This UT student seems to have defied all the odds but one

This story by Carlos Guerra in the San Antonio Express-News is about a student who is the progeny of House Bill 1403, a bill that basically capitalizes on the incredible talent that exists among many of our immigrant youth. The bill was passed during the 2001 legislature and was sponsored by State Rep. Rick Noriega from Houston who like myself in my own work, observed correctly that many of our immigrant youth outperform our U.S.-born youth. 

 I lay all of this out in my award-winning book, SUBTRACTIVE SCHOOLING, a three-year study of a Houston, inner-city high school that allowed me to focus on differences in schooling orientations between immigrant Mexican and nonimmigrant U.S.-born, Mexican American youth. I in fact drew from my research to testify on the legislation in 2001. In Houston, what had been observed is that many immigrant youth had excellent and ranked at the top of their class AND these youth had essentially lived their entire lives in the U.S. and so in many ways, they were more Texan and North American than any other identity. 

 All HB 1403 did was it waived the prohibitive out-of-state tuition so that children from these low-income, immigrant families could attend college, providing that they signed an affidavit saying that they were on the path to normalizing their status. 

 This was well and good, however, because it takes at least 15 years for this to occur, these students--including the first cohort of this legislation that graduated in May, 2005--are still undocumented. These students and myself are now pushing for the DREAM Act to pass in Congress. 

The DREAM Act is an amendment to the Senate Judiciary bill on immigration (amended by Senator Richard Durbin (IL) and it would allow these students to get on a path to temporary and then permanent legal residence if they've either served in the military for at least 2 years or if they have attended the university or community college for at least 2 years. This complicates support for any legislation that is draconian but is a reality nevertheless. Hope that this provides some additional perspective on Mirla's account below. 

-Angela Valenzuela

Web Posted: 03/30/2006 12:00 AM CST
by Carlos Guerra
San Antonio Express-News

Now a senior, 21-year-old Mirla López seems like a typical University of Texas at Austin student.

Her life story, however, shows that she is anything but.

"Times were very hard in the Valley, so we became migrant workers when I was 6," she recalls. "We would go to Georgia or Florida and pick strawberries, onions, cucumbers, whatever."

She went into the fields with her mother until she was 12, when her mother started leaving her wherever they were staying to care for the younger kids.

She attended migrant schools and participated in migrant programs, but through her early high school years her schooling was chaotic and disconnected.

"Then, after my sophomore year, I told my mom that I wanted to stay put someplace, so I could finish high school from a certain place," she says. "So I went to Houston to stay with my cousin and to take care of her little daughter, and my mom joined me there later."

In 2000, she enrolled at Houston's highly acclaimed Sánchez Charter High School, in part because it was close to her cousin's apartment. Also, unlike conventional high schools, that charter school recognized all the credits López had earned in migrant programs, so she would not be demoted for a year.

She did well and, in 2002, when she graduated as the school's salutatorian, she made the news, she says. "I guess because I was a migrant and I graduated with such high achievements."

She had considered continuing her studies at a community college, but a visiting recruiter encouraged her to apply to UT, which readily accepted her and awarded her a four-year Longhorn Opportunity Scholarship.

However generous, the scholarship doesn't cover all her expenses in Austin. Every summer, López returns to Houston, where she cleans homes and offices in the mornings, works the lunch rush at a restaurant and baby-sits in the evenings.

She says she already has enough credits to get her bachelor's degree with a major in government and a minor in business. But she wants to earn a second major in history.

And last year, she publicly revealed another reason why she is in no hurry to finish.

"I came out last year at an Immigrants Speak Out (event) at UT," she says, referring to her very public admission that she is an undocumented immigrant.

"There was a lot of hate, and very nasty comments were being made, so I stood up and said, 'You know what, I'm undocumented, and I work just as hard, if not harder, than every one of you.

"'And I am not leaving.'"

Her admission startled many. And it focused attention on an obscure Texas law under which immigrants may enroll in public universities, and pay in-state tuition, if they meet certain criteria.

They must have lived in Texas for three years prior to graduating and have a high school diploma or GED. If they are undocumented, as are an estimated 280 UT students, they also must file an affidavit with the school promising to apply for permanent residence as soon as they are eligible to do so.

"Yes, I could graduate this year," López says, "but then there is nothing I will be able to do because even with a college degree, I won't be able to work legally."

And returning to Mexico isn't really an option either, she says. She hasn't been there since her mother brought her to the Rio Grande Valley at age 6.


To contact Carlos Guerra, call (210) 250-3545 or e-mail cguerra@express-news.net.
Online at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/columnists/stories/MYSA033006.01B.guerra.1614985.html

http://www.mysanantonio.com/columnists/stories/MYSA033006.01B.guerra.1614985.html

Immigration Debate Wakes A 'Sleeping Latino Giant'

This is an interesting framing of the present awakening. This will be analyzed for years to come. -Angela

Immigration Debate Wakes A 'Sleeping Latino Giant'
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 6, 2006; A01

Drawing on fear of restrictive immigration proposals that have awakened hundreds of thousands of Latinos to political activism, organizers are using popular Spanish-language radio and networks of community organizations to mobilize protests in Washington and scores of other cities Monday.

The demonstrations are planned to expand on a groundswell that attracted about 30,000 largely Hispanic protesters in the District last month, about 100,000 in Chicago and as many as 500,000 in Los Angeles, a surprising display of political muscle from a population that makes up a substantial portion of the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants.

Jaime Contreras, president of the National Capital Immigrant Coalition, predicted that Monday's demonstration at the Washington Monument would draw 100,000 people and that nationally the turnout, in more than 60 cities, would number "in the millions."

"The sleeping Latino giant is finally awake," Contreras said. "This will be the largest demonstration by immigrants ever held in this country."

The movement has emerged as a loose coalition of immigrants rights groups, unions and religious and student organizations.

Organizers are eager to draw other immigrant groups, including Asians and Africans, into Monday's protest. But it is the involvement of so many previously apolitical elements of the Latino community that might prove a watershed in the political and cultural evolution of Hispanics, whose influence has lagged behind their growth into the nation's largest minority.

The mobilization has drawn into the political mainstream the organizations that have sustained daily life in the Latino community -- churches, Spanish-language radio and social groups.

"I'm not sure anybody totally understands this phenomenon. . . . But we are happily stunned," said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a civil rights organization based in Washington. "We're all very aware that this is history in the making, and the country will be transformed by it."

The protests will come as Congress begins a two-week recess. The Senate made progress yesterday in resolving differences that have stalled immigration change legislation, but a vote to cut off debate today seemed destined to fail, probably dooming the chance for a final vote before tomorrow's recess.

With the legislation in play, organizers of Monday's demonstrations can sustain the urgency of their appeal for support.

According to a count maintained by the New American Opportunity Campaign, a coalition of national groups based in Washington, there have been more than 30 pro-immigration rallies across the country this year with at least 1,000 participants -- and often the number was far higher.

The movement has attracted informal immigrant social groups -- including at least 10 in the Washington area -- whose previous focus has been exclusively on raising money for charitable projects back in Central America.

Thousands of Hispanic youths, coordinating their actions by text-messaging on cellphones, have staged walkouts at high schools across the country, including several in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs.

Many Latinos say they were first spurred to action by a House bill passed in December that would make it a felony to be in the country illegally or to provide assistance to illegal immigrants.

"We've always been separate and marginalized," said Carlos Rivas, 46, a burly construction worker born in El Salvador who lives in Fairfax City. "But I think the racism in this country has grown so much it's time to say, 'Enough!' . . . Our community needs us to show that we're here, and we're not criminals."

Rivas said Monday's demonstration is his first foray into political activism.

Several years ago he joined a group of Salvadorans who host parties to collect contributions to build homes for the poor or people with disabilities in El Salvador. Now that Rivas and other members of the association have decided to become involved in U.S. politics, the network of contacts they developed through their years of community work is coming in handy.

Early Sunday morning, they gathered in a friend's back yard in Chantilly to prepare hundreds of chicken tamales to sell in their neighborhoods. It was a typical fundraiser for the group -- except that this time they also planned to hand out a flier advertising the march with each tamale.

While the women gathered around vats of boiling cornmeal, the association's president, Francisco Castro, sat down at a picnic table and began calling acquaintances on his cellphone from a list written on a yellow pad.

"Hey, brother, how's it going?" Castro asked, raising his voice over the cumbia music on the stereo. "Yeah, we have the tamales for you. But I'm also calling because I want you to commit to convincing 10 people to come to this march. And do you think you could also lend us one of your vans so we can give people rides?"

There was no need to explain the march.

Over the past two months, Spanish-language radio hosts have emerged as a driving force behind the immigration rallies. Once relatively rare, the number of Spanish-language media outlets across the nation has grown greatly over the past decade.

Pedro Biaggi, host of the morning show on Washington's 99.1 El Zol, is virtually unknown among non-Latinos. But the boyish, irrepressible Puerto Rican has achieved celebrity status among the area's large Central American immigrant audience after only a few months on the Spanish-language FM station.

"I have five hours to do jokes and stupid skits -- and normally that's my job, to help people forget their troubles," Biaggi said. "But this is a case without precedent. Never have we Latinos felt as insecure and persecuted as we do now. I'm Puerto Rican. But I'm brown, too. I am my audience, and I feel totally committed to helping them."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/email&referrer=emailarticle

Fact Sheet on Recently Arrived Migrants

Check out this fact sheet from the Pew Hispanic Center titled, Recently Arrived Migrants and the Congressional
Debate on Immigration (pdf) . It's helpful in terms of the current debate in Washington.

-Angela

Can You Say, 'Bienvenidos'?

This piece is worth reading and quite thoughtful. –Angela

Can You Say, 'Bienvenidos'?
By Eugene Robinson
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/eugene+robinson/

Tuesday, April 11, 2006; Page A21

White Americans, and black Americans too, are going to have to get used to sharing this country -- sharing it fully -- with brown Americans. Things are going to be different. Deal with it. In the physical sense, of course, Latinos have been arriving for many years, and in huge numbers. In some cities they have sought and achieved political power -- if there were such a thing as "the capital of Latin America," arguably it would be Miami.

As a presence in national politics, however, Latinos have been much less influential than their weight in the population would suggest. That just began to change. Half a million people marched in Los Angeles, another half-million in Dallas, and hundreds of thousands elsewhere yesterday.

The fact that so many undocumented immigrants came out of the shadows, giving up their anonymity to denounce legislation threatening their interests, wasn't the most remarkable thing. More significant was that so many fully enfranchised Latino citizens joined them.

What happens next won't look like the civil rights struggle that African Americans waged -- the nation's two biggest minorities have different histories and face different issues, and anyway it's a different era. I doubt that any single Latino leader will emerge, or even any single leadership group. And the advance won't be linear or continuous, because much of the Latino population lacks full citizenship and thus can't vote.

When I was in Phoenix last week, I talked to advocates of a round-'em-up, kick-'em-out policy on illegal immigration who predicted the protests would spark an Anglo backlash. Maybe it will, but everyone should remember that demography is destiny: Given the youthfulness of the Latino population, xenophobes could construct an Adobe Curtain along the length of the Mexican border next week (they'd probably use Mexican labor) and the political strength of Latinos in the United States would still continue to grow.

There are economists, I realize, who argue that illegal immigration -- mostly from Mexico -- has depressed wages for unskilled labor, to the detriment of low-income, native-born African Americans and whites.

Other economists disagree, and in any case the effect is somewhere between negligible and small. There's no reason employers can't be required to pay a living wage to every janitor, whether his name is John or Juan.

But I don't think the immigration debate is about economics anyway. It's about culture and it's about fear. Among other things, it's about this voice-mail message: " Para continuar en espanol, oprima el numero 2 . To continue in Spanish, press 2."

Many Anglos in Phoenix and elsewhere were surprised by the size of the protests two weeks ago, but the demonstrations were coordinated and publicized in the open, on Spanish-language radio.

Latino immigrants in this recent wave, whether they intend to stay permanently or just work for a while and go home, are learning English but also keeping their Spanish -- and the fact is the United States now has a de facto second language. That seems to frighten a lot of people.

Some academics, such as the Harvard University political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, have warned that unchecked Latino immigration is bringing with it alien cultural values -- that somehow the Anglo-Saxon-ness of the country is threatened. But that ignores the fact that America has been shaped by successive waves of immigration going all the way back to the Pilgrims, and to the first African slaves. The country has proved that inclusiveness, adaptability and change are the keys to unparalleled success. Why on earth pull up the drawbridge now? Maybe the real fear is more visceral than that. Maybe it's that you don't have to extrapolate immigration and fertility rates very far into the future to see an America in which minorities -- Hispanic, African and Asian Americans -- are a majority. To put it another way: an America in which whites join the rest of us as just another minority.

That's already the case in our two most populous states, California and Texas, according to the Census Bureau, with others including New York, Arizona and Florida likely to follow soon.

Don't freak out, folks. It's not the end of the world. You might ask your black neighbors for advice on how to cope.

Dallas Morning News Immigrant Rights March Photo

Here is an eye-witness account by Marc R Hairston of the march in Dallas last .

-Angela

Date: April 9, 2006 7:44:14 PM CDT

Hi folks,

   When you watch the news and see the stories about the huge
(somewhere between 350,000 and half a million people) protest in
Dallas today over the immigration legislation in the Congress,
look closely. Three of those tiny dots on your screen are Becky,
Beto, and myself.  (See attached picture)  We decided to take Beto
to his first protest rally and a good time was had by all.  Some
random observations.

We were going to take the DART rail line into downtown, but were
worried about the crowds coming back.  So we took the car thinking
we'd park on the outskirts of downtown.  Instead we got to four
blocks of downtown and could see the gridlock, so we pulled off
behind the Latino Cultural Center and parked on a sidestreet.

One the way down we saw a steady stream of folks walking towards
downtown on Ross and Live Oak.  Once we got out of the car we
joined the flow.

We tried to head to the Guadalupe Cathedral (the starting point), but
the police were directing the crowd to a point six blocks away.  They'd
already filled up Ross (we got there about 1pm) and were letting that
group move along and getting the newcomers to join at this point six
blocks away.

The paletas (popsicle) vendors were making a killing.  They were
everywhere on the route and at one point close to the end there
were some that had joined the march and were selling paletas "on
the run."

The other folks who made a killing were the t-shirt makers.  No one
was selling any there, but since they'd asked everyone to wear white
the various groups had premade t-shirts they'd distributed earlier,
all of them with sponsor names (law firms, resturants, organizations,
etc.) on the back.

There were US flags everywhere.  We only saw a few Mexican flags and
one El Salvadorean flag.  There was a native American tribe there with
their flag and dancing in costume.

This was definitely a family affair. There are not many marches where
about one of every 20 marchers was pushing a stroller.  Most groups
had some small kids with them.  Despite the sun, we only saw one mom
who had to stop to deal with a five year old's meltdown.

There were a lot of handmade signs saying things like "Wanting to work
and raise a family is not a crime" and my favorite: "We are all immigrants,
and so is our government."  If I had thought about it, I would have made
a sign with the best line I heard from a protest in Arizona: "*Real*
terrorists cross the Canadian border."

We went past several of the big, expensive hotels downtown on the
route.  Because of the march the police had closed all the streets
so the guests couldn't drive out.  It may have been an inconvenience
for the hotel managment and guests, but most of the hotel help were
out on the sidewalks cheering us on.

It wasn't as diverse as the organizers had hoped, but we were pleasantly
surprised to see a young woman dressed in a Muslim burka in the march.
As an anglo I was outnumbered by at least 200 to 1.  There is a Spanish
phrase about being a latino in an anglo setting, "mosca en la leche" or
"A fly in the milk."  Well I must have been a lump of non-dairy creamer
in the latte.

There was only one counter demostration we saw.  In a parking lot across
from the Trammel Crow building there was group of nine people with a
loudspeaker and signs like "Illegal = Criminal."  There were about
15 police officers around them and 30 feet of open space behind a
barricade between them and the marchers.  The marchers just chanted
"USA!" and "Si! Se puede!" (Yes, we can!) and laughed at them.  Beto
stuck his tongue out at them.

At First Methodist (a mostly anglo congregation) they had set up tables
and were passing out cups of ice water to the marchers.  That was a
nice thing to do (and they were the only outside group on the march
route to do anything for the marchers).

One nice touch was that about every five minutes the bells at the
Cathedral would be rung loudly, I guess like Father Hidalgo did
for the Mexican Revolution.

We walked down Ross to the West End, then doubled back to the City Hall
and got there about and hour and 15 minutes after we started.  We didn't
stay to hear any of the speeches, but walked back to the car.  (We'd
promised someone some ice cream if he didn't whine about his feet
being tired.)  As we got back to the east end of downtown where we
started we saw more buses pulling up with more folks getting out to
head for the starting point (at this point it was two hours since the
march started).  I suggested we go walk it a second time so we could
get counted twice, but Becky and Beto vetoed that.

Final thoughts: aside from one minor scuffle we heard about later between
counter-protestors and some marchers at City Hall, there were no problems
with the march (and even that didn't result in any arrests).  They managed
to get half a million folks in and out of downtown in one afternoon
peacefully and efficiently.  This is now officially the largest event
that has ever occurred in downtown Dallas (bigger even than the Superbowl
parades they've had for the Cowboys).  The news at 5:30 was commenting on
how deserted downtown was already.  I pointed out to Becky that this was
because *nothing* happens in downtown Dallas on Sunday afternoons.  ^_^
And finally, the Texas Democrats have been trying for decades to motivate,
mobilize, and politicize the latino population here, but with only so-so
results.  But with a single bill, the Republicans have succeeded in doing
all the hard work for us.  Thanks guys!


Photo: Dallas Morning News

National Immigration Law Center Overview on Immigration 3/30/06

Here’s a pretty good summary of where things stand from the National Immigration Law Center (www.nilc.org). The legislative sub-parts may be obtained here. It’s all so complex and is going to undergo change this week as well. This nevertheless provides a good overview. -Angela

Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Sweeping Immigration Bill
March 30, 2006
BACKGROUND

On Monday, March 27, 2006, the Senate Judiciary Committee completed the markup of Chairman Arlen Specter’s (R-PA) proposed immigration legislation (the chairman’s mark) entitled the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006.”

The bill’s highlights include: a pathway to legalization for the millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.; reduction of the family immigration backlog, a temporary worker program; the DREAM Act which would allow undocumented students who have grown up in this country a pathway to legal status so that they can complete their education and get on with their lives; and a modified version of the AgJOBS bill which would provide legal status for certain agricultural workers. Significantly, the Judiciary Committee bill eliminated a provision in the chairman’s mark that would make being in unlawful status a crime, and it provided a humanitarian exception for provisions that would penalize some assistance to undocumented immigrants.

However, the Judiciary Committee bill includes many harsh enforcement provisions that are of great concern to immigrants. Some were part of the original Specter bill. Others were added by amendments offered in committee.

The legalization and temporary worker provisions in the Judiciary Committee bill were elements of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act (SAOIA) (S. 1033) introduced in 2005 by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA). These provisions, while a step forward in comprehensive immigration reform, retain flaws we described when the bill was first introduced. See An Analysis of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005.

Approval of the Judiciary Committee bill came on the heels of massive public demonstrations across the country calling for legalization of undocumented immigrants and denouncing punitive enforcement-only bills such as H.R. 4437, passed by the House of Representatives in December 2005. In the past few weeks, almost a million immigrants and their allies have held marches in Milwaukee, Tennessee, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and elsewhere. In Los Angeles alone, at least 500,000 people marched through the streets of downtown. These expressions of community sentiment appear to have played a pivotal role in shifting the Senate debate.

The Judiciary Committee’s swift completion of a bill followed a threat by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) that he would invoke a rarely used parliamentary procedure to bypass the committee and bring his own punitive enforcement-only bill to the Senate floor if the committee was unable to complete its work by Monday, March 27th. Although the deadline had not yet expired, Sen. Frist took pre-emptive action and introduced his enforcement-only bill on March 16. The Frist bill, “Securing America’s Borders Act” (S. 2454), contains many punitive provisions from the chairman’s mark, as well as some added sections addressing highly skilled immigrants and limitations on judicial review. However, the bill does not provide any legal immigration reforms, such as a path to legal status, reductions of the family immigration backlog, or any kind of a temporary worker program.

Debate on immigration reform has now begun in the Senate. By agreement with the Senate leadership, the Judiciary Committee bill has been offered as a substitute for the Frist bill. Motions to limit debate on both bills will be filed next week, as well as amendments to improve the bills or make them even more punitive. At least 60 senators must vote to limit debate. If neither bill achieves this vote, then Senate action on immigration reform will be at a stalemate.

LEGALIZATION PROVISIONS

The bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee included the earned legalization provisions within Title VII of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. Under SAOIA, undocumented immigrants who were working in the U.S. on January 7, 2004 could qualify for temporary lawful status for 6 years if they pay a $1,000 fine and fees, have complied with tax filing requirements, have not committed certain crimes, and understand or are studying English, U.S. civics and history. After the 6-year period, applicants who have worked or studied continuously and meet the other requirements of the bill would be able to adjust to lawful permanent resident (LPR) status after payment of a second $1,000 fine and additional application fees.

TEMPORARY WORKER PROVISIONS

The Committee’s bill also includes a temporary worker program that is based on Title III of the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. Foreign workers would be allowed to enter the U.S. and fill available jobs that require few or no skills so long as the applicant demonstrates that he/she has a job waiting in the U.S., pays a $500 fee and application fees and meets security, medical and other conditions. The guest worker visa would be valid for three (3) years, the visa can be renewed for an additional three years, and after four years the worker could apply to adjust his/her status to LPR status.

ADJUSTMENT OF STATUS FOR AGRICULTURAL WORKERS

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 would also create a pilot program to allow some undocumented farmworkers to earn adjustment to LPR status. The program was created out of a compromise between advocates for farmworkers and the agriculture industry that resulted in the AgJOBS bill. It would allow undocumented farmworkers who worked in agriculture at least 150 days within the previous two years before December 31, 2005 to apply for a “blue card.” If they work an additional 150 work days per year for 3 years, or 100 work days per year for five years, they can apply for lawful permanent resident status. They must pay a fine of $500, show they are current on their taxes, and that they have not been convicted of certain crimes. They can also do non-agricultural work during this period.

BACKLOG REDUCTION

The bill includes measures to reduce immigration backlogs. Immediate relatives (spouses, children and parents) of U.S. citizens would no longer be counted against the worldwide limit of available visas, and those visas would be made available for other family categories. The number of visas for employment-based visas would be more than doubled. The children and spouse of a U.S. citizen who have applied for an immigrant visa would be allowed to continue with their application if the citizen dies before the visa is issued.

DREAM ACT

Also included in the bill is the DREAM Act (S. 2075), which would allow immigrant students who have grown up in the U.S., graduated from high school here, and can demonstrate good moral character to initially qualify for “conditional lawful permanent resident” status, which normally would last for six years. During the conditional period, the immigrant would be required to graduate from a 2-year college, attend 2 years towards a 4-year degree, or serve for 2 years in the military. At the end of the conditional period, those who meet at least one of these requirements would be eligible to adjust to LPR status and could apply for citizenship without any further delay. The bill would also eliminate a federal provision that discourages states from providing in-state tuition without regard to immigration status.

PUNITIVE ENFORCEMENT PROVISIONS
The bill reported out of the Judiciary Committee contains many harsh and punitive enforcement provisions, including provisions that would:

Make expedited removal (removal without a chance to have an immigration judge hear the case) mandatory for individuals (except for Mexicans and Cubans) detained within 100 miles of the border and within two weeks after entry;

Require mandatory detention of individuals (except for Mexicans and Cubans) caught at a port of entry or land or international land or maritime borders;

Make detention more likely by increasing detention space;

Vastly expand the number of border patrol agents and further militarize the border without providing the protections needed to hold the government accountable for civil and human rights violations;

Overrule Supreme Court decisions on indefinite detention and allow the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain immigrants indefinitely, even when they have not committed a criminal offense and there is no reasonable chance of removal to their home country;

Limit courts’ ability to halt (enjoin) government violation of immigrants’ constitutional and statutory rights;

Make voluntary departure rules harsher;

Greatly expand the definition of passport, visa and immigration fraud crimes in order to criminalize acts such as the omission of information (rather than provision of false information) on immigration-related documents;

Bar persons from adjusting status if they admit (conviction not required) a document fraud offense; even a person who has US citizen or lawful permanent resident family members will be inadmissible, if she admits completing an I-9 form with a false Social Security Number to get a job;

Increase the penalties for failing to file notice of change of address;

Assert that states have “inherent authority” to enforce federal criminal immigration laws;

Authorize the entry of a wide range of civil immigration records into the federal National Criminal Information Center criminal database;

Expand local agency enforcement of federal immigration law by mandating that DHS reach out to states to enter into a memorandum of understanding to enforce federal immigration law (but without requiring states to enter into those agreements);

Unreasonably expand the definition of aggravated felony, which will make even more immigrants deportable and permanently ineligible for legal status;

Broaden the definition of “smuggling,” and include in the definition actions taken outside the U.S.;

Expand the “smuggling” forfeiture provision to apply to any property; a person who invited an undocumented relative to her house might lose her house

Impose immigration penalties on US citizens and LPRs by limiting their rights to petition for their relatives, if the citizens or LPRs have committed certain crimes;

Make the Basic Pilot employment eligibility verification program mandatory for all employers despite longstanding problems with inaccuracy of records, lack of privacy protections, and misuse by employers;

Greatly restrict the documents that individuals may use to prove identity and work authorization when applying for work; as a result, many citizens and immigrants will be unable to prove their eligibility to work;

Use Social Security Administration no-match letters to enforce immigration laws, despite the fact that such letters are often inaccurate, affect work authorized individuals, and lead to wrongful firing and retaliation by employers.
IMPROVEMENTS MADE DURING JUDICIARY COMMITTEE CONSIDERATION OF THE CHAIRMAN’S MARK

During Judiciary Committee consideration, some important improvements were made to the Specter mark by amendments or other action:

The provision making unlawful presence a misdemeanor was removed.

The humanitarian exception to the provisions making assistance to immigrants a crime of smuggling was broadened to cover non-emergency medical care, counseling, victim services and housing.

Refugees, asylees, and certain vulnerable populations would have limited protection from prosecution for the wide range of document fraud provisions.

Some of the retroactive application of punitive provisions was eliminated.

Limited judicial review of naturalization decisions and delays under current law was retained

Title VII of the Specter mark, which would limit all immigration appeals to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, and permit such appeals to proceed only in cases where a judge issues a certificate of reviewability within 60 days, in effect preventing most immigrants from appealing adverse immigration decisions. This title was pulled from the bill by Sen. Specter. A hearing on the issue will be held in the Judiciary Committee on April 3, and some version of the provision is expected to be offered as an amendment on the Senate floor.

CONCLUSION

The future course of this legislation remains utterly unpredictable. It could be improved or significantly weakened over the next week, changing the significance of procedural votes and even of the vote about final passage. Although we recognize that the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act represents a serious effort to make needed reforms in our immigration system, the National Immigration Law Center cannot support this legislation in its current form because of its punitive provisions.

But regardless of how the debate unfolds, it is imperative for all Senators to hear from the pro-immigrant side of the debate to balance the messages that they are receiving. Please contact your Senators each day while the debate continues to express your strong support for a path to legalization and reductions in the family immigration backlog, and your opposition to punitive anti-immigrant “enforcement” provisions.

—Joan Friedland, Immigration Policy Attorney
Monica Guizar, Employment Policy Attorney


TEA won't penalize schools hit by Rita

April 5, 2006, 10:30PM

TEA won't penalize schools hit by Rita
The affected campuses will be listed as 'not rated' if TAKS scores fall

By JANET ELLIOTT
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN - Schools in counties hard-hit by Hurricane Rita won't be rated on their students' performance on state-mandated tests this year, the education commissioner announced Wednesday.


Districts that were closed for 10 or more instruction days between Sept. 21 and Nov. 3, 2005, along with districts in counties designated as disaster areas by the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be listed as "not rated" if their rating drops from last year.

"This decision addresses the significant impact on instruction caused by this event," Commissioner Shirley Neeley said. "Districts and campuses that overcame the adversity and continued to improve or maintain performance are credited with a rating."

Neeley said last month that test scores of students displaced from their home districts by Hurricane Katrina will be removed from the accountability data.

School ratings are announced each August. Last year, ratings were down across the state under tougher passing standards on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

That trend could continue this year as the standards for a school to be rated "academically acceptable" increase for all subject exams. For example, 60 percent overall of the students and each individual student group (black, Hispanic, white and economically disadvantaged) must pass the reading, writing and social studies tests. Only 50 percent were required to pass those tests last year.

This year, 40 percent of students must pass math and 35 percent must pass science for a campus to get the acceptable designation.

Students first took the TAKS in 2003, and schools were initially rated under the tougher test in 2004. Education officials had predicted it would take time and hard work before student performance equaled the levels reached on the previous test, which was used to rate schools for nine years.

Neeley said the standard will continue to increase by 5 percentage points for all subjects in 2007, overruling an advisory group of educators that had recommended no change in reading, writing and social studies next year.

The standard will increase another 5 percentage points in 2008 and 2009. In 2010, only math and science standards will be increased, and the TAKS will be fully phased in.

"These increases acknowledge that more students need to be performing at higher levels sooner and gaps in achievement among the student groups need to be closed more rapidly," Neeley said.

janet.elliott@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3774751.html

Study gives schools tips on Latinos

Study gives schools tips on Latinos
Discipline among staff is key

Pat Kossan
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 31, 2006 12:00 AM

When it comes to helping struggling Latino kids learn, success has little to do with money, class sizes, fancy reading programs, parent involvement or tutoring, a study released Thursday concluded.

Those things can be found at both good schools and bad.

Here's what separates the best from the faltering: principals and teachers who test and retest students, who use the results to teach and re-teach, and who don't stop until they find a way for every kid to grasp the lesson.

Latino students make up more than 405,000 of the state's 1 million school kids. They are a growing population but are lagging behind their academic peers. About 30 percent of Latino students drop out before high school graduation.

The Center for the Future of Arizona, headed by former Arizona State University President Lattie Coor, and ASU's Morrison Institute conducted the three-year study. They were helped by Jim Collins, a former Stanford University business professor and author of the best-selling Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don't.

Collins' book examined why some companies organized themselves into steadfast successes by comparing them to twin companies that stayed flat or burst onto the scene and then failed. The study applied Collins' methodology to compare 12 of Arizona's best schools, in its poorest neighborhoods, to 12 similar but failing schools, sometimes in the same district.

The result is Why Some Schools With Latino Children Beat the Odds . . . and Others Don't. It's a fresh how-to manual created to help schools still struggling to catch up with an education reform movement that successful principals put in place nearly 10 years ago.

Path to success


The report concluded a successful school in tough circumstances is not an accident, or a flashy miracle, and doesn't require a grand change in public policy. Here is what it reported makes the difference in a successful school:


• Disciplined thought: These principals and teachers admitted failure and changed their approach. Johnny Chavez, principal of Phoenix's Larry C. Kennedy School, said he judged himself and each teacher on the daily, weekly and monthly test results of each child. If a child wasn't making progress, Chavez and the teacher worked together in the classroom and consulted other teachers until they found a better way. "You have to have honest dialogue with your staff," Chavez said. "I'm not looking to make friends."


• Disciplined people: These principals pushed ahead despite roadblocks and used their entire staff to find solutions. They fought through children suffering from poverty, drugs and crime. They fought through bad reading programs imposed by districts, oversized classes, underpaid teachers and public mandates that created mounds of paperwork. Juli Peach, principal of Yuma's Alice Byrne Elementary School, said it's not just one hurdle: "It's hurdle after hurdle." For eight years, Peach has fought to keep every adult focused on making sure each child learns reading and math. "It's not anything other schools can't do."


• Disciplined action: The principal and staff select one program or plan, stick with it and make it better and better. Frank Terbush had been principal 17 years at Phoenix's Granada East School when the state labeled his school "underperforming." It was 1997, and Terbush said to himself: Well, that's the last time that's going to happen. "It's not the (test) data that's so important," Terbush said. It's teachers taking responsibility for every one of the 28, 32 or 35 kids in their class. "It's who is using that data and how they're using it."

Comparison and contrast


Since retiring from ASU, Coor has been looking for a way to turn struggling students in Arizona schools into engineers, doctors and business leaders. He asked Collins for help.

The study has nothing to do with imposing business values onto schools, Collins said, because the same mediocrity and undisciplined focus plaguing many schools also plagues businesses.

It is about comparing and contrasting twin organizations, he said, whether they are businesses, sports teams or symphony orchestras, and discovering what makes one fail and one great.

"I see Arizona as a state with a growing Latino community, and if Arizona can do it right, it can be a beacon of hope for the rest of the country," Collins said.

Reach the reporter at pat.kossan@arizonarepublic .com.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0331latinokids0331.html

STUDENT RALLY FOR IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

STUDENT RALLY FOR IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

April 10, 2006 will be a national walk out, boycott, and protest day on behalf of immigrant rights.
Cities all across the nation are planning different events. We felt that Austin should not be an exception. So, a student walkout and rally is being planned for April 10, 2006 from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm at the MLK statue. This event is being sponsored by the University Leadership Initiative and LULAC, and Kappa Delta Chi.

If you want to be part of the history that advocacy groups across the country are now making, please contact me. If you want more details on the events that have been happening, I would be happy to provide you with them. We would love as many student organizations as possible to co-sponsor with us; we are not asking for any money, just the support of your organization.

Below are some links of the marches across the country. They are once again, historic. The country has NEVER seen Latinos mobilize such as now.


500,000 Pack Streets to Protest Immigration Bills (Los Angeles)


Protesters Rally Against Illegal Immigration Bill (Chicago)


High School Students Extend Immigration Protests Into 3rd Day (LA)


Thousands march for immigrants (Milwaukee)

Thousands March To Protest Immigration Bill (Phoenix)

Two recent reports on NCLB and English Language Learners.

Two recent reports on NCLB and English Language Learners. I'm concerned, in particular, by the language dependent nature of the exam, a problem that plagues the testing of English language learners even if 100 percent of them are tested. Moreover, for ELL youth who have been under-schooled in their own countries, offering it in Spanish still not fully beneficial (and most especially if it remains a translated version of the exam). We need more robust, comprehensive measures of student achievement that take the full menu of students' accomplishments into account. Growth measures are also helpful at the school level since the kids begin at different starting points yet schools and districts are evaluated as if a level playing field existed. -Angela

Challenges in the No Child Left Behind Act for English Language Learners

Jamal Abedi is a CRESST senior researcher and a faculty member at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. His recent studies have focused on the impact of linguistic factors and accommodations for English language learners.

The second author, Ron Dietel is the CRESST assistant director for research use and communications.

National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST)/UCLA
You may access the report at this link.
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Improving Assessment and Accountability for English Language Learners in the No Child Left Behind Act

The second is an issue brief by Melissa Lazarin. You may access the report at this link.

Students Sound Off on Immigration

Published: April 5, 2006
Students Sound Off on Immigration/ EDWEEK

School officials cope as thousands protest proposed crackdown on illegal immigrants.
By Sean Cavanagh and Laura Greifner

As waves of students staged walkouts and joined protests last week over proposed punitive changes to federal immigration law, school administrators sought a balance between allowing students to demonstrate peacefully and setting clear expectations that they should return to class soon.

Thousands of students nationwide marched in the streets or rallied in public parks, at state capitols, and in other locations. Some of the largest demonstrations were in California and Texas, but students have also rallied in Arizona, Nebraska, Virginia, and elsewhere across the country.


Holding signs like this one translating to "Yes We Can," hundreds of high school students from Northern Virginia rally on March 30 to protest federal immigration proposals. They gathered in front of the Arlington County Courthouse.
—Christopher Powers/Education Week
Some school leaders said the events were the largest and most quickly organized protests among precollegiate students they could remember.

While much of the activity had waned by late in the week, administrators said they had heard from students and others that additional protests were being planned.

Several principals and superintendents admitted to being taken aback by what they described as an unusually forceful display of civic activism among their students. At the same time, administrators said that in attempting to limit the disruption of classes, they used a variety of measures—from personal appeals to campus lockdowns to disciplinary action—to get students to return to campus or stay there.

At Metro Tech High School in Phoenix, about 400 of the 1,300 students walked out of classes on March 27, heading for a rally at the Arizona Capitol downtown. The next morning, Principal Frank Rasmussen met with about 300 of those students in the school’s auditorium, he said, asking them not to leave again—and reminding them that tougher penalties would follow if they did. The students complied, he said.

“Democracy is not just something where you oppose someone,” Mr. Rasmussen said in an interview last week. “It’s something you work through, and know how to use the system. I think there have been tremendous lessons here.”


Hundreds of Phoenix-area high school students protest March 28 at the Arizona Capitol.
—Khampha Bouaphanh/AP
In the Los Angeles Unified School District, an estimated 24,000 students walked out of 52 schools on March 27, from both high schools and middle schools, continuing protests that had begun the previous week. Officials in the 760,000-student district sent a letter to parents reminding them that students who left during school hours were violating compulsory-attendance policies. In addition, the letter said, they could be subject to criminal penalties if cited by police for loitering or other offenses.

“We cannot condone student walkouts that endanger their safety, and remove them from receiving instruction,” Los Angeles Superintendent Roy Romer wrote in an e-mail to Education Week. “There is a fine balance we must achieve here, but missing class is not the way to go.”

Federal Concerns
The student protests are among an eruption of demonstrations around the country in response to legislation pending in Congress that would significantly tighten enforcement of immigration laws.


Students in Dallas chant and wave Mexican flags as they are transported back to their schools after marching on City Hall the same day.
—Tony Guiterrez/AP
Many immigrants and their supporters specifically object to a Republican-sponsored measure, which passed the House of Representatives in December, that would make illegal residence in the United States a felony. Currently, living with that status is a civil offense.

A separate bill approved March 27 by the Senate Judiciary Committee does not include that penalty. It would create a temporary-worker program and mechanisms through which illegal immigrants could take steps toward U.S. citizenship.

President Bush, meanwhile, continued his call last week for immigration reform that would include a temporary-worker program.

An estimated 11 million illegal immigrants are in the United States today, about 1.8 million of whom are 18 years old or younger, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, in Washington. About 3 million U.S. citizens who were born in this country have a parent who is an illegal immigrant, according to the center.

“These [federal] measures would have direct impact on the futures of these kids, in a very profound way,” said Josh Bernstein, the director of federal policy for the National Immigration Law Center, also based in Washington.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that public schools must provide education without regard to immigration status, Mr. Bernstein noted. The vast majority of school officials have taken the decision—handed down in the 1982 case of Plyler v. Doe—as a sign not to ask about students’ citizenship, he said.

Disciplinary Action
Last week, school officials were trying to sort out the more immediate legal and disciplinary questions emerging from student demonstrations in their districts.

Thomas Hutton, a staff lawyer for the Alexandria, Va.-based National School Boards Association, said he believes all states have compulsory-attendance or anti-truancy laws that might come into play regarding students who walk out of school to join protests.

While schools can’t stop students from leaving campuses for demonstrations, schools also have the authority to respond with disciplinary action, he said. Districts such as Los Angeles were also right to warn students about potential criminal penalties, he said.

Some 30 students in San Diego were arrested last week by police for loitering and other offenses, said Music McCall, a spokeswoman for the 134,000-student city school district. Most were cited and released, she said.

The Associated Press reported March 30 that dozens of Houston students were arrested and a principal was disciplined for flying a Mexican flag in front of a school during a protest over the federal immigration legislation

In Phoenix, Mr. Rasmussen said, he had heard a broad range of public reactions, with some members of the community calling for him to be lenient with students and others urging him to be tough on those who walked out of school.

Students from the San Diego city system faced a variety of penalties for leaving school without permission, ranging from letters to parents for short absences to two-day suspensions for disruptive behavior in class upon returning, Ms. McCall said.

Officials in San Diego and Los Angeles also turned to nonpunitive strategies to attempt to get students back to schools safely. Both districts, for example, rolled out buses to various rally locations to pick up students who had had enough of the protests.


Los Angeles police officers ticket students for truancy on March 28, after the students failed to return to school following demonstrations.
—Lucas Jackson/Reuters
San Diego officials also asked principals at schools with high numbers of protesters to watch them to make sure they were safe.

One such chaperone was Elizabeth A. Cook, the principal at Marston Middle School, who ended up walking for about 90 minutes with students on their way to a rally at a San Diego park. About 80 students from her school left for protests on both Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.

Every 20 minutes or so, she encouraged the students—many of whom were likely to face detention or Saturday school upon their return—to turn back. A few did.

“I said to them, ‘I like the fact you’re thinking about these issues. We want you to think critically,’ ” Ms. Cook said. But she also made it clear that their actions brought consequences. “The law says you have to be in school. …The message is, you have choices,” she said

Vol. 25, Issue 30, Pages 1,18-19

© 2006 Editorial Projects in Education

'Heritage Speakers': Loss of a Treasure?

I'm glad that this conversation is happening in the midst of our anti-immigrant xenophobic upsurge here in the U.S. Language needs to be viewed as a basic human right. This doesn't at all mean not speaking English, but rather that one should not have to give up one's tongue in order to be American. For Mexican Americans, this has been a persistent and historic issue and concern that will simply never go away because their language (as for every other group's languague) is inextricably tied to their identity.

I'm happy to even go beyond this and say that biculturalism and biliteracy are basic human rights, since that's the reality in which so many of us find ourselves. Beyond this, it makes sense from a global perspective wherein we must educate and acquire global competencies, competencies that have been historically available to the the global/upper class but which are for the most part denied to the middle- and lower-classes.

-Angela

April 5, 2006
'Heritage Speakers': Loss of a Treasure?
By Mary Ann Zehr
Dearborn, Mich.

If the United States is going to take advantage of the linguistic skills of millions of children in this country who speak languages other than English at home, policy has to change at the district, state, and national levels, experts in the field say.

April 12, 2006
English Abroad
Many countries are introducing or upgrading policies to require students in government schools to tackle the study of English in earlier grades. Still, many schools struggle to find trained teachers and to institute rigorous and effective instructional programs.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the Dearborn public schools, located in this industrial suburb of Detroit.

Forty percent of the district’s 17,700 students are of Arab descent. Some moved here with their families from Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, or the Palestinian territories, after studying Arabic in school in their home countries. Others are “heritage speakers” of Arabic: They were born in the United States or immigrated here at a young age, but are growing up in homes where the language is spoken.

Though many heritage speakers here are fluent in a dialect of Arabic, they can barely read or write the language. Unless they’ve taken classes in community-run private programs or the relatively few classes available in the school district, they often can’t understand or speak Modern Standard Arabic, the formal dialect used in the Arab world.

Not many U.S. public schools provide the training to build on students’ home languages other than English, even when they have a critical mass speaking the same language. Instead, schools almost overwhelmingly focus on students who are learning foreign languages from scratch.

“At the same time we are talking about developing language proficiency in K-16, kids who are in schools who speak languages other than English are losing proficiency in those languages because it’s considered either irrelevant or detrimental to their academic progress,” said Joy Kreeft Peyton, the vice president of the Center for Applied Linguistics, a language-research organization based in Washington.

Sixteen-year-old Bidour Albiraihy of Dearborn, who moved from Iraq to the United States when she was 5 and speaks the Iraqi dialect of Arabic at home, recognizes how she’s benefited from formal schooling in Arabic. She says she wouldn’t be literate in her family’s language if it weren’t for a teacher at Dearborn Academy, a charter school.

“I never knew how to read and write, not even my name, until I started in 5th grade, and it’s all because of that one teacher,” she said. Ms. Albiraihy is now in her second year of Arabic at Fordson High School, Dearborn’s public secondary school with the most extensive offerings in the language.

Scattered Efforts
The U.S. government’s demand for employees who are fluent in both Arabic and English has skyrocketed with the war on terrorism and American military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Music Video

2nd graders at Becker Elementary School in Dearborn, Mich., rehearsing a song in Arabic with enrichment teacher Sabah Beydoun in preparation for a spring concert.

QuickTime file: 4.2mb
Windows Media file: 2.9mb
To further that goal, President Bush has asked for $114 million in fiscal 2007 to support the teaching of “critical” languages, which include Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian, at both the K-12 and university levels. Of that amount, only $24 million would be devoted to K-16 model programs to develop a pipeline of fluent speakers, according to Ms. Peyton.

Not much else, meanwhile, has happened at the national or state level to support public schools in helping heritage speakers develop high-level proficiency in their home languages.

“We don’t have the structures,” Ms. Peyton said. “We don’t have the teachers and the materials, the curriculum, to teach the [heritage] students according to where they are in terms of language and culture.”

There are, of course, scattered attempts across the country to enhance the skills of heritage speakers. For example, the Center for Applied Linguistics, with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, runs a program in which native adult speakers of critical languages study English intensively, with the goal of becoming fully bilingual and landing jobs in government, business, or industry.

Six states—Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and Oklahoma—specify that students can earn credit in a foreign language by demonstrating proficiency. Such provisions can benefit heritage speakers who learn languages outside of school. Twenty-six other states permit students to earn credit in some subjects by demonstrating proficiency, though they don’t single out foreign languages.

The College Board plans to implement Advanced Placement language and culture courses and exams in Chinese and Japanese next school year, and is also designing a Russian course and exam. But it has no similar plans for Arabic.


Fordson High teacher Nabila Hammami reviews Arabic translations with students.

—Christopher Powers/Education Week

In public primary and secondary schools, growing but still limited efforts are taking place to recognize and improve the language skills of heritage speakers.

Some schools around the country now offer a Spanish for Native Speakers course, which teaches literacy more than conversational skills. They do so at a time when the number of students who took the AP Spanish-language test and said they hear or speak Spanish at home more than doubled—from 17,803 to 41,442—from 2000 to 2005. Heritage speakers of Spanish who took the AP Spanish-literature test, which is much more difficult, grew from 3,853 to 9,062 during the same period.

Keeping the Doors Open
The Arabic program here in the Dearborn district illustrates some of the challenges public schools face in improving the proficiency of heritage speakers.

Dearborn public schools provide classes in Modern Standard Arabic to about 870 students, enrolling more in Arabic than any other district in the United States. But educators here say budget restrictions and policies that don’t emphasize the teaching of foreign languages make it hard to turn out students who are truly bilingual.

Student Voices at Fordson High

Sixteen-year-old Bidour Albiraihy has studied Arabic for six years in public schools. She moved from Iraq to the United States when she was 5. The sophomore always speaks the Iraqi dialect of Arabic with her parents, but can understand almost all dialects of the language. Ms. Albiraihy first learned to read and write Arabic in 5th grade, when she started taking Arabic at Dearborn Academy, a charter school. Listen to an interview with students Bidour Albiraihy and Riehab Omar:
Windows Media file: 0.65mb : MP3 file: 3.93mb

Click to View More Profiles
“People understand the need, but there aren’t the dollars,” said Kathleen McBroom, the teacher-leader for foreign-language classes in the Dearborn district. “We barely have the money to keep the doors [to such classes] open as it is.”

In her view, Dearborn schools could justify more language classes, including Arabic, if the state required all students to study a foreign language. The Michigan legislature is considering such a bill. In addition, Ms. McBroom would like the state to offer certification for Arabic teachers, which isn’t available now.

“It’s finances, tradition, and policy” that keep Dearborn public schools from expanding its foreign-language offerings, said Cheryl Delaney Kreger, the associate superintendent of the district, who oversees curriculum and instruction.

She said the picture in Dearborn schools would possibly change if the United States had a national curriculum requiring children to study foreign languages or if the No Child Left Behind Act emphasized the study of foreign tongues.

As it is, she said, “anything optional is going to fall by the wayside in lieu of core subjects that have to be tested.”

Mahmoud N. Hussein, the Arabic teacher at Lowrey School, a Dearborn middle school, says the community has the human resources to establish a comprehensive Arabic program from kindergarten through college. But so far, he contends, it hasn’t had the political will to do so.

In Demand
Henry Ford recruited Lebanese to Dearborn to work in his automobile factories as early as the 1920s, but by the 1970s, the Arab-American community here still wasn’t big, say longtime residents. Waves of immigration from the Arab world in recent decades have inspired a revival of Arab culture and language in this city of 95,000, however.

See Also
Read the related story, “Dearborn: Modern Standard Arabic Instruction.”
In downtown Dearborn, signs on restaurants, sweet shops, family-run businesses, and charities are written in Arabic as well as English. Last year, the city opened the Arab American National Museum, which features the contributions to U.S. society of such Arab-Americans as the consumer advocate Ralph Nader, the journalist Helen Thomas, and John Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor and White House chief of staff under President George H.W. Bush. Kibbee—a Lebanese dish of sautéed lamb baked between cracked-wheat layers—is a popular restaurant entrée, and gift boxes of baklava are readily available in bakeries here.

Fordson High School started offering Arabic classes in the 1980s, after a group of Arab-American teachers and parents pushed for them, according to Wafa Shuraydi, the head of bilingual education at Fordson and a Lebanese-American who graduated from the school in 1979.


Junior Zeinab Hojeij works on an assignment.
—Christopher Powers/Education Week
Fordson High is the top school in a feeder system that offers the strongest thread for Arabic study. Students learn Arabic in kindergarten through 5th grade at Becker Elementary, can study the language in two of three grades at Lowrey School, and then take more-advanced levels at Fordson. At all three, more than 90 percent of students are of Arab descent.

Nada Dakroub Fouani, a Lebanese-American, brought back the teaching of Arabic at the elementary school level when Becker discontinued an Arabic-English two-way immersion program in the 2001-02 school year after a federal grant for the program ran out. When Ms. Fouani became the principal of Becker Elementary two years later, she set up a program in which all the school’s 260 pupils take Arabic for at least two 40-minute periods a week. In the two-way program, students had been taught half their subjects in English and half in Arabic.

Even if Ms. Fouani’s school had the money to re-establish the two-way immersion program, it would be hard given the 90-minute reading-block requirement of the federal Reading First program that Becker participates in, Ms. Fouani said. The Dearborn district is operating under the assumption that instruction must be in English.

Double the Number
Lowrey School offers Arabic as an elective for 7th and 8th graders. But Principal Samir Makki said he could double from 50 to 100 the number of students studying the subject there if the district would pay for another foreign-language teacher. He would also like to see the language offered in 6th grade.

Students come into middle school able to speak Arabic, and some can read and write it, said Mr. Makki, a Lebanon native who is fluent in Arabic, English, and French. “Why should we lose that treasure?” he said.

The 2,350-student Fordson High offers four years of courses in Arabic, along with similar offerings in European languages. The lower levels of Arabic fill up quickly. Enough students to make up another class are turned away each fall, estimates Rosa M. Scaramucci, the head of the foreign-language department at Fordson. But enrollment drops off significantly between the first and fourth years of study. Only 14 students are taking Fordson’s most advanced Arabic class.


Niyaz Chahine helps Becker kindergartner Kasem Chami with an Arabic writing exercise.
—Christopher Powers/Education Week
Yet five students tested out of the top level last fall, according to Ms. Scaramucci. “What I’d like to do is add an additional advanced Arabic-literature course and a separate advanced composition course for students who have the ability to test out of all four years and would like to pursue Arabic in college,” she said. Ms. Scaramucci said she has recommended that arrangement numerous times both at the school and district levels, but nothing has come out of it.

When students finish four years of Arabic at Fordson, they can read short articles in the language, said Nabila Hammami, one of two Arabic teachers there.

Almost all the students studying Arabic as a foreign language in Dearborn schools speak a dialect of Arabic at home, but their skills in Modern Standard Arabic are all over the map.

Mr. Hussein at Lowrey School says the most challenging aspect of teaching heritage speakers is reaching the different levels.

In a recent Arabic class of 8th graders, he sweeps his hand through the air to encompass about half his 18 students and says, “This side here recognizes the alphabet, and they are trying to put sentences together.” Then he gestures to the rest of his students and says, “This group is new to Arabic. They can understand some dialogue.”

Mr. Hussein says the Arabic program in Dearborn could be improved if Arabic were taught at all the district’s elementary schools and if the study of a foreign language were made a part of the core curriculum, not an elective, at the elementary and middle levels.

“I was raised in Lebanon. I had to learn French. I couldn’t pass to another class until I spoke French,” he said.

Mistrust of Government
Arab-Americans in Dearborn are well aware of the U.S. government’s need for employees who are fluent in Arabic and English, but they are of mixed minds about filling that need.

Ms. Shuraydi, the bilingual education head at Fordson, says 10 of her former students have worked or are working as translators for the U.S. government in Iraq. Those students, all recent immigrants to the United States, don’t have as many job options as their counterparts from families that have lived in Dearborn for a long time, she said. The heritage speakers who take Arabic as an elective at Fordson “have more opportunities to go to college or get a scholarship,” Ms. Shuraydi said.

Only a small percentage of Arab-Americans will work for the federal government because of a lack of trust in U.S. foreign policy, according to Mr. Hussein, the Arabic teacher at Lowrey. “They will work for companies,” he said, “but not for the government.”

Most students in the elective Arabic classes say they are studying the language to speak better with family members or because they want to communicate with people in Dearborn in future careers, such as medicine, dentistry, or social work.

“My whole family knows how to speak Arabic. Sometimes, I have problems speaking with them,” said Hussien Raychouni, an 11th grader who is taking the most challenging Arabic class offered at Fordson.


First grader Ali Tohme searches in the coat closet of this classroom at Becker Elementary School for the folder containing his Arabic work before the start of the 40-minute language lesson.
—Christopher Powers/Education Week
His cousin occasionally teases him if he makes a mistake in Arabic. Mr. Raychouni said he wants to be able to speak his family’s language well.

Students make distinctions when asked if they’d be willing to use Arabic to work for the U.S. government.

“I would like to stay here in the United States and maybe help the government. They may need people in research,” said 17-year-old Mohamad Abdallah, who is also taking the most advanced Arabic class at Fordson High. The 11th grader said he would consider working in diplomacy for the government, but not to support a war. “No war, please,” he said.

Ms. Albiraihy, the young woman who immigrated to the United States from Iraq when she was 5, said she has two brothers and a cousin who are translators for the U.S. government in Iraq, but she’d only be willing to work for the government as a translator if she could stay on American soil.

Regardless of their future occupations, students said Fordson High should provide higher-level classes in Arabic.

Fifteen-year-old Ghadear Shukr, the American-born daughter of Lebanese immigrants, for instance, was placed in the most advanced Arabic class at Fordson this school year after testing out of three years’ worth of Arabic classes. She plans to study the language in college, but will be left with a gap in her studies in the public high school.

“Here I am a freshman,” she said, “and it’s my first and last year of Arabic.”

Coverage of new schooling arrangements and classroom improvement efforts is supported by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation.

Vol. 25, Issue 30, Pages 1,20-22, 24

© 2006 Editorial Projects in Education

Student Protests Echo the '60s, but With a High-Tech Buzz

It's interesting to see how technology has created new possibilities for social movements. What is under-estimated, however, is the extensiveness of both immigrant-based networks and organizing, coupled with the Spanish language media and subterranean wells of historic resentment, all of which culminates into the responses to "immigration reform" these days. -Angela

Student Protests Echo the '60s, but With a High-Tech Buzz
Youths used a popular website to organize their walkouts. And some did know what a 'sit-in' was.
By Scott Gold
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 31, 2006

Shuffling her feet in her Garden Grove home last weekend, Mariela Muniz stared into the carpet and suffered, as teenagers do, the silent deliberation of her parents. Soon, her father nodded and her mother uttered the words she'd been waiting to hear: "Lo puedes hacer."

"You can do it."

The next morning, the 15-year-old sophomore at Garden Grove High School — with the permission of her parents, both of whom are factory workers and Mexican immigrants who became U.S. citizens after entering the country illegally — skipped school for the first time in her life.

Following in the footsteps of those who led the first of the student walkouts March 24 and the adults who organized last Saturday's massive protest against proposed immigration legislation, Muniz became one of a few dozen students in Southern California who helped spearhead a national exhibition of civil unrest, one of the largest and most boisterous since the civil rights movement four decades ago. By the end of today — in Fresno, in Monterey Park, in San Diego — more than 40,000 students in California will have walked out of their schools to protest the proposed reforms.

There is little question that some students took advantage of the protests to ditch school. Some acknowledged they had little idea what all the fuss was about. Others took the opportunity to throw bottles at police and to shut down freeways. Law enforcement officials criticized them for diverting resources from more pressing needs, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told them to go back to school.

But for the small group of students who instigated the walkouts, most of whom hadn't been politically active but were well-connected on campus and online, it was a transformative week.

Using modern technology — mostly their communal pages on the enormously popular MySpace website — they pulled off an event with surprising speed and dexterity. Planned in mere hours on little sleep, lacking any formal organization, the protests were chaotic and decentralized and organic.

They were also a reminder that there are more than 35 million Latinos in the United States, about 40% of them in California. At least 8 million are in the country illegally. But many of their children — including many of the student leaders — are citizens by birth. And they represent a voting bloc that could help shape the politics of the West for years to come.

"I think it is the beginning of something," said Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science at UC Irvine. "You have the foundation for a new kind of Hispanic politics."

Many of the student leaders attended last weekend's Gran Marcha — which brought 500,000 demonstrators to downtown Los Angeles, stunning even the event's organizers — and said they were awed by the event.

"I've always been proud to say that I'm Hispanic," said Rafael "Ralph" Tabares, 17, a Marshall High School student and an organizer of his school's walkout. "But on Saturday, I thought: Whoa. We can do something. And we can do it right."

Others said they were inspired by the recent airing of the HBO film "Walkout," which re-created the Chicano-era school walkout by 20,000 Los Angeles students in 1968.

Since that tumultuous time, many Latinos in California had come to favor quiet, somber assimilation over loud, showy rebellion. To many, the student protests — and the Gran Marcha — represented a reawakening.

"It hearkens back to 1968," said Andres Jimenez, director of the California Policy Research Center at the University of California. "There was a sense of frustration that they saw with their parents in terms of the tenor of the immigration debate. This group is being singled out as a 'problem group.' And they wanted to seek an avenue to respond to that, to show that on the contrary, this group is very much a part of the broader society."

To be sure, students revealed both their youth and their naivete at times. When thousands of Los Angeles students descended on City Hall on Monday, for example, one student said she remembered something about civil rights protesters in the 1960s sitting down during demonstrations. It was a reference to the "sit-in," but it wasn't entirely clear whether the students recognized the pedigree of their decision to plop down on the steps.

"That was the idea of a girl from Belmont" High School, said Tabares. "In the '60s, the way they did it was sitting down. So we told everybody to sit down."

Just as often, however, students evidenced a surprising amount of savvy. They carried trash bags in their backpacks so they could not be accused of littering. They corralled students who tried to stray into stores and restaurants so they would not be seen as marauders.

Tabares even ordered classmates to put away Mexican flags they had brought to the demonstration — predicting, correctly, that the flags would be shown on the news and that the demonstrators would be criticized as nationalists for other countries, not residents seeking rights at home.

Stephanie Cisneros, a senior at Los Angeles Downtown Business Magnet, had to contend with the fact that many of her classmates were concerned about the police in squad cars following the marchers.

"Living in a low-income neighborhood, you just don't have a really good image of the police," said Cisneros, who became one of six students invited into City Hall to meet privately with Villaraigosa. "People thought we were going to get arrested. But I told them: 'No. We are exercising our right to free speech. As long as we don't do anything wrong, we won't be arrested.' "

Cisneros and a few others directed demonstrators to cross the street with the light and to remain on the sidewalk so they couldn't be accused of trespassing. "We were respectful. But we fought for something," she said.

The protest staged by Muniz and two friends in Orange County was typical of the student leaders' efforts.

They had heard about the March 24 walkouts at several high schools in Los Angeles, and decided to launch a protest of their own. On Sunday afternoon, they posted a bulletin on MySpace — since discovered by school administrators, who were not pleased — announcing that anyone wishing to participate should stand up at the 8 a.m. tardy bell Monday and "meet in front of the school."

In the scattered, rapid-fire text typical of students' MySpace missives, the bulletin continued: "dOnt b scared…. All these politic officials are trying to make their dreams come true by destroying ours, AND THEY WILL, unless we do something about it!!"

On the Internet site, which serves as a free-of-charge, virtual gathering place, users can send bulletins to all of their MySpace "friends." The lists can include dozens of people and the bulletins can be passed along in seconds.

It didn't take long before most of Garden Grove High's roughly 2,200 students knew what was coming, without the knowledge or involvement of teachers or parents.

Soon, the bulletin crossed over an invisible but critical line between teens who were friends but attended different schools. Students began posting their telephone numbers, and soon dozens more pledges to participate were obtained through phone calls and instant text messages.

Still, when the tardy bell rang Monday morning, Muniz had no idea what to expect. Teenagers can talk a big game. But would they follow through?

She waited in front of the school. Soon, the doors opened, and scores of students — most of them Latino, but a handful of whites, African Americans and Asian Americans too — joined her. They marched through Garden Grove and Anaheim, picking up students at several other schools as planned through MySpace bulletins. By 1 p.m., they had covered 10 miles. An estimated 1,500 students had walked out. Muniz was a truant — and, to her friends, a hero.

School administrators have since informed her that she'll have to perform community service as penance. Back at her home, a humble ranch-style house with family photographs on the wall and avocados on the dining room table, she said it was worth it.

"Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in," she said. "We did. And it worked."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-students31mar31,0,2965460,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Senators Back Guest Workers

Senators Back Guest Workers
Panel's Measure Sides With Bush
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; A01

A key Senate panel broke with the House's get-tough approach to illegal immigration yesterday and sent to the floor a broad revision of the nation's immigration laws that would provide lawful employment to millions of undocumented workers while offering work visas to hundreds of thousands of new immigrants every year.

With bipartisan support, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12 to 6 to side with President Bush's general approach to an immigration issue that is dividing the country, fracturing the Republican Party and ripening into one of the biggest political debates of this election year. Conservatives have loudly demanded that the government tighten control of U.S. borders and begin deporting illegal immigrants. But in recent weeks, the immigrant community has risen up in protest, marching by the hundreds of thousands to denounce what they see as draconian measures under consideration in Washington.

"There is no issue outside of civil rights that brings out the kind of emotions we have seen," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), one of the bill's primary sponsors, who called the controversy "a defining issue of our times."

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) rushed committee members to complete their work to meet a midnight deadline imposed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who favors a tougher approach more in line with the version passed by the House last December. But once the committee had acted, Frist declined to say last night whether he would substitute the committee's legislation for his own, which includes no guest-worker program.

Frist's efforts to wrest control of the issue from the Judiciary Committee could produce a power struggle among Republicans once the majority leader brings up the issue for debate and votes in the full Senate, probably this week. Specter and the other committee leaders may have to muscle their bill through as an amendment if Frist refuses to back down.

Frist, a presidential aspirant whom Bush helped elect as majority leader, favors tightening control of the nation's borders without granting what he calls amnesty to the approximately 11 million illegal immigrants living in this country. But Bush favors a comprehensive approach, which he says must include some program to answer business's need for immigrant labor.

"Congress needs to pass a comprehensive bill that secures the border, improves interior enforcement, and creates a temporary-worker program to strengthen our security and our economy," Bush said yesterday at a ceremony to swear in 30 new U.S. citizens from 20 countries. "Completing a comprehensive bill is not going to be easy. It will require all of us in Washington to make tough choices and make compromises."

Polls indicate about 60 percent of Americans oppose guest-worker programs that would offer illegal immigrants an avenue to lawful work status, and three-quarters of the country believe the government is doing too little to secure the nation's borders.

But the immigrant community has been galvanized by what it sees as a heavy-handed crackdown on undocumented workers by Washington. The House in December rejected calls for a guest-worker program and instead approved a bill that would stiffen penalties on illegal immigrants, force businesses to run the names of each employee through federal databases to prove their legality, deploy more border agents and unmanned aerial vehicles to the nation's frontiers and build massive walls along sections of the U.S.-Mexican border.

At least 14,000 students stormed out of schools in Southern California and elsewhere yesterday, waving flags and chanting to protest congressional actions. About 100 demonstrators, including members of the clergy, appeared at the Capitol yesterday in handcuffs to object to provisions in the House bill that would make illegal immigrants into felons and criminalize humanitarian groups that feed and house them. More than a half-million marchers protested in Los Angeles on Saturday, following protests in Phoenix, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.

"The immigration debate should be conducted in a civil and dignified way," Bush said. "No one should play on people's fears, or try to pit neighbors against each other."

A confrontation between the Senate and House Republicans now appears inevitable.

"We are eager, once the Senate passes this bill, to sit down and talk with them, but there are certain fundamental principles which we simply cannot compromise on," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who cosponsored the bill that passed the Judiciary Committee largely intact last night. "It has to be a comprehensive approach. As we all know, just building walls and hiring more border patrols are not the answers to our immigration problem."

Specter, the committee chairman, had tried for weeks to find a middle ground between senators advocating a generous guest-worker program and those categorically rejecting amnesty for illegal immigrants. In the end, that search for a compromise failed because advocates of the guest-worker program had more than enough votes to overcome conservative opposition.

The panel voted to accept a bill largely patterned on the measure sponsored by Kennedy and McCain. Specter and Republican Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Sam Brownback (Kan.) and Mike DeWine (Ohio) joined the committee's Democrats to win passage.

The panel's bill would allow the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in this country to apply for a work visa after paying back taxes and a penalty. The first three-year visa could be renewed for three more years. After four years, visa holders could apply for green cards and begin moving toward citizenship. An additional 400,000 such visas would be offered each year to workers seeking to enter the country.

Senators also accepted a proposal by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would offer 1.5 million illegal farmworkers a "blue card" visa that would legalize their status. The committee also accepted a provision by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) that would shield humanitarian organizations from prosecution for providing more than simple emergency aid to illegal immigrants, rejecting an amendment by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) to require humanitarian groups providing food, medical aid and advice to illegal immigrants to register with the Department of Homeland Security.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) protested that the Feinstein proposal was more focused on offering illegal immigrants a path to citizenship than meeting the labor demands of agriculture. Cornyn suggested the Judiciary Committee bill was moving toward creating a caste of second-class workers.

But Cornyn may have summed up Senate fears when he referred to energized voters protesting what they see as amnesty for people who violated the nation's laws and made a mockery of its borders.

"The American people are thinking, 'Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,' " he said. "The only way we can get the confidence of the American people is to convince them we are absolutely serious about border security and law enforcement."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/27/AR2006032700684.html

Massive Student Walkout Spreads Across Southland

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-protests28mar28,0,932535.story?coll=la-home-headlines
From the Los Angeles Times
THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE

Massive Student Walkout Spreads Across Southland
By Cynthia H. Cho and Anna Gorman
Times Staff Writers

March 28, 2006

Nearly 40,000 students from across Southern California staged walkouts to protest proposed immigration legislation Monday, blocking traffic on four freeways and leaving educators concerned about how much longer the issue will disrupt schools.

The protests are believed to eclipse in size the demonstrations that occurred during the anti-Proposition 187 campaign in 1994 and even a famous student walkout for Chicano rights in 1968.

Some principals put their schools on lockdown Monday to keep students from leaving campus, and Los Angeles Unified School District officials said all middle and high schools will be on lockdown today.

Monday's demonstrations appeared to start in Los Angeles but quickly spread to San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange and Ventura counties. Though the protests were mostly peaceful, there were a few clashes and several arrests.

Motorists were left in gridlock as youths marched down Sunset Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, Laurel Canyon Boulevard and other major thoroughfares.

At one point, protesters marched onto the Hollywood Freeway in downtown Los Angeles and two sections of the Harbor Freeway, downtown and in San Pedro, briefly halting traffic.

Students in Orange County briefly blocked the Riverside Freeway and Santa Ana Freeway in Fullerton, waving Mexican flags and tossing a rock that smashed the window of a CHP cruiser.

By noon, thousands of youths had gathered in front of Los Angeles City Hall, with student leaders meeting privately with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The rally took on a festive tone, with many waving Mexican flags and yelling, "Latinos Stand Up!" and "Viva Mexico!"

"It was my dad's and grandfather's sweat and tears that built the city of Los Angeles," said Marshall High School senior Saul Corona, whose father came to the United States illegally before getting a green card. "People like them did things no one else wanted to do because they wanted me to have a better future."

The protests appeared to be loosely organized, with students learning about them through mass e-mails, fliers, instant messages, cellphone calls and postings on myspace.com Web pages. By contrast, the massive rally Saturday that drew 500,000 people to downtown Los Angeles was highly organized, with demonstrators urged to wear white and bring American flags.

Many students said they were marching in opposition to a bill sponsored by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) that passed the House in December. The bill would give police more power to enforce immigration law and would lead to 700 miles of additional fencing along the border.

Even as the students marched, a Senate committee approved an immigration package Monday that would enable some of the about 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country to become U.S. citizens.

As immigrants or children of immigrants, several marchers said they would be personally affected by Sensenbrenner's pending bill.

"If this law passes, what will happen?" said Yadira Pech, 16. "There would be no more Los Angeles High School. Nearly all of us are immigrants."

Added Antonio Chavez, an eighth-grader at University Heights Middle School in Riverside: "Our parents, our families came here from Mexico. We want other families to be able to come here too."

Some students said they did not know exactly what the bill said but believed that it was part of an anti-immigrant movement taking hold nationwide.

"We just walked out because we didn't want to be at school," said Diana Hernandez, a senior at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles. "But we also believe [the legislation] is wrong."

The demonstrations became violent in some areas. In San Diego County, two dozen protesters were arrested in Escondido after refusing orders from police to disperse. Two patrol cars were reportedly vandalized.

In Riverside, a peaceful student protest unfolded downtown as six youths and one adult were arrested across town after scuffles with police clad in riot gear and carrying nightsticks, authorities said. After following students throughout the city and calling for them to disperse, officers confronted the group. Students responded by hurling rocks and bottles at police.

"They're pushing us around," said Pati Sanchez, a Norte Vista High School senior. "People should be able to say what they think."

In Santa Ana, officers used nightsticks and pepper spray to control students throwing bottles and rocks. They also set up barricades to prevent the protesters from disrupting traffic. One student was arrested and a few others suffered minor injuries, police said.

Four adults were arrested during a protest in Van Nuys, but no major violence occurred in Los Angeles County. The demonstrations prompted a tactical alert by Los Angeles police so the department could deploy officers to areas where they were needed.

"They're noisy but well-behaved," said LAPD Chief William J. Bratton as he walked through the downtown crowd. "Let them have their say."

In a district with about 358,000 middle and high school students, an estimated 26,000 walked out of more than 50 Los Angeles Unified campuses. Teachers, principals and school police urged students to demonstrate on campus, but students flooded through gates and onto city streets and sidewalks.

"It's very disruptive," said Ellen Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District. "We want them to express their opinions, but there are venues, there are forums for them to do so. We'd like them to stay in school and get an education."

Not only did the mostly high school students miss class time, administrators said, but the district could lose money if students did not show up. And with postings on myspace.com promoting more walkouts today, principals were doing whatever they could to encourage students to stay on school grounds.

All L.A. Unified middle and high schools will be on lockdown today, which means no one will be allowed to leave school once they enter, officials said. The district plans more stringent measures this morning, prohibiting students from going from class to class as usual.

Teachers are planning lessons on the immigration issue, and administrators are setting aside spots on campus for rallies and sit-ins. Some school officials plan to punish students who left campus with enforced attendance at Saturday school.

In Los Angeles, principals sent notes home that urged parents to tell their children to stay on campus and warned of disciplinary action for those who did not.