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Florida Senate Moves State One Step Closer to Becoming the Next Arizona

1:24 pm By Maegan La Mala · Florida|Immigration · 1 Comment

4 May 2011

In a move called quiet by some, sneaky by others, The Florida Senate passed Senate Bill 2040 today 23-16 without debate. The bill, the state’s own version of the “show me your papers” anti-immigrant legislation passed in Arizona and other states, requires police to verify a person’s immigration status if they suspect the person is undocumented. The bill also requires employers to use the flawed employment verification system, E-Verify.

In anticipation of the vote, some Latino advocacy organizations vowed to use economic pressure in protest of the bill including, but not limited to a boycott. Given the lawsuits against SB1070 in Arizona and the recently announced lawsuit in Utah, the financial cost to the Sunshine State if the bill become law could be huge. That is to say nothing of the costs to the various and diverse Latino communities across Florida.

Quick Link: SB 1070 Florida Style

11:45 am By la Macha · arizona|Florida|Immigration · 2 Comments

20 Oct 2010

Just saw this over at Change.org:

Tim Elfrink at Miami New Times (full disclosure: I work for the paper) reports that the law drafted by Florida state representative William Snyder, and supported by GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott, includes a clause that “Even if an officer has ‘reasonable suspicions’ over a person’s immigration status … a person will be ‘presumed to be legally in the United States’ if he or she provides ‘a Canadian passport’ or a passport from any ‘visa waiver country.’” Elfrink points out that aside from four Asian countries, all other visa waiver countries are located in Western Europe.

What the…? Yep, that’s right. The Florida law in a nutshell: If you’re a white non-Hispanic, you’re presumed to be in the country legally and don’t need to show any proof. If you belong in the “all others” category, better carry your papers.

Of course, there’s an explanation for such blatant racism, as Snyder told a radio host: “What we’re doing there is trying to be sensitive to Canadians. We have an enormous amount of … Canadians wintering here in Florida … That language is comfort language.”

Ah, yes tons of Canadians wintering here in Florida … along with MILLIONS of South Americans. In the biggest tourism destination in the state, Miami, people from South America comprise 52% of the visitors alone. That’s not even counting tourists from Central America and the Caribbean. These are people with plenty of disposable income, and plenty of tourism options. If Florida became a state suspicious of Latinos, they would just take their billions of dollars elsewhere. For a state whose economy relies so heavily on tourism, especially from Latin America, you’d think politicians would be a little bit more worried about making everyone feel comfortable. But that’s what makes it obvious this little clause isn’t about tourism at all. It’s about using every thin veil and pretense possible to try to legalize racial profiling.

Things just get ever better, don’t they?
Read the whole thing here.

Texas and Florida Face Physican Shortages

2:12 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Health · Comments Off

18 Nov 2008

Pointing to at least one reason why Latin@s are inclined to head in the direction of non-Western medicine, the Kaiser Foundation released a study detailing an extreme shortage of physicians in the Texas and Florida areas:

Access to care is a particularly “dire” issue for Hispanics, who have limited access to physicians because they are mostly employed by small businesses and are uninsured, the Express-News reports. Hispanics make up the largest group of uninsured people in Texas border cities. About 66% of Hispanic workers are employed by companies that provide employer-sponsored health insurance, Roland Angel, professor of sociology at the University of Texas-Austin, said. In comparison, more than 80% of blacks and whites have employer-sponsored health insurance (Poling, San Antonio Express-News, 11/14).

I wondered two things while reading this report. First, why are there scare quotes around “dire”? Is the situation not really “dire”? Is “dire” really just code word for “rolling eyes at stupid panicky brown people” (ala John McCain’s scare quotes around “health” when referencing women’s health exceptions for abortion)?

The second thing I wondered is why does the solution that many hospitals have found to this shortage problem seem to be a sort of scary “oh nos!” sort of scenario?

As Central Florida faces a physician shortage, some hospitals are recruiting physicians directly from Puerto Rico “because Puerto Rican doctors know Spanish” and “they are a good cultural fit for Metro Orlando,” which has a large Hispanic population, the Orlando Sentinel reports. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, an estimated 455,592 Hispanics live in the area.

Jorge Lopez — president of Florida Emergency Physicians, who recruits physicians for the Florida Hospital System — has traveled many times to Puerto Rico to recruit physicians. He said, “What we try to do is identify those who have already decided to leave. And when we go, we’re lucky if we can recruit one or two because there are so many other hospitals competing for them.” He added, “They are very competent doctors with fantastic hands-on experience. They are American citizens and bilingual. It’s one of our favorite places to recruit”

After I finished reading this, I felt like screaming “oh nos, the ricans are stealing all our jobs!” Not sure why–there’s nothing implicitly anti-Latin@ in this passage. Maybe it’s just the way “dire” in quotes framed how I read the rest of the article.

What do you think? Are we all supposed to be scared to death of Latin@s stealing all the good jobs? Or does this article really care?

When Families Suddenly Matter in Immigration

11:01 am By Maegan La Mala · arizona|Florida|Politics · Comments Off

19 Sep 2008

When it’s not their mother or daughter, politicians play lip service to family matters and immigration. When it is their family, in the case of Democratic Florida Congressman Allan Boyd and his son, suddenly protecting the family is important. His family. Not the family of the immigrants the 30 year old son of the Congressman was charged with smuggling after federal authorities found people hidden in his truck during a border inspection Sunday in Arizona.

Rep. Allen Boyd, a Democrat from Monticello, in Florida’s Panhandle, said today in a statement released by his office that the arrest of his son, John Finlayson Boyd, “is a family matter that my family and I will be dealing with privately.”

Authorities said two of the undocumented immigrants found in Boyd’s truck told them they had agreed to pay $3,000 each to be smuggled into the United States.

Certainly, the immigrants have been detained, are living in horrific conditions as they await deportation.

Via / Adventures in the Coconut Caucus

Central Florida Latinos Focal Point for Candidates

10:51 am By Maegan La Mala · Florida|Politics|States|US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off

1 Aug 2008

If a new survey is to be believed, Central Florida is where Barack Obama needs to be spending much of his $20 million Latino campaign budget. According to a new study by the non-partisan Democracia USA organization, those votes are up for grabs as the population tends to swing both ways (politically speaking):

“It’s something very interesting, very special here in Orlando and its surroundings: the Hispanic voting population isn’t defined. One moment the majority votes Republican and the next it votes Democrat,” Jorge Mursuli, president of the non-partisan Democracia USA organization, told Efe.

According to Mursuli, the Hispanic population of the city of Orlando has doubled over the past year, making the area a hotspot for swiping up votes, not to mention the fact that

“Florida has the largest number of electoral votes among the states where they talk about the importance of the Hispanic vote,” Mursuli said, apparently assuming that the Republicans stand little chance of wresting California – which leads the nation both in electoral votes and Latino population – away from the Democrats.

I hate to be naive, but I similarly don’t see Republicans standing a snowball’s chance in Hades in getting California. Obama needs to pull the mariachi ads and move out East, where he really needs to drum up support.

Via / Hispanic Business

Lethal injection of Latino tortuous, not instantaneous

12:49 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Controversia|Florida|Justice · 3 Comments

15 Dec 2006

Death by lethal injection is supposed to be one of most “painless” methods of execution of prisoners condemned to this fate. But this apparently was not the case in the execution of Ángel Nieves Díaz, a Latino prisoner in Florida. It took two injections to kill him and witnesses claim that his death was anything but painless:

The execution yesterday of Puerto Rican Angel Nieves Díaz has revived controversy over the use of lethal injection as a method of execution for prisoners in the state of Florida, as the the prisoner needed two doses of the lethal cocktail, which prolonged his agony for a full 34 minutes.
Nieves Díaz, sentenced to death for a 1979 murder, took 34 minutes to die because, according to the state’s prison department, he suffered a kidney condition that impeded his body from metabolizing chemical subtances quickly.

Latino family murdered in Florida

1:01 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Florida|Labor · 2 Comments

13 Oct 2006

Authorities are investigating the gruesome murder of a Latino family in St. Lucie, central Florida.

Two adults and two children were found shot to death Friday along an isolated stretch of a Florida highway, with the woman clutching the two children in an apparent attempt to protect them, authorities said.

Florida Highway Patrol troopers got a call Friday morning after someone spotted the bodies of a man, woman, boy and girl off the southbound shoulder of the highway, the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office said.

The adults were both in their 20s or 30s, and the children appeared to be between the ages of 4 and 6, Sheriff Ken Mascara said. All had been shot multiple times, he said.

“It appears to be a Hispanic family,” Mascara said. “The female had both the children clutched in a defensive mode, in an attempt to protect them. It gives the appearance that they were a family traveling.”

The bodies were found relatively close to the freeway, and no car was located, though authorities say that tire marks show that a car was driven off the road. At the time of this post, the victims’ identities remain unknown.

Via / International Herald Tribune

Florida gets an “F” in History

1:54 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Education|Florida|history · Comments Off

6 Jun 2006

The Miami Herald has an article today about how, despite the very strong Latin American and Spanish origins of the state of Florida (and it’s huge Latino population), the state’s educational system is flunking out on teaching kids about Latin American history — and any other history:

Despite the state’s burgeoning Hispanic population, an education think tank gives Florida an F when it comes to teaching students about the history of Latin America — or any other civilization.

The failing grade comes because the state’s standards for teaching world history are so vague, concludes the study by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which didn’t hesitate to castigate the state.

”Florida’s approach is so superficial that it is, for all intents and purposes, worthless,” said the report, which was released Monday. “There’s nothing glowing in the Sunshine State’s standards, and little worth redeeming.”

A kinder, gentler Jeb Bush?

6:27 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Immigration|Politics · 1 Comment

20 Mar 2006

Jeb Bush is calling for a “more liberal” immigration policy?

Bush told Notimex “we have plenty of people who have been here for many years and they do not have a way to legalize their status. A process should exist to create it”.

“It is not an amnesty, but I think it is important that if there are researchers and capable people all over the world who want to come here to pursue their dreams and they offer a quite important brain capacity for the new economy, we should capture it”, he said.

This regularization must come “along with a more liberal immigration process“, American President George W. Bush’s younger brother explained.

Brain capacity?

Anyone else think this is the world turned upside down? This is too liberal even for a “moderate” Republican. I mean he sounds like Hillary Clinton. Apparently he’s also too liberal for right wing crazies.

This reeks of presidential election bid.

More of Jeb Bush’s position on immigration.

Via / Que Pasa

Gracias to Her For Bringing Libros to Tampa Latinos

3:36 pm By Maegan La Mala · Books|Entrepreneurs|Tampa · Comments Off

16 Nov 2005

When Oceania Gonzalez went to look for quality Spanish language literature in Tampa all she found were magazines covering the latest bochinches. So she solved the problem by saving up and opening up Tampa Libros, the only Spanish-language bookstore in Tampa. The University of South Florida’s Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean gave Gonzalez a well deserved reception last week, honoring her efforts that preserve and expose to many Spanish Language Latino literature. The Cubana’s small but well stocked store carries books written originally in Spanish and Spanish translations of English language books, including children’s books.

Via / TBO.com

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