Read it here first: The latest ministry update.

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While the following opinion may end up betraying my general apathy about America’s supposed pastime, I’ve been confused lately in reflecting on the drastic inconsistency of rationales regarding granting amnesty - one of leniency for steroid users in baseball, and one of strictness towards undocumented immigrants.

One the one side, there are multi-millionaires being (more…)

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I have mixed reaction to this proposal to change this LAPD practice (Special Order 40) regarding inquiring about the immigration status of known gang members. I’m all for suppressing criminal activity - even though I question the effectiveness of blanketly deporting undocumented criminals - but I am concerned for how undocumented victims and potential witnesses might be impacted by a change in practice.

NOTE: National Geographic did a program that addresses the impact of gangs and immigration practices - World’s Most Dangerous Gang

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That is, more involvement in their lives.  From HispanicPundit.com, this post on parent involvement in college for Latino students.

It’s no secret that parental involvement increases academic performance in elementary and secondary schools, but scant research has been conducted to evaluate the effects of parental involvement on the academic achievement of college students…. Today, 49% of Latino college students are first generation college students - which means that their parents need information and support about how to navigate the college system and help their children be successful in higher education.

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This is one of the reasons I love being on staff, for being a part of stuff like this.

Poster for the upcoming “Cumbre de Alabanza” (Spanish for “Worship Summit”)When we started doing this event 5 years ago to serve Latino students around the Greater LA area, “we” was just Abner Ramos & I working together on the side, adding to our otherwise already full plates as campus staff, and our hopes were that a few students would come, maybe 30 or 40.

Now (more…)

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Cleverly spinning off of the UPS ad campaign, we shared the LaFe vision for Greater Los Angeles by introducing this video at the end of our staff conference on Thursday.

Our hope was to give staff something to remember as they think their ministry and Latino students on campus. What do you think?

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This from Ruben Navarrette, Jr. :

“The restrictionists and those pundits who have taken up their cause claim that race and ethnicity aren’t even part of the discussion and that those who oppose giving illegal immigrants a shot at legal status would feel the same way if the immigrants were coming from Canada instead of Mexico.

They say their concerns are limited to border security and the rule of law, and have nothing to do with nativism or xenophobia. And they reject any suggestion that the debate was hostile to Hispanics…

The people who buy into this demagoguery say the country is being colonized. That harkens back to what Benjamin Franklin said in the 1700s about German immigrants making up “a colony of aliens.”

A lot of what Franklin said about the Germans was rank bigotry. The same goes for what other generations of Americans would later say about Italians, Irish, Jews and other immigrants – even if they came legally.

What poison. Thank goodness we got that out of our system. “

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I must be onto something, since someone else is writing a entire book on my ideas.

Peter Lim - Assistant Professor of the History of Christianity at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee - is currently writing a book entitled Xenophobia to Philozenia: A Trinitarian Theology of Immigration. He is quoted in several recent articles about the New Sanctuary Movement (read their pledge), including (more…)

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I’m really getting excited about this Fall and heading into Christmas season. Why? Because of what’s cooking up for our new student outreach at CSULA starting in late September through November, and what’s happening with La Fe in Los Angeles - on Nov.16th we’re gearing up for the 5th annualCumbre de Alabanza and in December between Christmas and New Year’s, about 500 Latino students from around the U.S. will meet in Torrance for La Fe ‘07 - InterVarsity’s triennial Latino student conference.

(more…)

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Thus says The Economist about Boyle Heights in this article - “Escape from LA: Los Angeles is losing its illegal immigrants. That’s bad news.” The article goes on to talk about the negative impact of the declining number of immigrants coming to Los Angeles. Read it.

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Abner Ramos and I are beginning to get our bearings for several La Fe projects we’d like to develop in the coming months. One involves a La Fe network of Latino alumni from IV chapters in the greater Los Angeles, many of whom don’t even know what La Fe is or that they are La Fe alumni. (*La Fe is InterVarsity’s Latino ministry, aka La Fe or The Faith. It also is short for Latino Fellowship.)

So Abner & I are putting out this call on our blogs: (more…)

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VivirLatino.com has a recent post entitled “Tall and pale = more money on the job” about wage disparity. Now I know why I’m bringing home more bacon than Abner.

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Get your tickets now for Mariachi USA. Veronica & I have gone to this concert twice now - it is really a mariachi lover’s dream. All the things you could want: a summer night, the Hollywood Bowl, live Mariachi music, and all of the gritas, “ahuas” and “ayaiyai”s that you could ask for.

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Via Vivirlatino.com - Scholarship opportunities for Latino college students: documented & otherwise.

Printed copies will be distributed through the Sallie Mae Fund’s national “paying for college” bus tour, which launches its California tour today. Additional scholarship directories will be distributed by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, and by the Hispanic Scholarship Fund at their programs throughout Southern California.

Download a copy of the directory at LatinoCollegeDollars.org. FYI - looks like this is just for California Latinos. Don’t know if that means going to school in California, graduated from H.S. in California, or just California dreaming.

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My law-school friend Mark sent me this link to a CSM story on the 20 year anniversary of the 1986 congressional “amnesty” program that ultimately allowed 3 million immigrants to gain residency or citizenship.

“An amnesty cleans people who have broken the law,” says former US Rep. Romano Mazzoli (D) of Kentucky. He and former US Sen. Alan Simpson (R) of Wyoming were the primary architects and cosponsors of IRCA. “But in our bill, you had to prove that you were a law-abiding person who honored the institutions of our country…. So you can take your pick of euphemisms, but if you use the word ‘amnesty,’ people will get angry, throw their hands up in the air, and scream: ‘They’re rewarding people for misbehaving!’ “

While I respect an aspect of the “law-abiding society” argument of the anti-immigration rhetoric, it has always bothered me how willing those same folks are to either turn a blind eye or just raise their hands in ambivalence to the law-breaking employers that hire undocumented workers and often pay below a legal wage. (Not to mention the social benefit to prices from all of those products & services).

William King Jr., was the Western regional director of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and responsible for carrying out the amnesty program. He says that he had hope that the legislation would work at first. But IRCA was a three-legged stool, he says. One leg was employer sanctions, another was increased border security, and the third was the amnesty program. “In truth, only the amnesty program became a fact,” he says, and the effort failed.

I think that three-legged stool is the only legitimate means by which the current immigration dilemma can be tackled. To address the issue from only 1 or 2 legs means we’ll only end up on our a$&es.

P.S. Family experience does add to my view of the ‘86 amnesty. Some members of my family rightly & legally benefited from it, a few others wrongly & fraudulently benefited from it, and even others wrongly & inexplicably were tossed under the bus despite meeting all of the requirements and goals. I’m not sure how to interpret that - all systems have their holes. But whatever it says, the immigration debate is not mere theory or simple political machination (see here for “machination”).

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HT: Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council email

The Olvera Street Merchants
invite you to
Las Posadas
         A Candlelight Procession

 

December 16 -24, 2006, 7:30 pm nightly
Entertainment begins at 6:00 pm

     Champurrado  *  Pan Dulce  *  Piñata

For information call:
(213) 625-7074 or (213) 485-8372

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Check this out this weekend, if you can:

Josefina Lopez, author of Real Women Have Curves, and Courage Productions invite you to celebrate the voices and visions of Latina filmmakers in the second annual Boyle Heights Latina Independent Film Extravaganza (BHLIFE).

(more…)

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Cine Sin Fin ~ 12th Annual East L.A. CHICANO Film Festival
Go to: www.alabrava. com <http://www.alabrava .com/> for more information. Presented by: A La Brava Producciones Revolucionarias, Inc and the following locations:

(more…)

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It doesn’t seem to matter if here in Boyle Heights, just like in Beverly Hills, we have palm tree lined streets (like my street), or new BMW’s and Lexus’ SUV’s driving down every street. It doesn’t matter that we’ll have 2 state-of-the-art hospitals or a local winery or a gorgeous view of downtown. It doesn’t matter that home prices have doubled or tripled in the last 6 years (I even saw a million dollar home listing last year), or that in the “location, location, location” game, I can be in downtown - door-to-door - in less than 12 minutes.

All of the other things that make up life in Boyle Heights doesn’t seem to matter when a journalist throws down a two word summary of my neighborhood:

(more…)

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I’m off with my brother and a few friends to see Carlos Mencia’s Punisher Tour at the Gibson Ampitheatre at Universal Citywalk. I’m looking forward to some good (even if over-the-edge) laughs.

Even though Mencia is Honduran, we’re going to have some Mexican-style tacos at El Matador taco truck on Western & Lexington before the show.

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