Funding Priority
Priority will be given to research proposals that include a focus on (a) new
forms of media; (b) serious forms of violence, including victimization and
perpetration resulting in injury; and (c) describing the individual and
contextual factors that influence the association between exposure to violent
media and risk for violence.
For more information on this grant, please
click here to read the complete Federal Register notice.
(http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/14mar20010800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2003/03-29632.htm)
******************
At-Risk Children
Focus of Hanna Andersson Giving
(http://www.hannafoundation.org/)
Children who
are exposed to drug misuse and domestic violence are the focus of the
Hanna Andersson Children's Foundation, the giving arm of the clothing
retailer Hanna Andersson, Foundation & Corporate Grants Alert reported in its
November issue.
Nonprofits that serve the following areas are eligible to apply for grants:
Santa Clara, Calif.; Denver, Colo.; Michigan City, Ind.; Louisville, Ky.;
Kittery, Maine; Minneapolis and Bloomington, Minn.; White Plains, N.Y.; Portland
and Lake Oswego, Ore.; and Seattle and Woodinville, Wash.
Grants are also awarded for efforts that improve the lives of children who are
at-risk as a result of poverty; child abuse and neglect; homelessness; physical
disabilities; or mental issues.
Grants range from $1,000 to $20,000 each.
The deadlines for letters of inquiry are March 1 and Sept. 15. For information,
contact Alissa Keny-Guyer, director, Hanna Andersson Children's Foundation, 1010
NW Flanders, Portland, OR 97209; 503-553-3551; e-mail:
alissakg@hannafoundation.org
******************
Funding Available for Programs that Help At-Risk Women, Children
(http://wgbcf.org/)
The
W. Glen Boyd Charitable Foundation awards grants to grassroots organizations
and nonprofits in Florida, Minnesota, and Oregon that focus on empowering women
and children, Foundation & Corporate Grants Alert reported in its November
issue.
In particular, the foundation awards grants for programs that assist single
mothers and youths exposed to violence or other at-risk situations.
The foundation also awards grants to programs that provide access to training or
mentoring for greater educational and economic development; offer meaningful,
age-appropriate, safe, and supervised educational experiences for underserved
children and youths; assist women and children to build assets and promote
resiliency; provide for critical needs with follow-up and multiple-issues
services; and foster the development of self-respect, independence, and
self-sufficiency.
Grants range from $5,000 or less to up to $20,000 each.
Letters of inquiry are accepted on an ongoing basis.
For information, contact Diana Dokos, program director, W. Glen Boyd Charitable
Foundation, P.O. Box 6630, Minneapolis, MN 55406-0630; 651-646-1300; e-mail:
ddokos@wgbcf.org.
******************
Fellowships
Provide Seed Money for Public Service Projects
Echoing Green Foundation: Public Service Fellowships
(http://www.echoinggreen.org/)
The Echoing Green
Foundation offers full-time fellowships to emerging social entrepreneurs. The
fellowships provide a two-year $60,000 stipend ($30,000 per year), health care
benefits, on-line connectivity, access to Echoing Green's network of social
entrepreneurs, and training and technical assistance. The stipend serves as seed
money to start a new public service organization or an independent project.
Individuals with domestic or international projects in the start-up phase are
eligible to apply. Public service projects in areas including, but not limited
to, the environment, arts, education, youth services and development, civil and
human rights, and community and economic development are supported. Initial
applications are due January 12, 2004, and full applications are due
March 9, 2004. Visit the above website for more information.
******************
Community Support from
Citizens Financial Group
Citizens Financial Group Community Giving Program
(http://www.citizensbank.com/community/outreach/cmnty_corp_giving.asp)
The Citizens
Financial Group Community Giving Program supports nonprofit organizations in the
communities where the company does business. Grants are provided to
community-based organizations serving the local residents in the states of
Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
and Rhode Island. Priority is given to programs that address basic human needs,
affordable housing, services for low and moderate-income families, community
development for economically distressed areas, and economic self-sufficiency.
Applications are accepted year-round. In addition to community support, Citizens
Financial Group recognizes nonprofit organizations that champion change and make
a difference in company communities through the Community Champions Program.
Visit the above website for more information, or to access application
instructions.
******************
ExxonMobil Provides
Support in a Variety of Areas
ExxonMobil Foundation/ExxonMobil Corporate Contributions Program
(http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Notebook/Citizen/Corp_N_CitizenGrants.asp)
ExxonMobil
supports nonprofit organizations that address the social and economic conditions
in the communities where the company has a significant presence. The company
provides support in the areas of the environment; public policy and public
research; minority and women-oriented service organizations; health; arts,
museums, and historical associations; education; and civic and community-service
organizations. Grants are awarded primarily for organizations that are national
in scope, although local organizations in areas where the company has
significant facilities or numbers of employees are also eligible. Applications
are accepted year-round. Visit the above website for a complete list of company
communities, more information, or for application instructions.
******************
Development Grants Support Community Partnerships for Older Adults
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Community Partnerships for Older Adults
(http://www.partnershipsforolderadults.org/)
Community
Partnerships for Older Adults, a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
supports efforts of local public-private partnerships to improve long-term care
and supportive services systems for older adults. Up to 17 communities across
the country will receive development grants of up to $150,000 for 18 months.
Development grantees will then have the opportunity to compete for grants to
implement the activities described in their plans. Applicants must demonstrate
that a core group of community leaders have been working together in a
partnership for at least two years, and the partnerships must encompass a
geographic area with at least 10,000 residents who are age 60 or older, except
in rural communities. Letters of intent are due January 9, 2004. Visit the above
website for more information or to submit letters of intent online.
******************
Support for Technology in the
Classroom
Best Buy Children's Foundation: te@ch program
(www.bestbuy.com)
The Best Buy
Children's Foundation's te@ch program supports schools and educators using
technology to make learning fun. The program awards $2,500 grants to K-12
public, private, and parochial schools within 25 miles of a Best Buy store in
recognition of programs or projects that creatively integrate interactive
technology into the curriculum. Of special interest are innovative, interactive
programs or projects that make learning fun for students. Deadline for
submitting applications is December 31, 2003. Visit the Best Buy website for
more information and application instructions. To locate the te@ch program
guidelines, click on "Community Relations" under "Company Information" on the
company home page, then click on the link to the te@ch program.
******************
Jobs/Internships
Call for Essay: The Social Glue for the Vietnamese-American Community
The “Social Glue” for the Vietnamese-American Community in the 21st
Century Initiative is a collaborative project by Tomorrow Vietnamese Forum and
Nha Magazine. As the project's title indicates, all of us in one way or another
are interested in strengthening the "social glue" that binds us as a people and
as a community. The "social glue" is produced by our ability to build trust,
construct bridges, create friendships, and provide a helping hand among
ourselves--regardless of sex, ethnicity, age, class, religion, political
philosophy, etc. This is what allows us to cohere and to succeed as a democratic
and prosperous community.
Is the "social glue" strong enough for us to come together at the start of a new
century? Or are we becoming strangers to one another without adequate social
bonds?
We are calling for essays both in English and Vietnamese that address the above
issues. We desire a wide spectrum of perspectives from those who have strong
interests in our community--students of all ages, husbands and wives, parents
and grandparents, community activists of all stripes, scholars of all fields,
workers of all trades, etc.
Call for essays could address, but not limited to, the following questions:
* Who makes up the VAC (Vietnamese-American Community)? * Is the VAC based on
tangible as well as intangible traits and/or qualities, e.g., sharing a common
country of origin, sharing a common past and future, sharing common ideas, goals
and aspirations?
* What have kept the VAC together since our arrival in 1 975, and are they
likely to keep us together in the 21st Century?
* What have kept the VAC apart since our arrival in 1975, and are they likely to
pull us further apart in the 21st Century?
* What issues are likely to divide or pull us together in the 21st
Century?
* What has been done and/or what might need to be done to keep our community
together and prosperous?
* What can you to do to make our community a strong, enduring one in order to
pass it on to future generations?
Monetary prizes will be awarded in several categories. Selected essays will be
invited for presentation at a conference. Selected essays will also be chosen
for publication. We recommend that essays should be between 1,000 to 6,000
words. We also recommend e-mail submission, but regular mail submission will be
accepted. Please include a brief biography and contact information.
Deadline for submission is
March 31, 2004.
Email Submission:
lle@csub.edu
Regular Mail to:
Long Le
Department of Political Science
California State University-Bakersfield
9001 Stockdale Highway
Bakersfield, CA 93111-1099
More detail infomation will be posted at Tomorrow Vietnamese Forum at
www.csub.edu/~lle/tvf.html and Nha Magazine at
www.nhamagazine.com.
For further information contact:
Long Le, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Director of Tomorrow Vietnamese Forum
Department of Political Science
California State
University-Bakersfield
9001 Stockdale Highway
Bakersfield, CA 93111-109
lle@csub.edu or 661-665-6340
Nha’s contact person:
Nguyen Khoa Thai-Anh
1999 Monterey Road
San Jose, CA 95112,
Suite 140
editor@nhamagazine.com
(510) 531-6666
******************
AXA Achievement Scholarship
The AXA
Achievement Scholarship, in association with U.S. News & World Report and
managed by Scholarship America, provides $670,000 in annual scholarships to high
school seniors throughout the nation.
Fifty-two
(52) scholarship recipients, known as AXA Achievers, will be selected – one from
each state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These recipients will
receive one-time scholarships of $10,000 each. Ten (10) AXA Achievers will be
selected as national recipients from the pool of 52, earning an additional
one-time scholarship of $15,000, a computer and the offer of an internship at an
AXA office. This brings each national AXA Achiever's total award to more than
$25,000!
Visit
www.axa-achievement.com
******************
Paid
Internships for Community Organizations
Applications are
now being accepted for the 2004 Community Intern Program.
Community organizations seeking student interns must submit their application by
January 30, 2004.
Since 2000, the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice has sponsored the
Community Intern Program, allowing students to assist community organizations on
environmental and public health issues. More than 100 students have gained
working experience at the grassroots level. Communities get help with their
projects ranging from health education to outreach and advocacy.
The purpose of the proposed community project must be to develop research or be
of a research nature, (i.e., survey, research, collecting and analyzing data),
and be used to expand scientific knowledge or understanding of the subject
studied.
The 2004 Program Announcement and Project Description/Application is up now on
ECO's website.
http://www.eco.org/epa/Communityinternprogram/main.html
******************
EPA Community Intern
Program
PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT
Each Community
Intern will receive a stipend of $450 a week, and $500 for relocation or project
travel. Location of housing is the responsibility of the student.
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
The Community Intern Program is for local, grassroots, non-profit, community
organizations only. This may be demonstrated through designation by the Internal
Revenue Service as a 501(c) organization or by evidence that a state recognizes
the organization's non-profit status. Tribal and local governments, colleges,
universities, or other educational institutions are not eligible to apply. The
organization must also provide an office facility and the supplies required for
the project. Interns will not be allowed to work in private homes. In order to
be eligible for these internships, students must be citizens of the
United States,
its territories, or possessions, or lawfully admitted to the United States for
permanent residence. They must also be a current student, or a college graduate
who will be returning to a graduate or undergraduate program within nine months
of the start of the internship.
TO APPLY
If your organization meets these requirements and you would like to participate
in this opportunity to receive a student intern this summer, you must act
quickly. You must submit a completed project description form to ECO by
January 30, 2004 c/o Maria Torres at
mtorres@eco.org or 617-426-8159 (fax).
For more information please contact Maria Torres, ECO, or Renee Goins, EPA
Program Coordinator, 202-564-2598 or by e-mail:
goins.renee@epa.gov.
******************
Search for a Vietnamese-Speaking Executive Assistant to the CEO + BusDev
Director
Position:
Executive
Assistant to the CEO
Some
Vietnamese Speaking Ability is Required
Compensation &
Benefits:
Negotiable
and extremely competitive
Annual Bonus
Attractive
benefits package
Fortune
Magazine's "100 Best Places to Work for in America"
About the
Company:
Our client
is a management-consulting and venture capital firm that works with U.S. and
Vietnam companies. Based in San Francisco, the Company is a part of the world's
leading technology and venture capital company. FORTUNE magazine selected the
Company as one of the "100 Best Places to Work for in America." This year,
companies featured on FORTUNE's sixth annual list were selected based on their
innovative programs for attracting and retaining world-class talent as well as
keeping them satisfied in a downturn. The office is located in one of the most
beautiful buildings in San Francisco, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.
About the
Position:
As one of
the most trusted members, the Assistant to the CEO provides full and diversified
administrative support of a responsible nature. This professional utilizes broad
and comprehensive experience, skills and knowledge in organizational policies,
procedures and practices. The Executive Assistant also serves as a facilitator
who may coordinate deadlines and either handles them directly, or through
others, handles project coordination and completion.
Responsibilities:
-Assist the
CEO in day-to-day administrative responsibilities
-Maintain
large contact lists through database file and Outlook Contact.
-Respond to
general as well as industry information requests - some comprehension of the
Vietnamese language is required
-Assist with
domestic and international travel arrangements (air, hotel, limo, rental car,
visa or passport processing)
-Manage the
calendar with guidance by establishing a systematic approach for oneself and
others to track time commitments and the completion of tasks.
-Schedule
appointments, confirm changes or delays, and make necessary changes, with
guidance as necessary.
-Coordinate
and plan domestic and international travel arrangements, and recommend the most
cost-effective itineraries.
-Internet/Google
research (companies, executives, general background search on potential clients)
-Act as a
liaison between senior management and clients/colleagues to facilitate work and
accomplish objectives in a collaborative effort.
-Understand
the client engagement management process and ensure compliance of time and
expense tracking/reporting.
-Assist the
CEO in his community development role with the Vietnamese community as needed
Requirements:
Education:
- a
Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience is preferred
Experience:
- 2-5 years
of related experience
- Sales or
marketing skills would be very helpful
Skills:
-
understanding of the Vietnamese language and culture is desired
- highly
professional in appearance and communication skills
- initiative
and a strong customer service focus
- effective
interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to interface with
personnel at all levels, both verbally and in writing
- the
ability to improve standardized best practices and service deliveries to
accomplish firm, group, customer and/or individual goals
- the
ability to meet new challenges with an open mind and an optimistic response
- the
ability to effectively manage/coordinate simultaneous projects, and successfully
prioritize multiple tasks with good judgment
-
proficiency in standardized software and hardware applications, including MS
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Microsoft Outlook
- some
knowledge of technologies and Silicon Valley companies would be helpful
- a good
personality would be a plus and supercedes other deficiencies
This
professional must be available for overtime, as needed, and must have an
excellent attendance and punctuality record.
Please send
inquiries and/or resume to
Kirk Nguyen
Managing
Director
PacRim
Alliance Partners
kirk@pacrimalliance.com
www.pacrimalliance.com
******************
Tips
Internal Revenue Service Information for Nonprofits and Charities
Internal Revenue Service: Webpage for Nonprofits and Charities
(http://www.irs.gov/charities/)
The Internal
Revenue Service provides a webpage with tax information for charities and
nonprofit organizations. The webpage includes information on such topics as
exemption requirements, applying for exemption, Form 990-T filing developments,
and more. Additionally, the site provides customized pages with information
pertaining to different types of nonprofits -- from business organizations to
social welfare organizations. Application forms, public disclosure requirements,
exempt organization frequently asked questions, and local IRS contact
information are all available. Visit the above website to access these
resources.
******************
Donation Exchange Allows Charities to Expand Fundraising Sources
(http://www.donationexchange.com/home.htm)
A new service
called
Donation Exchange enables nonprofits across the country to expand
contributions by accepting non-cash assets valued at over $5,000, the
Philanthropy News Network reported Nov. 17.
"Historically, nonprofit organizations refused such contributions because of the
complexities involved with asset liquidation," said Dave Csira, president of the
Irvine, Calif.-based company. "However, the current environment of diminished
individual donations and dwindling corporate and government support has
necessitated new thinking and innovation in fundraising efforts. Donation
Exchange greatly enhances an organization's ability to develop new revenue
streams without burdening its already taxed staff."
Such contributions may include fine artwork, residential and commercial real
estate, business interests, intellectual property, machines, jewelry, coins, and
other collectibles.
Through Donation Exchange, the nonprofit would net between 65 percent and 85
percent of the proceeds.
"Over 90 percent of the wealth in this country is in illiquid assets, yet almost
all donations to charities are in the form of cash or marketable securities. The
United States
is on the verge of the largest transfer of wealth in its history with an
estimated $5 trillion expected to change hands over the next twenty years. With
so much of this wealth in non-cash assets, the charities that prepare themselves
to accept these donations are the ones most likely to prosper in the coming
years," said Ken Ghazey, chairman of Donation Exchange.
Donation Exchange handles the entire process involved in the non-cash donation,
including fundraising support, call-center operations, donor customer care,
asset evaluation, transaction management, logistics, warehousing, and conversion
to cash.
******************
Fundraising
Training: Workshops and Free Teleseminars
The Suddes Group
(http://www.forimpact.org/tsg/)
The Funding
the Vision workshop is a unique opportunity for nonprofit leaders. The Suddes
Group teaches its 30+ year proven framework for development and maximizing major
gift relationships in workshops across the United States. Additionally, The
Suddes Group hosts biweekly free 45 minute teleseminars that introduce key
"For-Impact" concepts and provide valuable fundraising ideas that are actionable
immediately. For more information about the workshops or teleseminars, please
visit the above website.
******************
News
July 13, 2003
How dreams can diverge
Why do Asians and
Latinos from similar backgrounds do differently in school?
By MARIA
SACCHETTI
The Orange
County Register
GARDEN GROVE –
Four years ago, Areanna Vasquez and Deanna Le bounded into the same school with
the same dream - to attend a university.
Both are the
daughters of immigrants who urged them to seize opportunities the parents
missed. At Garden Grove High School, Vasquez led the cheerleading squad, Le was
homecoming queen. Both were elected to student government. Their English is
seamless, their grades are strong and their expectations high.
Yet their dreams
diverged on the way to graduation. Le was accepted to four universities and
spent the spring hunting for financial aid. Vasquez toured one community
college, and barely glanced at the list of scholarships.
It is a split
typical of Asians and Latinos at this school and the rest of Orange County. But
the gap cannot be easily explained by differences in affluence, language ability
or even culture.
Asians are about
as likely as Latinos in this city to be poor and not fluent in English,
according to the U.S. Census. Many adults in both groups never graduated from
high school. But at this school last year, Asians who were prepared for a
four-year college outnumbered their Latino counterparts 7 to 1.
The divide, some
researchers say, is the result of the students' own decisions and the direction
they received from their family and friends, teachers and counselors. How their
communities work, how they are received in this country and whether they are
encouraged in school will do more to determine their success than innate ability
alone.
Le and Vasquez,
both now 18, sat in the same math class in junior high. By the end of senior
year, they rarely saw each other.
"We all were once
together," Le said. "It's weird."
THE BACKGROUND
Asians and
Latinos are among the fastest-growing groups in Orange County, according to the
census, and they are at opposite ends of the academic spectrum.
Latinos drop out
of high school in large numbers; Asians don't. Latinos are unlikely to be
prepared for a university; Asians outpace every group in college preparation.
Everyone from
teachers to parents to community organizers seems to have a theory to explain
the gap - Latinos don't value education, but Asians do; Latinos do not plan to
stay here permanently, while Asians see California as their home.
Some are now
challenging the conventional wisdom by studying the children of two immigrant
groups that have much in common: Vietnamese and Mexicans. Both are often poor,
not fluent in English and less educated than other groups.
The similarities
are highlighted in cities such as Garden Grove, which is about one-third Asian,
one-third Hispanic and one-third white. Most Asians here are Vietnamese; most
Latinos are of Mexican descent. Census data suggests both groups have
approximately the same percentage of homeowners. Asians are more likely than
Hispanics to receive government assistance.
Academically,
they are far apart. Two-thirds of Asians 25 and older had a high school diploma,
compared with less than half of Latinos. About 42 percent of the Asians in
Garden Grove Unified, which serves this city and parts of several others,
completed the coursework last year to apply to a state university, compared with
6 percent of Latinos, the lowest such rate in Orange County.
Intrigued by
similar gaps across the nation, two prominent sociologists - Rubén G. Rumbaut of
the University of California, Irvine, and Princeton University professor
Alejandro Portes - examined this issue as part of a larger ongoing study of more
than 5,000 immigrant children in
South Florida
and San Diego, which is similar to Orange County.
Many argue that
Confucianism, the Chinese philosophy that holds teachers in high regard, drives
Asians to succeed. But Rumbaut and Portes said Vietnamese have been influenced
by a number of religions and traditions. Most Vietnamese are Buddhist, for
instance, with a strong Catholic minority.
Family values
appeared similar, too. In surveys, Mexican parents were even more likely to have
rules for their children about doing homework, getting good grades and planning
for the future. But in reality, their children studied far less than their
Vietnamese classmates did - about 45 percent of Vietnamese students did more
than two hours of homework a day, compared with 14 percent of Mexicans.
The study found
another troubling difference: While majorities of both hoped their children
would graduate from college, the belief that it would actually happen was very
different. Only 55 percent of Mexican parents believed it would happen, compared
with 87 percent of Vietnamese. Rumbaut said Mexican parents' doubts about
college graduation partly stem from money concerns, their lack of community
support and their own educational shortcomings.
The hopes Mexican
students had for themselves showed similar gaps.
"Aspirations are
very high," Rumbaut said. "Expectations tend to reflect the realities of their
situation."
Rumbaut said
there were several explanations for the disparity:
Although both
groups have suffered discrimination, most Vietnamese arrived starting in the
late 1970s as refugees. They received an array of federal assistance in
resettling, from rent payments to English classes and job training. Also many in
this first wave of 130,000 people were educated, providing an example for the
larger, less-educated waves of boat people who arrived later.
In contrast,
Mexican parents historically have arrived as laborers, legally or illegally.
Laborers tended to be less educated and unaware of, or ineligible for,
government programs. In
Garden Grove,
12.8 percent of Asian households received government assistance in 1999,
compared with 4.7 percent of Hispanics, according to the census.
Vietnamese
parents reported feeling far more supported by others in their own community
than Mexicans did in Rumbaut and Portes' study - 54 percent of Mexican parents
compared with almost 83 percent of Vietnamese. The reasons for the Vietnamese
immigrants' support of one another, Rumbaut said, reflect their unique
histories: their shared political exile; their anti-communist ideology, which
matched that of the United States; and a subsequent desire to attain status in
this country, largely through education.
Mexicans often
see themselves as outsiders, researchers say, though in Rumbaut and Portes'
study most planned to stay in the United States permanently. Many families
perceived that they were toward the bottom of the class system, especially in
California,
Rumbaut said. This is reinforced by statewide referendums of the last decade
that dealt with language, affirmative action and immigration, which many saw as
anti-Latino, he said.
Language,
however, was not a major barrier for students, Rumbaut said. Most Asian and
Latino families in
Garden Grove,
for instance, reported in the census that their children spoke English well.
Schools, however,
offer conflicting information. At Garden Grove High, half of the Latino freshman
class last year was listed as "not fluent" in English, but test scores suggested
that more than half of these students were fluent or nearly fluent.
THE FAMILY
Areanna Vasquez's
mother, Reyna, immigrated with her father, a construction worker, and her
mother, a housewife, from the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí in 1973. Reyna
was 11 when they brought her to Orange County. She adored school here.
She treasures her
school certificates, which she keeps in a folder: perfect attendance,
most-improved reading, an award for soccer. She learned English in six months.
Two years later,
a counselor asked her what she wanted to do after junior high school.
"Work," Reyna,
now 42, replied. The counselor never asked about college, and sent her to an
alternative high school where she worked three hours and studied three hours a
day. By 15 she had dropped out.
"I thought that
working would get me everything," she said. "When I had my kids, I said,
'They're not going to do that.'"
Deanna Le's
mother, Katherine, 46, arrived in 1980 as a young mother and refugee, one of the
tens of thousands of boat people who fled Vietnam in flimsy watercraft. In
Vietnam,
she had never finished high school. She yearned to be a teacher, but she had to
drop out to help her family pay the bills. Her late husband attended college,
and although he helped shape the family's goals, he died when Deanna was 8.
Neither Reyna nor
Katherine could offer their children much money. Both had several children -
Reyna has five, Katherine has four - and both struggle financially. Katherine
runs a jewelry kiosk in Little Saigon. Reyna works as a child-care worker; her
estranged husband supplements her income.
Like many
parents, neither was active at their children's schools. Garden Grove High
doesn't have a PTA, though it is forming one now, officials said. But the two
women set similar rules about education.
"I would tell
them, 'School is your priority.'" Reyna said. "'There's nothing else for you to
worry about.'"
Both urged their
children to attend a university, not just a community college. But when it came
time to talk about a crucial detail - money - Katherine had learned far more
from friends than Reyna had.
Deanna Le once
wondered aloud if her mother could afford to send her to college.
"Don't worry
about that," Katherine shushed her. "I'll find a way."
Deanna devoted
herself to schoolwork and has earned thousands of dollars in scholarships for
high test scores. She took Advanced Placement classes that could help her earn
college credit and save money by not having to take some classes.
Reyna's oldest
daughter, Andrea, 21, a go-getter in school, was twice invited to visit UCI. But
Reyna balked at the price of a university education. It seemed safer to send her
daughter to community college first. Andrea later transferred to Cal State
Fullerton.
There was little
talk of scholarships or grants, and Reyna didn't push her children to look for
them.
"Truly, it seemed
so expensive," Reyna said. "We couldn't pay so much money."
Areanna, who was
in student government and the National Junior Honor Society with Deanna in
eighth grade, followed her sister's lead. While she had once wanted to go to
straight to the University of California, Los Angeles, it seemed safer to do as
her older sister did, and start at a community college.
THE COMMUNITY
It would appear
that Reyna, who worked in child care for a public school district, would have an
advantage in understanding how to navigate the system, but by the time her
daughters were in high school she still had never heard of the SAT, the college
entrance exam, or Advanced Placement classes.
When her friends
talk to her, it is about the day-to-day issues of work, their children and
safety at school.
"I always said,
'Go to a university,'" Reyna said. "But we didn't know how."
The talk where
Katherine works is far different. She spends most of her time at her jewelry
kiosk in Little Saigon, a hub of strip malls with Vietnamese shops.
In the quiet
morning hours, the women come to chat in Vietnamese about their son the doctor
or their daughter the pharmacist. An A is good, a B is bad, they tell her, over
the satin headbands and brocaded pins. A high school graduate should have a sash
around his neck and an asterisk next to his name in the program, both signifying
higher academic achievement. An SAT score should be above 1,200. Universities
are better than community colleges, they tell her.
"I don't know
anything about anything," Katherine said, with a smile and wave of her arm. "I
just know
San Diego,
UCLA, UC Davis, Berkeley. I see on TV that famous people are at Harvard."
At home she
drills the tips into her children, reminding them so often that sometimes they
flee the room.
She would prefer
that they become doctors, but they have chosen other paths. Hong, the only
university graduate so far, is a successful auditor who graduated from UCLA
while she worked to help out her mother. Deanna may become a pharmacist, which
pleases her mother, but she is also flirting with the idea of studying business.
The other two
children started at community colleges, though one has since transferred to a
university, choices for which Katherine's friends sometimes chided them.
"In my country,
doctor No. 1," Katherine said, index finger raised. "I think they make a lot of
money. It's easy to get a job."
THE STUDENTS
While parents are
important, researchers say a student's influences from peers and teachers may be
even more so. And in these, the experiences of Asian and Latino children are
often quite different.
Deanna Le relied
on teachers, her older sister and classmates, mostly Asian, who were in the same
top classes at Garden Grove High. She signed up for summer classes at the
community college, along with her friends. Her mostly Vietnamese classmates
helped her figure out which classes to take and which to avoid to keep from
hurting her grade-point average.
"A lot of people
think your parents are there for you a lot. My mother was never there for me,"
Deanna said. "She worked a lot. I was on my own."
Katherine agreed:
"I'm not good enough to guide them. If you don't know the right thing, you have
to ask counselor."
Although Garden
Grove High appears to be one of the most integrated in Orange County on paper,
often its classes are not. Most Latinos were in low-level math classes in ninth
grade last year; most Asians were in Algebra I or higher, a difference that
helps knock most Latinos off the path to a university because there are too few
years left to take the classes required for admission.
Asians are often
the valedictorians and student leaders. They compete for the top grades,
advanced classes and dominate the honor roll. Last year three times as many
Asians took the SAT as Latinos.
The gap belies
their common goals. In 2001, 68 percent of Asians and 55 percent of Latinos who
graduated from Garden Grove High then enrolled in a community college or state
university. The difference is that Asians are more likely than Latinos to head
straight to a university.
Students said
they notice the divide. Areanna Vasquez didn't say anything when she was dropped
from an honors English class after her sophomore year. She thinks it's because
she didn't do a summer reading assignment, but she didn't challenge it and her
mother didn't check.
"I felt like I
wasn't smart enough. I never really asked why," Areanna said. "I was the only
Hispanic in that class."
Paulina Ocampo,
16, who just finished her sophomore year, felt left out when she signed up last
year for Advanced Placement European History - made up mostly of Asian students
- only to learn completion of a project assigned over the previous summer was
also expected. Already three months behind on the first day of school, she
dropped the class.
In other classes,
she said, she felt her mostly Asian classmates thought she couldn't cut it.
Students were always competing for the highest grades, or getting together to
study in their own groups to the point that she felt excluded.
"It's
intimidating," Ocampo said. "Deep inside I feel like I can't compete against
them."
And she said some
Latino students think their teachers expect less of them. A recent study
co-authored by Harvard professor Gilberto Conchas showed that students who did
not know their teachers' expectations or who believed their teachers did not
care did less homework than those who thought their teachers expected them to
attend college.
"When you try to
bring it up (to teachers) they say, 'You're just seeing things. We don't do that
here at Grove,'" Ocampo said.
THE TEACHERS
If Latino parents
are often unsure of how to navigate the system and their children struggle with
self- doubts and a peer group with too few successes, it is often the school
that is the last hope. Researchers say teachers play a role in helping students
succeed - or fail - especially in communities where information about college is
scarce.
Garden Grove
High's teachers offer students all sorts of opportunities - from after-school
tutoring to regular progress reports sent home to parents who ask for them. They
say they want high standards and urge kids to reach for them. And students often
need their recommendations to get into an upper-level class, such as honors
English.
And sometimes,
teachers say, they form opinions about who can do the work based on factors
other than grades.
Kevin Griffin, an
English teacher and adviser to the student newspaper, said he has sometimes
rushed to such judgments. He praised student Carlos Salgado, 15, for getting
good grades in his English class, and admitted that at first he thought Salgado
would be a poor student because he slouched to a seat far in the back of the
room and wore loose, gang-type clothing on the first day of class.
"I was expecting
him to be low performing, that he might be a gang member," Griffin said at a
ceremony honoring the school's most-improved students. "Carlos has turned out to
be one of my good students. I think that if we had 20-25 students like Carlos
Salgado, we could turn this school around."
Later, Griffin
hesitated when asked if he would recommend Salgado for an honors English class.
He said Salgado was getting an A, which could be grounds for advancement. But
other things come into the mix, too: The honors courses are more competitive,
require higher skills and often more work than the regular classes. And they can
be cliquish; students who lag behind could feel ostracized by the honors kids.
"I don't know if
he'd be out of place in that class," Griffin said. "I don't know if he'd want
it. ... They (honors students) take things seriously."
School officials
say a teacher's recommendation is one of many factors considered when students
sign up for classes, and it should not necessarily bar them from enrolling.
Griffin, for
instance, said in the end he considers only whether they can handle the rigors
of an honors class. He has recommended Latinos for honors classes in the past.
But he said he
also struggles to motivate students who lag behind at the school, who don't push
as much for the tougher classes and perhaps don't see achieving in school as the
"cool" thing to do.
Salgado said he,
too, has been frustrated with the system, and has few peers helping him navigate
it. He has noticed that many Latino kids seem uninterested in school, but he has
also felt stuck in classes that are too easy, such as pre-algebra this year. He
didn't know he could sign up for the honors classes on his own, and although he
wants to go straight to one of "the really good universities, the four-years,"
he said he doesn't know which classes he needs to get in.
"The classes I
have right now are pretty easy," he said. "For me, this school, I basically
don't have any homework. I do most of it and then other people they're like, 'I
have three projects due tomorrow.'"
STEREOTYPES AND
SOLUTIONS
Garden Grove's
teachers and counselors say they work hard to narrow the gaps, and the
district's schools earned national recognition two years in a row, in part for
raising test scores. At Garden Grove High, for instance, counselors helped
seniors fill out financial aid forms for college, earning this medium-size
school the sixth-largest number of Cal Grants, or state scholarships, in the
county last year.
The school hosts
numerous meetings, usually at night, to inform parents about the opportunities
for their children. The district publishes parent guides in English, Spanish and
Vietnamese and offers translators at meetings.
School officials
say they cannot change things overnight - or alone for that matter, since they
have the students only six hours a day and counselors have as many as 500
students each. Parents, they say, must help them by sending kids for tutoring,
monitoring their classes and making sure students have clear goals.
"(Asians) apply
themselves, that's the key," said Chip Kublin, chairman of the math department
at Garden Grove High. "Anyone is capable of doing well in school. For the most
part, the Asian kids do what we ask.
"The Hispanic
population is catching up, but at a very slow rate."
But KimOanh
Nguyen-Lam, interim executive director of the Center for Language Minority
Education and Research at California State University, Long Beach, says teachers
can fall prey to stereotypes, giving Asian students higher grades because they
are often quiet and obedient. But that can hurt those same students because they
might not ask enough questions and develop critical thinking skills, she said.
"All this high
achievement from the Vietnamese-Americans or Asian- Americans is sort of
overrated," said Nguyen-Lam, a Vietnamese-American educator who also trains
teachers. "Their grades are inflated. They barely pass the (California State
University) writing-proficiency test.
"I hear teachers
say all the time, 'I would take 30 Vietnamese or Asian kids to 10 Latino kids
any day,'" she said.
And she responds:
"I would not want my kids in your room."
Nguyen-Lam said
she urges teachers to visit kindergarten classrooms. Immigrant children arrive
"bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" and ready to learn, she said. Rumbaut and Portes'
study and others have found that some children change over the years as they
feel discouraged by school and their communities.
"How did the
school change them?" Nguyen-Lam wondered. "If your teacher is around you
thinking that you're not as smart as the other kids, after a while, you believe
it."
DIFFERENT
DESTINATIONS
In their final
days at Garden Grove High, Deanna Le and Areanna Vasquez rarely crossed paths.
Student government was turned over to the juniors, and seniors were saying their
goodbyes or searching for scholarships.
Until the end, Le
was wrapped up in her classes, including calculus, which she hopes will give her
a leg up when she has to take it again in college.
Vasquez took it
easier, with a schedule that included serving as a teaching assistant to a
woodshop class. Both said they would love to attend UCLA, a world-class
university with one of the best research libraries in the nation.
Le's acceptance
letter arrived March 14. Eleven days later, Vasquez toured Orange Coast College,
a two-year school. She still plans to transfer to a university.
Vasquez starts
classes in August. Less than a month later, Le will leave for Los Angeles.
CONTACT US: (714)
796-2401 or
msacchetti@ocregister.com
(http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=47677§ion=&subsection=)
******************
Inclusive or Exclusive?
Next Stop
Vietnam
exhibit draws ire of Vietnamese Americans
By Joyce Nishioka, AsianWeek Staff Writer, Nov 21, 2003
When you
think of Americans who participated in the Vietnam War, veterans and student
protestors instantly come to mind. But there are also more than a million
Vietnamese Americans, many of whom barely escaped their homeland after the fall
of Saigon in 1975.
Ngoc Nguyen,
a computer analyst who lives in San Diego, lost her brother in the 1968 Hue
Massacre.
"The
Vietnamese Communists captured my brother, took my brother away and buried him
alive," she says. "Every single day, I have to attend the mass funeral which
people dig the grave. ... Every single day, the students have to go out on the
street and say farewell."
Nguyen and
other Vietnamese Americans want to make sure their history doesn't get glossed
over in Next Stop Vietnam: California and the Nation Transformed, an exhibit
organized by the Oakland Museum of California scheduled to open in August 2004.
Controversy
over Next Stop Vietnam erupted earlier this month when Mimi Nguyen, a research
coordinator for the project, distributed an e-mail that accused museum
administrators of focusing on veterans and protestors, and marginalizing the
Vietnamese American experience. Shortly after, she was fired. Museum
administrators maintain that decision was unrelated to her memo.
The memo and
her dismissal have galvanized the Vietnamese American community. Ngoc Nguyen is
one of several people collecting petitions that call for Mimi Nguyen's
reinstatement and demand the exhibit fairly represent Vietnamese Americans.
At this time
Mimi Nguyen is not going on the record about her case, but in her memo, she
lambasted the exhibit for its "white liberal" tone. The exhibit failed to
reflect the Vietnamese American community's strong anti-Communist sentiment and
portrayed the Vietnamese as minor players in the war, the e-mail suggested. For
example, on audiotape being developed, just 11 out of 53 people interviewed were
Vietnamese.
George Evans
is a writer and Vietnam veteran. He says far to often, Vietnamese American
voices are excluded from discussions about the Vietnam War.
"The problem
with the gringo version of the war is that it's all about us, the white people
who went there," Evans says. "I don't think we should be telling the Vietnamese
community, especially using public money at an art museum, how to be involved or
how much they can be involved. We did that to them once before and look what
happened."
After
questions about Next Stop Vietnam became public, museum administrators invited
UC Berkeley professor Peter Zinoman to critique the exhibit's blueprint.
A specialist
in Southeast Asian history, Zinoman says, "An exhibit that would accurately
represent the war would be one in which the Vietnamese would be at center stage.
"That's the
reverse image of how the war is typically portrayed in the United States, where
the Americans are at center stage and the Vietnamese are role players. My sense
is that's the way the exhibit had been conceptualized."
Still, he
and others remain hopeful that the exhibit's organizers will balance the focus
as they continue to develop the project. Anh Tuan Tran, the president of East
Bay Vietnamese Association's board of directors, participated in a focus group
conducted by the museum. A former professor at University of Saigon, Tran, 60,
was imprisoned in a Communist concentration camp from 1975 to 1978.
"I'm very
concerned about a one-sided exhibit," he says. "My comment to them was that the
exhibit should reflect the Vietnamese community in California, the nation, the
role they play, their contributions."
He
criticized the exhibit organizers for their plans to play up left-leaning
Vietnamese Americans, such as T.T. Nhu and Le Ly Hayslip. "They do not reflect
the true feelings of what's going on in the Vietnamese community," he says.
Ngoc Nguyen
expects to deliver several hundred letters this week to museum Director Marcia
Eymann and Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown.
"It seems to
me, the management don't count the Vietnamese voice. ... Do they actually
interview refugees? I don't think so," says Nguyen.
She recalls
her own family story. Three months after Communist soldiers killed her brother,
his fiancee told her family that she was pregnant.
"My mother
and father just cried," she says. "Normally to Vietnamese people, the oldest son
in the family about to have a baby, that is very good news, but why my parents
cry? Because the unborn baby is too young to be an orphan, and she, only 20, is
too young to be a widow.
"This story
is about the human face in the human world, not just only winner, loser. ... We
don't get the title 'refugees' without going through pain."
Reach Joyce
Nishoka at
jnishioka@asianweek.com.
(http://news.asianweek.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=a5d28df0f1f884b0bd046c14f1adbfc2)
[Description
of the exhibit:
Next Stop
Vietnam: California and the Nation Transformed
August 28, 2004 - February 27, 2005
The first national touring exhibition to explore the impact of the Vietnam
conflict on American life and culture looks at California during the war as both
a microcosm and a magnification of the national experience. Includes more than
500 historical artifacts, photographs and documents interwoven with oral
histories, film clips and music exploring the period from the Cold War of the
1950s to the present, with emphasis on the period from President Johnson's
escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965 through the war's end in 1975. The
exhibition will focus on the issues of war, protest and immigration in the
context of their time. Catalog. Organized by the Oakland Museum of California.
The exhibition will travel nationally.
(http://www.museumca.org/exhibit/upcoming.html)]
******************
November 28, 2003
Immigrants hurt at work face
hurdles
By Monica Rhor,
Globe Staff
Before the
concrete under Guillermo Medellin's feet gave way and he plunged -- still
clinging to a 40-pound jackhammer -- into a 16-foot hole, he was simply one of
many immigrant laborers toiling on the Big Dig.
Medellin, an
undocumented Mexican immigrant, was left fully disabled and unable to work.
Now, three
years later, Medellin's battle to obtain worker's compensation for his injuries
is at the heart of a legal challenge questioning the right of undocumented
immigrants to receive benefits when they are hurt on the job.
Under
Massachusetts law, workers injured in job-related accidents are covered by
worker's compensation insurance regardless of their immigration status.
However,
Medellin's former employer, Cashman KPA, is using a 2002 US Supreme Court ruling
to argue that Medellin should not qualify for benefits because he was in this
country illegally. The court's decision denied back wages to an undocumented
immigrant fired in a labor relations dispute.
The state's
Department of Industrial Accidents review board has yet to rule on the Medellin
case, but similar challenges have been struck down in seven other states, where
appeals courts and worker's compensation boards ruled that undocumented workers
are entitled to benefits.
Still,
immigrant and workers' rights advocates in Massachusetts fear the Medellin case
will discourage immigrants, both legal and undocumented, from seeking
compensation when they are injured at work.
''There is
already a lot of fear and misinformation, and the fact of this challenge is just
going to make it more difficult,'' said Audrey Richardson, an attorney with
Greater Boston Legal Services, who often represents immigrants injured at the
workplace. ''We've already heard of employers who are using the Hoffman decision
to claim that immigrant workers have no rights under the law.''
A spokesman
for American International Group, the corporate parent of the insurance company
representing Cashman KPA, said the company does not comment on pending claims.
Even before
this legal challenge, immigrant workers faced an uphill battle.
Often
employed in high-risk industries such as construction, food processing, and
landscaping, they are injured or killed in job-related accidents at a higher
rate than other workers. Last year in Massachusetts, 12 of the 49 workers killed
on the job (about one-fourth) were foreign-born -- nearly twice their
representation in the workforce, according to the Massachusetts Coalition for
Occupational Safety and Health, a worker advocacy group. Five of those who died
were Brazilian; five others were also Latino.
They were
crushed by slabs of concrete, hit by cars while paving, mangled by
stone-crushing machinery, run over by tractors, and killed in falls from
rooftops.
Between 1991
and 1999, one of six workers killed in Massachusetts was foreign-born, according
to statistics from the state Public Health Department's Occupational
Surveillance Program, which tracks workplace accidents.
Compounding
their problems, immigrants who are injured at work are often deterred from
seeking benefits by language barriers, lack of knowledge of workers' rights, and
in some cases unscrupulous employers.
''It's a
complicated system to begin with,'' said Richardson. ''Then when you layer that
on top of the language barriers, on top of the fears, on top of the
noncompliance by employers, the factors combine to make it very difficult for
workers with limited English to get access.''
In a state
Department of Public Health Survey of 1,400 injured workers, more than half of
the foreign-born workers questioned had never heard of workers' compensation,
compared to 15 percent among US-born workers, said Letitia Davis, director of
the Occupational Health Surveillance Program.
Under law,
employers must purchase worker's compensation insurance for their employees
based on their payroll and to report all injuries and workplace accidents. Too
often, however, employers fail to comply with the law when it comes to immigrant
workers, according to immigrant and workplace safety advocates.
Fausto de
Rocha of the Brazilian Immigrant Center said he has seen cases in which
employers delay taking injured workers to the hospital for medical attention.
Others order employees to say they were injured at home, rather than the
workplace. Some threaten to report undocumented immigrants to immigration
officials if they apply for worker's compensation benefits.
After Frank,
a 25-year-old Brazilian immigrant, tumbled off two wooden crates and pierced his
right hand with a metal trowel while plastering a wall two years ago, his
supervisor drove him around in circles for 45 minutes -- stalling for time while
their employer rushed to purchase the worker's compensation insurance he had
neglected to obtain.
Finally,
with blood dripping from his open wound, Frank jumped out of the moving car and
flagged down a police officer, who called for an ambulance.
It took
seven more months for Frank to receive compensation for the injury, which left
him in constant pain and with limited movement in his hand. During those months,
he says, his employer threatened to have him deported if he filed a compensation
claim.
''I had a
really bad time,'' said Frank, who did not want his full name used because he is
in the country illegally. ''I had no money to go to the hospital, no money for
therapy, no money for medicine.''
This year,
the Brazilian Immigrant Center has handled more than 128 cases of Brazilian
workers who were injured in work-related accidents. And advocates say the number
of immigrants injured on the job is growing, in large part because so is the
number of immigrants in the workforce.
That has
spurred several initiatives aimed at educating immigrant workers about safety
issues and workers rights, and keeping better track of workplace injuries. In
one, the Brazilian Immigrant Center has teamed with the Massachusetts Coalition
for Occupational Safety and Health and the Department of Work Environment at the
University of Massachusetts at Lowell to target Brazilian workers, who are
primarily employed in construction, cleaning services, landscaping, and food
preparation. MassCOSH is also working with VietAid to reach out to the
Vietnamese workers in the floor refinishing and nail salon industries, where
chemicals pose serious health risks.
''We need to
find a way to protect people in a language they understand. The people who
employ immigrants have a legal responsibility,'' said Carlos Eduardo Siqueira, a
research assistant professor at UMass-Lowell. ''Workers are not well-trained, so
they end up dying, crushed in machines and because of falls, in accidents that
were mostly preventable.''
This story
ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 11/28/2003.
©
Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
(http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/332/metro/Immigrants_hurt_at_work_face_hurdles+.shtml)
******************
November 27,
2003
Hmong
leader conditionally supports reconciliation with Laos
OAKDALE,
Minn. (AP) -- Hmong leader Gen. Vang Pao said he would support normalized U.S.
trade relations with Laos if the communist government substantially improves its
human rights practices and meets other conditions.
The general,
who led CIA-backed soldiers from the hill tribe during the Vietnam War, also
called for a cease-fire with his former adversaries in Laos and Vietnam, 28
years after the communists prevailed.
His
conditional support for better U.S.-Laotian relations and his desire to
reconcile with old enemies marked a significant shift for Vang Pao, 73, who was
a general in the Royal Lao Army and led Hmong anticommunist forces from 1961 to
1975. Like many Hmong, he fled and settled in the United States.
California's
San Joaquin Valley is home to thousands of Hmong, many of them farmers, as they
were in the mountains of their homeland.
Vang Pao
made his comments Wednesday as he issued a sweeping "Doctrine on Laos and
Southeast Asia" at a conference of Hmong and Lao leaders from across the country
in this St. Paul suburb. St. Paul has the largest Hmong population of any U.S.
city -- more than 24,000 according to the 2000 census.
The issue of
whether to engage the Laotian government and how to bring about change has been
the subject of a long-running debate among the Hmong.
"For this
plan to work it will take cooperation from the communist Lao leaders in
Vientiane. I ask these leaders to be courageous and join us in this most
important endeavor of the country and the people. Let us put aside our
differences from the past and build a brighter future for the people of Laos,"
Vang Pao said in translated remarks.
But he
demanded a cease-fire and an end to the Lao government's alleged tactic of using
starvation as a way to exterminate minority Hmong and Lao who had fled to the
jungles of northern Laos. He asked for the United Nations to take the lead in
creating safe zones for those in the mountains and providing humanitarian aid.
If necessary, he said, work should begin on resettling them in other countries.
Vang met
with Vietnamese representatives in Holland this month to discuss improving their
relationships, said his son, Cha Vang, who also is his spokesman. He said his
father will continue to talk with Vietnamese officials but that no further
meetings have been scheduled.
"This is a
new beginning," said Pobzeb Vang, executive director of the Lao Human Rights
Council of Eau Claire, Wis. "It's time to end the fighting and forget the past."
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/11/27/state1410EST0046.DTL)
Similar
article can be found at:
Hundreds
hear Hmong leader give plans for peace with Laos
Lucy Y. Her,
Star Tribune
(http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4236438.html)
******************
November 29, 2003
End the immigration bias
against Vietnamese
By LEQUAN HOANG
Most Americans
are not aware of how U.S. immigration policies discriminate against Vietnamese,
but the discrimination is real and ongoing.
From 1975 until
1990, more than 1 million Vietnamese escaped communist imprisonment and
brutality by fleeing
Vietnam
in small, leaky boats. More than 250,000 of these "boat people" did not survive
the perilous 500-mile journey across storm-tossed seas infested with sharks and
pirates.
Surviving the
journey was only the first step in becoming an American. The boat people next
had to wait for years in U.S.-financed refugee camps while their claims of
political persecution were verified, and relatives or charities agreed to
financially support them.
As it turned out,
120,000 boat people could not prove political persecution, were thus designated
illegal aliens and deported back to Vietnam. Most of these Vietnamese illegal
aliens in fact did not suffer political persecution, and were only looking to
earn more money in the United States.
Furthermore, the
children born in the refugee camps were by international law not citizens of any
country, but designated as "stateless." Even after entering the United States
with their parents, these stateless children do not become U.S. citizens unless
their parents became citizens after the required five-year wait.
Despite this
history, the
United States
allows millions of Hispanic illegal aliens, who only want to make more money
"for a better life," to remain in the United States, and has given many of them
permanent resident status and citizenship through amnesty. There are proposals
now in Congress to grant amnesty to millions more. Additionally, children born
to these illegal aliens are also automatically granted U.S. citizenship.
It should also be
noted that Hispanic illegal aliens given legal residency and citizenship are now
sponsoring their relatives for entry into the United States, thus crowding
Vietnamese (and others) out of the legal immigration system. Vietnamese
immigration into the United States is thus perhaps 30 percent lower due to past
illegal-alien amnesties.
On the other
hand, even though Hispanics are only 7 percent of the world's population, they
are 50 percent of
U.S.
immigrants. This is preferential treatment for Hispanics and discrimination
against Vietnamese.
Since many
millions want to come to this country "for a better life," the only solution to
this discrimination is to treat all illegal aliens the same way Vietnamese
illegal aliens were treated. The United States should also treat children born
to illegal aliens the same as the rest of the world.
The U.S.
government will no longer discriminate against Vietnamese if it does the
following:
· Enforce all
immigration laws. At a minimum the following steps should be taken:
A) All businesses
should be required to check the validity of new employees' Social Security
numbers. All this requires is a quick phone call or Internet linkup to the
social Security Administration. Without jobs, most illegals will leave of their
own accord.
B) Local and
state law enforcement officers should be allowed to verify the citizenship and
immigration status of everyone they stop/apprehend. The CLEAR Act currently
before Congress would allow and fund this.
C) The Department
of Homeland Security should double the number of interior enforcement officers
and detention facilities.
· Children born
to illegal aliens, visitors and guest workers in the United States should not be
given U.S. citizenship. The United States is totally out of step with the rest
of the world in this regard.
· The United
States should not allow illegal aliens who were adjusted to permanent resident
status, their U.S.-born children, and anyone sponsored by either group, to
sponsor any of their relatives for immigration. The United States should put all
of these people on a "not eligible to sponsor" list.
In no way do we
want the
United States
to increase immigration levels as compensation for amnesty to Hispanics and
citizenship to illegal aliens' babies. The current limits on family-based
immigration were arrived at after much study. These limits are in the best
interests of the American people.
We don't want to
impose any additional burdens on the American people who have graciously given
us a new home in this land of freedom.
Hoang is director
of Vietnamese for Fair Immigration, in Lompoc, Calif. (www.fairimmigration.com).
(http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/2256963)
******************
November 30, 2003
Patriot Act Author Has Concerns
Detaining citizens as 'enemy combatants' -- a policy not spelled out in the act
-- is flawed, the legal scholar says.
By Richard B.
Schmitt, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — The
Justice Department's war on terrorism has drawn intense scrutiny from the left
and the right. Now, a chief architect of the USA Patriot Act and a former top
assistant to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft are joining the fray, voicing concern
about aspects of the administration's anti-terrorism policy.
At issue is the government's power to designate and detain "enemy combatants,"
in particular in the case of "dirty bomb" plot suspect Jose Padilla, the
Brooklyn-born former gang member who was picked up at a Chicago airport 18
months ago by the FBI and locked in a military brig without access to a lawyer.
Civil liberties groups and others contend that Padilla — as an American citizen
arrested in the
U.S.
— is being denied due process of law under the Constitution.
Viet Dinh, who until May headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy,
said in a series of recent speeches and in an interview with The Times that he
thought the government's detention of Padilla was flawed and unlikely to survive
court review.
The principal intellectual force behind the Patriot Act, the terror-fighting law
enacted by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Dinh has steadfastly defended the Justice Department's
anti-terrorism efforts against charges that they have led to civil-rights abuses
of immigrants and others. While the Patriot Act does not speak to the issue of
enemy combatants, his remarks still caught some observers by surprise.
In an interview, Dinh, a professor at
Georgetown
University Law Center, said the Padilla case was not within his line of
authority when he was in the department, but that he began to think about the
issue later, and came to the conclusion that the administration's case was
"unsustainable."
Another top former Justice Department official, Michael Chertoff, who headed the
department's criminal division, has said he believed the government should
reconsider how it designates enemy combatants.
"Two years into the war on terror, it is time to move beyond case-by-case
development," Chertoff said, according to an excerpt from a speech he gave last
month at the
University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law school.
"We need to debate a long-term and sustainable architecture for the process of
determining when, why and for how long someone may be detained as an enemy
combatant, and what judicial review should be available," he said.
Chertoff, a federal appeals court judge, also mentioned at a judicial conference
in Philadelphia
this month the need to reexamine procedures for combatants. "Inevitably,
decisions of war are made with imperfect information," he said. "Perhaps the
time has come to take a more universal approach."
Chertoff emphasized in an interview that he wasn't venturing an opinion on the
Padilla case, which is being litigated in the federal courts, or criticizing the
decisions that the government has made to date in the case.
The comments by Dinh and Chertoff offer some of the first public utterances by
Justice Department officials who stood watch in the weeks and months after Sept.
11 on how they felt about the work done by them and their colleagues. The
comments also illustrate the uncharted legal terrain they and others were
operating under.
Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment on the remarks
by the former officials, citing the fact that the Padilla case is pending in
court. The department has staunchly defended its anti-terrorism record and its
use of the tools in the Patriot Act, portions of which have been attacked as an
abuse of government power by groups as diverse as the American Civil Liberties
Union and the American Conservative Union.
Dinh first flagged his concerns in a speech he gave in September at a human
rights conference in
The Hague
sponsored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He
reiterated them this month during a panel discussion with Chertoff and others on
national security and civil liberties at the conference in Philadelphia.
"The person next to me said, 'My God. He is saying that the Padilla case is
wrong!' " said Philip Heymann, a Harvard Law School professor who also sat on
the panel in
Philadelphia
and who agrees that the administration view in the case is wrongheaded.
"There has to be some form of judicial review and access to a lawyer," said
Heymann, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. "That is what
habeas corpus was all about. That is what the Magna Carta was all about. You are
talking about overthrowing 800 years of democratic tradition."
In the interview, Dinh said he believed the president had the unquestioned
authority to detain persons during wartime, even those captured on
"untraditional battlefields," including on American soil. He also said the
president should be given flexibility in selecting the forum and circumstances —
such as a military tribunal or an administrative hearing — in which the person
designated an enemy combatant can confront the charges against him.
The trouble with the Padilla case, Dinh said, is that the government hasn't
established any framework for permitting Padilla to respond, and that it seems
to think it has no legal duty to do so.
"The president is owed significant deference as to when and how and what kind of
process the person designated an enemy combatant is entitled to," Dinh said.
"But I do not think the Supreme Court would defer to the president when there is
nothing to defer to. There must be an actual process or discernible set of
procedures to determine how they will be treated."
Padilla was arrested at O'Hare International Airport on
May 8, 2002, after arriving on a flight from
Pakistan.
Initially, he was taken to
New York
and held as a "material witness," presumably to testify against others.
The following month, he was transferred to a military prison in South Carolina
after Ashcroft announced that the government had determined that he was part of
an unfolding terrorist plot to explode a radioactive dispersion device, or
so-called dirty bomb.
Padilla's lawyers subsequently filed a writ of habeas corpus saying that he was
being illegally held. The Justice Department responded by saying that the
detention was a proper exercise of the president's wartime powers. A decision is
pending before a federal appeals court in New York.
(http://www.latimes.com/la-na-justice30nov30,1,632079.story)
******************
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and civil liberties.
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