Hispanics

CHICAGO -- The fight over what to do about illegal immigration is not entirely a matter of people coming to the United States in violation of the law. It's also about what they allegedly bring with them: social pathologies. Many American think illegal immigrants are prone to all sorts of destructive behavior: committing crime, having children out of wedlock, dropping out of school and refusing to learn English. This is not a full and fair portrayal. Still, there is some truth to the charge that when we import foreigners, we also import social problems.

GEORGETOWN, Del. -- Having changed the face of Delmarva agriculture during the past 75 years, the poultry industry now is changing the face of its culture, adding new hues, accents and languages to an ethnic landscape once rendered mostly in black and white.The impetus is the industry's growing appetite for Latin American workers, which has transformed the Eastern Shore's seasonal wave of migrant harvesters and crab pickers into a more rooted scattering of enclaves in rural towns, trailer parks, apartment houses and labor camps.

AT a time when home-ownership rates are at record levels, some 72 percent of all white adults own their homes, compared with 46 percent of African-American and Hispanic adults.Closing the gap would give millions of African-Americans and Hispanics a shot at the "American dream" of homeownership. It would also give lenders a healthy boost in their profits.Why, then, are those who originate mortgages discriminating? Since this is the '90s and few fools actually put sheets on their heads and hurl racial expletives openly, the discrimination is probably unconscious.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The wages of Hispanic workers in California lag far behind those of other ethnic groups, and a corresponding lack of education is the main culprit, according to a report done for state legislators.With a median income of $14,560 per year, Hispanics make about $8,000 less than the next-lowest-wage group, blacks, the report said.Increasing the wages of Hispanics, who will make up the state's largest group of workers by 2025, will mean big dividends for California, said state Senate Majority Leader Richard G. Polanco, a Democrat from Los Angeles, who requested the study.

Two weeks after the NAACP decried a scarcity of minority faces on network television, a national coalition of Latino civil rights groups decided yesterday to put together a weeklong boycott of the four major TV networks in September to protest the "brownout" of Hispanics in the media.While Hispanics constitute 11 percent of the U.S. population, they comprise less than 2 percent of the characters on prime-time television shows, said Lisa Navarrete, a spokeswoman for La Raza, a national Hispanic advocacy organization.

IN A DIRTY and brawling village of the Middle East -- unzoned, unplanned, choked with the Sons of David returning to be taxed -- the Prince of Peace was born.Bethlehem was no ''city beautiful,'' surely no ''suburb beautiful.'' Yet amidst its squalor and confusion, it throbbed with life, with a rich diversity of peoples and culture. Into that scene came the new life that would change the world.For generations now, the United States has been seeking to cordon off and extinguish its Bethlehems.

WASHINGTON -- Into the volatile political racial wars, Congress is now preparing to throw another complication -- statehood for Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico.The island has been an American commonwealth for nearly 100 years, locked in an anachronistic half-baked status that no longer makes much sense either in Washington or San Juan. Denying the territory full rights has kept it in dependent second-class limbo for too long.But the politics of elevating Puerto Rico into full participation in the union are murky, messy and even a bit mean.

WASHINGTON -- Deep in the hushed archives of the Museum of Natural History, far from the thronging schoolchildren streaming past an 8-ton African elephant, Latin America specialist Laura Larco is on an expedition for the Smithsonian Institution.She dons white gloves and decides to shun the face mask she sometimes wears against decades-old dust. She gingerly removes a turn-of-the-century 8-by-10-inch glass negative from an envelope and, for the benefit of a visitor, describes a scene from the 1899-1902 U.S. occupation of Cuba:"It's a parade," she says, squinting at the image.

"Environmental racism" isn't a new expression. The Rev. Ben Chavis, former director of the NAACP, first used the term in 1982 to protest the location of a North Carolina toxic waste landfill. Since then numerous speakers have attempted to stoke the fires of activism by calling pollution in the inner cities the next civil rights issue.It's true that both industrialists and governments have typically put smoke-belching factories, air-polluting highways and waste-leaking landfills in communities where the people are least able to fight them.

DALLAS -- Who are the Cape Verdians, and why are they angry?They are descendants of the inhabitants of Cape Verde, an island off the coast of West Africa. Centuries ago the island was colonized by the Portuguese and became a way station for the slave trade. Some of its inhabitants -- of mixed African and Portuguese parentage -- migrated to the U.S. Their descendants live today in the New England area.And those descendants are irked. They're irked because they say they don't fit into any of the racial categories on the U.S. Census.

The census can be a hard sell in some Hispanic communities. Fears that the information illegal immigrants give to the census could lead to their deportation is partly responsible for Latinos being undercounted in the 2000 census by an estimated 3 percent. This year, a prominent Latino evangelical preacher with a radio show in 11 markets is encouraging undocumented immigrants to boycott the census to protest the lack of immigration reform. And a Mexican-American political organization has called for all Hispanics to boycott it. Against that backdrop, a coalition of prominent Latinos launched a nationwide campaign Thursday urging people to fill out the 2010 census forms.

WASHINGTON - -Sonia Sotomayor will go before a Senate committee starting today and will be pressed to answer a question that has lingered since President Barack Obama made her his first choice for the Supreme Court. Given a lifetime appointment, will she be a justice who views the law through a liberal lens because of her Latina heritage? In speeches, she said "gender and national origins ... will make a difference in our judging" and added that a "wise Latina" will "more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male."

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, whose presidential bid never picked up enough steam, backed Sen. Barack Obama for president yesterday, handing the Illinois senator what could be an important endorsement in the race for the Democratic nomination. Richardson, the nation's only Hispanic governor, told a rally in Portland, Ore., that Obama was an extraordinary leader who appeals to the best in Americans. "You are a once-in-a-lifetime leader," Richardson said. "Above all, you will be a president who brings this nation together."

CHICAGO -- The fight over what to do about illegal immigration is not entirely a matter of people coming to the United States in violation of the law. It's also about what they allegedly bring with them: social pathologies. Many American think illegal immigrants are prone to all sorts of destructive behavior: committing crime, having children out of wedlock, dropping out of school and refusing to learn English. This is not a full and fair portrayal. Still, there is some truth to the charge that when we import foreigners, we also import social problems.

By the time Victelia Guillen walked into a clinic last summer, the pain that had begun a year earlier flared through her body. Within days, she received grim news. Doctors at the Caridad Clinic, a facility west of Boynton Beach that serves low-income Hispanics, diagnosed Guillen, 52, with advanced cervical cancer. Uninsured and wary of doctors, the Guatemalan mother of 10 had never before had a Pap smear -- a screening test that has drastically reduced cervical cancer rates in the United States over the past 50 years.

The image on the brown T-shirt is simple, a colorful outline of the Southwest's craggy hills. The message under the picture - "New Mexico, Cleaner than Regular Mexico" - has galvanized thousands of Latinos, who are taking their protests from the streets to cyberspace. "I was born in Mexico, so when people make comments about Mexico I take it personally," said Carime Hernandez, 24, of West Palm Beach, Fla. Hernandez took action. She went to BlueLatinos.org and sent an e-mail demanding that the chairman of Urban Outfitters, the retail chain that sells the tops, remove them from the store.

A Columbia man who was arrested during a police undercover operation last summer that targeted street robbers of Hispanic victims in Oakland Mills was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in prison by Howard County Circuit Judge Lenore R. Gelfman. David Lee Williams, 19, of the 9600 block of Basket Ring Road, pleaded guilty to attempted robbery Jan. 24. Police began the undercover operation after several Hispanic victims were robbed while walking in the Columbia village, according to Assistant State's Attorney Lynn Marshall's memorandum in aid of sentencing.

FOR EIGHT years now, Steve Walden and Raymond Whye have been doing business at Howard and Lexington streets in what we used to call the heart of downtown. The business exists on a sidewalk. It consists of a beat-up card table offering bargains of the day. As it happens, Walden and Whye are black. They are today's link to Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and William Donald Schaefer, who agreed last week that a state program to help minority businesses "needs to end." Mr. Governor and Mr. Comptroller, say hello to Mr. Walden and Mr. Whye.

RIVERDALE - With dirty-blond hair and hazel eyes, Oscar Bonilla is called guero - Spanish for "blond" or "fair-skinned" - by customers at La Central music and video store. But his race is less easily defined. "I look white, completely white," says Bonilla, 21, who was born in El Salvador but raised in nearby Montgomery County. "But the first thing I would call myself is Hispanic. My race? I don't really think about it." Like nearly 15 million Latinos in 2000, Bonilla would identify himself as "some other race" on the U.S. Census.

Hispanics add diversity to Carroll Diversity. The definition of that word is mixture, multiplicity, assortment, range and variety. Our country is made up of a melting pot. I live in a neighborhood that is vastly diversified, whether financially or ethnically. I live on Pennsylvania Avenue, where we treat each other with respect, no matter who you are. People are talking about illegal immigrants here in Carroll County and in the United States. Not all immigrants are illegal in the United States.