Sonia Espinoza crowded among a group of parents yesterday, darted across a room and raced to retrieve her shoe to get a gift for her son from the three wise men.
"It reminded me of when I was little," Espinoza said of a game she played as a girl in Puerto Rico when her family celebrated the day the trio is said to have visited the baby Jesus with gifts. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Two mortgage brokerage companies must compensate 445 black and Hispanic borrowers who were systematically charged higher fees than white clients.
HCI Mortgage and Consumer One Mortgage must pay $665,000 in restitution, according to a settlement between the companies and the state Attorney General.
The state sued the mortgage firms after an investigation of GreenPoint Mortgage Funding, a unit of Capital One Financial, uncovered the discriminatory practices. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Singers Marc Anthony and Paulina Rubio are among entertainers slated to perform at the upcoming Latino Inaugural Gala in Washington, organizers said.
Also confirmed to participate in the Jan. 18 festivities at Union Station are Rosario Dawson, Tony Plana, War, Cucu Diamantes & Yerba Buena, Elida Reyna and Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano. READ FULL STORYRead more…
An Arkansas rice mill has agreed to pay $350,000 after the federal government found the company discriminated against hundreds of women and non-Hispanic job applicants.
The U.S. Labor Department announced that Producers Rice Mill Inc., based in Stuttgart, discriminated against 246 females and 363 non-Hispanics who were seeking work as machine operators or laborers with the farmer-owned cooperative. The Labor Department alleged the cooperative engaged in hiring discrimination over 2004 and 2005.
Read more…
California Rep. Joe Baca has long pushed legislation he said would "open the doors to the American Dream" for first-time home buyers in his largely Hispanic district. For many of them, those doors have slammed shut, quickly and painfully.
Mortgage lenders flooded Mr. Baca's San Bernardino, Calif., district with loans that often didn't require down payments, solid credit ratings or documentation of employment. Now, many of the Hispanics who became homeowners find themselves mired in the nationa
Read more…
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is withdrawing his nomination to be commerce secretary, citing the distraction of a federal investigation into ties to a company that has done business with his state.
Two Democratic officials told CNN the investigation involves a California company that won municipal bond business in New Mexico after contributing money to various Richardson causes.
In a statement Sunday, Richardson said he asked Obama "not to move forward" with his nomination now. READ FULL STRead more…
Being an illegal immigrant doesn’t make someone a criminal—that’s a distinction Elizabeth Young hopes to hammer home to Arkansas residents.
“It’s not a crime to be here undocumented,” Young says. “It’s a civil issue.”
As director of the University of Arkansas’ new immigration law clinic, she’ll lead students helping clients through the dense web of regulations governing those coming to the United States. The new clinic, which opens in early January, comes after Arkansas became home to one of t
Read more…
In Illinois, Latina/Hispanic women are twice as likely as any other race or ethnicity to have a baby born with a birth defect involving the spine.
That's why they will be the focus of National Folic Acid Awareness Week, which will be observed next Monday through Jan. 11
"We need to educate all women, especially Latinas, that folic acid can help prevent birth defects of the brain and spine, said Adriane Griffen, chair of the national Council on Folic Acid. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Crystal Perez never tried to hide her Mexican heritage.
Perez, a University of Wisconsin-Parkside senior studying communications, speaks Spanish fluently especially at home, where she still celebrates her family’s cultural traditions, such as Las Posadas and Tres Reyes, or the Three Kings during the Christmas season.
But in school, at work, and at just about every social setting outside her home Perez was just “Crystal” to her friends, teachers, acquaintances and others. She spoke English wit
Read more…
Growing up along the Texas border, Edward Caballero remembers fearing the green-uniformed agents of the U.S. Border Patrol.
Now, the 32-year old Caballero — a former schoolteacher in the Rio Grande Valley — is one of thousands of new agents who have swelled the force's ranks to more than 18,000, a product of an historic recruitment blitz.
And unlike the Border Patrol of his youth, which was overwhelmingly Anglo, the expanded border agency is now 54 percent minority. Hispanics like Caballero co
Read more…
Nancy C. Andrade is President and General Counsel of Mexifeast Foods, Inc. Ms. Andrade is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago with a B.A. in Political Science and law degree from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Ms. Andrade began her career in the food industry while practicing law at a large Chicago law firm. Ms. Andrade was one of only four Latino attorneys at that time and happened to be the only attorney of Mexican ancestry. Being the resident Mexican “expert”, collea
Read more…
With budget cuts straining California's public colleges and universities, some are worried about the effects on Latinos, who are particularly difficult to recruit to higher education in the best of times.
The California State University system, where more than one-quarter of students are Latino, plans to cut enrollment by 10,000 next year. Although the university still plans to guarantee entry to the vast majority of qualified California residents, the plan could discourage students from applyi
Read more…
With his choice of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as commerce secretary, President-elect Barack Obama broke with tradition, putting a longtime public servant in a position that has recently been held by private-sector executives.
Richardson, who was one of Obama's rivals for the Democratic nomination, has spent almost his entire career in prominent government roles -- as a governor, congressman, United Nations ambassador and energy secretary. Obama cited the range of Richardson's experience in
Read more…
As it prepares to turn 100, the Boy Scouts of America is honing its survival skills for what might be its biggest test yet: drawing Hispanics into its declining — and mostly white — ranks.
"We either are going to figure out how to make Scouting the most exciting, dynamic organization for Hispanic kids, or we're going to be out of business," said Rick Cronk, former national president of the Boy Scouts, and chairman of the World Scout Committee.
The venerable Scouts remains the United States' la
Read more…
Diversity within the group of men -- and still only men -- who have been president of the United States will change significantly when Barack Obama is sworn in next month.
But when he looks across the highest level of civil servants managing the government, he'll see a mixed bag when it comes to improving the diversity of the federal Senior Executive Service. A new report by the Government Accountability Office says representation of women and people of color in the senior corps grew overall b
Read more…
La depresión y la Navidad en ChicagoRebecca Sánchez22 de diciembre, 2008Para quienes festejan la Navidad, las luces resplandecientes, la música alegre y la comida festiva suelen inspirar paz, armonía y esperanza. Para muchos latinos es la época más bonita del año. Desafortunadamente, esta Navidad no será así para algunos en nuestra comunidad. El 2008 fue un año complejo y estresante. El país e Illinois atraviesan dificultades como la recesión, el alto desempleo y la falta de fondos estatales. La
Read more…
Valley’s Latino consumers appear to buck national economic slowdown
It's a week till Christmas, and Itzel Garcia is looking to buy a gift for her daughter.
Armed with a gift card, she decides for a dress at Union Gap's Macy's store. The 19-year-old Garcia says that though there's a recession, she still feels she has to buy gifts for her friends and relatives.
"I guess you still need to buy, you still need to shop around," says Garcia. "You feel so bad not to get people stuff. You just manage
Read more…
What's made up of five women, four African-Americans, three Latinos, two Republicans and two Asians, including a Nobel Prize winner?
The answer: President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet.
Obama is taking the big-tent approach to governing and wanted a Cabinet that stretches the tent wide.
"I think people will feel that we followed through on our commitment to make sure that this is not only an administration that is diverse ethnically, but it's also diverse politically and it's diverse in terms
Read more…
The Asian American Donor Program is launching a new initiative that seeks to register more Hispanic marrow/stem cell donors, New America Media reports. In the last 19 years, the program has been working to expand the availability of potential marrow/stem cell donors in the Asian community, and more recently has targeted Hispanics. AADP holds roughly 300 bone marrow/stem cell drives annually nationwide (Avila, New America Media, 12/14). READ FULL STORYRead more…
New Census numbers show whites no longer in majority in Dodge City and Liberal
Hispanic people now account for slightly more than half of Dodge City's population, leaving non-Hispanic whites in the minority, according to new Census figures.
The Hispanic segment of Dodge City's population has risen to 53.6 percent since 2000, while non-Hispanic whites dropped to about 41 percent, the figures show. Blacks now account for 1.5 percent of the population, and Asians make up another 2.2 percent.
Dodg
Read more…
