New America Media

'Why Are There So Many Filipino Nurses in the US?'

2013-05-18T09:25:00Z

This was the question posed to me by a curious TV news reporter on May 7, just three days after a stretch limousine, carrying nine Filipino nurses to a bridal party across the San Mateo Bridge, suddenly burst into flames killing five of the occupants, including the bride.

Ann Notarangelo, the reporter who is also the weekend anchor of CBS 5′s Eyewitness News, explained that she was only asking the question because it was on the minds of her viewers. She came to my office to interview me because she thought I might know the answer as I taught Filipino American History at San Francisco State University and I am the legal counsel of the Philippine Nurses Association of Northern California. Plus, I added, I am also married to a Filipino nurse.

She said that she was frankly surprised to learn that 20 percent of all the registered nurses in California are Filipinos, a considerably large percentage since Filipinos number only 2.3 million (officially 1.2 million) out of a state population of 38 million.

“I just never noticed it before,” Ann told me, “because I generally don’t see people in racial terms.” But, she said, in reflecting back on all the times she visited friends and relatives in hospitals all over California, she now recalls seeing Filipino nurses everywhere. Not just in California, I said.

Filipino nurses in the US may be invisible even when they are visible everywhere but not anymore.

Tragedy Sheds Light on Filipino Nurses

The video clip of the fire-engulfed limousine was the top story over the weekend. The fatalities included Neriza Fojas, 31, a newlywed bride who was planning to get married again in the Philippines in June; Michelle Estrera, 35, the bride’s Maid of Honor who worked with her at a Fresno medical facility; Jennifer Balon, 39, and Anna Alcantara, 46, of San Lorenzo, both of whom worked at the Fruitvale Healthcare Center; and Felomina Geronga, 43, who worked at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland.

Americans also learned about the nurses who escaped the fire and were treated for burns and smoke inhalation: Mary G. Guardiano, 42; Jasmine Desguia, 34; Nelia Arellano, 36; and Amalia Loyola, 48. In a TV interview, an anguished Nelia Arellano blamed the limo driver for failing to stop immediately and for selfishly refusing to help them get out of the burning limo.

As the San Francisco Chronicle described it, “They came from little towns scattered all over the Philippines, hungry for the good life in America. A nursing degree was each one’s solo ticket over, and once they found each other, they became the best of friends.”

As the TV camera started rolling, the TV news reporter posed the question to me:“Why are there so many Filipino nurses in the US?”

There are push and pull factors that are at play, I explained. The main push factor is the poor Philippine economy where an average Registered Nurse earns only about 5 percent of what an RN is paid in the United States. The main pull factor is the nursing shortage in this country.

But Americans should not to be too surprised at the large number of Filipinos here, I told her. After all, the Philippines was a U.S. colony from 1899 until the Japanese occupation in 1942 and, some would argue, a “neo-colony” for many decades after the Philippines was granted independence by the United States in 1946.

It certainly does not surprise the British to see many Indians and Pakistanis in England, nor does it surprise the French that there are many Algerians in France. They understand that people from the colonized countries generally tend to gravitate and immigrate to their “mother” countries, even after their native countries are granted independence.

Four Waves of Migration

Filipino nurses did not arrive in the United States overnight. They have been immigrating here for more than a century. In fact, there are four distinct waves of Filipino nurse immigration to the United States.

The first wave came after the United States began its colonization of the Philippines and needed local health care professionals to meet the health needs of the subject population which is why the U.S. Army recruited Filipinos to work as Volunteer Auxiliary and Contract Nurses.

Under the Pensionado Act of 1903, Filipino nursing students were among those sent to the United States as government-funded scholars (pensionados) including those pursuing a nursing education. Some of those who stayed for employment as nurses went on to form the Philippine Nurses Association of New York in 1928. The association’s first president was Marta Ubana, who completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Many other pensionado nurses returned back to the Philippines to help set up and manage the 17 nursing schools that were established in the Philippines from 1903 until 1940. Large numbers of the graduates from these nursing schools thereafter immigrated to the United States as, unlike with the Chinese and Japanese, there were no exclusion acts enacted against them since Filipinos were considered “U.S. nationals” and even traveled with U.S. passports.

One of the pioneer Filipino RNs was Isabel L. Mina, who graduated with a nursing degree from the University of the Philippines in 1919 before working at the Mary Chiles Hospital in Manila. Isabel and two other Filipino nurses, Josefa Cariaga and Petra Aguinaldo, boarded a ship in Manila 1921 bound for Hawaii where they worked in a hospital before moving on to California. They then boarded a train and traveled to New York where they worked in a local hospital for several years.

Information about Isabel Mina was obtained by her San Francisco-based granddaughter, Lissa Sobrepena, who learned about her grandmother when she logged on to Ancestry.com. For a fee, the website produced photos of her grandmother in 1921 and her documents including the ship’s passenger manifests and the two passport applications she filled out when she lost her U.S. passport while traveling in the United States.

What stunned Lissa was when she found out that her grandmother’s best friend, Petra Aguinaldo, coincidentally just happened to be the grandmother of her husband, Robert Sobrepena. Neither Lissa nor Robert knew that their grandmothers – who died before they were born – were close friends and that they had traveled together across the United States as RNs.

The second wave of nurses from the Philippines began in1948 when the U.S. State Department set up an Exchange Visitor Program to “combat Soviet propaganda." According to Catherine Ceniza Choy, associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (Duke University Press, 2003), owing to the “special relationship” between the mother country and its former colony, a large percentage of the exchange visitors came from the Philippines.

Among these nurses was Maria Guerrero Llapitan who came to the United States in 1948 to take post-graduate nursing courses at Baylor University in Texas. Maria had served as the supervisor of the operating room of a hospital in Bataan before it fell to the Japanese invaders in 1942. After completing her postgraduate studies at Baylor, Maria moved to Chicago to work at the Cook County General Hospital where she met her fiance. She then went to Hunter College for Women in New York to get her nursing degree while working at Sloane-Kettering Memorial Hospital in New York.

Maria married her fiancé in San Francisco where they set up a family in 1951. She later was among the Filipino nurses who formed the Philippine Nurses Association of Northern California in 1961.

The third wave of Filipino nurse immigration to the US came after 1965 when U.S. Immigration laws were liberalized to allow Filipino nurses and other professionals to immigrate to the United States. It also allowed Filipino nurses to come to the United States on tourist visas without prearranged employment and to then adjust their status in the country.

During this period, the number of nursing schools in the Philippines soared from 17 in 1940 to 170 in 1990 to more than 429 at the present time. Many of these nursing schools were diploma mills exploiting the desire of many Filipinos to enter the nursing profession.

Unfortunately, as a result of the inferior education offered by these subpar nursing schools, only 15-20 percent of the Filipino nurses who immigrated to the United States after 1965 could pass the state nursing board exams. This led to the establishment in 1977 of the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) to help prevent the exploitation of graduates of foreign nursing schools who immigrate to the United States to work as nurses but who can’t pass the nursing board exams here.

The CGFNS developed a pre-immigration certification program that consisted of a credentials review; a test of nursing knowledge (CGFNS qualifying examination), and an English-language proficiency examination (TOEFL).

Since 1977, CGFNS has administered more than 350,000 tests to approximately 185,000 applicants in 43 test sites worldwide. From 1978 to 2000, the data showed that 73 percent of CGFNS test takers came from the Philippines, followed by the United Kingdom (4 percent), India(3 percent), Nigeria (3 percent), and Ireland (3 percent).

'Grow Your Own Nurses'

Menchu Sanchez is a 3rd wave nurse immigrant who has worked as an RN for more than 25 years, the last three years at the New York University Langone Medical Center. Menchu was in charge of 20 at-risk infants in the Intensive Care Unit of her hospital when Superstorm Sandy battered New York last October and knocked out the electric power to the hospital. Menchu organized the nurses and doctors to carry the babies in warming pads down 8 flights of stairs to safety. Menchu was invited to sit beside First Lady Michelle Obama at the State of the Union address of Pres. Barack Obama on February 12, 2013.

In his speech, Pres. Obama cited Menchu as a role model: “We should follow the example of a New York City nurse named Menchu Sanchez. When Hurricane Sandy plunged her hospital into darkness, she wasn’t thinking about how her own home was faring. Her mind was on the 20 precious newborns in her care and the rescue plan she devised that kept them all safe.”

Many Filipino nurses who entered the United States on H-1work visas after passing the CGFNS tests benefited from the passage of the Nursing Relief Act of 1989 which provided for their adjustment to permanent resident status if they had H-1 non-immigrant status as registered nurses and had been employed in that capacity for at least 3 years.

But the “sunsetting” of this law in 1995 effectively decreased Filipino nurse immigration to the United States. The passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1998 (IIRIIRA) further discouraged nurse immigration.

The passage of nativist legislation was fueled by fears of foreign nurses taking American jobs as former Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry complained : “it’s so bad, that if you go to the hospital now, you find a number of immigrants who are nurses, particularly from the Philippines,” Barry told the Examiner. “And no offense, but let’s grow our own teachers, let’s grow our own nurses — and so that we don’t have to be scrounging around in our community clinics and other kinds of places — having to hire people from somewhere else.”

Grow your own nurses, that’s what the United States did. According to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, U.S. nursing schools produced close to a million nurses from 2006 to 2011.

While the demand for Filipino nurses may have waned in the United States, the demand for Filipino nurses in the rest of the world did not diminish. Filipino nurses working for the National Health System (NHS) in England drew international attention last February when Britain’s 91-year-old Prince Philip, while on a tour of a new cardiac centre in Bedfordshire, England, turned to a Filipino nurse and said: “The Philippines must be half-empty – you’re all here running the NHS.”

Not quite, not by a long shot, your majesty.

According to Reuben Seguritan, general counsel of the Philippine Nurses Association of America (PNAA), the Philippines is the world’s largest supplier of foreign-trained nurses with 429 nursing schools and 80,000 nursing students.

To place this number in context, City College of San Francisco, with 89,000 students, does not have the resources to accept more than 75 students into its nursing program. The nursing students are chosen by lottery from a list of about 500 students who otherwise qualify for acceptance, a selective system practiced by community colleges all over California.

Is there a fourth wave of Filipino nurse immigration to the US?

Yes, but it hasn’t arrived yet. According to recent CNN report, “Demand for health care services is expected to climb as more baby boomers retire and health care reform makes medical care accessible to more people. As older nurses start retiring, economists predict a massive nursing shortage will reemerge in the United States.”

The CNN report adds: “We’ve been really worried about the future workforce because we’ve got almost 900,000 nurses over the age of 50 who will probably retire this decade, and we’ll have to replace them,” [economist and nurse Peter] Buerhaus said.”

The fourth wave may come as early as 2014 when the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, comes into effect and about 30-40 million Americans without any health insurance will finally be covered by health care insurance.

LPG Marketer’s Association party-list Rep. Arnel Ty believes that Obamacare will “stimulate” the U.S. hiring of foreign nurses. “This will hopefully spur U.S. demand for new foreign nurses and other health practitioners such as pharmacists, physical therapists, medical technologists, radiologists, and speech pathologists,” Ty said.

To another question posed by TV reporter Ann Notarangelo, I answered that I do not know the exact number of Filipino nurses in the United States. All I know is that number, whatever it is, was significantly reduced by 5 on the evening of May 4, 2013.

Samoan Dance Brings Healing to Violence-Prone SF Community

2013-05-18T08:50:00Z

Pelenise Faataui, a native of San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood, recently began teaching Polynesian dance to friends and neighbors in the area. The daughter of one of the first Samoans to settle in the largely African American community, Faataui has seen her share of violence, having lost a 14-year-old brother and several relatives to gang-related shootings. Her dance, she says, brings a sense of community and culture to residents struggling to cope with the violence plaguing their neighborhood. For now classes are held in front of her house in the West Point housing projects, despite the very real danger of catching a stray bullet. Faataui says she has begun reaching out to local community centers in the hopes of finding a safer place to continue her work.

Jean Melesaine is a native of San Francisco and grew up in Hunters Point. She is a writer and videographer with Silicon Valley DeBug, a project of New America Media. Her work focuses on the issues and concerns of the Pacific Islander community.

Fatal Bakersfield Beating Highlights Latino Fear of Police

2013-05-17T23:46:14Z

The beating death of 33-year-old father David Silva in the central California city of Bakersfield last week has garnered national attention. Univision reports the incident highlights the Latino community’s ongoing fear of law enforcement.

Univision Los Angeles reminds viewers “the death of David Silva from Bakersfield is one more in a long list of beatings by police agents in California.” The site went on to list some of the more well-known police beatings in recent years across the state.

Silva, the father of four young children, died May 8 after deputies say he fought with them and CHP officers who'd responded to a report of a possibly intoxicated man. Several passersby who filmed the alleged beating later had their phones taken by police.

An FBI investigation into the case is currently underway.

Bakersfield reporter Juan Carlos Gonzalez found that many of the city’s Latino residents are afraid to talk about the incident.

“Here where the incident occurred, it’s clear that people are afraid of law enforcement,” he reported. “Of all the people we tried to talk to, only two agreed to be interviewed, but only on condition of anonymity.”

Gonzalez reports that there have been “many cases of abuse” involving police and Latino residents. Nearly 50 percent of the city’s 400,000 residents are Latino.

One man who spoke on condition of anonymity told Univision through his screen door, “Generally people who are Mexican or just not American are treated worse than animals, in jail, in the street, wherever.”

New Report Looks at How Foreclosure Undermined Black and Brown Wealth

2013-05-17T22:15:41Z

Despite recent headlines trumpeting a return of America’s real estate market to its boom-time highs, a report released today by the Alliance for a Just Society shows how little of that has trickled into communities of color. The document, entitled “Wasted Wealth,” is a sobering reminder of the gap between top-line economic cheerleading and the reality of what’s happening on the ground.

As “Wasted Wealth” lays out, close to 2.5 million families lost homes in just three years. Communities that were majority people of color saw foreclosures take place at almost twice the rate as white communities, with an average loss of wealth 30 percent higher per household.

This foreclosure tidal wave is why wealth for blacks and Latinos is at the lowest level ever recorded. Housing is the leading wealth asset for these two communities.

Although the real estate market overall has regained $16 trillion in wealth lost during the recession, these gains are largely driven by a frenzy for high-end properties at the very top of the market. “Wasted Wealth” contrasts these highs with the fact that more than 13 million homes continue to remain at risk for foreclosure. Read more here.

In LA Mayor's Race, Latino Voters Target of Confusing Messages

2013-05-17T20:51:49Z

Image: Los Angeles voters will choose Tuesday between mayoral candidates Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti.

Latino voters will be an influential group in the upcoming election for mayor of Los Angeles. They deserve more respect from the candidates and their people, who apparently would rather attack their rivals with half-truths instead of addressing the community's concerns.

The campaign has reached a low point, taking on a destructive tone that explains electoral apathy and voter frustration with politicians.

The campaigns of Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti should be seeking Latino support by discussing security and municipal services, among other issues. Instead, their attempts to court voters involve trying to destroy the opponent or confusing the electorate, which is unacceptable.

For example, Greuel's campaign has tried to associate the reprehensible anti-immigrant message of former mayoral candidate Kevin James with Garcetti. What was not mentioned is that James' statements did not bother the controller while she was actively seeking his support.

Another example is the promotion and distribution of advertising by her followers that implies that in general, voting for Greuel can result in increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour, instead of explaining that this election promise only applies to hotel workers in Los Angeles.

Likewise, supporters of Garcetti implied in a TV ad that Greuel joined Pete Wilson in favor of Proposition 187. In reality, the controller was a registered Republican but never supported 187.

These campaigns targeting Latinos are deceptive because of what they deliberately omit and their attempts to confuse. Given the misleading strategies of political campaigns, voters must pay attention and be well informed, especially since their decision can be the determining factor.

It is also worth questioning what the candidates are saying. Did Garcetti achieve as much as he says as a council member, or is he exaggerating? Can Greuel really fulfill all her promises, when she is making them to organizations with conflicting interests, like labor unions and the Chamber of Commerce?

The Latino vote is an integral part of campaign strategies. The candidates have four days to seek Latino support with ideas and proposals.

On the other hand, voters have the same amount of time to become informed in order to fully participate on Tuesday and assume responsibility, so they can decide who will lead our city into the future.

UC Presidente: Sirviendo minorías es una "cuestión clave"

2013-05-17T19:00:00Z

English Translation

Nota del editor: En agosto, el presidente de la Universidad de California Mark Yudof se retirará después de un mandato de cinco años, que coincidió con una de las peores crisis económicas en la memoria reciente y un histórico cambio demográfico evidente por todo el panorama social y político, incluyendo en la educación superior. Yudof habló con Peter Schurmann de New America Media sobre cómo la Universidad de California ha combatido desafíos y sus planes para el futuro.

Presidente Yudof, usted asumió el cargo de jefe del sistema de la Universidad de California en 2008. ¿Cuál fue el mayor desafío que usted enfrentó en ese momento?

Creo que los desafíos principales empezaron casi inmediatamente en el 2008 o en el año siguiente. Sabía que estábamos en una recesión económica, pero no sabía que era la mayor crisis económica desde la década de 1930. Pensé que los presupuestos estaban en problemas, pero yo no estaba anticipando recortes en los próximos años de $ 800 millones o más.

Yo diría que [la política de] admisiones fue otro reto inmediato. Mis primeras semanas en el cargo, se propuso la facultad de cambiar el sistema de admisión. Estoy muy en favor de acceso, apoyo la acción afirmativa y pongo mucha importancia en la diversidad. Pero también tengo una regla que no firmo nada que yo no entiendo. Me tomó un tiempo para entender la propuesta de la facultad, y al fin lo apoyé. La Junta de Regentes también le gustó y unos años más tarde la política de admisión cambió. No se trata sólo de números o su rango en la secundaria, ve todo el estudiante y si la persona había superado la pobreza u otros circunstancias difíciles, o tenían talentos particulares.

Usted menciona la acción afirmativa. ¿Cuál es su opinión sobre los informes que muestran que, de hecho, la diversidad universitaria ha aumentado en la ausencia de eso?

He estado en el lado de acción afirmativa por mucho tiempo, probablemente desde la década de los 70. He tenido una pasión por el concepto. Estoy muy orgulloso de que tenemos un alto grado de diversidad socioeconómica. Más del 40 por ciento de nuestros estudiantes son elegible para la subvención Pell. Un lugar como Berkeley o UCLA o Davis tiene más estudiantes de Pell-elegibles que toda la Liga Ivy combinado.

Así que creo que hacemos un buen trabajo de traer a los estudiantes de bajos ingresos. Pero no es un sustituto para una herramienta adicional, que es la acción afirmativa. Si realmente se ven los números, que han recuperado algunos, pero la matrícula afroamericana está relativamente plana – sólo un poco mas alto que el momento de la Proposición 209 [aprobada en 1997, que prohíbe las políticas de admisión basadas en la raza en las universidades de California]. Y mientras que la matrícula hispana ha aumentado, lo que realmente refleja es que los hispanos representan una mayor proporción de la población de California. En realidad no es un salto cualitativo en términos de nuestros jóvenes latinos y latinas que son capaces de acceder a la universidad. Creo que podríamos hacer mucho mejor si tuviéramos esa herramienta adicional.

Dejando de lado la cuestión de la acción afirmativa, ¿cuál es el mayor obstáculo para traer a los jóvenes que no ven UC como una opción viable?

Hay muchos obstáculos. Una es que mamá y papá se sientan con sus hijos en la mesa de la cocina y deciden que no pueden pagarlo. Por eso creamos el Programa de Azul y Oro. Hoy día, si usted gana menos de 80.000 dólares al año, no paga ninguna cuota. Es tan simple. Usted tiene que solicitar la beca Pell y subvenciones Cal, pero si no tienes todo lo que necesitas, te garantizamos que usted no tendrá que pagar ninguna cuota. Y contribuimos a los costos de vida y todo eso.

Una cosa que necesitas es la ayuda financiera. La segunda cosa que necesitas es claridad acerca de la ayuda financiera. Eso es muy importante. No se puede simplemente decir: "Confía en mí, ven a vernos después de que haya sido admitido." Una tercera cosa es que las tasas de graduación de la secundaria no son lo que deberían ser. Y la preparación para la universidad ya no es lo que era antes. No podemos admitirte y graduarte si nunca saliste de la escuela secundaria.

Ahora que te vas, ¿qué ves como los principales retos que enfrenta su sucesor?

Bueno, hay un montón de problemas [y] el dinero es parte importante de eso. Quiero decir, que deberíamos estar tomando más de 30.000 estudiantes, pero el estado no está pagando por los estudiantes que tenemos. Así que el dinero es un gran problema. El aumento de la cobertura ayudaría, pero no hay dinero para ampliar la matrícula. Eso es un gran, gran desafío.

El segundo reto es la matrícula. Lo que tenemos es un sistema muy diferenciado. Y es altamente redistributivo. Aproximadamente el 30 por ciento de cada dólar que tomamos de la matrícula reinvertidos en la ayuda financiera. Así que la cuota nominal es de $ 12.000, pero la matrícula real es probablemente alrededor de $ 8.500. Es como el precio de etiqueta de un automóvil: el 62 por ciento de nuestros estudiantes no pagan el precio de etiqueta, [que es] renta ajustada. Pero sigue siendo un problema, especialmente para la clase media, porque cuanto mayor sea su ingreso, menos usted es elegible para recibir ayuda financiera.

Otro gran desafío es que el modelo financiero [del estado] está roto. El estado probablemente no va a encontrar mucho más dinero. A través de los años hemos perdido cerca de $800 millones. Estamos de vuelta alrededor de $150 millones, pero estamos muy lejos de los niveles de financiación que teníamos en 2007. Quiero decir que estamos muy lejos. Probablemente no vamos a llegar a esos niveles para otros cinco o seis años.

¿Hasta qué punto son los retos financieros que enfrenta la universidad una gran pregunta acerca de los valores públicos?

Sí, tiene que ver con los valores públicos. Y a veces es el descuido público. En cierta medida, los valores cambiantes representan los cambios demográficos. El país está envejeciendo. La gente se pregunta se dónde sus ingresos de jubilación vendrán, o cómo van a pagar los costos de sus medicamentos. No es decir que odian la educación superior, pero hay mucha competencia por los recursos.

Yo [también] opino que hay una pérdida del sentido de un propósito común, o la riqueza común en este país. Construimos a más autopistas de peaje que nunca porque los gobiernos estatales les resulta tan difícil sacar el dinero para construir autopistas. Tenemos más comunidades cerradas. Tenemos más policías privados que públicas. No hay suficientes jueces, y no hay dinero suficiente para mantener el sistema legal. Veo a la educación superior así. Demasiado se trata como un bien privado y no un bien público que tiene un impacto en todos nosotros.

Hace mucho tiempo las escuelas UC son el líder en la educación superior en California. ¿Cómo pueden servir mejor a la nueva mayoría de estudiantes de minorías en el estado?

Eso es algo importante. Tenemos las tasas de graduación más altas que casi cualquier universidad pública en el país. Si nos fijamos en los Premios Nobel, tenemos 60 de ellos, más de países enteros. Tenemos muy buenas tasas de graduación, incluyendo entre los estudiantes minoritarios. Así que es un buen lugar.

Pero esa es la pregunta importante para los próximos 25 años. ¿Cómo podemos estar seguros de que estamos sirviendo a California? Y para servir California, esto significa que usted tiene que servir a los latinos, los afroamericanos, asiático americanos, blancos y otros grupos. Creo que es una pregunta abierta y creo que no estamos donde tenemos que estar.

Creo que tenemos que ser más grande que somos actualmente, con más estudiantes y más estudiantes de licenciatura. También tenemos que seguir siendo una puerta abierta para los estudiantes transferidos de colegios comunitarios. Aplicaciones de los colegios comunitarios se han reducido porque los colegios comunitarios se están mordiendo de hambre. Tienen menos de 400.000 estudiantes.

Creo que tenemos que hacer más en el lado de e-learning. Creo que tenemos que tener acceso a e-learning en la universidad. Debemos tener un plan de estudios en el Internet con cursos de crédito específicamente para los estudiantes que quieren transferir. Esto sería un nivel adicional que permita mayor acceso.

¿Cómo el creciente énfasis en la tecnología afecta el plan de estudios? ¿Qué tan útil, por ejemplo, son las humanidades?

Estoy preocupado por las humanidades. La mayor parte de lo que tomé en la universidad era de las humanidades. Si alguien me dijo que era relevante, yo no lo tomé. Tomé el pensamiento griego y tomé la astronomía y tomé la filosofía y la psicología. Yo era muy bueno en la psicología anormal, era natural para mí.

Todos estos esfuerzos nacionales ... que dicen que si no ayuda en el sentido físico o si no pone comida en la mesa, entonces no vale la pena, no creo por un momento. Las empresas pueden hacer maravillas enseñando los principios de ingeniería o de negocios, pero no he encontrado uno todavía que enseña a Wallace Stevens o TS Elliot. Estoy profundamente preocupado de que en esta búsqueda, donde la única educación que importa es la que produce un resultado de trabajo muy específico o producto que las humanidades se van a poner exprimido. Pero los estudiantes todavía recogen las humanidades y las ciencias sociales en cifras muy significativas. Llevan la bandera.

El mayor problema para los estudiantes que vienen a la escuela UC o cualquier otra universidad es el empleo. ¿Dónde ve usted la relación entre la educación superior y el empleo?

Creo que estamos aquí para educar. Quiero decir, nosotros también estamos aquí para ayudar con los trabajos, pero sobre todo para educar. Y para mí, las habilidades más importantes en el ámbito universitario son las habilidades cognitivas. ¿Se puede resolver un problema? ¿Se puede sintetizar ideas? ¿Puedes expresarte? No creo que eres un buen ingeniero si simplemente memorizas los principios. Tienes que ser capaz de aplicarlos, y manipular los conceptos. Mi visión de la vida es que no importa lo que eres -- un neurocirujano o un empleado de correos -- una persona que puede resolver los problemas, y mantener las ideas en su cabeza es extremadamente valioso. Nuestra obligación, entonces, es la de educar a los estudiantes ... [garantizando] que aprendan a aprender, que son creativos, reflexivos. Si no estamos haciendo eso, entonces no estamos educando.

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Long Beach Schools Improve, But Achievement Gaps Persist

2013-05-17T15:22:42Z

LONG BEACH -- Long Beach Unified might want to hide the report card it got last month. The district received an overall grade of “D+” for its effectiveness at serving low-income Latino and African American students in a study released by Education-Trust-West (ETW).

More troubling still, the district received a failing grade when it came to the achievement gap separating white students from their Latino and African American peers.

The California-based policy, research and advocacy organization, which seeks to increase student achievement in the state’s K-12 schools, handed out report cards to dozens of California's largest school districts to measure how they are serving these groups. Using data culled from the California Department of Education website, grades were based on Academic Performance Index (API) scores and graduation data for the 2011 and 2012 school years.

The overall district grades were determined by averaging out grades given across four distinct areas: academic performance, academic improvement, achievement gaps and college-readiness.

Long Beach Unified received an average grade of “C” for performance and improvement, for both low-income students and students of color. College readiness was a mixed bag, with LBUSD receiving a “C” for its graduation rates for those same students, but a “D” for college eligibility.

Latinos account for 54 percent of all LBUSD students, with African Americans comprising 16 percent. Whites currently account for 15 percent of all students in the district. Seventy percent qualify as low-income.

Multiple Causes

“As a student who has gone through LBUSD, I can say that the report card is absolutely accurate,” said Chris Covington, 22, who is of mixed African American, Mexican, Irish, Scottish and Chinese heritage.

“When I went to see a counselor, I was automatically just put in any class. I was not put into a class that addressed the A through G requirements,” said Covington, referring to the high school courses required for entry into the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems.

Covington also pointed to the “zero tolerance” approach to school discipline as helping to widen the achievement gap. “When I was in high school, my teacher would have referrals ready for me, to kick me out of class,” he said. Discouraged, he eventually dropped out of high school, but was hooked back in through a restorative justice program – an alternative conflict resolution model -- at Reid High School. With the help of mentors there, Covington was able to graduate on time.

In the last school year, African-Americans in the district accounted for 43 percent of all in-school suspensions, according to the California Department of Education.

“If the student is not in the class learning, then they’re not on track to graduate,” said Covington, who noted research showing an (LBUSD) student is “suspended every 19 minutes.”

Today, Covington is a mentor himself, working with Long Beach youth through a local organization, Khmer Girls in Action (KGA). He suggested that the racial achievement gaps in city schools are likely more extreme than the ETW report suggests, given the complex racial dynamics of the city.

Ethnic Khmer students from Cambodia and other Asian minorities, for example, are lumped together under the catch-all banner of Asian Pacific Islander (API), so the problems they face often go unseen due to the common misperception that all Asian students are high achieving.

“In reality, Khmer students are having trouble with [academic] achievement and with graduation rates,” he said. The city’s Khmer families, he explained, also tend to live in poverty-stricken neighborhoods around Central Long Beach, which has one of the largest Cambodian populations in the world, outside of Southeast Asia.

Malachy Keo, a 17-year-old senior at Polytechnic High School and also a member of KGA, said economic pressures at home make it difficult for him to envision going to college, let alone focus on his daily schoolwork. “My mom’s always stressing out on work and money,” said Keo. “I’m almost finishing school and I want to be able to graduate so I can help support (my mom).”

“It’s hard for parents to be strong and keep going,” he added. “Their kids gotta’ drop school and get money to help support them. Most of them [the children] will drop out and just slang” – sell drugs -- to get by.

A Different Perspective

“The latest Education Trust report contradicts every other independent review of our school district’s performance,” said Chris Eftychiou, LBUSD’s Public Information Director, via e-mail.

Eftychiou cited numerous statistics, studies, and awards commending the district, including a Global Education Study that highlighted LBUSD as one of five top performing districts worldwide; a Dispelling the Myth Award given by ETW to LBUSD for implementing district-wide improvements; and a Broad Foundation report that showed LBUSD’s African-Americans, Latinos and low-income students outperform state standards.

“The unfortunate result is that rather than dispelling myths [about African American and Latino students], Ed Trust is now perpetuating them,” said Eftychiou.

Arun Ramanathan is the executive director of Education Trust-West. He acknowledged LBUSD’s recent successes, but said the data pointed to serious issues.

“We know Long Beach is touted as a top district in California. When we saw their data, we were surprised -- very surprised,” he said. “It’s not our data. It’s the state’s data,” he added. “We have the greatest level of respect for folks down there, but the data is the data.”

LBUSD wasn’t the only district that fared poorly. Los Angeles Unified also earned an overall grade of a “D+” in the ETW report, while two other large school districts, San Francisco (“D”) and Oakland Unified (“D-“) received even lower scores.

The school district with the highest overall grade in the state, by comparison, was Baldwin Park Unified in Los Angeles County. Ninety-four percent of Baldwin Park students are low-income and 91 percent are Latino. The next two highest graded districts are also in Southern California – Los Alamitos Unified in Orange County, and San Marcos Unified in San Diego.

Still, while competing views abound, most agree the future for LBUSD looks promising. District funding is expected to almost double from $6,200 to $11,000 per pupil over the next eight years should Gov. Jerry Brown’s new funding formula for public schools pass, according to ETW.

“We will have some increase in resources,” said Virginia Torres, president of the Teacher’s Association of Long Beach. She is optimistic the revenue will help ease the racial and class disparities in education – disparities found not only in Long Beach but also in districts across the state.

Michael Lovano is a community reporter for Voicewaves, a youth-led community news hub founded by New America Media.

Invisible Workforce: An Undocumented Immigrant Caregiver Shares Her Story

2013-05-17T08:10:00Z

Nannies, housecleaners, caregivers—they are sometimes called the world’s most invisible workforce. In the US alone, it’s estimated that more than 2 million people do this type of work. Most are women and many are immigrants. And pressure is growing to address their working conditions. As part of our Global Nation coverage, The World’s Monica Campbell has our first piece in a series about domestic workers. It looks at a home aide from Fiji, her elderly employer, and a short documentary called “The Caretaker” highlighting these intimate partnerships.

A few years ago, Florence Tratar fell down. In her 80s, it was enough of a spill to change her life drastically and leave her bound to a wheelchair. And with no family nearby, she needed someone to move in and care for her immediately.

But nobody she hired clicked, until she found Joesy Gerrish, a caregiver from Fiji.

“I liked her right away,” says Tratar. So once Gerrish’s references checked out, she was hired and moved in to help Tratar full time. It’s easy to see why Tratar picked Gerrish. In her early 40s, she is energetic, has a quick laugh, and says she treats her employers like family.

Now, Gerrish gets up early every morning, makes Tratar’s meals, drives her to appointments.

“I do everything!” Gerrish says.

“Everything!” Tratar agrees. “I mean, whatever I have to do, Joesy does.”

I met Tratar and Gerrish in Sebastopol, California, north of San Francisco. The two women had ventured out to see a short documentary about Gerrish. The film, by San Francisco-based director Theo Rigby, shows how immigrant caregivers increasingly fill a demand in the United States to attend to the disabled and elderly.

The documentary shows Gerrish cooking and shopping for a previous employer, an ailing Japanese woman. She feeds her, turns her over so she won’t get bed sores. It’s non-stop work.

After the film, Tratar realized how little she knew about Gerrish’s life: How she misses Fiji—and how she’s in the US without legal authorization.

“This is a shock to me because I just didn’t know,” Tratar says.

She’s against hiring people without papers, she says. But she also can’t say why she never asked Gerrish for documentation. Maybe because she didn’t want to know, she says, because Gerrish was a good fit.

Meanwhile, Gerrish says she doesn’t worry about stepping out of the shadows so publicly. She tells Tratar how she’s hoping immigration reform might grant her legal status.

“It’s getting there,” Gerrish tells Tratar. “It’s a long journey but we’ll get there.”

Gerrish also tells Tratar how, in her off time, she is working to improve labor conditions for other caregivers, nannies and housekeepers. In California, it’s estimated that some 200,000 people do this type of work, many without papers.

She talks about women from Mexico she knows, along with other immigrants from elsewhere, who live in the US illegally and worry about getting deported on their way to work. Also, Gerrish says, she hears about women worried about getting paid, since they are off the books. If there is a dispute with an employer, wages can be held back and undocumented workers can be aware that they still have the right to claim wages.

“Oh, there’s a lot of that, getting paid under the table. A lot!” Tratar exclaims.

“Yes,” Gerrish says, “but that’s the only kind of work that we can do. We would like to do other stuff. But we’re stuck with that.”

Gerrish says she has felt mistreated by other employers.

“Oh, you’re like a slave,” she says. “Do this. Do that. Do that. I say, ‘Wait a minute, I only have two hands.’ But they want you right there, right there, right there. Otherwise, I’ll kick you out. But you have to do it. Otherwise what else can you do? You need to survive.”

Gerrish is working with labor advocate Maureen Purtill, who organizes immigrant women at the Graton Day Labor Center nearby, in Sonoma. Purtill remembers Gerrish’s reaction when she told her that, among other demands like overtime and vacation, they’d push for workers to get uninterrupted sleep.

“She burst into laughter, in this uncomfortable laughter, like, ‘Oh, I would love that. That would be amazing. I’ve never had the right to sleep five hours in a row, or eight hours in a row,” says Purtill. “Caregiving requires sometimes, you know, care every two hours if you’re caring for elderly people.”

It’s the case with Gerrish, who wakes up with Florence Tratar at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. every day.

“Oh my goodness gracious, you need domestic help,” says Tratar. “I don’t know what I would do without Joesy. I couldn’t survive.”

Tratar hopes that Gerrish will legalize her status in the US soon. She understands now that deportation is a constant worry for her caretaker.

“Everyday you live in fear, just looking behind your shoulder every day,” Gerrish says.

The question now is whether new legislation would let both women rest a little easier.]]> 47149832

First Class Action Lawsuit Against BP in Mexico

2013-05-16T20:46:47Z

MEXICO CITY - A group of Mexican citizens are preparing the first civil lawsuit in the Mexican courts against British oil company BP for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The plaintiffs are bringing the class action lawsuit under a 2011 reform of the Mexican constitution that allows a large number of people with a common interest in a matter to sue as a group.

The civil lawsuit encompasses “damages to people living in the area or who own residential and commercial property along the coast, and people indirectly affected” by the spill, lawyer Óscar Preciado, with the law firm Rincón Mayorga Román Illanes Soto y Compañía, told IPS.

“Without a doubt, this will set an important precedent. Class action lawsuits have been brought, but in questions relating to consumer, rather than environmental, rights,” said the lawyer, whose firm is representing the plaintiffs.

On Apr. 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, owned by Swiss-based Transocean Ltd and under lease to BP, exploded off the coast of Louisiana, leaving 11 workers dead and 17 injured. It sank two days later.

By Jul. 15, 2010, when the oil leak was finally sealed, nearly five million barrels of oil had been spilled – only 800,000 of which were recovered – and at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants had been injected into the Gulf of Mexico.

The spill poses a long-term threat to flora, fauna and fishing resources in the Gulf of Mexico, which bathes the coasts of the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Quintana Roo, and to tourist sites, although the final extent of the damage is unknown, experts say.

“The government and BP can be sued in Mexico. The government was guilty of omission in this case,” René Sánchez, the coordinator of Colectivas, told IPS. The non-governmental organisation was born in November 2012 to provide advice to organisations and individuals with respect to filing class action lawsuits.

However, the 2011 law on collective action, which allows groups of consumers and PROFECO, Mexico’s federal consumer protection agency, to sue public and private companies, does not contemplate reparations.

The Gulf of Mexico disaster gave rise to a massive class action lawsuit involving more than 130,000 plaintiffs, known as multi-district litigation 2179 (MDL-2179), overseen by federal Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans.

In January, BP pleaded guilty to 14 criminal counts and was sentenced to pay 4.5 billion dollars in penalties and fines. However, the amount is expected to climb as the lawsuit continues to wind its way through the courts.

The following month, TransOcean was found guilty by a U.S. federal judge of violating the U.S. Clean Water Act, and was fined 1.4 billion dollars.

Barbier set a Jun. 21 deadline for the attorneys to file their conclusions about evidence presented in the first phase of the trial.

In April, the government of conservative Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto sued BP and other companies in a U.S. court, after his predecessor Felipe Calderón (2006-December 2012) failed to do so.

The government’s lawsuit will fall under MDL-2179.

In 2010, the state governments of Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Quintana Roo, as well as several companies, had brought legal action against BP and TransOcean for damages to the marine environment, the coastline, and local estuaries.

Government agencies in Mexico spent more than 11 million dollars on studies, assessments, lab tests, training and overflights related to the disaster, the state governments argued.

BP Mexico did not respond to IPS’ queries about the government or class action lawsuits.

The dearth of studies on the magnitude of the damages in the Gulf of Mexico has been the Achilles’ heel of the environmental organisations and lawyers involved in preparing the class action lawsuit in Mexico.

“That is the question that has limited us the most,” Preciado said. “The Mexican state has not been very participative.

“The damages will appear over the course of years, and this won’t be easily resolved. But we are not frightened of taking on BP – on the contrary, we are very motivated,” added the lawyer, who is working on another class action lawsuit against Mexico’s state-owned oil monopoly Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) involving oil spills in the southeast state of Tabasco.

The class action suit will pose a challenge to the Mexican judges, who are not accustomed to environmental litigation, when it is presented to a federal court in the capital on a date that has not yet been established.

Colectivas’ Sánchez said “we have to see how the judges prepare, and the state of the judiciary’s bureaucracy. One of the first steps is for the plaintiffs to be recognised as a class,” as occurs under the U.S. justice system.

Sánchez is also preparing a collective lawsuit against the eventual approval of commercial planting of genetically modified maize in Mexico.

Despite the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster and a September 2008 blow-out on a BP rig in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan – which was covered up – Pemex signed a technological agreement with the British company in 2012 for deep-sea operations in this country’s Gulf of Mexico waters.

“It is an aberration,” Preciado remarked.

Los Angeles School To Be Named After Korean American Legend

2013-05-16T09:25:00Z

Los Angeles is naming a new elementary school after a Korean American living legend.

The board of directors of the Los Angeles Unified School District met today and approved the new elementary school’s name to be the “Dr. Sammy Lee Medical and Health Science Magnet Elementary School,” named after the 92-year-old former Olympic diver.

Dr. Lee was the first Asian American to win a gold medal for the United States and competed at the London Olympics in 1948 and the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, winning gold medals in the 10-meter platform at both Olympics.

The native of Fresno, Calif., was already a physician when he won his gold medals, having earned a medical degree from the University of Southern California in 1947. He also served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Korean War.

“If approved, this will be the third LAUSD School to be named after a Korean American hero,” said Yonah Hong, a board member for the Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council, in a statement released prior to the vote. “This is a true accomplishment and a celebration for the entire Korean American community.”

Dr. Sammy Lee Elementary will join two other Koreatown schools, Charles H. Kim Elementary School and Young Oak Kim Academy (middle school), to be named after Korean Americans.

Korean American Helen Kim has been nominated to be the first principal of the school, which is expected to house 32 classrooms and is set to open in August. The building is located in the northeast corner of Koreatown at 3600 W. Council Street, Los Angeles, CA 90004.

How the Sierra Club Learned to Love Immigration

2013-05-16T08:40:00Z

The Sierra Club, one of the largest and oldest environmental organizations in the nation, announced last month its support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. It was a unanimous decision among the group’s board of directors and marks a definitive break with the group’s troubled history on immigration—a history that has also plagued the environmental movement broadly.

The arc of Sierra Club’s evolution starts with a dubious if not hostile perspective on immigration that the Club carried in the 1960s. The theory was that immigration drives unsustainable population growth, which then drains resources and harms the environment. That perspective shifted to a hard line against immigration in the 1980s, then to a neutral position in the ’90s, before finally coming around in the 21st century to advocating on behalf of immigrants.

The announcement was mostly a codification of work Sierra Club had already been doing lately, such as fighting against building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to block migration to the United States. But by officially adopting a stance that endorses a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, Sierra—like the Republican Party—is recognizing that shifting demographics matter. Read more here.

The Tragedy of Self Immolation - No One Cares

2013-05-16T08:35:00Z

Self-immolation isn’t what it used to be.

This ultimate form of protest became global news in 1963 when the venerable monk Thich Quang Duc set himself ablaze in the middle of Saigon, Vietnam, protesting religious oppression. Doused in gasoline, the monk sat serenely in lotus position and lit a match. A bird of paradise thus blossomed and bloomed, and quickly charred his body.

The photographer Malcolm Browne captured Thich Quang Duc’s fiery renouncement of the mortal coil, the image quickly becoming an icon of the Vietnam War era. The term “self-immolation,” in fact, entered into common English usage after his death, which led to a coup d’etat that toppled the pro-Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem regime.

Half a century later, to die by fire in protest registers little more than a media blip.

As of this writing, 117 Tibetans have set themselves ablaze since 2009 in a series of protests against Chinese rule. The most recent incidents came in April, when two young Tibetan monks and a lay Tibetan woman set themselves on fire. There was little coverage of their deaths.

Indeed, with the exception of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor who set himself on fire and thus sparked what became known as the Arab Spring, self-immolation has by all accounts become a failed form of protest as an agent of change. Since Bouazizi, in fact, 150 more Tunisians have set themselves on fire in protest against the new government that took over after the downfall of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali's secular dictatorship.

Whether in Syria or Palestine, Greece, Italy or Vietnam, individuals continue to go up in flames as crowds look on.

“All the Tibetans who resort to self-immolation do so because they feel they have no other way to make China and the rest of the world listen to their country’s call for freedom,” Byrne-Rosengren, director of the London-based advocacy group Free Tibet, told Radio Free Asia last month.

Alas, China has turned a deaf ear to their cries, while the world media has averted its eyes.

Aristotle once observed that the plot of a tragedy should be so framed that, even without witnessing the events, simply hearing of them should fill one with “horror and pity” — even lead to insight and action. But the amphitheater of the 21st century has fallen into decay, scattered and fragmented into a multitude of media platforms. There are too many actors in too many theaters and their tragedies — overwhelming, lacking in context, incoherent, truncated or badly reported — have lost their grip on the human psyche.

Studies about desensitization of the modern mind are aplenty, but the general consensus is that over-saturation of images and narratives of violence have resulted in a collective numbness. A profound act of public death cannot hope to sway a world in which horror itself has lost its power.

What we want instead is entertainment, and what we gravitate toward and react to, more often than not, is profanity.

A year after Bouazizi went up in flames in Tunisia, an unknown amateur filmmaker named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula,” aka “Sam Bacile,” inflamed the Middle East with incendiary video clips ridiculing the prophet Muhammad. His film turned the Arab Spring of 2011 into the Autumn Rage of 2012, resulted in the death of an American ambassador in Libya, and continues to be a bone of contention in Washington.

The cynic observer can’t help but wonder: If self immolation no longer works as an agent for change, then is it still worth the price?

At its most profound the act stands as the highest form of human compassion, a confirmation of life by giving up one’s own. At its most incoherent self-immolation becomes more expressive of the frustration of the powerless. The individual, enamored by death, possessed by anger, elicits neither horror nor pity but cynicism. After all, to burn with passion is very much different than to be consumed by rage.

Fire — this gift and curse to humanity — is a terrifying beauty. Contained, it hints at elegance, cooks our food and propels our world. Out of control, it engulfs body and soul. It seduces. It overpowers. And it destroys.

In a world where individuals leverage more power online than in the public square, it may be that to live burning with desire for change — regardless of the oppression and humiliation — is the real challenge to becoming actual agents of change in the world. So why not live instead? And find new paths that call attention to the suffering of one’s cause. Find a way to force the world’s attention once more back onto the stage — and evoke pity and horror in us all.

To burn with that desire, to call our attention and hold our gaze until we weep — isn’t that worth living for?

Andrew Lam is editor and cofounder of New America Media. He is the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres, and most recently, a collection of short stories, Birds of Paradise Lost.

NY Irish Center Fights Older Immigrants’ Isolation

2013-05-16T07:55:00Z

Photo: Seniors and volunteers at the New York Irish Center in Long Island City. (Peter McDermott/Irish Echo)

Part 2. Read Part 1 here.

LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y—In most conversations he has with casual acquaintances or strangers, Paul Finnegan asks the same question: “Do you know someone who might benefit from going to the New York Irish Center?”

It’s part of his personal outreach for the organization he heads up in Long Island City in Queens.

The center comes alive seven days a week with people from all age groups. But Finnegan has been so effective at recruiting those over 65 the center now involves 200-250 seniors in various activities. The center is so important to the lives of Irish elders that it was created in 2005 with partial funding from the Irish government, which continues providing financial support.

The Biggest Threat

“Isolation is the biggest threat facing seniors. They’re very, very vulnerable to going off the grid,” Finnegan said.

He explained, “Maybe your relationship wasn’t so good with your children, or they’ve moved away and you continue to live in the old neighborhood.” In some cases, he added, being widowed can cut a person off from a wider circle of friends and acquaintances.

The New York Irish Center itself is not off the grid: On a westbound No. 7 train it is just three minutes from Grand Central Station in the heart of Manhattan. “That’s our biggest selling point,” said Finnegan, a native of Galway City in Ireland.

Mary Wicelinski was among those who traveled over the Pulaski Bridge from Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s famously Polish community, for the weekly seniors’ lunch on a recent Wednesday.

“It’s a situation where you look forward to it,” she said. “It’s not easy for me to get out. I have a walker,” added Wicelinski, who was born a Fitzgerald to Irish immigrant parents.

“My son called me up. He said, ‘Where are you going?” I said, ‘Bridie is bringing me to the Irish Center.’ He loves to hear that I’m coming here.”

Sitting near her at that mid-morning hour -- 11 a.m. -- were Bridie Mitchell, Peggy Cooney and Carmel McCarthy, respectively from Counties Leitrim, Meath and Cavan. They’d come from Greenpoint, too.

All three have been visiting the center since it opened in 2005. Like many of the other seniors they help with the serving and the washing-up.

“Eight years? It doesn’t seem possible,” Cooney said.

“Our shoes are worn down now,” McCarthy said.

“It’s not just Irish,” said County Offaly native Julia Anastasio, who is married to an Italian American. “We have Italians, Spanish and a couple of black gentlemen are regulars on Wednesdays.”

The New York Irish Center was the brainchild of the Rev. Colm Campbell, who was sent by Irish church officials to act as a chaplain to young emigrants in the mid-1990s.

The three-story structure was acquired by a group of sympathetic Irish businessmen with Campbell’s project in mind. At the time, the neighborhood was beginning to take off after being talked up for years in the media. Eight years on, the high-rise apartment buildings that line the waterfront are just one visible sign of a rapid gentrification.

“He’s a remarkable man,” Finnegan said of Campbell, who now lives in an assisted living facility in England, close to his sister. “He had a vision.”

The priest amended that vision somewhat as he learned more of contributions to Irish American culture of his own older generation and began to understand more about their needs.

Irish Government Support

At the same time, the Irish government was becoming increasingly concerned about Ireland’s aging émigré population. “From the perspective of Dublin there’s a genuine appreciation of what immigrants have done, such as sending remittances home,” which helped their families and communities, Finnegan said.

The center’s board members typically want to give back to the World War II generation of immigrants, Finnegan said. One told him that he knew families in his community in rural Ireland who were greatly dependent on “the parcel” that arrived from England or America.

The Irish government, however, realized that quite a few of them were living abroad in less than comfortable conditions. In the mid-20th century, a large number of Irish males particularly sought work in England. Many became used to a transitory lifestyle, which put them at a much higher risk of isolation later in life.

The Irish community in the United States also found that it wasn’t immune to some of the same problems.

Irish officials in New York supported Campbell’s efforts. Now, half of the funding for the center’s operational costs comes from the Irish government, the City of New York and the American Ireland Fund.

Because of Ireland’s austerity budget, Finnegan said, Dublin is targeting its funding more to frontline services and less on capital building projects.

The center’s board raises the other half of its funding with events, such as “Night of Comedy and Music” scheduled for June 6, with former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Colin Quinn and other entertainers.

The center seeks to help maintain friendships through original social networks, such those that had built up around jobs -- men who worked together as baggage handlers at JFK airport, for example, and women who worked in school cafeterias – or in church parishes or those associated with individual county associations and their umbrella group, the United Irish Counties.

“Others know each other from the dancehall days,” added Finnegan, a married father of two children.

“You hear about people on the grapevine,” he said. “Someone might ask, ‘Where’s Joe?’ Someone else will say: ‘He’s not well but he’ll be in next week.’”

“When people don’t show, you miss them. And, yes, some pass away,” said Julia Anastasio. “Fr. Campbell always made sure there was a memorial Mass.”

From Lunches to Computer Classes

At that moment, Anastasio was readying herself to go to Mass at St. Mary’s Church across the street ahead of the lunch.

She spends much of her time caring for her husband and so nowadays goes to the center for the seniors’ lunch only.

But the center aims other kinds of activities at seniors, as well, notably the Saturday morning computer class. The staff also tends to involve other age groups as teachers, volunteers and participants.

“We mix the generations as much as possible, and we do it pretty successfully,” Finnegan said. It’s good, too, he suggested, for twentysomethings who miss the company of grandparents back home.

Generally, many of the oldest regulars are less inclined to venture out for such evening events as movie or trivia-quiz nights. “Seniors are routine orientated,” Finnegan said, adding, “They’re not looking for much excitement or intrusion in their lives.

“We’re welcoming to all, even those who have substance abuse problems,” Finnegan said. “After getting over the feelings of defensiveness about life, they feel accepted.

“We find a place for them. It never got so bad that we were out of our depth,” he said. “We would like next to hire a social worker, but it wouldn’t be someone upstairs that you made an appointment to see. It would be someone that everyone would know.”

The center’s only other full-time employee is Jane McCarter, the culture and heritage officer. It’s important for Finnegan that the volunteer-staff ratio be weighted considerably towards the former, something that helps it to be truly a community center.

“You don’t want the staff to be a self-perpetuating situation,” he said.

It’s important, too, that the seniors help keep the center ticking.
“This is my little space on a Wednesday. My therapy,” Anastasio said, adding with a laugh, “And I’m still cleaning.”

Peter McDermott this article for the Irish Echo through a MetLife Foundation Journalists in Aging Fellowship, a project of New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America. It is the second part of a series.

Data Reveals Immigrants’ Financial Contribution to States

2013-05-16T07:00:00Z

LOS ANGELES – In California, Asian and Hispanic immigrants pay nearly $30 billion in federal taxes, $5.2 billion in state income taxes, and $4.6 billion in sales taxes each year.

In New York, immigrants are responsible for $229 billion in economic output in the state. Even in Alabama, a state not known for having a large immigrant population, the purchasing power of Asian and Latinos in Alabama totaled $5.8 billion since 1990.

The Immigration Policy Center released last week a partial state-by-state analysis highlighting the importance and economic impact of Asians and Latino immigrants in the United States.

The release of the data comes at a crucial time as the bipartisan “Gang of Eight’s” comprehensive immigration reform legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people living in the US, makes its way through Congress.

Introduced on April 17, the bill, S.744, formally known as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, currently sits in the Senate Judiciary Committee where they will next discuss it on Tuesday, May 14.

The Immigration Policy Center data cites several eye-popping numbers about the contributions of Asian and Hispanic immigrants in the country.

For example, in California, which is home to 10.2 million immigrants (more than the total population of Michigan), “the average immigrant-headed household contributes a net $2,679 annually to Social Security, which is $539 more than the average US-born household,” the research shows.

Acclaimed professors and researchers Marshall Fitz and Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, reveals: If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from California, the state would lose $301.6 billion in economic activity, decrease total employment by 17.4 percent, and eliminate 3.6 million jobs.

And if unauthorized immigrants in California were legalized, it would add 633,000 jobs to the economy, increase labor income by $26.9 billion, and increase tax revenues by $5.3 billion, added Fitz and Hinojosa-Ojeda.

“Immigrants comprise more than one-third of the California labor force. They figure prominently in key economic sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and services. Immigrants provide leadership and labor for the expansion of California’s growing economic sectors – from telecommunications and information technology to health services and housing construction,” according to the Immigrant Policy Center data.

In places like Alabama, where undocumented immigrants comprise 4.2 percent of the state’s workforce, these workers paid $130.3 million in state and local taxes in 2010, according to data from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy.

They cited a report by the Perryman Group, an economic and financial analysis firm. If all undocumented immigrants were removed from Alabama, the state would lose $2.6 billion in economic activity, $1.1 billion in gross state product, and approximately 17,819 jobs.

In Rhode Island, Perryman research reveals that the state would lose $698 million in economic activity, $310 million in gross state product, and 3,780 jobs.

In Texas, if all undocumented immigrants were removed from the state, it would lose $69.3 billion in economic activity, $30.8 billion in gross state product, and 403,174 jobs.

The data released on Thursday only highlights 10 of the 50 states. The Immigration Policy Center said they will plan the rest in the next few weeks.

(www.asianjournal.com)

普濟電話將推出手機服務

2013-05-16T00:00:00Z

English Translation

手機時代的來臨讓普濟電話面臨挑戰，因為絕大多數的居民不再僅使用家用電話。

30年以來，這是第一次加州普濟電話（ Lifeline ）將推出有折扣的手機服務。

經由參與州內舉辦的公聽會，低收入消費者將有機會提供意見，改善普濟電話。加州公共事業委員會(The California Public Utilities Commission)鼓勵低收入居民參加公聽會，如此一來，新推出的普濟手機計劃將更能符合低收入戶的需求。

加州公共事業委員會公聽會
4:00-7:00

Rancho Cordova, May 14
Rancho Cordova City Hall Council Chambers 2729 Prospect Park Drive

San Francisco, May 15
Commission Courtroom State Office Building 505 Van Ness Avenue

San Diego, June 12
Al Bahr Shriners Center 5440 Kearny Mesa Road

Riverside, June 17
City Hall 3900 Main Street, Riverside

Los Angeles, June 18
Caltrans District 7 HQ Rm. 01.040 A and B 100 S. Main Street

Eureka, July 17
Board of Supervisors 825 5th Street

Fresno July 31
Fresno City Hall Council Chambers 2nd floor 2600 Fresno Street

Salinas, August 13
Laurel Inn and Conference Center 801 West Laurel Drive

三藩市公共事業改革網絡（ The Utility Reform Network ）主任蒙特斯（ Ana Montes ）在一個由其機構和媒體正義（ The Center for Media Justice ）以及新美國傳媒共同舉辦的電話會議上，對許多少數族裔媒體記者說，“我們有機會去創造一個獨一無二和其他州都不同的普濟手機方案。 ”

然而推動與傳統普濟電話不同的普濟手機計劃面臨許多困難。加州公共事業委員會需要使用者的建議，例如：使用者可負擔的月費、須要的分鐘數以及是否需要提供簡訊、網路和緊急電話的服務。

華埠社區健康中心（ Chinatown Community Wellness Center ）社區聯繫員張嘉敏 (Tina Cheung)指出，普濟手機計劃對加州最需要幫助的低收入戶非常有幫助，包括單語、新移民和英語有限制的居民都將受益。

張嘉敏並提到“這項服務讓家庭聯繫更緊密，尤其在現今社會，家庭成員通常都分居兩地。”

媒體正義（ The Center for Media Justice ）聯繫員藍登（ Steven Renderos ）說，“如同這項計劃的名稱，普濟手機計劃的意圖是提供低收入戶生活上的幫助，包括就業、教育和醫療保險上的需求。”

藍登說，“普濟電話的用途是減少家庭在電話費用上的負擔，而這幾年大眾對溝通媒介上的需求是手機。”

根據皮尤研究中心的數據，87％的成年人擁有一台手機。截至2011年止，27.9％的加州家庭只使用手機。

藍登說，“和白人相較，拉美裔、非裔以及少數族裔在使用電腦和網路的比例較低，但在使用手機的比例上則和白人相近。”
新千禧年研究基金會(The New Millennium Research Foundation)針對5,500位普濟手機的使用者進行調查，並詢問使用者的手機使用習慣。

藍登說，“根據研究顯示，使用者對普濟電話的主要用途是和家人聯繫，另外則是需要和僱主聯繫。”“ 對少數族裔和低收入社群而言，普濟手機不僅是溝通的管道，同時也是改善財務狀況的工具。”

藍登指出，普濟手機可以被視為是經濟工具。 “對低收入戶而言，普濟電話一年平均可以為他們節省＄259元。”

目前國內1,350萬的家庭使用普濟電話。然而，另外有5千萬戶家庭符合申請普濟電話的資格但尚未註冊。

手機對加州低收入社區非常重要，但許多低收入居民因為沒有具體的居住地址而面臨取得手機的困難，這種困難同時發生在偏遠地區和都市中。

三藩市中心城市散防聯會（Central City SRO Collaborative)社區組織員薩內尼 (Priya Sawhneyw)坦言 “普濟手機計劃目前仍面臨許多困難”。對於那些居住在低收入飯店的居民而言，他們所面臨的困難是“飯店的地址不是永久的居住地址。”

薩內尼說“由於飯店地址通常不被普濟電話提供者認可，因此讓這群最需要普濟電話的社群無法獲得服務。”

聖伯納汀諾(San Bernardino)「先知集會組織」（Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement ）代表塔滕(L. B. Tatum) 指出許多需要普濟電話服務的人甚至不知道有這項服務。

塔滕說“我們明白低收入戶對普濟手機的需要，然而許多低收入戶沒有管道取得相關消息或需要協助填寫申請表格。”“我們需要保障低收入社區以及有經濟困難的民眾能夠得知普濟手機的資訊。”

普濟手機計劃預計在一年內被推行。

加州公共事業委員會(The California Public Utilities Commission) 將會在五月以及六月在全加州舉辦的公聽會上尋求民眾的意見，地點包括：弗雷斯諾，河濱，洛杉磯，三藩市，聖地牙哥和薩利納斯。若您欲參與本地的公聽會，請聯繫公關主任辦公室：public.advisor@cpuc.ca.gov 或免費電話：866-849-8390