Immigrant Volunteers Joining Town Fire Departments

There’s good news and bad news in New York state.  The bad news: numbers of volunteer firefighters are dropping across the state.  The good news: in some towns, the opposite is happening because of the increase in immigrants.

According to the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York, immigrants from Central and South America are stepping up to volunteer.

Port Chester Second Assistant Chief Mike De Vittorio, called this wave of immigrants “a godsend.”

The department’s numbers are growing because of dozens of Latinos on the force.  The 2010 census showed 59% of Port Chester’s residents were Latino or Hispanic, with 45% foreign-born.

Village trustee Luis Marino is the first Latino to hold public office there.  He is happy getting involved, bringing in young guys who also want to serve: immigrants from Ecuador, El Salvador, and Guatemala.  “Each day, we’re growing,” he said.  And just to kid the natives, Marino sometimes says, “We’re going to take over.” 

For locals who are faced with a house on fire, I’m sure that’s just fine with them.

For details, you can read the entire story here.

Port Chester volunteer firefighters (source: New York Daily News)

November Doesn’t Honor All Veterans Equally

November in the U.S. is a time to honor the military veterans who served the country in times of war and peace.  As talks on immigration reform stall in Washington, a specific group of immigrants is holding its breath: ones who fought in World War II but whose children aren’t allowed to immigrate here.

One such soldier is John Aspiras, Jr., who fought in a guerilla unit against the Japanese army in the Pacific.  Aspiras is among tens of thousands of Filipino vets who got citizenship through a special immigration bill in 1990.

Along with his wife, Aspiras now lives in Los Angeles, but their 50-year-old daughter remains in the Philippines.  Lines are especially long for immigrants from the Philippines.  At age 86, Aspiras reminds legislators, “I'm not getting younger, if you know what I mean."

One person in Washington may have heard him. Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii is proposing a bill to exempt immigration limits on children of Filipino war veterans.  The rationale: if they risked their lives for this country, they ought to be able to spend their golden years with their children at their sides.

For the children of veterans like John Aspiras, let’s hope members of Congress stop their partisan bickering and push ahead with reasonable immigration reform this month.  Now, that would be a way to honor our veterans.

Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/1azpW81.

Immigration Reform Pushes Forward

On-camera:

Earlier this year, the U.S. Senate passed a compromise bill, S-744, the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act." There are a dozen areas targeted for change.  Let’s take a look at highlights of the 844-page bill. 

1.    H-1B specialty occupation work visas: Increase the visa quota to a minimum of 110,000 and a ceiling of 180,000, an increase in 2-3 times the current limits. 

2.   Legalization: Allow noncitizens who are unlawfully present and who entered the U.S. before December 31, 2011 to apply for Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI) status. Under this provision, applicants would be required to pay a penalty fee and back taxes.  Importantly, DREAMers would be eligible for citizenship immediately after obtaining green card status. 

3.   New Non-immigrant Invest Visas and Immigrant Visas (green cards):     Create a new visa category for certain qualified entrepreneurs who can meet certain strict investment, job creation, and revenue requirements.   

4.   E-Verify: Require all employers to be using the national E-Verify database in a five-year period.  

5.  Asylum: Eliminate the one-year filing deadline and authorize asylum officers to grant asylum during credible fear interviews.  

As of this recording, the U.S. government is in shutdown, but legislators are still hopeful that, before 2013 expires, the House of Representatives will pass an immigration bill for the President to sign into law. 

More information:

The DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) gives permanent residency to children who were brought illegally into the U.S. when they were children. They would need to be immigrants of “good moral character” who graduated from U.S. high schools, and lived in the country continuously five years before the bill's enactment.

Hallowe’en Traditions

The American holiday of Hallowe’en comes on the last day of October.  It is one of those holidays where schools and businesses are not closed, and not everyone celebrates.  However, if you want to join in the fun, I really encourage you.

If you’ve seen Hallowe’en, you think it’s all about costumes and parties.  But where did it come from?

Originally, the holiday is a recognition of November 1 in the Christian church as All Saints Day.  One of the meanings of “saint” is a friend or relative who has died before you.  Hallowe’en comes on the evening before All Saints Day and is spelled with an apostrophe between the two E’s.  “Hallowe’en” is an abbreviation of All Hallows Eve(ning).

In the United States, whether people do or don’t celebrate All Saints Day in church, they don’t usually think of Hallowe’en as a religious holiday.  It is just a day for dressing up in costumes.  Because the theme of the day was inspired by dead people, you will see lots of costumes related to death, for example, ghosts or skeletons.  At school parties and later in the evening, children can be seen dressing up like their favorite superhero.  

Flo (from Progressive Insurance Co.)

Adults often have competitions at parties to see who can dress up most creatively.  Last year, my nephew and niece went to a costume party dressed up as the spokespeople for two national insurance companies, Flo and Mr. Mayhem. (NOTE: Flo is short for Florence. Mayhem means chaos, confusion, complete disorder.)

If you are someone who likes parties or likes to dress up, ask your American friends about what they do to celebrate Hallowe’en.  Maybe they’ll invite you to a party!  

Mayhem (from Allstate Insurance Co.)

For more about Hallowe’en customs, click here.

Here is some advice on how NOT to dress for Hallowe’en.

Finally, here is somewhere to go if you are shopping for costume ideas.

Your Status If You’re Not “From Here”

During our conversation with Tigers catcher Brayan Peña, we learned about his 1999 defection to the United States to pursue his dream of playing Major League Baseball.  It turns out, many others have had this dream over the years since Cuba became a closed society.

Since Fidel Castro took power in 1959 in Cuba, dozens of professional baseball players have defected to the U.S.  Currently, 17 Cubans play baseball for the MLB, including two who defected just this year.  For professional ballplayers, the allure of defecting is to play a sport they love at the highest level—and for the potential of huge salaries.  Coming from a poor country like Cuba, this is a huge incentive.  The downside, as mentioned by Brayan in our interview is the risk of arrest, punishment, and losing all chances to play again.  A bigger risk is the possible harm to their families, or never seeing them again, if they stay behind. So America still remains a symbol of freedom to many, even though we continue on our journey toward a more perfect union. 

One question many of my students ask from this story is: “What is a defector?”  Let’s take a simple look at the ways internationals might come to the United States.

One-way ticket:                    Round-trip ticket:

Defector                                             Expatriate worker

Refugee/Asylee                               Migrant worker

Immigrant

Defectors, asylees, and refugees all move to another country because they are running away from something.  Refugees are escaping life-threatening events like war or famine.  Asylees (people seeking asylum) are escaping persecution because of their political or religious beliefs.  Defectors are escaping a country whose government is trying to keep its citizens locked up inside the country.  

Refugees fleeing Kibati, Democratic Republic of Congo (source: Julien Harneis)

Immigrants choose to move to another country for reasons of work, opportunity, or family.

Expatriates move to another country temporarily—for a few years—because of job training or education. 

source: fotolia.com

 Migrant workers move in and out of an area with regularity, often following seasonal work, with less opportunity to put down roots.

Foreign-Accent Mistrust

There’s news on the human nature front – a new scientific breakthrough that has to do with how we understand human prejudice.

Scientists have shown that the brain responds differently to accents they are not used to. It seems that we feel more at ease with people who sound just like us, because processing those sounds is easier for us - a phenomenon called “cognitive fluency.”

Not surprisingly, we listeners tend to assign negative judgments to an accented speaker, even when the speaker is quite knowledgeable.

On the positive side, studies show there may be benefits to wrestling with language that is difficult to process.  According to the research, making your brain work harder can make you smarter and help you remember information better. 

So, give unfamiliar accents another chance! It’s good for you!

For more details on this study, go here.

Bi-National Couple Married on River Border

A heart-warming story in the news for all of you romantics.

A bi-national couple got married on a Zodiac raft in the middle of the Rio Grande this month.

The bride, Stephanie Guerra is a U.S. citizen, but her fiancé, Ruben Alfonso Fierro, is not.  The couple has four young children, who are all U.S. citizens. Fierro had been living for years in the United States but had not legally immigrated.

When he temporarily left the country, he was not allowed to return.  It seemed the fastest way for the family to come together again was to get married in the United States, except for U.S. border patrol coming in the way.

Here is where it’s good to know the details of the law.  There is an 1848 treaty that allows free navigation for both sides along the Rio Grande, which is the river that forms almost half of the U.S. border with Mexico.

Judge Hector Liendo from Laredo, Texas boarded the couple's raft which is both in the river but technically also in U.S. territory and conducted the ceremony.  Fierro’s family members, who had boarded from the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, were also in attendance. 

Under the watchful eyes of the U.S. border patrol, the couple was legally married, an act which should speed up Fierro’s return to the United States and his family.  Hurray for love and the creativity it inspires in all of us!

For details: http://bit.ly/Zp3fgP

Associated Press Rejects the I-Word

Earlier this year, the Associated Press announced it will no longer recommend that journalists use the term “illegal immigrant” when referring to immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission.

Instead of using “illegal” to describe a person, it is telling users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.

The New York Times recently announced it will also be revising its usage of the term “illegal immigrant.”

For further details on this story, click here.