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1. Most Hispanic appointments
2. Rangers warn of smugglers
3. Kennedy spurred legislation
4. Mexico claims bias increase
5. Elderly 10% of immigrants

1.
Obama's 1st year sets record for Hispanic nominations
By Erin Kelly
The Arizona Republic (Phoenix), August 31, 2009

Washington, DC -- President Barack Obama has appointed more Hispanics to high office than any president ever has during the first year in office, reflecting the growing political clout of the nation's largest minority group.

The 43 appointments since Inauguration Day also reflect Obama's debt to the Hispanic community, which helped propel him into the White House.

Obama won two-thirds of the Hispanic vote in the 2008 presidential race, according to an analysis of exit polls by the Pew Hispanic Center. He beat Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., overwhelmingly among Hispanic voters despite McCain's generally moderate stance on immigration issues.

Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said he believes Obama has made a conscious effort to hire Hispanics in part to keep a campaign promise.

"I think the president has been very intentional about it, and he's delivered," Wilkes said.

But the White House put a slightly different spin on it.

"The president has made it a priority that his administration reflect America's great diversity," said Adam Abrams, a White House spokesman. "But the most conscious effort has been to appoint the best and most qualified candidates for each position."

The Senate has so far confirmed 43 Hispanics nominated by Obama to serve at top levels in his administration and in the federal government, including two Cabinet secretaries and the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor.

Those appointments represent 14 percent of the 304 Obama nominees the Senate has confirmed.

Hispanics make up 15 percent of the U.S. population and about 8 percent of the overall federal workforce, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Office of Personnel Management.
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/08/31/200908...

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2.
US Forest Service warning linking tortillas and Tecate to armed pot growers called profiling
By Steven K. Paulson
The Associated Press, August 28, 2009

Denver (AP) -- A federal warning to beware of campers in national forests who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and play Spanish music because they could be armed marijuana growers is racial profiling, an advocate for Hispanic rights said Friday.

The warnings were issued Wednesday by the U.S. Forest Service, which is investigating how much marijuana is being illegally cultivated in Colorado's national forests following the recent discovery of more than 14,000 plants in Pike National Forest.

"That's discriminatory, and it puts Hispanic campers in danger," said Polly Baca, co-chairwoman of the Colorado Latino Forum.

The U.S. Forest Service quickly retracted the warning.

"It is inexcusable and we regret that this insensitivity distracted attention from the real problem of illegal marijuana cultivation on federal land and the threats to human safety and environmental degradation it poses," said Hank Kashdan, associate chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

Forest Service officials said they believe illegal immigrants are being brought to Colorado by Latin American drug cartels for mass cultivation of marijuana.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-hispanic-c...

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3.
Kennedy helped change demographics of US as tireless advocate for immigrants
By Russell Contreras
The Associated Press, August 29, 2009

Boston (AP) -- Before 1965, Leticia Hermosa had little chance of crossing the Pacific to the U.S. from the Philippines. Hermosa, a nurse, and others like her just couldn't get through the strict U.S. immigration quota system, which favored Western Europeans and essentially excluded those from Asia and Latin America.

But after Sen. Edward Kennedy pushed through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the door opened for her to immigrate in 1973 to Boston, where she eventually finished school, got a law degree and became a U.S. citizen.

On Thursday, Hermosa stood in line with thousands of others at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum to pay her respects to the late senator. "If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here today," said the 55-year-old Hermosa, who now lives in Westwood, Mass.

As the nation mourns Kennedy, who died this week of a brain tumor at age 77, historians and immigrant advocates are remembering the senator — perhaps more than any other — as championing legislation that directly benefited immigrants, their children and their grandchildren. The 1965 law that he sponsored fundamentally changed the demographics of the country and transformed many urban enclaves into majority-minority cities.

But they say Kennedy also remained a "point man" in the Senate for immigrant advocates and minorities throughout his career, even supporting recent proposals to overhaul immigration laws aimed at undocumented workers.

"Sen. Kennedy was always committed to us and also tried to do what he could on our behalf," said Arturo S. Rodriguez, president of the California-based United Farm Workers, a group co-founded by the late Cesar Chavez.

Kennedy advocated for the children of immigrants and minorities by pushing legislation on voting rights and health care for uninsured children, Rodriguez said.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-kennedy-im...

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4.
Mexican official says anti-Mexican discrimination up in US in areas with fewer migrants
The Associated Press, August 28, 2009
Mexico City (AP) -- A Mexican official says discrimination against Mexicans in the United States is growing and is most pronounced in areas where immigration is relatively new.

Director of Consular Affairs and Protection Daniel Hernandez says that "where we are seeing the most complex, hard and deep-seated discrimination is in areas where immigration is new, where there may be fewer Mexicans."

Hernandez says "precisely because there are fewer Mexicans, the discrimination is tougher," although he did not cite specific examples or causes for the trend in a talk Friday.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-lt-mexico-us-discrim...

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5.
Old Immigrants, Invisible With ‘Nobody to Talk To’
By Patricia LEigh Brown
The New York Times, August 31, 2009

Fremont, CA -- They gather five days a week at a mall called the Hub, sitting on concrete planters and sipping thermoses of chai. These elderly immigrants from India are members of an all-male group called The 100 Years Living Club. They talk about crime in nearby Oakland, the cheapest flights to Delhi and how to deal with recalcitrant daughters-in-law.

Together, they fend off the well of loneliness and isolation that so often accompany the move to this country late in life from distant places, some culturally light years away.

“If I don’t come here, I have sealed lips, nobody to talk to,” said Devendra Singh, a 79-year-old widower. Meeting beside the parking lot, the men were oblivious to their fellow mall rats, backpack-carrying teenagers swigging energy drinks.

In this country of twittering youth, Mr. Singh and his friends form a gathering force: the elderly, who now make up America’s fastest-growing immigrant group. Since 1990, the number of foreign-born people over 65 has grown from 2.7 million to 4.3 million — or about 11 percent of the country’s recently arrived immigrants. Their ranks are expected to swell to 16 million by 2050. In California, one in nearly three seniors is now foreign born, according to a 2007 census survey.

Many are aging parents of naturalized American citizens, reuniting with their families. Yet experts say that America’s ethnic elderly are among the most isolated people in America. Seventy percent of recent older immigrants speak little or no English. Most do not drive. Some studies suggest depression and psychological problems are widespread, the result of language barriers, a lack of social connections and values that sometimes conflict with the dominant American culture, including those of their assimilated children.

The lives of transplanted elders are largely untracked, unknown outside their ethnic or religious communities. “They never win spelling bees,” said Judith Treas, a sociology professor and demographer at the University of California, Irvine. “They do not join criminal gangs. And nobody worries about Americans losing jobs to Korean grandmothers.”

The speed of the demographic transformation is leading many cities to reach out to the growing numbers of elderly parents in their midst. Fremont began a mobile mental health unit for homebound seniors and recruited volunteer “ambassadors” to help older immigrants navigate social service bureaucracies. In Chicago, a network of nonprofit groups has started The Depression Project, a network of community groups helping aging immigrants and others cope.

But their problems can go unnoticed because they often do not seek help. “There is a feeling that problems are very personal, and within the family,” said Gwen Yeo, the co-director of the Geriatric Education Center at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Many who have followed their grown children here have fulfilling lives, but life in this country does not always go according to plan for seniors navigating the new, at times jagged, emotional terrain, which often means living under a child’s roof.

Mr. Singh, the widower, grew up in a boisterous Indian household with 14 family members. In Fremont, he moved in with his son’s family and devoted himself to his grandchildren, picking them up from school and ferrying them to soccer practice. Then his son and daughter-in-law decided “they wanted their privacy,” said Mr. Singh, an undertone of sadness in his voice. He reluctantly concluded he should move out.

So when he leaves the Hub, dead leaves swirling around its fake cobblestones, Mr. Singh drives to the rented room in a house he found on Craigslist. His could be a dorm room, except for the arthritis heat wraps packed neatly in plastic bins.

“In India there is a favorable bias toward the elders,” Mr. Singh said, sitting amid Hindu religious posters and a photograph of his late wife. “Here people think about what is convenient and inconvenient for them.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/us/31elder.html