PHOENIX – Daniel Rodriguez has been a part of the immigrant rights movement for as long as he can remember. He is gay, 27 and a law school student who hopes to become an immigration attorney one day.

Rodriguez has no doubt that LGBT rights should be part of comprehensive immigration reform. But these days he finds himself in an uncomfortable position.

“This is one of those times in which our community has to sacrifice something to have a win,” said Rodriguez. 

In the coming days, the Senate could consider an amendment to the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill that would allow U.S. citizens to sponsor their same-sex partners to get a green card. 

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, said on Tuesday that he would not introduce the amendment in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and intends to present it on the floor of the Senate instead.

LGBT rights advocates expressed disappointment that the amendment was withheld Tuesday, the last day of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

“We are disappointed that Senator Schumer and his ‘Gang of 8’ colleagues accepted a false choice between LGBT families and immigration reform,” said Rachel Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality Action Fund, “when the truth is that including LGBT families from the outset would have strengthened the bill.”

When Leahy announced the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), the controversial amendment was criticized nationally. Some Republicans and Democrats said that adding protections for same-sex couples could kill the immigration reform bill. 

But those who identify as both queer and undocumented, or “undocuqueer” as they call themselves, beg to differ.

“I agree that it could hurt immigration reform but I don’t think that it would kill it,” said Rodriguez, who is the chair of Somos America, a broad coalition of pro-immigrant groups in Arizona. “I think it’s important to discuss it.”

Still, Rodriguez says that if he knew that an amendment like this would kill immigration reform and he had the power to stop it, he wouldn’t support it.

“It’s hard to the point that it verges on being hypocritical,” he said. “We have built this idea of the American dream for equality, for us to be included. It’s really difficult being that we’ve done it for so long, that in order to get there it may be that we have to put somebody down.”

Dago Bailon, the Arizona chair of the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project (QUIP), said the chances that the amendment might pass the committee or the Senate floor are slim.

“At the end of the day, I have to ask if I’m willing to sacrifice my family for this issue, at the end of the day if we can have immigration reform without this. We’ll still be OK,” said Bailon, 26.

Both Bailon and Rodriguez, who have work permits under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, have family members who are undocumented.

The argument against UAFA

President Obama has voiced his support for LGBT rights to be included in any comprehensive immigration bill. But Leahy’s amendment has been sharply criticized by members of the Gang of Eight, including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida.

“It will virtually guarantee that it won’t pass,” Rubio told Politico in an interview. 

Two other Republican members of the group – John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — also made clear their opposition to the amendment, saying it would “kill the bill.” 

Democrats like Chuck Schumer found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Schumer had voiced his support for gay rights in the past, but was unwilling to support the amendment, saying he believed that voting for it would cause the Republicans to walk away from the bill.

Opponents of UAFA argue that under the current immigration proposal, all undocumented people regardless of sexual orientation would be able to apply for a provisional status.

But immigration attorney and LGBT advocate Regina Jefferies explained there is a big difference between getting a temporary work permit and having a chance at a green card through marriage to a U.S. citizen. This last option is not open to same-sex couples, even if they are legally married in one of the 12 states that allows same-sex marriage. 

“People are not aware of the special impact that being in a same-sex married couple has when one of the members is from another country,” she said. “We have too many U.S. citizens living in exile because they can’t sponsor their spouse.” 

Bailon and other advocates believe that an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) could make a difference in allowing same-sex partners a chance at immigration equality like any other couple.

DOMA prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex couples for various benefits including the right to sponsor a spouse for a green card.

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns it this year, immigration attorneys argue that it will open the door for same-sex couples who were married in states where same-sex marriage is legal to have a chance to apply for a green card through marriage.

Yet, that could be an administrative nightmare, according to Jefferies.

“It will be an unbalanced treatment of LGBT couples,” she said. “You’ll have situations in which people from one state or another won’t be able to petition for a same-sex spouse but they’ll be able to do it in another place.”

Paying lip service to LGBT rights

Youth advocates for immigration and LGBT rights like Mohammad Abdollahi, a member of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance and founder of DreamActivist.org, say there’s a split within the movement when it comes to Leahy’s amendment. 

While some national organizations support the amendment publicly, he said, behind closed doors there’s pushback against it.

“Their support is not real,” he said. 

Furthermore, the argument that repealing DOMA would address the needs of gay couples nationally doesn’t work, according to Abdollahi.

Under UAFA, petitioners would have to prove that they are in a committed relationship as “permanent partners.” 

“Marriage law is state by state; we still have to fight every single state,” he said. “If it passes in immigration reform, it’s a federal change, regardless of laws on marriage.”

Devious Maids at play while the boss is away, played by (left to right): Roselyn Sanchez, Dania Ramirez, Judy Reyes and Ana Ortiz

The number of Latino television writers is at an all-time high, says a new report from the Writers Guild of America, West. But, even Hollywood Latino insiders aren’t gloating yet. The numbers are still in no way proportionally representative of the Latino population in the nation.

Latino writers in televisionland have grown from 1.1 percent of staff writers during the 1999-2000 season to 4 percent during the 2011-2012 season. The latter figure represents about 66 writers out of a total of 1,722 for 190 TV and cable shows.

That’s low when you consider that the almost 50.7 million Latinos comprise 16.7 percent of all Americans, and their numbers are increasing faster than other segment of the U.S. population.  

Los Angeles area film industry writers warn that more Latinos creating more Latino characters doesn’t mean that these roles are going to reflect the authentic Latino experience. Latinos in Hollywood continue to be stereotyped, they add. 

“I think the issue with being a Latino writer is when we are asked to play into the stereotypes of Latino characters,” says Shawna Baca, a writer and filmmaker. “I have seen many times where Latino characters are asked to have heavy accents or to play the gardener, gangster or maid. I thought we would have evolved from those stereotypes and, yet, you still see them.”

One example of what Baca talks about is Lifetime’s June premiere of a new drama, Devious Maids, whose executive producer is Eva Longoria. The ensemble cast includes Ana Ortiz (Ugly Betty), Dania Ramirez (Entourage), Roselyn Sanchez (Without a Trace) and Judy Reyes (Scrubs). These veteran actresses portray five maids with ambition and dreams of their own while working for the rich and famous (guess what ethnicity?) in Beverly Hills. 

On the other hand, Latino portrayals of mainstream characters has increased: detective Christian Arroyo in Golden Boy, doctor Callie Torres in Grey’s Anatomy, and Santana Lopez of Glee.

Jesus Salvador Treviño is a writer/director whose TV credits include Law and Order, ER and many other mainstream shows. He also was co-executive producer on Showtime’s Resurrection Blvd., which portrayed a Latino family in East Los Angeles, a heavily Latino area in which Treviño himself resides. This Hollywood writer and director began his career as a student activist documenting the 1960’s Chicano civil rights movement with a Super-8 camera. He also has created a website, Latinotopia.com, to which he uploads the short films he has made of Latino leaders in all fields. 

“I am a Chicano and I am a director and I am a writer and, above all, I am a storyteller,” he says. “And, all of these are not contradictory qualities but rather complimentary qualities that inform each other and make me better at what I do.” 

Treviño says one obstacle that has not been erased in his more than 30 years in the industry is that minorities continue to be under-represented as executive producers. The majority of producers are still clueless about Latinos, he adds. 

He remembers meeting with a studio executive who asked whether fellow directors, Luis Valdez and Gregory Nava, came from Mexico. “I informed him that both Luis and Greg had been born in the United States.”

One reason there are more Latino writers today is because of pressures put on the TV networks by Latino advocacy groups, such as the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which created “report card” ratings of Latino writers employed on network shows. 

The industry is also economics driven, both writers say, and TV executives are forced to take notice of a population that has a $1 trillion buying power and are the largest consumers of entertainment. 

“I agree that we need minority-specific family shows like (the now defunct series) Resurrection Blvd., American Family, The Brothers Garcia, and The George Lopez Show,” Treviño says, “but this is not enough. No, we need to see Latinos as a thorough and integrated part of all American television.”

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Rep. Jeff Flake and Sen. John McCain. Photo by Connor Radnovich, Cronkite News

The political rhetoric and debates about undocumented immigrants has changed drastically since the U.S. Senate’s “Gang of Eight” – two of whom are Arizonans (Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jeff Flake) – started piecing together comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Where once unauthorized immigrants were referred to as “invaders” and “potential terrorists,” they are now being referred to as “hard-working people” and “boosts to the nation’s economy.” 

“There has been a huge shift in the conversation about undocumented immigrants, from terrorists to law-abiding U.S. citizens,” said Joseph Garcia, a former journalist and now the director of the Morrison Institute Latino Policy Center, during a panel on April 17 titled “U.S. Citizenship: The Economic Pathway.”

Garcia tempered the conversation with a dose of reality about the final product of the piecemeal draft bill revealed on April 15 – ironic timing consider that day was also the deadline for tax filing.

“I don’t think anyone would call this Frankenstein monster of a bill sexy,” he said. “But it’s a first step. It’s anything but ‘instant amnesty.’ And it focuses on workers.”

A new study unveiled during the panel discussion at ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism asserts that legal status and a path to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants and Arizona’s approximately 160,000 unauthorized workers could mean substantial boosts to the country’s and the state’s economies in the near future. 

Reading between the lines of the study, it reveals the economic arguments that immigrant advocates have been making: unauthorized immigrants are currently earning far less than their potential, paying much less in taxes, and contributing significantly less to the U.S. economy than they potentially could.

The Morrison study examined two immigration reform scenarios: immediate legal status and a path to citizenship within 13 years, and “non-citizenship legalization, which gives immediate legal status that after eight to 10 years can lead to permanent residency status, but provides no path to citizenship.”

The first scenario that promises immediate citizenship, would provide the biggest economic boost, adding from $174 million to $246 million in additional individual income a year in Arizona. These income increases would go primarily to low-income families, making them more financially stable. The additional income spent in Arizona would have a multiplier effect on the state’s  economy, which could mean an overall economic impact of about $200 to $300 million per year. 

The above economic benefits would not result from a legalization program without citizenship, the study says. 

Another point made was that, once these workers were legalized, their employers potentially could invest more in their training, leading to better positions; there would be more jobs created, more small businesses created, and more growth for our state’s economy.

Therefore, the study explains, a path to citizenship means increased earnings and a more skilled workforce. There is also evidence that the legalization of parents will benefit their children, too. Children from economically stable and legal families perform better in school. A more stable education could lead the younger generation to stay in school and aspire to higher education more often, becoming higher-skilled workers. 

“There’s going to be a labor shortage [in the U.S. and in Arizona],” Garcia said, adding that a path to citizenship and a guest-worker program being considered as part of the immigration reform bill would help ease a national and state labor shortage that could possibly result in an economic recession.

A copy of the Morrison Institute Latino Policy Center study can be downloaded at Morrisoninstitute.asu.edu/Latinos

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Your child’s backpack may be hazardous to their health, according to health advocates protesting the high level of phthalates in products made from vinyl

The protesters at the Disney annual shareholders meeting last month at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Phoenix were as welcome as Wreck-It Ralph. 

The environmental health advocates called on the mega-corporation to stop making products for children that they claimed contained toxic chemicals. The children’s products they targeted were Disney lunch boxes, backpacks and rain coats, some of the most popular items for young students going back to school. 

These Disney school supplies contain phthalates in quantities up to 59 times the safety level for this category of chemical, according to a 2012 report by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice.

“We would like Disney to do what’s right and safeguard our children’s health by eliminating these unnecessary harmful chemicals and plastic,” said Steve Brittle, president of Don’t Waste Arizona, a statewide organization.  

Brittle pointed out that Latino children constitute a large percentage of the consumers of these school products. Disney markets to Hispanics in a big way, and that outreach will grow, according to a Disney consumer analysis. The number of Hispanic children between between the ages of 6 and 11 years old is expected to increase 40 percent by 2015, and marketers will want to develop new ways to increase brand awareness and use by this group. 

Hispanic characters, such as Dora the Explorer and Princess Sofia (although her Hispanic ancestry has been debated), directly appeal to young Hispanics. The entertainment corporation also has Spanish-language websites, magazines and blogs, and quinceañera balls at their Disney resorts. 

Disney has publicly denied that their vinyl products pose dangers. “Producing safe and high quality products is our top priority and we meet or exceed all applicable safety standards set forth by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the FDA and numerous other safety organizations,” they said in a statement. 

Phthalates have been banned in toys because of their link to birth defects, ADHD, asthma and other health conditions. Brittle emphasized that Hispanic women should be concerned, because they have a higher fertility rate than other populations. 

According to test results by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), children are the most vulnerable to exposure to these hazardous chemicals. The CDC also reported that many common housuehold plastic products contain phthalates. 

Other protest tactics used by environmental health advocates include on-line petitions to Disney on change.org and MomsRising.org.

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Telemundo, the number two U.S. Spanish-language network, led the parade when it merged with NBC to create NBC Universal. Several years ago, Telemundo created a cable channel, Mun2 (pronounced “mundos,” a play on “two worlds”), which went way beyond traditional telenovelas and offered a range of bilingual programs, including reality shows. The Fox network followed by launching MundoFox, a Spanish-language broadcast network that offered English closed-captioning on some of its shows. 

Now, both are battling a new competitor – last year the Spanish-language media giant Univision teamed up with ABC News. The network is partnering with ABC News on a 24-hour news and information channel called Fusion that is set to debut in late summer, 2013. 

Some reports say Univision is also talking to Disney to create an all-English news channel for Hispanics. Another sign that Univision wants to be a hybrid language network is that it began broadcasting its prime-time telenovelas with English subtitles. 

This media-merging madness is faithfully following the market research. Most of the Hispanic population growth in the past decade came from native-born kids, not immigration. In addition, the research shows that, currently, only about one-fifth of U.S. Hispanics prefer Spanish-language TV programs. Most, about 80 percent, are bilingual or prefer their shows in English. 

Nor is the Hispanic consumer outreach explosion limited to television. The on-line news site, Huffington Post, has created Huffington Post Latino Voices. Fox on-line created Fox News Latino. Now, CNN, which already has CNN en Español, is forming its own channel that will carry bilingual news.

In the magazine world, Condé Nast and the Hearst Corporation are competing for territory in the Hispanic market. Condé Nast’s Glamour has a new quarterly supplement titled Glam Belleza Latina. Hearst has a bi-annual, Cosmopolitan for Latinas, which will go quarterly this year. Rolling Stone magazine introduced a bilingual insert last fall showcasing Latino music stars, with a different cover featuring Pitbull. The competition for Hispanics also is happening in radio, social media and on mobile platforms. 

Media biggies that were once adversaries are now becoming friends because they recognize that bilingual, bicultural Hispanics are a force to be reckoned with, particularly second-generation Hispanic millennials, ages 18 to 29, who speak little Spanish and would rather be talked to in English.

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Benitez says his career goal is to attend Arizona State University and become a biomedical engineer. The courses he’s taking at Bioscience include engineering, algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry and biology.

But, he also has learned to think critically about major issues such as pollution and global warming.

His school is part of a growing trend of “green curricula” in public and charter schools across the country. California is a state leading in the new educational methods that Los Angeles mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, has praised as “educating the next generation of environmental stewards.”

Around Arizona, some schools are teaching their students to use calculators, complex math formulas and scientific reports to estimate nations’ energy consumption, civilization’s carbon footprints and global-warming impacts.  

“Definitely, Bioscience High’s focus on sustainability has opened my eyes as to how things will look in the future. California also is doing the whole sustainability thing,” Benitez says. “The current course that our country is taking is unsustainable. It’s too reliant on fossil fuels and coal. These fuels are cheap, but there is a cost in increasing CO₂ levels, mercury in the water and acid rain. Future generations are going to have to live under harsher regulations because of climate change.”

Green curricula are the backbone of California’s Education and the Environment Initiative (EEI), which was developed by the California Environmental Protection Agency after a 2003 law mandated it. The EEI consists of 85 units for kindergarten through 12^th grade. Kindergarteners use a Resources Bingo game to learn about drinking water and water resources. The goal is environmental literacy for all state students. 

When fully implemented, the EEI lessons will be used in 1,000 school districts, 9,900 schools and by 6.2 million students. Public and private partnerships will help fund the curriculum’s implementation, accord to the California EPA. 

While students like Omar Benitez are intensely interested in these classes, not all schools in Arizona offer green curricula. The Arizona Department of Education allows school districts and charter schools wide leeway in the ways ecology might be taught. The Arizona Academic Standards require basic instruction in the “impact of human activities on the environment” starting in third grade, but green lessons plans are just an option. 

Benitez says that what he learned at school are tools that his and future generations need to be good stewards of our planet. 

“What I learned was creative problem-solving,” he says. “There are lots of problems in this country that will need creative problem-solving principles to provide solutions. We have to start thinking about how we do things for a more sustainable future.”

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Recent surveys indicate that a large majority of Latinos favor more regulation of gun sales and ownership

Despite media depictions of Latinos as gun-loving gang members, recent polls paint a much different picture of Latinos as gun owners. One survey by the bipartisan Mayors against Illegal Guns Coalition shows that there is strong Latino support for stronger gun laws.

Survey results show that 89 percent of Latinos support regulations requiring background checks on all gun sales, and that 79 percent support a new Obama administration program requiring firearms dealers in border states to report bulk sales of assault rifles. 

The large support for stricter gun regulation in border states no doubt comes from the violence and civilian deaths in Mexico attributed to drug trafficking. Many of the Mexican victims have relatives in the United States.   

The Mayors’ Coalition report also shows that Latinos strongly lean toward allowing states to decide who can carry concealed weapons, rather than the federal government. A bill in the U.S. House would override state authority to set concealed gun-carrying standards.

The gun regulation issue is particularly controversial in Arizona, where a lone gunman shot and killed six people and severely wounded Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in Tucson in 2010. Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly were recently motivated by this senseless gun attack and its aftermath to found Americans for Responsible Solutions (ARS), a pro-regulation organization advocating for stricter weapons control laws. The goal of ARS is to reduce gun violence. 

In Arizona, some think that certain Republican state legislators and lawmen try to stretch the legal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment to extremes. They cite past attempts in the legislature to pass bills that would have permitted guns to be carried on school campuses and the recent order by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to have his armed volunteer sheriff’s posses patrol county schools as ideas that may do more harm than good.

State Senator Steve Gallardo (D-Phoenix) and fellow Democrats are advocates for closing the gun-show loophole and banning the sale of high-capacity magazines like those prosecutors say Jared Loughner used in the Tucson shooting. 

“It has nothing to do with prohibiting a law-abiding citizen from owning a firearm,” Gallardo says. “It’s about making sure guns are not in the hands of the bad guys. If you talk to folks who are gun owners, they’ll agree with you.”

Other polls and surveys also offer surprising facts about Latinos and guns. An analysis of six years of Gallup Polls shows that only 18 percent of Latinos own guns, less than whites and blacks. Who made up the largest population of gun owners? White southern males. 

In addition, an April 2012 Pew Research Center survey showed that only 29 percent of Latinos said it was more important to protect gun rights than control gun ownership. By contrast, 57 percent of whites thought that gun rights were more important.

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Juliet Carrion

In 1989, when the Arizona Hispanic School Administrators Association (AHSAA) was formed, there were about 20 Latino superintendents in Arizona, and only one – Debra Gomez of the Tempe Elementary School District – was Latina, says Jose Leyba, a former superintendent of the Isaac Elementary School District in Phoenix and one of the founders of AHSAA.

Today, there are 15 Latino superintendents, three of whom are Latinas. “So, even though we have made a few gains, we have actually lost ground,” Leyba says. 

In order to prepare more Latinas to become superintendents, AHSAA, through its Nosotras program, is empowering more Latina educators to lead districts. 

Juliet Carrion, a principal at J.B. Sutton Elementary School in the Isaac Elementary School District  in Phoenix, created Nosotras in 2009. In partnership with AHSAA, she facilitates a unique and on-going professional development program for Latina school administrators through a series of workshops at which they receive training in personal and professional development.

She says experienced school-district administrators are invited to the workshops to speak on topics such as: Balancing Your Personal and Professional Life, Interviewing Techniques, Using Data to Make Decisions, Sharing Leadership, Creating an Environment that Facilitates Learning, and How to Deal with Conflict.

The Nosotras seminars originated after Carrion completed a research study as part of her doctoral program. Carrion was among the first 20 doctoral graduates of Arizona State University’s College of Teacher Education and Leadership.

The study used a multi-media website to accurately depict the struggles and steps that veteran Latina school district leaders experienced while moving up the school-district ranks to school superintendency. 

 “Providing the Nosotras leadership workshops over the past three years to women school leaders … has provided us female leaders with a safe networking environment, as well as to further develop our leadership skills,” Carrion says.   

In 2013, the remaining Monday training dates are March 4, April 8, May 6 and June 3. Workshop hours are 4:45-6:45 p.m. The location is the J.B. Sutton Elementary School at 1001 N. 31^st Ave., Phoenix. To register for Nosotras, contact Rene Diaz, AHSAA executive director, at 480-286-6825, or e-mail him at rene.diaz@azhsaa.org. The AHSAA website, azhsaa.org, also has information about Nosotras.

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In Arizona, environmental activists are advocating for green energy to replace the harmful air and ground emissions issued by the coal-burning Navajo Generating Plant near Page. In addition, both Salt River Project (SRP) and Arizona Public Service (APS) utility corporations say they are investing in more green-energy technology for a sustainable future. 

The NCLR report centered on the link between this rapidly emerging market and Latinos, the country’s fastest growing segment of U.S. workers. Latinos will make up an estimated 18 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2018, and 33 percent by 2050. The increase in green jobs has risen to 3.1 million positions, a hike of almost double any other category of employment during the recent recession.

Green jobs, such as installing solar panels and building facilities for wind-energy towers, tend to pay 13 percent more than other industries and do not yet require higher education degrees. As the report emphasizes, “It is in the interest of the country to align the fastest growing workforce with the fastest growing industries.” 

A poll conducted by NCLR and the Sierra Club in late 2012 showed 87 percent of Latinos would prefer to work in clean energy jobs. That same survey also showed that Latinos overwhelmingly agree that clean-energy solutions will create more jobs; 86 percent of Latinos would prefer the U.S. government to invest in renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels; and nearly six in ten Latinos are willing to pay more each month on their electricity bill if their electricity comes from clean sources.  

The NCLR report advises Latinos to seek more information on the green-job opportunities that clean-energy solutions will create as more cities adopt the green-economy concept. 

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Bless Me, Ultima, the movie, stars 11-year-old Luke Ganalon and the renowned Puerto Rican actress, Miriam Colón Valle

It took 30 years but, in February, film aficionados will see a big-screen version of a Chicano literary masterpiece, Bless Me, Ultima. 

The movie is based on the 1972 novel by New Mexican writer, Rudolfo Anaya, and directed by Carl Franklin.

This classic story describes how Antonio, a young boy in New Mexico, learns about life and spirituality from the elderly Ultima, a curandera.   

One of the reasons it took so long to make the movie was because the novel was controversial to some, who tried to ban the book from being taught in schools. 

Anaya’s novel was one of the books banned by the Tucson Unified School District when it shut down the Mexican-American Studies Program. 

Since the book was published, parents in other school districts across the U.S. have claimed that Bless Me, Ultima treats religion irreverently and has bilingual cuss words, according to Banned in the U.S.A: A Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries.  

This book quotes Deidra DiMaso, a parent in Wappingers Falls, New York, as saying, “The book is full of sex and cursing.” 

Anaya, a prolific Chicano author and playwright, told the Los Angeles Times in 2009: “What are these people afraid of? … We have ample evidence throughout history of what happens when we start banning books, when we are afraid of ideas and discussion and analytical thinking. The society will suffer.”

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