Category: Higher Education

Most immigrant patients have jobs and pay taxes, through paycheck deductions or property taxes included in their rent, administrators at the Dallas and Fort Worth hospitals said. At both institutions, they have a better record of paying their bills than low-income Americans do, the administrators said.
The largest group of illegal immigrant patients is pregnant women, hospital figures show. Contrary to popular belief here, their care is not paid for through local taxes. Under a 2002 amendment to federal regulations, the births are covered by federal taxes through Medicaid because their children automatically become American citizens.

These cases are not affected by new regulations that went into effect on July 1 requiring Medicaid patients to provide proof of citizenship, Texas health officials said. They said they believed that only small numbers of illegal immigrants had received other Medicaid benefits.

New York Times, “Texas Hospitals Reflect Debate on Immigration” by Julia Preston, July 18, 2006

MALDEF FILES SEGREGATION SUIT ON BEHALF OF LATINO CHILDREN

Lawsuit alleges ESL used as a proxy to discriminate against minority students in Dallas public school

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS – Today, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the nation’s leading Latino legal organization, filed suit in federal district court against the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) and the principal of Preston Hollow Elementary School alleging civil rights violations by segregating and discriminating against
Latino schoolchildren.
The Latino parents represented by MALDEF, Organizacion para el Futuro de los Estudiantes
(OFE), allege that Preston Hollow illegally uses its English as a Second Language program to
segregate Latino and minority students from Anglo students, irrespective of their language
abilities. The documents in the case show that Latino students who are proficient in English are,
nonetheless, channeled into classes masked as “English as a Second Language.” Preston Hollow
organizes its general education classes and even combines some grades to ensure that Anglo
students, who comprise just 18 percent of the school, sit in majority white classrooms.

“Fifty years after Brown v. the Board of Education, it is a shame that segregation continues to plague our schools,” said David Hinojosa, MALDEF staff attorney and lead counsel in the case.

“Using ESL as a proxy to segregate schoolchildren can not be tolerated. This lawsuit is intended to send a message that there is no justification for any school to treat Latino students any differently than white students,” Hinojosa added.

Ms. Lucresia Mayorga Santamaria, lead plaintiff and mother of three children attending Preston
Hollow, stated “The school attempted to omit Latino children from the school brochure because
they did not want the surrounding neighborhood to get the wrong impression. Well, I hope they
all get this impression: we will not stand by any longer because our children deserve the same
opportunities as all other children of Preston Hollow.”

Calling on the leadership of Dallas ISD to now answer Latino parents’ calls for justice, Mr.
Hinojosa added, “We condemn efforts such as these to keep white students together for the sake
of deterring white flight. We call on the superintendent and the Dallas Board to swiftly end the
segregation at Preston Hollow.”

Founded in 1968, MALDEF, the nation’s premier Latino civil rights organization, promotes and protects the rights of Latinos through advocacy, litigation, community education and outreach, leadership development, and higher education scholarships.

Press Release Received via email April 18, 2006

As it turns out, we clipped last week’s story from the Dallas Morning
News for good reason. This week begins with a news report posted
at GOPUSA that Republicans in the US House of Representatives will be
pursuing the issue of border incursions along the Rio Grande river
involving "military style" uniforms and equipment.

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), along with
Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), Michael McCaul (R-Texas), and Steve Pearce
(R-N.M.) announced on Friday that they have asked Mexican Ambassador to
the U.S. Carlos de Icaza to explain what’s going on.

They’ve also written to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, asking them to
investigate and report back to Congress….

McCaul expressed concern about individuals in Mexican military
uniforms helping drug smugglers cross the border. He pointed to a
recent press report saying that law enforcement officers on the U.S.
side observed Mexican military humvees equipped with .50 caliber
weapons escorting drug traffickers back into Mexico to provide them
safe haven.

Meanwhile, over at the Texas Farm Bureau website,
Victoria County Sheriff T. Michael O’Connor claims that 90 percent of
the migrant traffic through his jurisdiction are OTMs (other than
Mexicans):

"I would say 10 percent at most are people from Mexico. The
rest are a makeup of people from Central and South America," says
Victoria County Sheriff T. Michael O’Connor, who polices the "fatal
funnel," a main thoroughfare for illegals traveling Highways 59 and 77,
en route to Houston. "There have even been some from the Middle East,
Russia, and China. The U.S. border with Mexico is not a free border,
but south of that, all borders are open borders. People come into
various ports in Central and South America, and they find their way
here. Their main means of transportation today is rail. They get to the
Texas border and then find their way via a trafficking issue. They pay
thousands and thousands of dollars to get to the Houston area."

O’Connor has a political voice worth respecting, since it is not often
that county sheriffs are also former vice chairs of the Texas A&M
University System Board of Regents. But we have good reason to doubt his thumbnail statistics (as quoted) since official figures
reported from the Department of Homeland Security indicate that 92
percent of foreign nationals apprehended in 2004 were "natives of
Mexico." Putting ourselves into a posture for reading tea leaves, we’d
stick by our previous predictions that
this border issue is being set up by Republican interests for
exploitation, and we’d add one more thing: keep an eye on O’Connor’s
electoral career.

The two part series at the Texas Farm Bureau web site begins with a
sentence about 9/11 and is a tellling marker of the way that the border
issue is being increasingly framed within a war on terrorism context
that criminalizes migrants and militarizes the reflexes of state policy.

Meanwhile, at the American Chronicle website, columnist Barbara
Anderson today files her third border opinion of the year, this time calling
out for "a well regulated militia". The vaunted language of the
Fourth Amendment right to carry guns is placed in context of Minutemen
who she calls "the closest thing we have to a militia". Along
with the Republican chime, Anderson also hits up last week’s report of
"military style" uniforms and guns at the Rio Grande. She pleads
for "sovereignty" in the form of a "sturdy fence":

Is this the time for a “well regulated Militia”? It seems the
disciplined Minutemen may be an answer for the pressing need of eyes
and ears, and some defensive arms, along our wide open southern border
until the government catches up with the sentiments of outrage by its
citizens.

And while we’re on the subject of the war on terrorism, here’s a telling exchange at Monday’s White House Press briefing:

Q According to data currently available at the Department of Homeland
Security Funded Terrorism Knowledge Base, the incidents of terrorism
increased markedly in 2005: worldwide attacks were up 51 percent from
the year before, and the number of people killed in those attacks is up
36 percent; since the year 2000, attacks are up 250 percent, and deaths
are up 550 percent. How do you reconcile those numbers with your claim
that you’re winning the war on terrorism and putting terrorists out of
business?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, just look at the facts. If you look at the facts,
many of al Qaeda’s known leadership have been put out of business.
They’ve been brought to justice. They’ve either been captured or
killed. No longer is America waiting and responding. We’re on the
offense; we’re taking the fight to the enemy. We are engaged in a war
on terrorism. The enemies recognize how high the stakes are. And one
thing the President will talk about, continue to talk about tomorrow
night and in the coming weeks, is that we continue to face a serious
threat.

This is a deadly and determined enemy. But the difference is now that
we’ve got them on the run, we’ve got them playing defense, we’re taking
the fight to them. And all of us in the international community must
continue to work together. We’ve been fortunate that we haven’t been
hit again since the attacks of September 11th. And that’s in no small
part because of the great work of our men and women in uniform abroad,
and because of the great work of our intelligence community, and the
great work of our homeland security officials here at home who have
worked together using vital tools, like the Patriot Act and other
tools, to help disrupt plots and disrupt attacks.

And there’s great progress being made. But the President made it clear
after September 11th that this was going to be a long war, but he’s
going to continue acting and leading and doing everything in his power
to win that war so long as he is in office. And we also have to work to
continue to advance freedom. And 2006 was a year of progress when it
came to advancing freedom around the world. The Middle East is a
dangerous, troubled region, and that’s why it’s important we continue
to support the advance of democracy throughout that region.

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia Austin / Houston / NorthTexas

In the relationship between knowledge and freedom, children derive
their right to free education. Take for example the Texas constitution
of 1875 (Article VII, Section 1):

A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the
preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the
duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable
provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of
public free schools.

Into this succinct line of reasoning is packed a serious claim.
Where there is no suitable education, there can be no real hope of
preserving rights and liberties; therefore, elected representatives
have a duty to establish, support, and maintain public schools.

Yet in the wake of the latest collective judgment handed down by the
Texas Supreme Court, we are left shaking our heads. The court has
affirmed that Texas is dead last among the fifty states of the USA when
it comes to high school literacy among adults 25 and older. And the
court has stipulated that high-school-dropout rates consume fully half
of the state’s Hispanic students and nearly half of African Americans.
Yet, the court finds this system of public education adequate,
suitable, and efficient.
Had the court wanted to signal a higher standard of respect
for ‘essential’ conditions of education, justices could not have
concocted a more timely environment. A state district court had already
ruled the education system unconstitutional, and the legislature had
convened several special sessions ordered by the governor in open
admission that something better should be done. But legislators, time
after time, had failed; until finally they said it might be better to
wait until the high court gave guidance.

Because the trial court, the governor, and the legislature were already
behaving as if a constitutional crisis in education had been reached,
the Texas high court had only to stand squarely on the side of the
rights and liberties of the people to issue a profound and lifting
command. Yet the court retreated from the rights of the people and
aligned itself instead with the prerogatives of a decadent legislature,
whose inability to agree on some better course of action now stands in
a sentimental glow of constitutional sympathy.

Instead of casting into 21st Century law a progressive
commitment to vigorous support for the “essential” institution of
public ed, the court tottered backward, deferred to backward looking
comparisons, and anchored its logic squarely in 19th Century habits of
mind that have usually blunted the keen logic of the constitution.

With a decisive choice before it, whether to raise
expectations for the people or lower expectations for the legislature,
the court decided that deference to the legislature was its wisest
course. And so the court, when served up with a critical and hard-fought
opportunity to enliven the relationship between knowledge and liberty
among the people (an opportunity that will take many years to rebuild)–the court abandons its rare and recent tradition
of trying to be part of the public education solution.

In its deferential (cozy) embrace of the legislature, the
court decided that so long as the legislature is not being “arbitrary”
in its provision of education, its crucial provisions for the rights
and liberties of the people cannot be second guessed.

But what requires the court to be deferential to the legislature when
it comes to assessing public education, especially if public education
is so clearly founded on the need to preserve the liberties and rights
of the people? It is to the liberties and rights of the people that the
court is more urgently bound to defer, not to the liberties and rights
of the legislature.

A plain reading of the legislature’s actions since 1875 prove
that in the absence of a jealous court, the state legislature tends to
deflate the concept of public education, preferring to keep the rights
and liberties of some people hostage to the rights and liberties of
others. The paradigm for this pattern is marked out in two words: Jim
Crow.

Or to put it another way, if a jealous court is not actively
protecting the rights and liberties of the people one and all, then the
promise and hope of democracy loses an essential foundation of
legitimacy within the state structure upheld by that court. A lousy
court results not only in a lousy state, but in lousy hopes that the
state can ever be democratically reformed. Yet the court in this case
seems to believe that a lousy court can motivate a lousy legislature to
do what it has never voted to do to date without court pressure. As a result of the court
ruling, the promise of education for democracy in Texas is once again a revolutionary hope.