Latina/o Community Awards and Senior Send-off
Latina/o Community Awards
This Week in the Community!
Located under Brittle Lounge in the Choates
Lower Tuition for Undocumented Students in Colorodo
Gov. John Hickenlooper will sign the ASSET Bill into law Monday around 1 p.m., giving undocumented students full in-state tuition at Colorado colleges and universities and putting an end to a 13-year-long fight.
The signing will take place on the Auraria Campus in Denver, where, last year, Metro State University’s board of trustees voted to lower tuition for undocumented students just months after Republicans at the Capitol blocked the ASSET bill.
Read more here: http://kdvr.com/2013/04/29/bill-granting-in-state-tuition-to-undocumented-students-to-be-signed-into-law/
SENIORS: LATINA/O COMMUNITY GRADUATION STOLES
SENIORS: LATINA/O COMMUNITY GRADUATION STOLESThis week in the Latino Community!
Located under Brittle Lounge in the Choates
Hear from a keynote speaker, panelists and from each other. Join us in a dinner discussion about privilege.
Latina/o Community End of the Year Community Building
U.S. Hospitals Quietly Deport Hundreds Of Undocumented Immigrants
Hundreds of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally are put through a little-known removal system run not by the federal government trying to enforce laws, but by hospitals seeking to curb high costs.
In interviews with immigrants, their families, attorneys and advocates, The Associated Press reviewed the obscure process known formally as “medical repatriation,” which allows hospitals to put patients on chartered international flights, often while they are still unconscious. Hospitals typically pay for the flights.
“The problem is it’s all taking place in this unregulated sort of a black hole … and there is no tracking,” said law professor Lori Nessel, director of the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall Law School, which offers free legal representation to immigrants.
Now advocates for immigrants are concerned that hospitals could soon begin expanding the practice after full implementation of federal health care reform, which will make deep cuts to the payments hospitals receive for taking care of the uninsured.
Health care executives say they are caught between a requirement to accept all patients and a political battle over immigration.
Hospitals are legally mandated to care for all patients who need emergency treatment, regardless of citizenship status or ability to pay. But once a patient is stabilized, that funding ceases, along with the requirement to provide care. Many immigrant workers without citizenship are ineligible for Medicaid, the government’s insurance program for the poor and elderly.
That’s why hospitals often try to send those patients to rehabilitation centers and nursing homes back in their home countries.
Civil rights groups say the practice violates U.S. and international laws and unfairly targets one of the nation’s most defenseless populations.
“They don’t have advocates, and they don’t have people who will speak on their behalf,” said Miami attorney John De Leon, who has been arguing such cases for a decade.
Estimating the number of cases is difficult since no government agency or organization keeps track.
The Center for Social Justice and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest have documented at least 600 immigrants who were involuntarily removed in the past five years for medical reasons. The figure is based on data from hospitals, humanitarian organizations, news reports and immigrant advocates who cited specific cases. But the actual number is believed to be significantly higher because many more cases almost certainly go unreported.
Some patients who were sent to their country of origin subsequently died in hospitals that weren’t equipped to meet their needs. Others suffered lingering medical problems because they never received adequate rehabilitation, the report said.
Gail Montenegro, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency “plays no role in a health care provider’s private transfer of a patient to his or her country of origin.”
Such transfers “are not the result of federal authority or action,” she said in an email, nor are they considered “removals, deportations or voluntary departures” as defined by the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Patients are frequently told family members want them to come home. In cases where the patient is unconscious or can’t communicate, relatives are told their loved one wants to return. Sometimes they’re told the situation is dire, and the patient may die, prompting many grief-stricken relatives to agree to a transfer.
The American Hospital Association said it does not have a specific policy governing immigrant removals, and it does not track how many hospitals encounter the issue.
There are expectations that medical removals will increase with implementation of health care reform, which makes many more patients eligible for Medicaid. As a result, the government plans to cut payments to hospitals that care for the uninsured.
Some hospitals call immigration authorities when they receive patients without immigration documentation, but the government rarely responds. Taking custody of the patient would also require the government to assume financial responsibility for care.
Jan Stipe who runs an Iowa Methodist department finds hospitals in patients’ native countries that are willing to take them. The hospital’s goal, she said, is to “get patients back to where their support systems are, their loved ones who will provide the care and the concern that each patient needs.”
The American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs issued a strongly worded directive to doctors in 2009, urging them not to “allow hospital administrators to use their significant power and the current lack of regulations” to send patients to other countries.
Doctors cannot expect hospitals to provide costly uncompensated care to patients indefinitely, the statement said. “But neither should physicians allow hospitals to arbitrarily determine the fate of an uninsured noncitizen immigrant patient.”
Latina/o Community Dimensions: ¡Sabor Latino!
This Week in the Latin@ Community!!!
Located under Brittle Lounge in the Choates
Fun Events this Week 4/8-4/13
Located under Brittle Lounge in the Choates
Immigration And Immigration Reform
This may be the year Congress decides what to do about the millions of immigrants living illegally in the U.S.
Since the Gang of Eight are releasing their proposal for immigration reform tomorrow, here are facts, figures and other information to help understand the current debate over immigration:
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WHY NOW?
Major problems with U.S. immigration have been around for decades. President George W. Bush tried to change the system and failed. President Barack Obama promised to overhaul it in his first term but never did. In his second term, he’s making immigration a priority, and Republicans also appear ready to deal.
Why the new commitment?
Obama won 71 percent of Hispanic voters in his 2012 re-election campaign, and he owes them. Last year’s election also sent a loud message to Republicans that they can’t ignore this pivotal voting bloc.
It’s been the kind of breathtaking turnaround you rarely see in politics. Plus, there’s growing pressure from business leaders, who want to make it easier for the U.S. to attract highly educated immigrants but also legally bring in more lower-skilled workers such as farm laborers.
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WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
Talk about “comprehensive immigration reform” generally centers on four main questions:
*What should the United Stares do about the 11 million-plus immigrants who live in the U.S. without legal permission?
*How can it tighten border security?
*How to keep businesses from employing people who are in the U.S. illegally.
*How to improve the legal immigration system, now so convoluted that the adjective “Byzantine” pops up all too frequently.
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WHAT’S THE GANG OF EIGHT?
A group of four Democrats and four Republicans in the Senate, taking the lead in trying to craft legislation that would address all four questions.
Obama is preparing his own plan as a backup in case congressional talks fail. There’s also a bipartisan House group working on draft legislation, but House Republican leaders may leave it to the Senate to make the first move.
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COMING TO AMERICA
A record 40.4 million immigrants live in the U.S., representing 13 percent of the population. More than 18 million are naturalized citizens, 11 million are legal permanent or temporary residents, and more than 11 million are in the country without legal permission, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a private research organization.
Those in the U.S. illegally made up about 3.7 percent of the U.S. population in 2010. While overall immigration has steadily grown, the number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally peaked at 12 million in 2007.
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WE’RE NO. 1
The U.S. is the leading destination for immigrants. Russia’s second, with 12.3 million, according to Pew.
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HISTORY: DOING THE WAVE
The U.S. is in its fourth and largest immigration wave.
First came the Colonial era, then an 1820-1870 influx of newcomers mostly from Northern and Western Europe. Most were Germans and Irish, but the gold rush and jobs on the transcontinental railroad also attracted Chinese immigrants.
In the 1870s, immigration declined due to economic problems and restrictive legislation.
The third wave, between 1881 and 1920, brought more than 23 million people to the U.S., mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, aided by cheaper trans-Atlantic travel and lured by employers seeking workers.
Then came the Great Depression and more restrictive immigration laws, and immigration went into decline for decades.
The fourth wave, still underway, began in 1965 with the end of immigration limits based on nationality. Foreign-born people made up 1 in 20 residents of the U.S. in 1960; today, the figure is about 1 in 8.
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WHERE FROM?
Twenty-nine percent of the foreign-born in the U.S., or about 11.7 million people, came from Mexico. About 25 percent came from South and East Asia, 9 percent from the Caribbean, 8 percent from Central America, 7 percent South America, 4 percent the Middle East and the rest from elsewhere.
The figures are more lopsided for immigrants living here illegally: An estimated 58 percent are from Mexico. The next closest figure is 6 percent from El Salvador, says the government.
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GETTING IN
Here’s one way to think about the ways immigrants arrive in the U.S: Some come in the front door, others the side door and still others the back door, as laid out in a report from the private Population Reference Bureau.
_Arriving through the front door: people legally sponsored by their families or employers. Also refugees and asylum-seekers, and immigrants who win visas in an annual “diversity” lottery.
_Side door: legal temporary arrivals, including those who get visas to visit, work or study. There are dozens of types of nonimmigrant visas, available to people ranging from business visitors to foreign athletes and entertainers. Visitors from dozens of countries don’t even need visas.
_Back door: Somewhat more than half of those in the U.S. illegally have come in the back door, evading border controls, Pew estimates. The rest legally entered, but didn’t leave when they were supposed to or otherwise violated terms of their visas.
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HOW DO WE KNOW?
It’s widely accepted that there are more than 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
But how do we know that?
Those who are living here without permission typically aren’t eager to volunteer that information. Number-crunchers dig into census data and other government surveys, make some educated assumptions, adjust for people who may be left out, mix in population information from other countries and tend to arrive at similar figures.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates there were 11.5 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally in January 2011. Pew puts the number at 11.1 million as of March 2011.
Demographers use what’s called the “residual” method to get their tally. They take estimates of the legal foreign-born population and subtract that number from the total foreign-born population. The remainder represents those who are living in the country without legal permission.
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A NEW ACRONYM
The president’s draft immigration proposal would create a “Lawful Prospective Immigrant” visa. It would allow those who are here illegally to become legal permanent residents within eight years if they met certain requirements such as a criminal background check. They could later be eligible to become U.S. citizens.
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GETTING A REPRIEVE
While the larger immigration debate goes on, the government already is offering as many as 1.76 million immigrants who are in the country illegally a way to avoid deportation, at least for now.
Obama announced a program in June that puts off deportation for many people brought here as children. Applicants for the reprieve must have arrived before they turned 16, be younger than 31 now, be high school graduates or in school, or have served in the military. They can’t have a serious criminal record or pose a threat to public safety or national security.
Applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program are averaging 3,300 a day. By mid-March, nearly 454,000 people had applied and more than 245,000 had been approved, with most of the rest still under consideration.
In some ways, the program closely tracks the failed DREAM Act, which would have given many young illegal immigrants a path to legal status. Obama’s program doesn’t give them legal status but it at least protects them from deportation for two years.
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LATINOS RISING
Census figures show that between 1960 and 2010, immigration from Europe declined while the numbers coming from Latin America and Asia took off. As the immigrants’ points of origin changed, so did their destinations. Concentrations shifted from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West.
A few Census Bureau snapshots:
_In 1960, there were fewer than 1 million people in the U.S. who were born in Latin America. By 2010, there were 21.2 million.
_In 1960, 75 percent of foreigners in the U.S. came from Europe. By 2010, 80 percent came from Latin America and Asia.
_In 1960: 47 percent of the foreign-born lived in the Northeast and 10 percent in the South. By 2010, 22 percent lived in the Northeast and 32 percent in the South.
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WHO’S LEAVING?
Mexicans, mostly. Since 1986, more than 4 million noncitizens have been deported. Deportations have expanded in the Obama administration, reaching 410,000 in 2012 from 30,000 in 1990. Most of those deported – 75 percent – are sent back to Mexico. Nearly half of those removed had prior criminal convictions. So far, the Obama administration has deported more than 1.6 million people.
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SKIPPING IT
Nearly two-thirds of the 5.4 million legal immigrants from Mexico who are eligible to become U.S. citizens haven’t done so, according to a Pew study released in February. Their rate of naturalization is half that of legal immigrants from all other countries combined. The barriers to naturalization cited by Mexican nonapplicants include the need to learn English, the difficulty of the citizenship exam and the $680 application fee.
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FAMILIES VS. JOBS
A big question in the immigration debate centers on how much priority to give to the family members of U.S. citizens and permanent residents.
Under current law, the U.S. awards a much larger proportion of green cards to family members than to foreigners with job prospects here. About two-thirds of permanent legal immigration to the U.S. is family-based, compared with about 15 percent that is employment-based, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The rest is largely humanitarian.
Some policymakers think employment-based immigration should be boosted to help the economy. Advocates for families want to make sure any such action doesn’t come at the expense of people seeking to join relatives in the U.S.
