Starting Points: Latinos

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May 28, 2010

Arizona Law Is Stoking Unease Among Latinos

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

PHOENIX — When Gov. Jan Brewer signed Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law, giving police departments broad power to make immigration checks, she sought to allay concerns from Hispanic citizens and legal residents that they would be singled out for scrutiny.

“We have to trust our law enforcement,” Ms. Brewer said. “It’s simple reality. Police officers are going to be respectful. They understand what their jobs are. They’ve taken an oath, and racial profiling isn’t legal.”

Those words ring hollow to many Latinos, including Jesus Ruiz, 25, a college student in Mesa, Ariz., who, like many Latinos here, believes that all too often the police view them suspiciously and single them out for what they consider questionable stops or harassment.

In one stop in 2004, Mr. Ruiz said, an officer pulled him over for speeding 10 miles over the limit and went on to question him on where he was going to school and whether he lived with his parents, and finally asked for his Social Security number.

“I was thinking, is he supposed to be asking me for that and all these questions for a speeding ticket?” said Mr. Ruiz, who spray painted himself white and wrote on his body, “Am I reasonably suspicious?” at a recent protest against the new law, which goes into effect in late July.

But it is not just young people.

Judge Jose Padilla of Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix, says that twice since he became a judge in 2006, the police have pulled him over, alleging minor traffic infractions. Even though Judge Padilla, 60, did not disclose his occupation, he ended up not receiving a ticket. He said his complaints to the police department led to sensitivity training for the officers.

Judge Padilla believes the stops were based on his Hispanic ancestry and the fact that his 1988 pickup truck has large wheels and resembles a low rider, a customized car popular in Mexican-American culture but also favored by some street gangs.

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“This has been lifelong, these stops,” he said, “and it is not just me.”

Now, Latinos and several police chiefs say they worry that the law, which requires the police, “when practicable” and if they have reasonable suspicion, to check the immigration status of people they stop, detain or arrest for another reason, will widen a chasm of trust that they have struggled to close.

Those concerns have reached the Justice Department, which is considering challenging the law in court, out of a concern, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on ABC’s “This Week,” that “we could potentially get on a slippery slope where people will be picked on because of how they look as opposed to what they have done.”

Though President Obama again criticized the law at a news conference Thursday, a majority of Americans support it, according to a CBS News poll released Tuesday. But recent surveys suggest a split along ethnic lines, with a majority of Latinos opposed to it. An Associated Press-Univision poll released May 13 showed nearly two-thirds of Hispanics opposed the Arizona law, compared with just 20 percent of non-Hispanics (45 percent favored it and 30 percent were neutral).

Antonio Bustamante, a veteran civil rights lawyer here who is helping organize protests against the law, explained by saying, “The majority in the country has not experienced being profiled so they don’t perceive it as an issue, just like they don’t accept discrimination in the country because they have not been discriminated against.”

Roberto Villaseñor, the chief of police in Tucson, said in a recent conference call with reporters that his city “is divided about this issue,” and he worries that immigrants will not report crimes or turn in criminals out of fear, justified or not, they will end up deported.

The law, Chief Villaseñor said, will instill “a level of mistrust” particularly in immigrant communities and break down years of efforts to combat the perception that the police collaborate with immigration agents.

Already, he said, there are anecdotal reports that some police departments in the state are asking people for their papers. He said his department had received a picture of a patrol car near a Border Patrol vehicle, as if proximity proved that officers were already collaborating to carry out the law.

Tensions between law enforcement and some Latinos have deep roots but have been aggravated by a spate of recent incidents and lawsuits.

A study conducted as part of the settlement of a racial profiling suit brought against the Arizona State Police found that over a one-year period ending in 2007, blacks and Hispanics were two and a half times more likely than whites to be searched by highway patrol officers even though the rate of seizure of contraband among whites was higher than for Hispanics and about the same as for blacks.

Memories also burn strong here of the so-called Chandler roundup, where the police in that Phoenix suburb worked with immigration agents to arrest more than 400 illegal immigrants — stopping scores of Latino citizens and legal residents to check their papers, in the process. The city settled a subsequent lawsuit for $500,000.

Today, a federal lawsuit and a Justice Department investigation continue against Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, who has been criticized for using stops for traffic offenses in a series of “crime suppression operations” to check people’s immigration status throughout metropolitan Phoenix.

It remains unclear what criteria the police will use in deciding what is a reasonable suspicion a person they stop is an illegal immigrant.

The new state law says the police cannot use race, color or ethnicity “except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.”

Some civil rights lawyers find that clause worrisome.

They note that federal courts and the Arizona Supreme Court have upheld the right of federal agents enforcing immigration law to consider someone’s ethnicity, especially at or near the border, when deciding to question someone suspected of being an illegal immigrant.

A training manual as part of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program known as 287(g), which deputizes specially trained state and local police as immigration officers, lists a number of factors that can be used to make an immigration query, including “Does the subject have a thick foreign accent or appear not to speak English?” and “Does the subject’s appearance look like it is ‘out of place’ or as though the subject has just traveled?” and “Is the area known for its attraction to illegal aliens?”

Federal officials said the manual was being revised to clarify the criteria and emphasize that several other factors must be considered.

David Salgado, a Phoenix police officer who has filed one of five lawsuits to block the law, said it would be impossible not to take race or ethnicity into account to develop reasonable suspicion, given the proximity to the border and region’s large Hispanic population.

Officer Salgado said the fact that officers can check immigration status only after a stop for another reason is essentially meaningless because “you drive two or three blocks down the street I will find something to pull you over for — going over the double line, forgetting to signal for a lane change, it’s not hard.”

Nina Perales, a lawyer with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which also has sued, said non-Hispanic illegal immigrants would get a free pass.

“How does law enforcement form a reasonable suspicion that a white person is an alien absent a flat-out admission they are?” Ms. Perales asked.

Still, many Arizonans who support the law believe racial profiling concerns are overblown or a smokescreen to hide a belief that borders should be wide open.

“The police will do the right thing. The majority of them do,” said Sunday Schwein, a retired nurse in Payson, Ariz. “I really doubt they will pick people out just because of their race.”

Under an executive order signed by Ms. Brewer, the state’s police training board is developing a training course designed to guide officers in developing reasonable suspicion that somebody is an illegal immigrant.

A letter from the board to the governor last week indicated the training, in the form of a DVD with handouts for every officer in the state, would reflect that given to federal immigration officers as well as the state’s Department of Public Safety.

While several police chiefs oppose the law, groups representing rank-and-file officers support it and play down the concerns about racial profiling.

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, a union representing police officers that supports the law, said some factors that might provoke reasonable suspicion include someone not carrying identification or using fake identification or possessing foreign identification without a visa.

But many Latinos remain unconvinced.

May 15, 2010

Arizona Government Is Racist

Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr

City Brights: Michael Yaki : Arizona law banning Ethnic Studies: Arizona Gov't is the real racist.

by Michael Yaki

Arizona once again delves into uncharted constitutional waters by seeking to ban courses catering to minority--again, in this case, primarily Hispanic -- students. Indeed, the Arizona State Superintendent, Tom Horne, said it was written to target Mexican or Chicano ethnic studies classes, which he claims divides students by race and promotes race resentment.

The statute bans courses that "promote resentment toward a race or class of people . . . are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group . . and advocate ethnic solidarity." The statute then goes onto exempt courses on the Holocaust because, of course, without that exemption, every class that shows Schindler's List where at the conclusion you resent the Nazis (a class of people) and wanting to save the Jews (promoting solidarity), you would have violated Horne's law.

Horne's dilemma is that enforcement will be so arbitrary, so capricious, relying, most likely, on Horne's particular biases and whims that the statute is begging for a First Amendment challenge. How do you quantify or measure "resentment." "Ethnic solidarity?" If two Latino students, hearing about the plight of migrant workers in the lettuce fields of California, feel that they should send a donation to the United Farm Workers to help them combat the agrigrower owners, has that crossed a line? If a teacher shows "Roots" and black students feel compelled to talk about the anger they still feel at the legacy of slavery, is that a violation? If students leave a classroom finally understanding the prejudice and struggles of their parents of whatever race or religion or background, and feeling justifiably angry, will Tom Horne be there with a questionnaire to gauge whether their teacher fueled their discontent so he can yank their funding?

Image by aprilzosia via Flickr

And let's not forget Arizona's participation in one of the most shameful acts of racism in American history: the incarceration of over 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. The Arizona desert was a lovely place for west coast Americans to spend their time simply because of their ethnic heritage. If a Park Ranger spoke at a class in Arizona about Gila River and Poston, and condemned the paranoia and racism at the time, and several Asian American students petitioned their school to form an afterschool group for Asian Americans, is that the "ethnic solidarity" deemed a no-no by the law?

I remember a history class at UC Berkeley I took on American history. It left me shaken, and angry, and ultimately disappointed that my high school history glossed over the tremendous struggles that workers and minorities suffered through in the rise of the industrial age. If anything, shouldn't Tom Horne be targeting universities, the real hot-beds of controversial thinking? On-line education? Any Learning Annex lecture given by a minority lecturer? Isn't Horne, Brewer, and the entire Arizona Legislature, plain and simple, engaging in censorship and whitewashing promoted by a state government?

If the Governor, legislature, and education departments of Arizona are worried about "resentment" towards them by the substantial Latino population in the state, there are greater things to worry about than simply 1984'ing the state curriculum. Perhaps if they addressed the inequities in health care, living conditions, the standard of living for many Latinos living there the "resentment" level might just die down. Perhaps if they didn't pass laws targeting Latinos, regardless of citizenship, for racial profiling and police interrogations on the "suspicion" that they may be undocumented persons there wouldn't be any fears of "resentment."

Learning about your heritage and your roots is part of who we are as Americans. Perhaps if the Arizona government recognized that undeniable, indisputable fact, if they just behaved like human beings who should care about other human beings, without regard to skin color, ethnicity, or nationality, then maybe, just maybe, their claims about "ethnic chauvinism" wouldn't sound so hypocritical. Because, right now, everything they have done in the past month bears the ugly stain of racism.

Posted By: Michael Yaki (Email) | May 15 2010 at 08:33 AM

May 14, 2010

Clueless in Arizona

Image by Dan Shouse via Flickr

Citing Individualism, Arizona Tries to Rein in Ethnic Studies in School - NYTimes.com

By TAMAR LEWIN

Less than a month after signing the nation’s toughest law on illegal immigration, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has again upset the state’s large Hispanic population, signing a bill aimed at ending ethnic studies in Tucson schools.

Under the law signed on Tuesday, any school district that offers classes designed primarily for students of particular ethnic groups, advocate ethnic solidarity or promote resentment of a race or a class of people would risk losing 10 percent of its state financing.

“Governor Brewer signed the bill because she believes, and the legislation states, that public school students should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people,” Paul Senseman, a spokesman for the governor, said in a statement on Thursday.

Judy Burns, president of the governing board of the Tucson schools, said the district’s ethnic studies courses did not violate any of the provisions of the new law and would be continued because they were valuable to the students.

“From everything I’ve seen, they empower kids to take charge of their own destiny, gain a sense of the value of their own existence and become more determined to be well-educated contributing members of society,” Ms. Burns said.

The new law, which takes effect at the end of the year, is a victory for Tom Horne, the state superintendent of public instruction, who has fought for years to end Tucson’s ethnic studies programs, which he believes teach students to feel oppressed and resent whites.

“The most offensive thing to me, fundamentally, is dividing kids by race,” Mr. Horne said.

“They are teaching a radical ideology in Raza, including that Arizona and other states were stolen from Mexico and should be given back,” he continued, referring to the Mexican-American studies classes. “My point of view is that these kids’ parents and grandparents came, mostly legally, because this is the land of opportunity, and we should teach them that if they work hard, they can accomplish anything.”

Mr. Horne, a Republican who is running for state attorney general, said he also objected to the textbook “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paulo Freire.

The schools in Tucson, where about 56 percent of the students are Hispanic, offer Mexican-American studies classes in history and literature and African-American literature classes. Although the classes are open to all students, most of those who enroll are members of the ethnic or racial group being discussed.

In June 2007, in an open letter to the residents of Tucson, Mr. Horne said, “The evidence is overwhelming that ethnic studies in the Tucson Unified School District teaches a kind of destructive ethnic chauvinism that the citizens of Tucson should no longer tolerate.”

In that letter, he said he believed that students were learning hostility from La Raza teachers, citing an incident in which students at the Tucson High Magnet School walked out on a speech by his deputy, a Republican Latina, who was trying to refute an earlier speaker who had told the student body that Republicans hate Latinos.

Sean Arce, director of Tucson’s Mexican-American studies department, said the ethnic studies courses do teach students about the marginalization of different groups in the United States through history.

“They don’t teach resentment or hostility, in any way, shape or form,” Mr. Arce said. “Instead, they build cultural bridges of understanding, and teach the skills students need to understand history.”

Furthermore, Mr. Arce said, the ethnic studies courses have been highly effective in reducing students’ dropout rates and increasing their college matriculation well above the national average for Latino students.

Mr. Arce and Ms. Burns said that they had repeatedly invited Mr. Horne to visit the ethnic studies classes, but that he had declined the invitations.

“We wish he’d come see it, so he’d know what we do, and not just go on hearsay,” Ms. Burns said.

Mr. Horne acknowledged that he had never sat in on a class, but said he did not believe that what he would see would be representative of what regularly took place.

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Read all about it - click here.

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Apr 2, 2010

Hispanics new to U.S. more likely to participate in census - washingtonpost.com

Image via Wikipedia

By Carol Morello
Friday, April 2, 2010; A16

Recent Hispanic immigrants are more likely to return their census questionnaires than Hispanics born in the United States, according to a new study that suggests a census campaign targeting Spanish speakers has been wildly successful.

A telephone survey of about 1,000 people conducted in the third week of March by the Pew Hispanic Center also found that foreign-born Hispanics are less skeptical that their census information will remain confidential.

The study was released Thursday, which the government dubbed "Census Day" -- the day by which, officials hoped, people would have filled out their forms and mailed them in. To encourage participation, the White House released a photo of President Obama filling out his questionnaire.

The government will continue to promote the census throughout April, particularly in areas with low response rates. At the end of the month, officials will compile lists of addresses from which surveys have not been received by mail. Census-takers will be dispatched to those addresses to try to get survey questions answered.

Major Hispanic groups have said there is widespread fear among immigrants that data will be shared with immigration authorities. In response, groups have stressed the confidentiality of the census in a campaign called "Ya es hora. ¡Hagase contar!" or "It's time to be counted."

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, declared himself "giddy" about the results.

"It shows the work we have been doing has had an impact," he said of the effort that enlisted newscasters, entertainers and other prominent Latinos to spread the message that Hispanics should send in their forms regardless of their legal status. "It shows that this population understands what we need do as a community to move forward, to be counted and to be heard."

But, ironically, the survey suggests that the message did not get through so readily to U.S.-born Hispanics. While 91 percent of the foreign-born said they had returned their forms or would do so soon, only 78 percent of the U.S.-born said they would participate. Both figures would be an improvement over the last census, when 69 percent of Hispanic households returned their forms.

Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in the United States, as well as the fastest growing. About 35 million were counted in the 2000 Census, and they were estimated to number 47 million by 2008, or 15 percent of the population.

Image via Wikipedia

This year, the Census Bureau mailed bilingual forms to neighborhoods with a large Hispanic presence. It also spent more than $25 million, about one-fifth of its total advertising budget, for Spanish-language media.

The sharp focus on messages in Spanish may have created the disparity in how recent immigrants and natives regard the census.

Maria Teresa Kumar, executive director of Voto Latino, said that recent immigrants are the main consumers of Spanish-language programs aired on Univision and Telemundo, which introduced a census-taker as a character in its top-rated telenovela. Generations born in the United States tend to prefer English-language media.

"The more acculturated you are, the more you have the same views as the rest of mainstream America, and a lot of folks are distrustful of government," she said.

The Pew survey also suggests that a census boycott called by some Hispanic evangelical ministers to protest the lack of immigration reform has been a failure. Only 16 percent said they had heard calls for a boycott.

"We're not sure why it didn't gain traction," said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center. "We know that when it was announced, there was a very broad effort to counter it."

Carlos Aragon, general manager of Radio Fiesta, which broadcasts in the Washington area, said many Hispanics consider the boycott "ridiculous." He also said he hears myths that the Census Bureau will turn in undocumented immigrants to the authorities.

José Robles, director of Hispanic Ministry in the Phoenix Catholic Diocese, said the concern about information being handed over to authorities is more pronounced among members of the clergy than parishioners. The diocese has heavily promoted the census, but Arizonans are among those who are slower to return forms than the national average.

The states whose response rates are lagging are mostly in the South and Southwest.