Andres Oppenheimer

Rapidly growing Hispanic voting bloc will continue to influence issues, elections

One thing seems clear in the election with an unclear outcome. The Hispanic vote was more important than ever, and is likely to become an even bigger factor in future elections. Perhaps because most of the country's 32 million Hispanics are concentrated in five states with the largest number of Electoral College votes -- California, New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois -- they played a key role in the outcome of Tuesday's election. If George W. Bush wins the White House, Cuban- Americans in Miami will be able to say -- with some reason -- that he would not have won without their overwhelming support. Although no ethnic break-out of the vote was available at the time of this writing, a pre-election poll for Univision showed 82 percent of Miami's Cuban- Americans backed Bush.

Mass Migration

American Enterprise Magazine supports immigration reform

The December issue of The American Enterprise is dedicated to immigration reform. The topics explored include assimilation, the over-representation of Mexicans in the immigration flow, etc. Writers include Samuel Huntington, a Harvard professor of government, columnist and author Georgie Anne Geyer and John Fonte, a Hudson Inst. Senior fellow. AE editor Karl Zinmeister sets the tone of the discussion by noting that even though he is an immigration supporter, "One can get too much of a good thing." Discussing assimilation, Zinmeister notes that "our liberal elites have fostered 'multiculturalism,' bilingualism, and a politics of ethnic grievance. The Ford Foundation, for instance, has founded Mexican activist groups (like MALDEF) rather than encouraging assimilated citizenship."

Washington

Bishops Meeting Blasts Death Penalty, Questions Immigration Laws

The bishops have gathered this week for the four-day 60th general meeting of the National Catholic Conference of Bishops and United States Catholic Conference of bishops at a Capitol Hill hotel. The bishops proposed a statement on diversity and welcoming immigrants into the church. Thursday, the conference also will consider a proposed resolution urging U.S. immigration law and policy reform, saying that such laws and polices in the last five years "have had the effect of undermining the human dignity of the immigrant and (have) divided immigrant families.''

The Stein Report

Los Angeles tells illegal street vendors to drop the chalupa

Hispanic residents and businesses are at the forefront of an effort to crack down on illegal food vendors in Los Angeles. "The residents anger has prompted officials to seek a Los Angeles city and county task force to combat about 30 unlicensed taco and burrito stands in Boyle Heights, nearly all of them popular hangouts for other neighbors," reports the LA Times. The paper writes that "Ross Valencia, whose Boyle Heights Residents Assn. Drove most of the initial effort to eliminate the stands, said it is unfair to taxpaying legitimate restaurants to allow the illegal vendors to thrive."

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Anti-immigration billboards spur rally

Project USA has posted hundreds of billboards nationwide this year, alleging that immigrants are flooding the United States. In recent months, Project USA has targeted cities in Michigan, including Grand Rapids. "The community as a whole has to band together to put a stop to the Project USA campaign," said Andres Abru, organizer of the rally. "If we don't stop this, racial hatred will continue." - "People need to pull together instead of being pulled apart," said Jose Guardado, who was born in Mexico and has lived in Grand Rapids four years. "I am against the advertisements that talk about immigration in a negative way. This is something that is bad for the community."

Arizona Bilingual Ed Ban

Schools: Don't panic over bilingual ed vote

As parents worry and students get angry, educators are trying to figure out the immediate impact of last week's voter approval of Proposition 203, which dismantles the state's bilingual education system. Parents shouldn't panic, School officials said. "Right now, what we're teaching at school has not changed," said Sunnyside Unified School District spokeswoman Monique Soria. "The day after the election (was) the same as the day before - nothing has changed." After being inundated with calls since Tuesday's election, TUSD Superintendent Stan Paz issued a statement informing parents of the waiver option in 203 and assuring them the district is developing an English- immersion program.

Mass Migration - Georgia

The law is bilingual in Roswell

Police officers patrolling Roswell's fast- growing Spanish-speaking neighborhoods say there is a lot more to the job than speaking textbook Spanish. There are variations on the language and matters of courtesy and cultural etiquette. "A word that means one thing to a Mexican, could be insulting to a Puerto Rican," said Tomas Garcia, one of Roswell's first two Hispanic officers. Learning the culture is nearly as important as speaking the language, according to these officers. "We have to educate them about what is not acceptable here," Garcia said. "Latinos are a patriarchal society where it is permissible to beat your wife. You can't do that here. We have to teach them, and it's a constant battle." Communicating with those who don't speak English is a nationwide problem, Garcia said.

Come One, Come All!

Foreign Students Turn to U.S. Colleges in Droves

In all, more than 514,000 students from nearly every country were enrolled in U.S. schools last year, comprising 4 percent of the overall student enrollment, said a study by the Institute of International Education in New York. California hosted 66,305 international students, more than any other state, with Stanford, UC Berkeley and San Francisco State near the top of the list. "It's great news," said Yenbo Wu, director of international programs at S.F. State. "There's a tremendous benefit to hosting international students. They bring a diversity of cultures that all students can learn from." International students coming here are more likely to come for graduate work and stay until they earn their degrees. The vast majority are from Asia, followed by Canada, Mexico and Turkey.

Arizona Bilingual Ed Ban

School dazed by Prop. 203's approval

It's been almost a week since Arizona bilingual education went down in a statewide referendum, but teachers, students and staff at one Valley elementary school remain in denial. "I believe teaching (students) in their native language helps them with their cognitive development," Rosemary Agneessens, principal at Creighton Elementary School, reasoned Friday as if Election Day hadn't yet happened and there was still time to save bilingual education. Among some students, there also remains a considerable amount of anger at voters for approving a ballot initiative they believe was a racially motivated attempt at making them fail in school, not succeed. "We should put everything in Spanish and see how well those gringos learn," one eighth-grader, Liliana Rivera, 14, said in Spanish.

Clinton's Vote Fraud Sham

Chicanery Roils Election 2000

A lot of immigrant games have been under way, some legal and some otherwise. It is no secret that the Clinton administration has been instrumental in vastly increasing the number of immigrants becoming naturalized citizens. For instance, 1.7 million resident aliens have become U.S. citizens in just the last two years, with California (54 electoral votes) taking in 1.6 million of these. According to Deborah Phillips, who chairs the Voting Integrity Project, a Virginia-based nonprofit group that investigates claims of election fraud and teaches citizen poll watchers what to look for to thwart election fraud, "The voter rolls have so many fraudulent names and addresses and, in most jurisdictions, you don't even have to provide any form of identification to prove you are who you claim to be."