Black Colleges Hit Hard Times
Bridges - Ethnic Media Digest
New California Media, Compiled and Edited by Pueng Vongs, Posted: Jan 17, 2003
“Bridges” is a weekly report on news and views from the ethnic press and communities.
Black Colleges Hit Hard Times
Graduates of black colleges are worried about the future of their alma maters, facing a financial crisis, reports the Sun-Reporter, a black weekly in San Francisco.
The 121 year old Morris Brown College in Atlanta recently lost its accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The school is $23 million in debt. Last year the school was placed on probation for failing to have enough professors with advanced degrees. Federal officials are also investigating reports that the college used student loan money to pay off bills. Without accreditation, students will not be able to apply for federal financial aid.
Meanwhile the 102-year old Grambling State University in Grambling, Louisiana remains on probation for the second straight year because it has failed to rectify financial records, according to the Sun Reporter.
Mary Holmes College in West Point, MS has also lost its accreditation and is suffering from failing enrollment and a cash shortage.
HBCUs, which is garnering renewed excitement and interest after the recent feature Drumline, are favored by many blacks students. They say black professors care, classes are smaller, the social life is better and graduation rates are higher for blacks than at larger white universities.
The plight of HBCUs is occurring during a push to urge more educated black men to work in the inner city as mentors. Oakland’s House of Unity in Eastmont Town Center, directed by Eddie Abrams, is working with groups such as Black Men First to turn around the city’s high homicide rate.
American Jews Write Bush
American Jews – usually in the forefront of civil liberties movements – have been noticeably absent from the national conversation about The Patriot Act and its influence on immigration policy. Until now.
Led by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), prominent national Jewish organizations have sent a letter to President Bush expressing “misgivings” about last month’s detention of more than 400 Middle Eastern men (including a handful of Iranian Jews) in Southern California, according to the national Jewish newspaper, the “Forward.”
The detentions took place in Southern California on December 16, when the INS required registration of men over the age of 16 in the U.S.A. on temporary visas from countries designated “state sponsors of terrorism” – Libya, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and Syria.
A total of 12 Jewish organizations representing thousands of members – including The American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith International, the Anti-Defamation League, and United Jewish Communities – wrote that they “have long been committed to responsible immigration policy that has at its core the reunification of families and the rescue of those fleeing persecution.”
In the end, the organizations called on the President to halt any mistreatment or other civil and human rights violations of current registrants and prevent abuses in any future registration, and to exempt a registrant with pending and valid claims for legal status from detention or deportation “unless that individual poses a threat to society.”
Chinese Americans React to Hong Kong Security Proposal
Chinese Americans are concerned about new proposed security laws in Hong Kong, reports the Sing Tao Daily, a widely read Chinese-language publication.
The cryptic "Article 23" allows Beijing to criminalize “sedition, subversion and treason.” While it’s still unclear how the laws will by enacted by the July 2003 deadline, Chinese have protested the proposal from Hong Kong to the Bay Area. Many, not unlike those under new security laws in the United States, are worried about civil liberties. Leon Chow, liaison of the US Asian and Pacific Islander Labor United San Francisco chapter, told the Sing Tao Daily that he was afraid the freedom of unions in Hong Kong in the future will be limited.
Armenians off the US Registration Rolls
In reversing their decision to put Armenia on a list of countries whose citizens are suspected of terrorism, the Justice Department acknowledged the political clout of the Armenian-American community while exasperating American Muslims who can still count 190 Islamic nations on the list.
According to Harut Sassounian in an editorial in Asbarez Daily of Glendale,California, the incident proved to the U.S. government that there is a vigilant Armenian-American community. The White House was deluged with more than 10,000 messages in a single weekend. The successful effort showed the community how they could overcome their habitual apathy and act decisively in a unified and forceful manner.
In the meantime, Muslim leaders here and abroad were feeling defensive and offended. Officials from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia plan on taking action to protest the inclusion of their citizens on the blacklist. Armenia is primarily a Christian country. Pakistan will file an official protest and Saudi Arabia threatened to have U.S. visitors to Saudi Arabia fingerprinted in reciprocal action. All male visitors from nations on the list who wish to enter the U.S. must be photographed and fingerprinted. So far only Armenia has been the only country removed from the list.
Analysts - Free Trade Means More Latin American Immigration
While Mexican farmers staged violent anti-free trade protests Jan.13, analysts said U.S.-brokered trade deals spreading across Latin America will damage agriculture in the region and may send larger flows of job-seeking immigrants northward.
The news that Chile had joined the United States in a free trade deal and the farm unrest triggered by the elimination of Mexico’s agricultural tariffs prompted talk of a new exodus out of Latin America’s rural areas. With the Mexican market suddenly wide open to U.S. fruit, grain and poultry—sectors once protected by tariffs as high as 48 percent— many fear a wave of farm bankruptcies.
In Fresno, California, the weekly Vida en el Valle Spanish-language newspaper published a New Year’s Day editorial calling for a guest worker program to alleviate some of the strain on the Mexican economy caused by the tariff removals. “It could help ease the pressure to emigrate,” the editorial said.
In the Dec. 2002 edition of his quarterly Migration News, University of California at Davis professor Phil Davis highlighted the following statistics—about 25 percent of Mexicans live in the country’s countryside, but farm products account for only about 5 percent of economic production. Latin American and Caribbean leaders, among them Jean-Bertrand Aristide—who focused on the subject in his year 2000 book, “Eyes of the Heart”—express worries free trade will ravage the region’s rural economies, which may not be economically dynamic, but employ millions.
Other countries in Latin America, including Uruguay and a bloc of Central American nations, also want to sign bilateral free trade agreements with the United States. The White House views these agreements as stepping stones to its engineering of a hemispheric free trade zone.
Indian Diaspora - Who Gets Citizenship?
Some in the Indian diaspora, especially wealthy U.S. based entrepreneurs, have sometimes complained that the Indian government regards them as cash cows for foreign investment. Anxious to dispel the image, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee chose the first official gathering of the diaspora in Delhi from Jan. 9-11 to announce dual citizenship for those of Indian origin.
Indian intelligence agencies worry it could be misused by terrorists, but Vajpayee decided to push the measure for Indians in seven countries, including the United States and Britain. This has angered Indians in the Persian Gulf countries who number 3 million and send home millions of dollars annually. They believe they were sidelined because many of them are semi-skilled laborers unlike the more professional non-resident Indians in Europe and the United States, according to Rediff.com, a web-based newspaper in India.
Next up are plans for a similar summit in New York in April to discuss investment in India, said Bhishma Agnihotri, India's newly appointed Ambassador-at-Large for Indians in the United States, reports Sify.com, a popular web portal in India. Agnihotri said his office was studying how the Indian diaspora could emulate Jewish and the Chinese expatriates in helping their home country. The Indian government decided January 9 will celebrate the diaspora every year since it commemorates the day Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa in 1915. Some 1,500-2,000 Indians out of the estimated 25 million spread over 110 countries attended the diaspora festivities this year.
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