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This story about hardworking immigrants is too interesting not to share. Story is being published courtesy of the daily Town Talk in Alexandria-Pineville, Louisiana. After reading this story, please visit www.ImmigrationNewsman.com for more immigration stories.

BUNKIE — Rosario Lubanga can’t help but smile.
The teacher is worlds away from her home, but still she smiles, saying, “We believe we can make a difference here.”
And the Avoyelles Parish School District agrees.
Lubanga is one of eight teachers from the Philippines who will be teaching at Bunkie Middle School this year. They will join four others who will be teaching at Marksville Middle School.
They come to the rural Louisiana parish’s middle schools with certification in need-specific areas, such as special education and English. Some have master’s degrees and a few — including Lubanga — have earned a doctorate.
“These teachers will be an asset for our middle schools,” Avoyelles Parish Schools Superintendent Dwayne Lemoine said.
Lemoine was having trouble finding certified teachers willing to teach in his parish’s middle schools. He said there is an educator shortage and that Avoyelles Parish is surrounded by parishes that pay their teachers more.
The middle schools also have been a problem area for the parish with slipping standardized tests scores and overhauls done for budget cuts. The schools have not had librarians, assistant principals and counselors, nor have they offered electives such as agriculture or home economics.
Initially, the district planned to move the middle schools onto the high school campuses so the two could share resources. The problem, district officials say, has been money. The plan was halted because the parish is under a federal desegregation lawsuit and the plan is being reviewed.
In the interim, Lemoine has said, the middle schools will not be the same when students return this fall — as the parish cannot afford for them to be.
This year, Bunkie Middle School made the state’s “academically unacceptable” list because of its standardized test scores, attendance and dropout rates.
Some of the changes that will be made in the coming school year in Avoyelles, which begins Monday, include:
– Every middle school will have a dean of students who is in charge of discipline.
– The schools will use the teaming concept, in which teachers work together to address the needs of the students.
– Technology has been purchased for the middle schools that will allow online assistance programs for students falling behind and allow teachers to work with their peers from across the nation on strategies that are working in their classrooms.
Lemoine is pushing to house certified and highly qualified teachers in the middle schools, and that includes the teachers from the Philippines.
The superintendent heard about Universal Placement International during a recent superintendents meeting. Other parishes such as Caddo and East Baton Rouge have used the service.
The school district sent its needs to the company, and applicants’ information was sent back.
“I never would have dreamed this in a million years,” said Barbara Z. Jones, supervisor of elementary education. “This is so exciting, and they have been a joy.”
Jones has been working with the new teachers to help them get settled into their communities.
She said the district feels the new teachers are helping them, while the new teachers say Avoyelles Parish is helping them.
“This is a career advancement for us,” said Maria Grace dela Cruz, an eighth-grade English teacher. “We want to win their hearts and their respect.”
Rosalyn Andaya said she is a little nervous about the first day of school.
“We are ready to face the challenge and help out here,” she said.

Listen to a great version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” performed by Iz, a.k.a. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Hawaii’s legendary singer/musician. Israel died more than 10 years ago.

Here’s the April 2 editorial of The New York Times:

Immigration is good for the financial health of Social Security because more workers mean more tax revenue. Illegal immigration, it turns out, is even better than legal immigration. In the fine print of the 2008 annual report on Social Security, released last week, the program’s trustees noted that growing numbers of “other than legal” workers are expected to bolster the program over the coming decades.

One reason is that many undocumented workers pay taxes during their work lives but don’t collect benefits later. Another is that undocumented workers are entering the United States at ever younger ages and are expected to have more children while they’re here than if they arrived at later ages. The result is a substantial increase in the number of working-age people paying taxes, but a relatively smaller increase in the number of retirees who receive benefits — a double boon to Social Security’s bottom line.

We’re not talking chump change. According to the report, the taxes paid by other-than-legal immigrants will close 15 percent of the system’s projected long-term deficit. That’s equivalent to raising the payroll tax by 0.3 percentage points, starting today.

That is not to suggest that illegal immigration is a legitimate fix to Social Security’s problems. It is another reminder, however, of the nation’s complex relationship with undocumented workers. Would the people who want to deport all undocumented workers be willing to make up the difference and pay the taxes that the undocumented are currently paying?

It is also a reminder of Social Security’s dynamism. As society and the economy evolve, so does the system, responding not only to changes in immigration and fertility, but also in wage growth and other variables. As such, it is adaptable to the 21st century, if only the political will can be found to champion the necessary changes. Those include modest tax increases and moderate benefit cuts that could be phased in over decades — provided the country gets started soon.

By the Editorial Staff
www.ImmigrationNewsman.com

Sometimes it’s interesting how immigration attorneys struggle to get a green card for their clients. Remember Dorismar? She’s the Argentine bombshell also known as Dora Noemi Kerchen who starred in “Latinas Gone Crazy.” In 2006, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security abruptly deported her and her husband to Argentina. Her lawyer, Michael Feldenkrais, fought to get her classified as an “alien of extraordinary ability.”

What exactly was her “extraordinary ability?”

Here’s an interesting video from MSNBC:

Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri says the federal government has dropped the ball on immigration reform. He recently signed an executive order targeting illegal immigrants in his state.

“This is not about taking a hard line against immigrants,” said Carcieri. “It’s about making sure that those who come here can realize their goals of economic security and a better quality of life.” Harking to his own immigrant roots, the governor said he supports people who follow legal channels to realize the American Dream.

“The motive is to get control of an issue that has to be dealt with,” he said. “If you’re here illegally, you shouldn’t be here.”

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, an estimated 40,000 illegal immigrants reside in Rhode Island.

“Unfortunately, over the last few decades, the federal government has consistently ignored the complex issue of illegal immigration,” said Carcieri. “As a result, the flow of illegal immigrants has become epidemic, with the consequential costs being borne by state taxpayers.”

Public anger against illegal immigrants is already entrenched in parts of Northern Virginia and is also seeping into Maryland as legislators face unprecedented demands to launch a crackdown in the state that has been more tolerant of them. At least 20 bills focused on illegal immigration have been introduced in the state legislature this session.

A recent Washington Post poll found that about half of Maryland residents considered illegal immigration a problem. Eighty-five percent of those surveyed said they wanted local government to actively deal with the issue.

Many undocumented immigrants are worried about local laws allowing police to question them about their legal status.

“Now I am too scared to go back and return my license plates,” said Raul Romano, 40, who said he and his family had recently fled Prince William County, where they lived for eight years. “”I left my job, my apartment, my daughters left their school. Now, here we are in Maryland, starting over again.”

All throughout his authoritarian rule, Fidel Castro enjoyed delivering speeches that lasted four hours and more. In June 2006, the Cuban leader was quoted by a Dominican newspaper as saying that immigrants are the equivalent of “modern slaves,” without whom industrialized nations could not keep going. He expressed sorrow for Mexico that after being “ransacked” by the United States, now is forced to sustain itself with the remittances.

“Every minute it becomes more difficult for them (the United States) to control the slaves (the immigrants),” Castro said.

There’s a politically powerful community of Cuban immigrants in Miami. Castro himself has derided them, calling the immigrants gusanos (worms), escoria (trash) and more recently “the Miami Mafia.” There’s reason for Castro to get annoyed because under his rule, more than a million Cubans fled to the United States, settling mostly in Miami.

But now that Castro has stepped aside as Cuba’s president, should the United States ease restrictions on Cuban-Americans who seek to visit or send money to relatives on the island? Would this signal a better future for Cuban immigrants?

A Southern California tree nursery company recently filed a lawsuit, saying that California discriminates against workers who do not speak English because the state doesn’t offer tests in other languages. GroWest officials claimed that their only crane operator, who has been their employee for 24 years, failed the mandatory test to get a Certification for Crane Operators because it was in English. Company officials said that had the test been given in Spanish, their employee would have passed it.

“The issue doesn’t have anything to do with discriminating against people who do not speak English, but everything to do with safety,” said Graham Brent, executive director of the state commission that produces the test.

There are two points of view on this issue. A group calling itself “ProEnglish in the Workplace” pushes for the English requirement, as expected, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) says that English-workplace policies are discriminatory, and thus illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

What do you think? Share us your opinion.

By the Editorial Staff
www.ImmigrationNewsman.com

We need to present both sides. First The New York Times’ March 19 editorial titled “Citizenship, Thwarted” and excerpts from the reply of USCIS Director Emilio Gonzales:

Here’s the NYT editorial:

The director of the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, Emilio Gonzalez, is stepping down next month, leaving behind a gummed-up bureaucracy and perhaps a million empty promises. That’s about how many people are stuck waiting to have their citizenship petitions approved by the agency, which was swamped last summer by a flood of applications that it failed to predict or prepare for.

The disaster erupted when the agency jacked up the price of its services by an average of 66 percent, a nasty bite for the immigrant families whose fees provide nearly all the money that keeps the rickety system going. Mr. Gonzalez justified the increases by promising that they would lead to better service and shorter waits.

The agency expected that the new fees would spur only a negligible increase in citizenship applications. But applications spiked 350 percent last June and July over the same period in 2006. More than three million applications of all types flooded in last summer. The five-month wait for citizenship that Mr. Gonzalez promised is now 14 months to 16 months. Many immigrants who had dearly hoped to vote in 2008 will have to sit the election out.

Those who know the citizenship system say it’s dumbfounding that Mr. Gonzalez did not foresee the surge, not only because the fees went way up, but also because 2008 is a presidential election year — always a time when would-be citizens hurry to get their papers in. …

The processing delays mock America’s respect for those who “play by the rules” and “get in line.” For millions who want to work but have no one to sponsor them and no specialized skills, there is no line to get into: no realistic hope of a visa and no functioning guest-worker program. As for the others who have gone the route of patience and paperwork, they are the ones whose expectations Mr. Gonzalez raised and crushed. …

Mr. Gonzalez will soon have time to reflect on a dismal monument to his tenure: the dreams of thousands of rule-following, line-waiting, would-be Americans, signed, sealed in envelopes with large checks and money orders, delivered by truckloads, waiting in shrink-wrapped pallets, unopened.

And here’s the Gonzales piece, aptly titled “Fit to Print?”:

The Times got it wrong again. I feel compelled to set the record straight for 17,000 employees who work late nights and weekends to welcome lawful immigrants into our society. I will not stand idly by as the New York Times insults the dedicated and professional services they provide.

If the Times seeks to add legitimacy to its editorial, they should first get the facts straight. USCIS received more than 600,000 applications for citizenship in June and July of 2007 – a 350 percent increase from the same time the year before. While this surge was substantial, it isn’t close to the “perhaps a million empty promises” the Times suggests.

Further, all applications received during that time have been opened, issued receipts, and entered into our processing queue. The idea that there are “envelopes with large checks and money orders, delivered by truckloads, waiting in shrink-wrapped pallets, unopened” at any USCIS facility, is an outright fabrication, hastily conceived by an imaginative writer.

What the writer failed to mention, and what I personally conveyed to the Times, is that more than half of all the citizenship applications received in June and July will be completed by September 30. Further, many of the applicants who filed for citizenship after July 2007 have already been naturalized. The writer also omitted that not withstanding our challenges, in 2008 we will process some 20-25 percent more citizenship applications than in 2007, while maintaining the integrity of the immigration system and the security of the process. …

My posting today demonstrates to the more than 700,000 newly naturalized citizens that this country embraces free and open debate. It is a shame, however that a newspaper like the New York Times – which boasts with each paper that it contains all the news that’s fit to print – only values its version of a story and leaves no room for that debate or for the facts.

By the Editorial Staff
www.ImmigrationNewsman.com

Here’s a funny way to look at the immigration debate: