I, for one, welcome our new Hispanic overlords. </sarc>
Posted on 11/09/2008 5:26:17 PM PST by Tennessee Nana
KNOXVILLE — Groups representing Hispanic immigrants in East Tennessee joined together Friday in downtown Knoxville to explain their missions and outline their goals to members of other civic-minded groups in the community.
It is safe to say everyone present had an accent — the native East Tennesseans as well as the Hispanics.
The meeting was sponsored by the East Tennessee Foundation and initiated by Gladys Pineda, chair of the Latino Task Force of CEDnet (Community Economic Development Network of East Tennessee).
The Latino Task Force is dedicated to linking Hispanics with businesses and organizations in hopes of unifying to create a stronger community through organizations such as the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, helping to bring banking services and developing leadership within the Latino community. It established the Heroes Banquet for Latino Leaders and Allies that is held in July in Knoxville.
Jeannine Fort De La Torre Ugarte, with the Latino Task Force, said the group is about breaking barriers and building bridges.
"The Latino Task Force is like an antenna imbedded in the community. What is going on? What can we do? How can we solve? Where should we work? With whom do we need to work?"
There was a common theme to the presentations: It's past time to wonder if there is a need in the community to deal with changes wrought by immigration. The need is now and Hispanic leaders are forming organizations to help immigrants deal with issues of education, language, housing, jobs and bureaucracy. Here to stay "It's not a question of whether Tennessee will embrace immigrants -- it's a matter of how and when," said Stephen Fotopulos, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRCC).
Fotopulos is of Greek ancestry and his group serves immigrants from all nations, but the Nashville-based group mostly works with Spanish-speaking newcomers, because they are far and away the majority of new immigrants in the state.
Between 1990 and 2000, Tennessee's Hispanic community grew by 278 percent from 31,075 to 123,838, according to Census data. That does not include the undocumented population estimated at 100,000, and the numbers have continued to climb over the past eight years.
TIRCC was formed in 2001 as a grass-roots operation established to help immigrants and refugees defend their rights and be recognized as positive contributors to the state.
Rosie Noriega, chair of Centro Hispano de East Tennessee, recalled that after she moved to Tellico Village she used to look for fellow Spanish speakers when she shopped at Wal-Mart. She just enjoyed speaking to someone in her native tongue.
"Now, I don't have to look. We're everywhere," Noriega said.
The vision of Centro Hispano is to create a community center where Hispanics would be welcomed by a bilingual staff to help them bridge language and cultural barriers that prevent them from meeting their most basic needs ranging from housing to health care.
Loida Velazquez is education coordinator for HoLa Hora Latina, the oldest grass-roots Latino nonprofit in the area.
It is perhaps best known for the annual HoLa Festival Celebrating Hispanic Heritage that drew 10,000 people in September to Market Square in Knoxville.
Three waves Velazquez put the Hispanic experience in East Tennessee in historical perspective. She said Hispanic immigrants come from 23 countries and arrived in three major waves.
The first came in the early 1970s when employers responded to affirmative action legislation and brought in an educated class of professionals from Latin America to the U.S.
The second and largest wave was in the '90s when migrant workers, mainly from Mexico and Central America, came for agricultural jobs and were followed by people in construction and service positions.
They came to work in Florida and the Carolinas, and some put down roots in East Tennessee.
The third wave started about eight years ago as a response to the second.
"This third wave is formed by people that are coming here because they have one quality that is desired. They are bilingual," Velazquez said.
They are employed by banks, schools, hospitals — any organization that needs to be able to serve the second wave and its growing families.
"We live in a global world and the global world has gotten here (to East Tennessee), and it is important to take advantage of opportunities." Sharing the load
Lourdes Garza is director of the Hispanic Ministry Office of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Knoxville, one of the earliest organizations to serve Hispanic immigrants in the area. She said that as new organizations have formed to fill specific needs, the ministry office has been able to share some of the load with others.
"We're very often the first contact, still, and we're very happy to be able to refer people out and concentrate more on our pastoral ministry that we are meant to be," Garza said.
Jeanet Berruecos Xicohtencatl is director of Latino Ministries in the Knoxville District of the United Methodist Church that advocates for Latinos in the area. She has been here a year and sees more to do.
"We have many positive gains, but I also have to say that we have not gotten, yet, to the point where the American society in East Tennessee acknowledges and accepts the Latino community," she said.
She mentioned four areas that are among the most serious problems facing Latinos: health care, education, housing and obtaining a drivers license.
"As leaders in our community ... and as children of God, we have a lot to do in our effort to get an equal society in East Tennessee," Xicohtencatl said.
So, when were the illegal aliens in East TN going to be counted ???????????
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm ???????????
PING
Tennessee PING
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The latinos are there, and with 0 the illegals will stay. Given that, get the Tennessee GOP involved so that they are not brainwashed by liberal/leftist’s to vote rat.
Still here and still fighting the invasion.
Probably being orgainzed by an agency of the Democratic Party, such as ACORN.
But why aren’t we out there organizing Hispanics? Believe me, the guy who cuts your grass and is building his own lawn service is not going to want to fork over all his money to Obama’s dysfunctional following. We could really build a base with Hispanics if we were willing to try.
TN will be a blue state in 8 years if amnesty is passed.
Northern Mexico continues to form all at the expense of REAL Americans, their laws, their sovereignty, their borders, their safety and the meaning of American citizenship.
How do you convince low income, uneducated folks to the Republican side when the Dems are offering handouts for everything from medical care to housing to childcare to education?
You said it best.
I weep for my country.
At least some had accents in English and not spanish.
Trying to equate the two appalls me.
“Jeannine Fort De La Torre Ugarte, with the Latino Task Force, said the group is about breaking barriers and building bridges.”
“Building bridges” is a phrase I would like to see stricken from our language.
Like I always say...The legal Hispanic population enables and employs the illegal ones and this has been the road to wealth for many of them’
Not all legal Hispanics do this but this applies more to the legal arrivals in the last 25 years. Hispanic communities and families are mixtures of legals and illegals so it’s natural the legal ones that know the ropes help and also exploit/employ the new arrivals.
“THEY SAID WE ARE WATCHING HISTORY IN THE MAKING” They are right, we are witnessing the destruction of the United States of America in our lifetime.
Well, they obviously didn't learn by watching the Soviet Union self-destruct (with a little help from Reagan). Perhaps the inevitable sinking of the economy when the true players take their dice home will do the trick. When the result of ones' labor and efforts is to have the fruit of that labor stolen, one tends to quit performing labor.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
The number one issue facing our country and neither candidate would even address it. Once Barak follows up on his pledge to give illegals a “path to citizenship” all will be lost. When LA mayor Viaregoso becomes our president you can say Mexico has fully taken over.
It’s only a matter of time. Many people that I talk to about this issue favor a path to citizenship. We have lost the argument and the political class knows it, even though we did provide a roadbump last spring.
Must read for people from TN!
The reality is that the Hispanic population in this country is growing very rapidly, and will continue to grow. There is a large, legal Hispanic population that is very conservative by nature. They are Catholic, pro-life, and strong on family values. They share our political philosophy. They are REAL Americans.
Yet, here at FR they get lumped in with the illegals, and the welfare queens. Karl Rove, for all of his faults, tried to warn the GOP that they would need the Hispanic population in this country if they wanted to continue to win elections. Obama is what happened when that advice was ignored. If we continue to equate legal Hispanic immigrants, or Hispanics in general with lazy, welfare dependent illegals, we will continue to lose elections.
I am Hispanic, and work hard to convince my Hispanic family and friends to consider conservative candidates. There is a strong view in the community that Hispanics are not welcome in the GOP. As long as they do not feel welcome, they will not support our candidates or our policies. We need to think before making comments that reflect negatively on legal Hispanic immigrants.
It’s difficult. The Dems have always gotten votes by promising about 10 chickens in every pot, etc., etc. This is still their approach, and immigrants really fall for it. The Jews did, the Italians did, the Irish did, even the Chinese (in CA) did. The ward bosses were right there recruiting in immigrant neighborhoods.
The other frightening thing is that a lot of native born folks seem to have been stupid enough to believe the Dems, and I don’t mean only undereducated lower income blacks. I know young white male union members who sincerely think Obama is going to give them something and that the government is going to take stuff away from their bosses and hand it over to them. Mind you, they’re making at lest $70,000 per year themselves, but they think of themselves as poor.
I think we have all lost our focus. Immigrants only become as good as the culture into which they immigrate, and we have got a fully established welfare state going here now, so it’s not surprising that many of our immigrants are a little confused. In addition, many of them are coming from heavily government controlled states and, while they didn’t like where they lived and didn’t find any opportunities there, they are accustomed to heavy government interference in their lives combined with the occasional government crumb, such as lousy child care or inadequate medical care.
We have to fight to give people (including our own native born citizens) a different view.
I agree. I think these comments have been disastrous and I don’t know what motivates them.
When FR started with all this anti-Hispanic stuff, I thought it was being invaded by some bizarre WASP supremacist group (since anti-Catholicism seemed to be part of it, too). I also suspected that some of the more inflammatory, bigoted posters were Dem plants who were trying to whip up a frenzy among a small but vocal group here and even in the GOP. I actually stopped contributing to FR at one point because I was so upset about it.
I hope that this loss will make some people here and in the GOP sit up and take notice and ask themselves a few searching questions.
I was speaking to a legal immigrant from Colombia. He was working 7 days a week, sometimes from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. or 1 p.m. He was exhausted. I quoted a Polish immigrant from Samuel Huntington’s “Who Are We?” at the turn of the century. This Polish immigrant wrote to his family in Poland, “If you come to America, be prepared to work and to work very hard.” My Colombian friend laughed and said, it’s still true today. There are many hard-working hispanic immigrants. They see the free loaders in their neighborhoods. They know what Castro and Chavez did to their countries promising the poor everything and delivering nothing but misery. They don’t want a hand out so much as a hand up. Let’s embrace the hard workers and get to them before the left leaning socialists.
Look this is a true story. It tells you what being an American used to mean to those coming here. It was leaving the other nation and culture as such behind including language except in the home.
Three brothers born in the late 1800's to parents who came here from Romania. The dad spoke English the mom tried but had a thick accent. They insisted it seems their children adapt to their new home and not vice versa. They had several children three of which were named Moses, Samuel, and Jerome. The moms accent was so bad that when she tried to say her son Samuel's name it came out Shemp. Yea that Shemp. Shemp Howard, Moses Howard, and Jerome Howard or Shemp. Moe, and a nick named for young brother Jerome of Curly. They sought to be Americans and indeed they were. Everyone knew them but I bet few knew their parents came here from Romania. Not that that was wrong but rather the parents adapted and made certain the kids did as well. They did a fine job.
Can you even tell that they were children of Immigrants? Yet in the U.S. we have third generation ones now who still refuse to give up the nation the grandparents left. No one especially society has ever insisted they adapt. Instead it is reversed we have adapted to them especially our government. What ever happened to coming to America to be an American? If the nations culture they left behind was so great then why did they leave it?
To anyone wanting to be an American then Welcome to your new home. We have laws that most of us obey. We have a language we all use and it cuts down on confusion and misunderstandings not to mention saves billions in money for the nation. We have a national history that we require all to learn including our own kids as it is part of their education. We also use to have certain standards of social conduct as well we expeceted to me met including using the public restroom in the Walmart rather than waiting till a person gets out to the parking lot.
It's impossible.
Thanks to Bush and his fellow globalist RINO cohorts refusal to curb the 24/7 20,000,000 man illegal invasion through Mexico, we're pretty much screwed, aren't we?
“The legal portion of any immigrants does themselves nor anyone else a favor my aiding and abetting illegals. It takes away from everyones tax dollars and jobs.”
Most legal immigrants do not aid and abet the illegals. Most dislike illegal immigration as much as you do. It certainly does not help us in any way.
As for assimilation, it is harder for some than for others. I was born in PR, so I grew up speaking Spanish and very little English. After moving to OH, I learned English by watching cartoons, but didn’t get fluent until I was in my early 20s. It isn’t easy. My parents never learned English. My children speak English, Spanish and Portuguese, but they only want to speak English. It takes a couple generations for assimilation to take place.
Take time to educate yourself about Hispanics. They are not all the same, and they are not all a threat to your culture and your country. Many are much more similar to you than you think. BTW, I wire money to my relatives all the time. I still have many relatives in Brazil and PR, and that is the best way to get them money when they need it. It doesn’t make me an illegal
Hola. I was born here, CA, and grew up with Mexicans. Way back then in school, we were all treated alike: white, brown, black, Asian, and expected to pay attention & learn & get good grades. I never knew a Mexican kid who failed; most of them were born here but parents still spoke Spanish or were bi-lingual to some extyent. But in the late ‘60s & 70s that compatibility and adjustment began to shift—whites were made to feel guilt for everything, we were always the aggressor, the killer, the slaver. Affirmative action ruled, and turned race against race. Now, something that would help: If legal immigrants would complain loudly to their Reps from city officials to Fed level, about the vicious gangs, the drug runners & dealers, the sanctuary laws in big cities—then maybe, probably, whites who have been paranoid would change their minds & hearts. What do you think?
Is Tennesee a right to work state. If so, then they have the right to work there. Be careful with what you ask for, you just might get it.
I think that there are many that do speak out about the problems in immigration and the gangs etc. The fact is, they are no more capable of changing things than anyone else that complains. Most of the legal Hispanics I know are hard working decent Christian people, who do not support illegal immigration, and would rather die than accept public assistance.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I know that in order for conservatives to get elected they need to receive the votes of those Hispanics that are voting. Lumping all Hispanics together with illegals is not going to help that process. Many of us are here legally, and are US citizens. As for the 60s and 70s, I was still in PR and happily unaware of the changing attitudes in the 50 states. It seems to me that most of the anger and hatred has come about recently, because of the huge increase in illegal immigration.
You can hardly buy a masonry job in East Tennessee. The illegal invasion has devastated the majority of local masonry businesses around here. It has hit my family very hard in the past year.
I actually left this site for several months, because I was disgusted with the hateful Hispanic environment. I decided that my time would be better spent actually working to get a conservative candidate elected. I was devastated by the results of this election, and was hopeful that things here at FR might change.
It would appear that many here are still unable to differentiate between legal and illegal Hispanics. For many, we are all the same, just looking for a handout. Add to that those who believe that whites are far superior to minorities in IQ and ability, and it becomes obvious that nothing here has changed. The sad thing is that it would be so easy to reach the average Hispanic voter. They are natural conservatives, and are very receptive to conservative politics. They don’t think they are welcome in the GOP, and if FR is any indication, I can’t say that I blame them.
I am so sorry, Nellie Mae. The invasion has hit AZ (where I live) with an incredible impact.
It looks like both candidates for POTUS were going to grant citizenship to ALL illegal immigrants, no matter what country they came from. What ever happened to Ellis Island - where they learned English, and were medically tested?
Guess the “O” doesn’t care any more than McCain, about all the incurable TB, MRSA, STD’s, bed bugs, and other stuff the illegals are bringing into our country. (Not to mention all the innocent citizens killed by murder and drunk driving illegals.)
IMHO, the border should have been locked and secured by midnight, September 11, 2001. Our jobs would have been secured, and, the unsecured mortgages and credit given to the illegals might not have happened, causing the major financial and banking disaster we are now facing.
ga medic, I truly don’t think that most posters here have a problem with anyone who is in this country legally. I have friends from many countries, but all have become citizens, the hard way and the legal way.
I honestly think that the posts you are reading that are negative, are referring to those immigrants who have no intention of getting in the back of the line, and working for years to become a citizen of this country.
Our country is losing innocent citizens every day as a direct result of drunk driving illegals. Children are being molested every day by illegals. Women are being raped by illegals. Innocent people are being scammed and robbed by illegals. Incurable TB is being spread rampantly by those who enter this country illegally. Our hotels and motels are fighting bed bugs, brought in by illegal housekeeping employees. Our Emergency Rooms are having to shut down, because of those who want the free medical care offered to everyone. Our school system is abhorable, with teachers trying to teach children who do not speak the language of this country. And, call any business in the United States, and you will have to push “one” for English. The list goes on and on.
If people from other countries truly wanted to live here, and went through all the red tape required, they would surely be respected and accepted. But to sneak in and demand ‘entitlements’? No wonder we are upset!
This shows why the GOP is no longer exist or speaks for conservative traditional Americans. You supporters of the invasions need to sign up for LaRaza, learn Spanish and kiss my ass!
How about people that vote and act as a race? You know LaRaza maybe you have heard of it?
BS! You are obviously easily convinced and manipulated.
Well maybe if Hispanics didn’t act and group as a race that would happen? Maybe if Hispanic’s overwhlemingly didn’t support the invasion and thier race there could be common ground. When Hispanic work as a group to get rid of all the race based polical & lobbying groups then you may have something otherwise BS!
I have several family members from other nations myself. Two from Europe and one from Asia two were brought here and one's parents came here. They adapted.
I've been to Brazil myself. I saw the best and the very worst. The best being RIO the worst being the Street Orphans in Salvador and a society that has for generations now allowed it keep happening. I've even been in a bonified Communist nation which was a cultural pressure cooker fixing to blow. I was inside Tito's Yugoslavia twice in the late 1970's. It was a police state and due to waring ethnic factions had to remain so. Yugo was not Warsaw Pact but Communist none the least. I've been\n in about 7 different nations and was close enough to one literally while driving through ElPaso to see what was going on to know there is no way I would live in Juarez Mexico.
On the other hand I have a feeling we as a nation are headed for such. The legals coming here I can understand do so to get the heck out of Dodge and I don't blame them a bit I would also. The illegals though bring their baggage meaning Gang ties of which up till a few years ago was uncommon in East Tennessee. They also bring other horrors some of us remember from epidemics past. TB was all but wiped out here. Some of the older people had inactive TB {I know what it means I worked in a nursing home which handled all active cases in the Knoxville area}. Now the drug resistant kind is around. Two possibilities. The Aids epidemic inside the U.S. or illegals from other nations who had it, did not finish the treatment, and came here.
I've worked around and been in the service with legals from many nations including the South Pacific ones. Those I have no issue with. It's the ones that come here illegal then by having children use them to stay here and refuse to adapt even after several generations. They are not here to become Americans they are here to make America what they had left behind.
In the mean time they are taking jobs Americans in fact will do and if the ecomnomy tanks we gonna see some major problems.
Nana - You know we’ve been looking at retirement homes in Tennessee, just west of Knoxville — us and my sister’s family. This may make us re-think our plans. Just wondering if TN powers-that-be would prefer to be over-run with mooching aliens or retired professionals? (Takers vs. givers?) Who would be a good contact in government there so we could question them directly?
How do Unions co-exist with the illegal alien situation? Are they looking to unionize them? If so, it will be the end of “cheap labor”.
All you people who supported amnesty .. look out, cause the very reason we as a country allowed this horrible nightmare (cheap labor) is going to evaporate.
Then we’ll have to pay them much higher wages, educate them, provide them with healthcare, housing and college.
There is no good outcome option to this mess.
(Just changed my plans to move to TN.)
Republicans just took over the legislature for the first time in decades...
In 2006, for the first time in 140 years, the Reps took over the Senate...
So for the first time since 1869, we have control of the Capitol Building...
Lots of good immigration bills were dumped into committee..
This year one bill was said to cost too much...
It was a bill to prohit non-American citizens (over the age of 18) from receiving public assistance...
And so the craziness went..
Now we hope that the 107th General Assembly will be a lot different..
prohit = prohibit
If amnesty is passed, the entire country will be blue. An amnesty would not only grant legal status to the 12 to 20 million illegals already here, it would then allow them to sponsor another 66 million to 100 million more LEGAL IMMIGRANTS thru chain migration, i.e., family reunification.
McCain pledged the same thing. He will work with Obama to get an amnesty passed.
Let me give you a real dose of reality on Hispanic family values:
The government social-services sector has already latched onto this new client base; as the Hispanic population expands, so will the demands for a larger welfare state. Since conservative open-borders advocates have yet to acknowledge the facts of Hispanic family breakdown, there is no way to know what their solution to it is. But they had better come up with one quickly, because the problem is here—and growing.
The dimensions of the Hispanic baby boom are startling. The Hispanic birthrate is twice as high as that of the rest of the American population. That high fertility rate—even more than unbounded levels of immigration—will fuel the rapid Hispanic population boom in the coming decades. By 2050, the Latino population will have tripled, the Census Bureau projects. One in four Americans will be Hispanic by mid-century, twice the current ratio. In states such as California and Texas, Hispanics will be in the clear majority. Nationally, whites will drop from near 70 percent of the total population in 2000 to just half by 2050. Hispanics will account for 46 percent of the nation’s added population over the next two decades, the Pew Hispanic Center reports.
But it’s the fertility surge among unwed Hispanics that should worry policymakers. Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate in the country—over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly one and a half times that of black women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women bore 92 children in 2003 (the latest year for which data exist), compared with 28 children for every 1,000 unmarried white women, 22 for every 1,000 unmarried Asian women, and 66 for every 1,000 unmarried black women. Forty-five percent of all Hispanic births occur outside of marriage, compared with 24 percent of white births and 15 percent of Asian births. Only the percentage of black out-of-wedlock births—68 percent—exceeds the Hispanic rate. But the black population is not going to triple over the next few decades.
As if the unmarried Hispanic birthrate weren’t worrisome enough, it is increasing faster than among other groups. It jumped 5 percent from 2002 to 2003, whereas the rate for other unmarried women remained flat. Couple the high and increasing illegitimacy rate of Hispanics with their higher overall fertility rate, and you have a recipe for unstoppable family breakdown.
Yet, here at FR they get lumped in with the illegals, and the welfare queens. Karl Rove, for all of his faults, tried to warn the GOP that they would need the Hispanic population in this country if they wanted to continue to win elections. Obama is what happened when that advice was ignored. If we continue to equate legal Hispanic immigrants, or Hispanics in general with lazy, welfare dependent illegals, we will continue to lose elections.
I am Hispanic, and work hard to convince my Hispanic family and friends to consider conservative candidates. There is a strong view in the community that Hispanics are not welcome in the GOP. As long as they do not feel welcome, they will not support our candidates or our policies. We need to think before making comments that reflect negatively on legal Hispanic immigrants.
When did they feel welcome? After Reagan's "one time amnesty" in 1986? The majority of Hispanics have voted Dem because they agree with the idea of big government. The Reps have not played identity politics because we believe our values and policies are universal regardless of what ethnicity or race or gender you are. So how can the GOP be more welcoming to Hispanics without pandering to them?
Where will we go???
See post 42 from Nana.
Thanks, for understanding. It is really hard to deal with when you work all of your life to build a business and finally get decent wages, only to be undermined by a bunch of unscrupulous building contractors that hire illegals and pay off gov. employees to look the other way. My husband was the superintendent on a big subdivision job and NEVER saw a county building inspector on the premises ever the whole year he was there. The place was overrun with illegals, you should have seen them run and hide in the woods whenever they saw a car coming that even looked like the police. To beat it all the contractor that was doing the majority of the building was a federal agent (DEA)! Is is just me or does something smell fishy about that? These people on this site that trash us for wanting to stand up for AMERICAN CITIZEN’S rights on this problem are not looking out for our country. They have their own agenda. We need to look out for OUR families not illegal’s. They CHOSE to come here illegally. We were born here and our rights supersede the rights of aliens. I am not ant-hispanic, but, I am anti-illegal. Their close proximity to our border does not excuse them for jumping line on those from other countries who enter our country in the LEGAL manner. Mexico is not the only country in the world that people are trying to get away from and it is not fair to the ones who do things right to let the illegals get away with breaking our laws so blatantly. If you are illegal- GO BACK HOME and become a citizen the right way.
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