor students, idealistic, hard-working. They are our students and former students, and given a chance they will be our future.

Educators and DREAMers nationwide contributed to history when the first comprehensive immigration reform legislation in more than 25 years was introduced in the Senate three weeks ago.

The “Gang of Eight” bill confers special status on DREAMers and prioritizes family unification. Titled the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, the bill:

Provides a five-year path to citizenship for DREAMers who arrived in the United Sates before the age of 16 and have completed high school or earned a GED.
Retains the ineligible status of DREAMers, until they are citizens, from all forms of federal financial aid and means-tested public benefits, such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Temporary Assistance for Needy families and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Emphasizes family unification and increased training, personnel and resources for immigration courts.
Stipulates that individuals in the United States prior to December 31, 2011, will have a 13-year pathway to citizenship provided they pass a background check, show a grasp of basic English, and pay any assessed tax liability, fees and a $500 fine.

This Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee begins a weeks-long process of debating and amending the bipartisan Gang of Eight bill. A bill has yet to be introduced in the House.

Van Roekel and Pacheco commended the Gang of Eight for bringing the bill forward. The critical step now, said Van Roekel, is that “the politicians have to hear from their constituents” repeatedly as the legislative process unfolds into the summer.

Los Angeles Times: ‘A student with promise, a teacher who had to help’

Colleges, universities join immigration reform movement for DREAMer students

This article was first published in NEA Today.

Félix Perez is Senior Poltiical Writer at NEA.

[Photo by DREAMCoalition]

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