August 2012 (6)
EFE
Someone wanting to run for public office in Arizona can be kept off the ballot if he or she lacks a sufficient command of English, the state's Supreme Court said. Elected officials must be able to communicate with constituents and the general public in English without the assistance of an interpreter, Chief Justice Robert Bruntinel wrote.
EFE
The Latino Community Credit Union of North Carolina has created a "Dreamer Loan" to keep students who qualify for Deferred Action from being left out because they don't have the money to pay the $465 application fee. The LCCU has started informing its 54,000 members about the new finance program for young undocumented immigrants eligible for Deferred Action, a program aimed at delaying deportation of the kind of people who would benefit from the long-stalled DREAM Act.
EFE
A community center in Southern California opened in response to the increase in street violence during the 1990s is now helping young undocumented immigrants who want to regularize their status through the federal government's new Deferred Action program. "We want the elected officials to expand programs like Deferred Action and convert them into a path toward citizenship," Stella Murga, the executive director of the Pasadena Youth Center, an organization that prepares young people for a better future through education, told Efe on Thursday.
EFE
Thousands of undocumented immigrants jammed the installations of Chicago's Navy Pier, where some stood in line all night to be among the first to apply for a new program that promises protection from deportation. "I arrived at midnight with my cousins and there were already people in line," a young woman named Heidi told Efe while standing a few steps from the tables manned by lawyers and volunteers from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, or ICIRR.
EFE
Jasmine Guerrero has spent more than 10 years helping minority girls and young women who have done time behind bars to overcome the resulting social and economic barriers so they can find a better future. After submitting her senior thesis at California State University, Los Angeles, about the plight of women in jail and the hardships they face when released, Guerrero decided to jump in and help them herself. "Doing the research and the interviews and hearing the awful experiences of those girls opened a new horizon for me and made me want to help them reenter society," she told Efe in an interview.
EFE
Paola Espinosa, who won a silver medal for Mexico in 10-meter synchronized diving at the London Summer Olympics, said the experience was "a dream come true."