Korean Immigrants Sickened by Nursing Fraud
Bridges - Ethnic Media Digest
NCM, News Digest, Compiled and Edited by Pueng Vongs, Posted: May 30, 2003
"Bridges" is a weekly report on news and views from the ethnic press and communities.
- Korean Immigrants Sickened by Nursing Fraud
- African Americans Bridge Gap with Black Immigrants
- Asian Americans Fighting Depictions of 'SARS Nation'
- Latino Christian Radio Grows in California
Korean Immigrants Sickened by Nursing Fraud
Korean immigrants, told by phony employment brokers that they will be guaranteed jobs and green cards if they study for a U.S. registered nursing license, are finding reality is a little less rosy, reports the Korea Times in Los Angeles.
Many pay the fraudulent brokers a sum of $1,000 to $5,000 to enroll in programs that train and prepare aspiring nurses for the Registered Nursing license exam. After many enrollees pass the exam, they are often turned away for jobs at hospitals because they do not speak proficient English, according to Kee-sook Kwon, president of the Korean American Nurses Association in Southern California.
The association has been inundated with calls from those cheated by the brokers -- many based in Los Angeles' Koreatown. The US has long been a popular destination for nurses from Asian countries.
African Americans Bridge Gap with Black Immigrants
Black leaders are trying to head off growing tensions between African Americans and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, reports the San Francisco black weekly Sun-Reporter. A major source of the friction is the perception that black immigrants receive more economic opportunities.
The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation recently held a conference to discuss ways to bridge the gap between the two groups. Latest census figures show the typical black immigrant earned more than the average African American. Additionally, the unemployment rate for black immigrants was half the rate for African Americans at 10.2 percent. While many immigrants from Africa tend to come with more education compared to African Americans, attendees at the conference emphasized that all blacks in America must overcome the same racial disparities in housing, education and health care.
Black immigrants are among the fastest growing populations in the United States. Arrivals from the Caribbean or West Indies have more than tripled between 1980 and 2000 to 1.5 million, and the number of immigrants from sub Saharan African countries such as Nigeria or Ghana has increased six-fold from two decades earlier to 537,000.
In an action that may signal a new trend, a pair of business partners tired of watching blacks denied business loans, have decided to take matters in their own hands and opened their own lending practice, reports the Sacramento Observer. Keith Caldwell and Chris Thomas with more than 35 years experience in the financial lending business have created Loan Brokers, which they say will fund proposals in the community that may have been turned down by other banks. "If they don't automatically fit into somebody's lending criteria, we are going to say 'hey don't just give up, we will work with you,'" said Thomas.
Asian Americans Fighting Depictions of 'SARS Nation'
Fighting a tide of what they call the racial profiling of Asians due to SARS, two Bay Area Chinese Americans have launched an Internet campaign to protest a recent magazine cover calling China "SARS Nation," reports the Chinese language Sing Tao Daily.
In its cover story of May 5, the Asia edition of Time magazine includes a flag of China superimposed with an X -ray of lungs with pneumonia. When Wang Yu and Chen Lei Qing received the message from friends in Shanghai, they created a petition on the web site www.shanghaining.com, which has collected more than 100 signatures in a span of three days. The webmasters have sent a formal complaint to the magazine's editorial offices.
AAJA Media Watch, a publication of the Asian American Journalists Association, said the Associated Press issued a correction to a May 22 story about SARS where the reporter quoted World Health Organization official Dr. David Heymann making a statement with derogatory implications.
The Associated Press quoted Heymann as using the phrase "three chinks a month in the chain" in describing the way the virus was transmitted. Heymann said he used the phrase "three links."
Latino Christian Radio Grows in California
A Spanish-language radio chain with Christian programming has added another station to its growing list of properties by buying an AM station in San Diego for $10 million, Enlace reports.
The Latino Christian radio chain, Los Angeles-based Hi-Favor, purchased KSDO AM 1130, which will change its programming from news and talk in English to a mixture of Christian music and talk in Spanish, said the Spanish-language weekly in its edition running to May 29. Hi-Favor already owns 22 other stations in California with the same format.
Another company, the Camarillo, Calif.-based Radio Nueva Vida (www.nuevavida.com), which also broadcasts on the web, handles the programming for all these stations and has been broadcasting its evangelical message since 1987. "We are motivated by our Christian faith," Hi-Favor President Roland Hinz told Enlace. "We consider San Diego as a vehicle for accessing many of the Latinos who arrive in this country, and this is our way of connecting them to the gospel."
Census estimates show that 27 percent of San Diego County's population of 3 million is Latino.
On the Nueva Vida website, an e-mail from Downey, Calif. is posted: "The listeners of Nueva Vida can taste from the source of honey that sweetens the heart," the listener says.
Kapson Lee, Marcelo Ballve and Kai Lui contributed to this report.
Page 1 of 1
|
-->
