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FESTIVAL NEWS
Border Crossing: New Migrant Patterns Call for Policy Changes
Have you seen The Sixth Section? This Festival film explores the immigrant organzition Grupo Union and how the members work together to raise money for their hometown, Boqueron Mexico. A recent article published by Peter Laufer on Alternet unearths new patterns of immigration around the country and how Mexican communities are beginning to form in all regions of the country. Alabama's Hispanic population more than tripled during the 1990s. Georgia had 108,922 Hispanics in the 1990 census, 1.7 percent of the population; by 2000, that population had tripled, and Hispanics now account for more than 5 percent of the state's population. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of Hispanics more than doubled in states from Kansas to Oregon to South Carolina. A decade ago newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and the New York Daily News were experimenting with Spanish-language editions. Now Dallas Morning News has one, and Orlando Sentinel, too. Changes this profound in the center of the country effects not only economics and employment patterns but are demanding that immigration policy be examined and reformed. A national conversation has begun as the work of illegal immigrants is a permanent, necessary part of the economy. Laufer exaplins, "But to be effective at all, any response must begin with the recognition that no government in history has managed to stop eager employers and willing workers from getting together. That truth is now playing out in places like Kentucky. Washington can either fight this reality and force both employers and immigrants into the shadows of illegality, or accept it and find a way that most if not all sides can live with." Read the entire Alternet article, "My New Kentucky Home".Published on January 28, 2005
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