Assimilation Issues

Raphael Gallegos made a very interesting point about the legitimacy of the article. The article suggests that today’s immigrants are not as willing to assimilate into the American culture as those in the past have been. However, our group agreed that it was Americans who were less willing to accept the immigrants. This argument brought up the question of whether or not it is actually possible for Latino immigrants to assimilate into American culture without losing their own. Many immigrants are afraid to become active in their community because of the threat of deportation. Others find themselves in areas so rich in Latino influence that it does not matter if they assimilate. Regardless of the reason for Latinos not assimilating, the trend is creating a rut between Latinos and Americans and could cause big problems in the future. Already Latino Americans dominate Miami and a few other mentioned cities where Americans have left, but why is it that an increasing Latino population causes Americans to relocate? What is stopping us from living together in communities? The acceptance of outside influence and culture is the main factor. A simple answer would be for us all to agree to meet halfway. But, what is halfway? And would people on either side be willing to make this sacrifice? In a situation with so many unanswerable questions, a solution is nearly impossible to derive.

Guest Worker Program

The Guest Worker Program is a program that has been proposed many times in the past as a way to permit US employers to sponsor non-U.S. citizens as laborers for approximately three years.  The program has been criticizes for granting amnesty for illegal immigrants. Until last class, I didn’t know how complicated the program was.  My grandfather began working in the US through the green card and this is eventually how he obtained residency and, later, citizenship. Although he worked in construction and not in agriculture, had he not had the opportunity to work in the US with a green card and had he not obeyed the rules, my father might not have been born in the states and I would not be an American. Although I understand both the positive and negative sides of the argument, if the US were to get rid of the program, conflict would ensue.  The Latino workforce in the US is an asset to the country. 

Guest Worker Programs

I mentioned this briefly in class last week, but it is interesting to revisit guest worker programs from the eyes of a farmer in the United States. I was really grateful to hear the personal imput, about how the workers return year after year for the same season to work, how they receive a lot of letters, and how most of their families are at home. This is one aspect f spring break that I am most excited about: direct interaction with the farmworkers.
I was lucky enough to have direct interaction with guest workers in Singapore, doing lots of field research with my class and personal interviews. I have a feeling there are many similarities and differences between programs there and programs in the US. For one, here they allegedly have the right to change employers. In Singapore they do not, and the island is so small and so secure, that running away, leaving one's job, or even reporting abuse means instant deportation. Furthermore, no one wants to settle in Singapore. It is incredibly hard to get citizenship there; and PR status goes mostly to foreign talent. A domestic worker who marries a Singaporean does not get citizenship automatically, and the laws do not really protect you if you are not one. Also Singapore requires certain physical elements to their program that would be considered an invasion of the right to privacy, such as mandatory HIV and pregnancy tests, if positive for either one is immediately deported. I just bring up these things because Singapore is considered the model guest-wroker program across the world for it's efficiency, and many people say the guest worker program needs to be revamped to be more like Singapores. My question is, even if we did reform the guest-worker program, how could we make it more efficient without sacrificing the qualities that we support as a liberal democracy?

Yay or Nay on Guest worker programs

America’s past precedent regarding the acceptance of newcomers is one that should be encouraging to the large numbers of Latino immigrants. With a tendency to assimilate rather quickly, most immigration populations spend a number of years working the bottom rung of the ladder, then slowly matriculate up through the levels of social stratification. The only distinguishment that can be made is that there are more Latinos coming into the country illegally than there ever were immigrants of other nationalities. Bush’s idea of seasonal work visas seems to be very good in some areas and not so strong in others. A positive is that it gives immigrants a legal way to stay here, make money, and then return to Mexico (or their other country of origin) to support their families and fuel the their home country’s economy. A con to this arrangement is that workers are often forced to live in substandard conditions and harassed or bullied by the leaders of their work groups or the farmers. An easy solution is not available, but through our Spring Break adventures, and the efforts of all of the other groups working for the welfare and fair treatment of immigrants, we will discover new ways to make the transitions easier and the working environments more positive.

Economics of Immigrantion

Immigration is really important for a country. Right now it seems that all most people can think of are the negative aspects but everyone forgets that at some time or other someone in our family or lineage had to move, start over and acclamate to the US and many times this meant making room in the already formed social, economic, political, etc. structures. Everytime there is a large group of new immigrants all they want is to assimilate and close the door behind them. But if you think about it the fertility rate in the US is not increasing yet the amount of people reaching out for social security checks is. The point is to make immigrants legal not only to "benefit from their tax payments" as one of the articles pointed out but it is a self esteem boost to feel welcomed and like you are part of a community. This sense in self leads a person to become a productive member of society. Everything is an investment. Our educations, money in the bank, social programs for latinos, legal status for latinos. Yes the cost outweighs the benefits in monetary terms now but in the near future the benefits will outweigh costs not only in money but also in social exerternalities. As soon as the issue with the Latinos dies down there will soon be another wave of immigrants coming in from somewhere else. Seeing as this country is a haven for immigrants you would think that we would have systemic approach of transitioning that does not include a period of isolationism and name calling ("cultural schisms").

Overshadowed Importance

After last week's discussion, I really spent time thinking about what Paul brought up, in regards to the fact that the Latino workforce in our country is such an important (and in many cases, partially lucrative) asset to our nation. And while this may be fairly evident, out of distaste and discrimination, those who oppose their presence here overlook this fact. If we were to remove all immigrant workers from agriculture and other industry, would the industries be able to still function normally? No! The whole point of the guest worker program is to aid industries that are unable to employ American labor, hence without the immigrant labor, they would not survive. Additionally, when Jakelin mentioned that lack of acknowledgement of the Latino impact of the economy at the rally she attended also proved that our state, despite having the largest amount of Latino labor and a booming population, is very narrow minded. But it is because of this that progress is halted. If industries and officials would realize the value that the Latino population really holds in our country and the positive impact they end up making (including keeping some businesses afloat), then maybe the economy and its various issues would not be as prevalent.

Why Border Patrol is a Sham

It's strange how despite years and years of immigration and complaints about immigrants, they continue (or at least have continued over the past decade) to pour across the border almost unchecked. You would think that if it were such a problem we would do something about it. But at the end of the day, in the heart of hearts of the administrative personel making border control decisions, they know that to slow the influx of immigrants would actually be detrimental to our nation. It isn't a problem at all. It is the fuel of our economy. We haven't had a sub-blue collar workforce like this since slavery. With the threat of deportation comes extreme submission, to the point that we can pay them five dollars an hour without complaint, we can subject them to working conditions that would make OSHA shudder, and we can drop them from the payroll without a second thought. Forget about having to pay for healthcare--they can't receive it. Forget about unemployment and benefits--employers don't have to pay it.

Think they don't pay taxes? What about the $9.2 billion dollars net impact in sales and tax on NC in 2006? What else would you tax, their income? What income? We hardly pay them anything. The state probably makes more in tariffs through remittances than they would ever make from a comparable citizen's income tax. According to a study at the Kenan Institute it costs NC about 61 million a year to house this "illegal" population, including healthcare and education. The state saves about $1.9 billion in wages ALONE, not to mention the increase in state productivity. So who still wants to build that fence? And who still wonders why we haven't already?

Economies of high immigration countries

It always bothers me that some people state, “immigrants don’t pay taxes” as their primary reason for wanting the immigrants deported, yet those same people would vote against a law enabling immigrants to become citizens, and receive a social security number through which to pay taxes. There are many ways to try to cover discrimination, but in the end, it is still discrimination. I like the point brought up about immigrants not wanting to be here anymore than some natives want them here, because I know it is true. Every summer hundreds of letters would come in and out of my grandparent’s farms for and from the workers, and they were only apart from their families for a few months. I cannot imagine how it would feel to be separated from my family for the rest of my life, as is the case for some immigrants who make the trek to America. If there was a way to build up the economy of Mexico and other countries with high departing immigration rates it would definitely be a better situation for those people, allowing them to make enough money to support their families while still being with them. We discussed several options and different ways to make this happen and the one I thought was most appealing was to fund schools to educate them in their native countries as opposed to in America (unless of course they wanted to be in America). But educating them in their own country would allow them to be near their families and have that emotional support. Also, learning economics and business in your country with your own native culture makes a person better suited to create change because they understand how these topics translate into their personal social norms.

A Few Reflections

I guess one thing I am always interested in, and that we touched on in class, is how one is to be culturally sensitive as well as pragmatic and effective in one's care. I asked my parents (who are both doctors) what the most important consideration in any doctor should be apart from his or her skills, and both agreed that it was compassion. I think it was really helpful to talk about 'the evil eye' and explore an instance where belief may conflict with medical practice because every doctor admits a certain amount of uncertainty in what they do-- each body works as a self-contained miracle, and what works with one may not work with another. Acknowledging that makes it especially important to pay attention to beliefs, traditions and faith surrounding the people one takes care of. There is more to a patient than his body

Health Care

1/3 of Latinos have trouble communicating with physicians/ rely on the emergency departments for general health care.
Only 5% of healthcare managers
Only 9% of nursing aids
Only 3% of nurses
And
Only 4% of physicians are Latinos.
These statistics are shocking. If 1/3 of Latinos have trouble communicating with their patients, then how are they going to be able to follow the treatment prescribed to them? How will they be able to communicate what’s wrong with them and how they feel? I believe that although generalized, the clues on “Communicating with your Latino Patient” is a good way to start.

No where else to go

The issue of not having healthcare usually only manifests itself when an individual falls ill or is injured. At that point, trying to seek medical care can be extremely difficult, if not near impossible. The fact that many individuals are forced to go to the ER to seek basic care is definitely a flaw in the healthcare system, but the reality is that almost all doctors offices require some form of healthcare. When there is no one and no where to turn to, a sick/injured person will a) continue on without seeking medical attention, making the best of what they can or b) go to the place they know they must be treated, the ER. While one time problems can be "solved" this way, the next issue is preventative care. Across the board, there are people in our country who do not utilize preventative care, and as this problem grows, so do the risks. Additionally, all of this is tied into the overwhelming issue of healthcare our nation's leaders are working through. Specifically, the high cost and the potential undocumented status lead to a lack of healthcare among the Latino community--however expense and fear are not justified reasons for having less concern for one's health.

Making Our Socialized Medicine Cheaper

In our discussion of medical care for the Latino community, the arguments always circled back to cost. Clearly, we would like to be able to treat everyone who has an illness, but at the end of the day we have more medical care available than our society can afford. So many argue that we cannot give healthcare to everyone (i.e. middle to low income individuals and immigrants) because it would simply cost too much. However, almost invariably, these discussions neglect the fact that we already treat everyone despite health insurance status-- the federal law under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires that hospitals stabilize individuals in the emergency room.

This law coupled with the widespread lack of insurance or under-coverage has led to record-high emergency room visits--individuals without money or insurance are using them as primary care. However, by the time an illness justifies the emergency room, it has likely progressed to a very difficult and expensive state. So not only do tax-payers already pay for "socialized" medicine, they pay for an extremely expensive, morally questionable version of it. The discussion needs to change from whether or not we should pay for government-funded healthcare to a cost-benefit analysis of not switching to systems that enable relatively inexpensive preventative care.

The Voicelessness of Immigrant Youths

As a Latino immigrant to this country, I was not only already aware of the issues covered in our discussion, but I had lived and am living them first-hand. While I agree with most of the conclusion provided in our readings (undocumented youths need to be granted access to higher education; a well executed administrative, political, and financial effort must be made to bridge the education disparity between Latinos and the rest of the population; the southern US serves as the epicenter of a huge influx of immigrants and thus the key area were education reform must take place), the take-home effect of our discussion, for me, was the voicelessness of those most affected by these disparities: children, especially the undocumented.

When I write voicelessness, I mean the lack of attention given to immigrants’ perspective in the political discourse that directly affects their well-being,; in this case, their education. Not only is this voicelessness present for immigrants, but it is even more so for the children of these immigrants, the ones who are directly affected by a lack of educational parity.

Coalition for College Access, a group on UNC’s campus, and other like them are making an effort to provide voices to these voiceless children through lobbying and education of the masses.

Headstart programs and minority assistance education

I thought it was really interesting in the last class to hear about different people's experiences with elementary and preschool education as coming from different cultural backgrounds and immigrant statuses. My parents and sisters immigrated to the US from Egypt in 1983 and my older sister was enrolled in the Headstart Program after about 3 years. Since my family had to economically start over when they came to the US, Headstart was the only way for my sister to get a pre-elementary school education. My other sister, who was about 5 at the time of immigration, was put into kindergarten with no sort of ESL program catered to Arabic-speaking students. This transition to learning English must have been alienating for my sister, and her experience makes me wonder how Latino students in low-resource schools grapple with the same sorts of obstacles when having no hopes for access to a bilingual education.

Education as a Commodity

Our generation of students is extremely fortunate. Many of us were educated in public school systems in a time of great economic growth. The nineties didn't see any serious market contractions as we saw recently and have seen in the past. We were educated when state budgets were relatively stable, and only the tip of the iceberg of immigration was showing.

However, school administrators and policy-makers are facing a rapidly changing landscape where education programs are on shoestring budgets, children of immigrants that speak limited or no English are flooding the system, and the federal effort to salvage a steadily declining quality of education in the form of No Child Left Behind is generally regarded as a failure. It is perhaps easier to understand the problem of declining educational quality as a commodity, since it has increasingly become the case that the quality of one's education is directly related to the amount one can pay for it.

Lets say that the the success of an individual is determined by distance traveled. Students are mechanics, and education is the accumulation of parts of a car that will enable you to travel more quickly--the uneducated walk, bike or hitchhike. In this situation, as in reality, the quality of the parts are determined by their price, and what the school can afford is determined largely by county property tax. This is why you see more luxury vehicles pouring out of wealthy counties, and you see old beaters coming out of inner cities. The inner cities tend not to have the large houses and valuable properties that generate revenue for the school, while at the same time inner cities have to churn out more cars (students). This disparity has been building throughout our time in the education system.

Now enters another complexity. Whereas before now all of the cars were using parts based on the English system of measurement, new mechanics are flooding the system that only use the metric system. They are assembling the cars in fundamentally incorrect ways because despite their ignorance of English units, we attempt to drown them in non-metric tools and parts hoping they will cobble something together eventually. Meanwhile, the non-metric parts are coming from somewhere. We are stripping our other mechanics of everything from cruise control to airbags to save money for metric parts. It has become a zero-sum game. And in great irony, some of the metric mechanics do succeed despite having to adapt measurement systems and create beautiful machines despite overwhelming odds, only to have their cars impounded due to lack of a driver's license.

The ideal is that every mechanic would have a chance to build a complete and dependable car. But in these circumstances, what do we do? In a situation where car parts are already scarce, do we try to switch from English units to metric? Or do we risk ending up unfinished vehicles, wheels with a frame and seats but no engine? Or will having a population base of individuals that can work with both English and metric allow for cost savings in the future? Maybe metric-based airbags are cheaper, and initial training cost will lead to long-term benefits.

There are many questions to ask. Do we spend too much money on paint? Chinese cars may only have rugged-looking primer, but their engines are top of the line. And yet other questions are easy to answer. Do we impound high-profile cars due to lack of a driver's license? The DREAM Act should take care of that, noting the obvious consequence that one less driver is one more hitchhiker.

It's easy to say we need more metric parts. But when acting on any type of policy we need to be very careful. Metric parts are currently very expensive, and inevitably another mechanic will be losing the means to build their car. There is a balance, and we need to ensure that in the process of the inevitable conversion to a dual system, we do not rush into a situation where all of our mechanics are left with Go Carts.

Education

Until last class, I did not know how complicated implementing a bilingual education was in this country. Growing up in the Dominican Republic, I had the opportunity to go to a bilingual school where all my classes were taught in English and only one class was taught in Spanish. Because both of my parents are American, learning and becoming proficient in English became easy for me. I know that at first, for my dad it was hard. Although he was born in the states, he was born to a Cuban mother and a Spanish father. Neither of them spoke English when they immigrated to the States and had my dad. As a result, he had to repeat a grade in order to catch up.
I believe that bilingual programs are important but more resources should be allocated to these programs so that they may actually work. I do believe that immigrants coming to the States should learn English but I also believe that Americans should be more receptive to their language and culture. Whether it is making schools teach a class in Spanish from elementary all the way through high school or teaching a course on Latino culture. The reality is that the Latino population in the US is growing and something will have to be done by schools to help integrate students and not leave any behind.

Bilingual Education

The subject of bilingual education is a hard one to tackle, because it is feasible and admirable in so many ways, but is not flawless.

After discussion I went home and thought more about where a total bilingual education (classes in both languages) could be implemented, and the only places where I thought it might be feasible would be magnet schools (which teachers are attracted to because of special attention within a subject and good programs), private schools that have more funding and flexibility within their curricula, and perhaps some wealthy districts. However, none of these schools would actually necessarily target the Latino community, and it is their language handicaps that the system should try and correct. However, I do realize that my vision of the workings of the school system are limited, so perhaps my dreams for successful implementation are as well. I think bilingualism is a merit, and it would be wonderful to see more achieve it.

Education in the Suburbs

It was really interesting to read about the migration of Spanish speaking families from urban areas to suburban areas and thereby bypassing some sort of integration period, curiously enough this is what is mostly happening in North Carolina. It is encouraging to see cases such as that described in the NY Times article in which the Frenbrook has significantly raised scores of Latino children. It was surprising that even though they had to do a lot of rearranging of staff and resources people have not complained about the changes. i.e no computer lab, fewer administrators, etc.

Hopefully school administrators will work to accommodate the needs of students before they receive failing test scores.

A bilingual dilemma

Last Thursday definitely helped to present several of the underlying problems that cause a common under education of Latinos. After discussing the various issues that cause this, it became very clear the importance of starting the bilingual learning process as early as possible, or run the risk of the language not being efficiently learned. Also, the fact that there are not enough resources available makes it almost impossible to successfully learn both languages. Not only is it important that Latinos gain more educational opportunities in regards to learning English, but the reversal is also very important. Teaching Spanish at a young age, like elementary school, is an important not only for the learning of the language but also the culture. By improving the Spanish taught at a younger age, the chances of cultural appreciation and awareness increase drastically. While many might argue that Latinos have to learn English in order to be successful in America, why can't the reverse be said about learning Spanish? Without taking this into consideration, trying to encourage English education can come off as hypocritical. However, the obvious dilemma is that lack of a vision in regards to this. Needs are not met due to inadequate resources, like teachers, and for now only continual discussion of this issue will help bring to light the attention it truly needs.

Education

The issue of educating children who are not proficient in English is a lot more complicated than I previously realized. Getting bilingual teachers into enough classrooms to make a difference is unfortunately impossible at this time due not only to the low number of bilingual teachers, but the low number of certified teachers to begin with. Because many schools where Latinos attend are underfunded and forced to employ teacher with minimal qualifications and little experience, Latino children are not offered the same standard of education as other children . I liked the idea about having a school that stresses both languages, but when it was mentioned that students from those schools ended up less proficient in both languages that idea was kind of shot. I’d really like to see some kind of initiative put out there for teachers to become proficient in English and Spanish.