A gay farmworker in Salinas was tired of fellow employees teasing him. A UC Santa Cruz student needed help paying his bills because relatives opposed his sexual orientation and would not help him out.
Abel Murillo, director of the Diversity Center's new Latino Outreach Program, talked to the Salinas man's boss to quell the intimidation and is working to solve the student's financial problems. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Amalia Dominguez was 18 and desperate and knew exactly what to ask for at the small, family-run pharmacy in the heart of Washington Heights, the thriving Dominican enclave in northern Manhattan. "I need to bring down my period," she recalled saying in Spanish, using a euphemism that the pharmacist understood instantly.
It was 12 years ago, but the memory remains vivid: She was handed a packet of pills. They were small and white, $30 for 12. Dominguez, two or three months pregnant, went to a fr
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Bill Richardson's withdrawal from his commerce secretary nomination Sunday didn't just leave a major gap in the new administration, but it also sorely disappointed Latinos who view the New Mexico governor as their most prominent representative.
"We are hugely disappointed. It's a stunned community out there," said Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. READ FULL STORYRead more…
After the withdrawal of Bill Richardson's name as an Obama administration Cabinet nominee, Hispanic leaders say they expect the president-elect to name another Latino to head the Commerce Department.
An Obama transition team source said a veteran California congressman, Xavier Becerra, has emerged as the leading congressional candidate to replace Richardson, the Hispanic governor of New Mexico, as President-elect Barack Obama's choice for a job that will include overseeing the 2010 U.S. Census
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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