BBC News (July 8, 2011)

An Arizona sheriff office’s will pay $200,000 to two Hispanic men unlawfully detained during an anti-illegal migrant raid on a landscaping firm in 2009.

Julian and Julio Mora, one a legal resident and the other a US citizen, were held for three hours by Maricopa County deputies.

In April, a judge agreed the deputies violated their constitutional rights.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is known for his harsh crackdowns on illegal immigrants.

In February 2009, a team of dozens of deputies and volunteers with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office raided Handyman Maintenance Inc, a landscaping company based in Phoenix, Arizona.

They had a warrant to search the company premises for evidence of document fraud, and ultimately arrested 60 illegal aliens, the sheriff’s office said at the time.

The two Moras men – Julian is Julio’s father – were on their way to work when they were stopped in their truck outside the company grounds, handcuffed with plastic zip-ties, and held for three hours with other employees.

They were released when deputies established that they were in the US legally and had committed no other offenses.

‘Don’t ignore the constitution’

In August 2009 the men sued the sheriff’s office, arguing that officials had violated their right under the US constitution to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure. In April, Federal Judge David Campbell agreed, ruling the deputies had no lawful reason to detain them.

On Thursday the Moras and the sheriff’s office agreed settled the case.

“Sheriff Arpaio’s deputies are not free to ignore the constitution when they are enforcing immigration laws,” their lawyer Annie Lai, of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

“County officials should take heed that the Moras and hundreds of other Latino residents who have been detained in the raids without any evidence of wrongdoing have recourse in the courts.”

A lawyer for the sheriff’s office said the large number of deputies working on the raid precluded them from identifying which had been involved in the Moras’ detention, so it could not defend against the suit.

“If you can’t have the officers, it’s an uphill climb,” Tim Casey told the Arizona Republicnewspaper.

“The sheriff’s office has made some good, positive changes, so when they have 100 deputies doing operations, they’re going to record things better so this doesn’t happen again.”

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

Published: May 30, 2011

A cognitive neuroscientist, Ellen Bialystok has spent almost 40 years learning about how bilingualism sharpens the mind. Her good news: Among other benefits, the regular use of two languages appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Dr. Bialystok, 62, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, was awarded a $100,000 Killam Prize last year for her contributions to social science. We spoke for two hours in a Washington hotel room in February and again, more recently, by telephone. An edited version of the two conversations follows.

Q. How did you begin studying bilingualism?

A. You know, I didn’t start trying to find out whether bilingualism was bad or good. I did my doctorate in psychology: on how children acquire language. When I finished graduate school, in 1976, there was a job shortage in Canada for Ph.D.’s. The only position I found was with a research project studying second language acquisition in school children. It wasn’t my area. But it was close enough.

As a psychologist, I brought neuroscience questions to the study, like “How does the acquisition of a second language change thought?” It was these types of questions that naturally led to the bilingualism research. The way research works is, it takes you down a road. You then follow that road.

Q. So what exactly did you find on this unexpected road?

A. As we did our research, you could see there was a big difference in the way monolingual and bilingual children processed language. We found that if you gave 5- and 6-year-olds language problems to solve, monolingual and bilingual children knew, pretty much, the same amount of language.

But on one question, there was a difference. We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentence was grammatically correct: “Apples grow on noses.” The monolingual children couldn’t answer. They’d say, “That’s silly” and they’d stall. But the bilingual children would say, in their own words, “It’s silly, but it’s grammatically correct.” The bilinguals, we found, manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important.

Q. How does this work — do you understand it?

A. Yes. There’s a system in your brain, the executive control system. It’s a general manager. Its job is to keep you focused on what is relevant, while ignoring distractions. It’s what makes it possible for you to hold two different things in your mind at one time and switch between them.

If you have two languages and you use them regularly, the way the brain’s networks work is that every time you speak, both languages pop up and the executive control system has to sort through everything and attend to what’s relevant in the moment. Therefore the bilinguals use that system more, and it’s that regular use that makes that system more efficient.

Q. One of your most startling recent findings is that bilingualism helps forestall the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. How did you come to learn this?

A. We did two kinds of studies. In the first, published in 2004, we found that normally aging bilinguals had better cognitive functioning than normally aging monolinguals.Bilingual older adults performed better than monolingual older adults on executive control tasks. That was very impressive because it didn’t have to be that way. It could have turned out that everybody just lost function equally as they got older.

That evidence made us look at people who didn’t have normal cognitive function. In our next studies , we looked at the medical records of 400 Alzheimer’s patients. On average,the bilinguals showed Alzheimer’s symptoms five or six years later than those who spoke only one language. This didn’t mean that the bilinguals didn’t have Alzheimer’s. It meant that as the disease took root in their brains, they were able to continue functioning at a higher level. They could cope with the disease for longer.

Q. So high school French is useful for something other than ordering a special meal in a restaurant?

A. Sorry, no. You have to use both languages all the time. You won’t get the bilingual benefit from occasional use.

Q. One would think bilingualism might help with multitasking — does it?

A. Yes, multitasking is one of the things the executive control system handles. We wondered, “Are bilinguals better at multitasking?” So we put monolinguals and bilinguals into a driving simulator. Through headphones, we gave them extra tasks to do — as if they were driving and talking on cellphones. We then measured how much worse their driving got. Now, everybody’s driving got worse. But the bilinguals, their driving didn’t drop as much. Because adding on another task while trying to concentrate on a driving problem, that’s what bilingualism gives you — though I wouldn’t advise doing this.

Q. Has the development of new neuroimaging technologies changed your work?

A. Tremendously. It used to be that we could only see what parts of the brain lit up when our subjects performed different tasks. Now, with the new technologies, we can see how all the brain structures work in accord with each other.

In terms of monolinguals and bilinguals, the big thing that we have found is that the connections are different. So we have monolinguals solving a problem, and they use X systems, but when bilinguals solve the same problem, they use others. One of the things we’ve seen is that on certain kinds of even nonverbal tests, bilingual people are faster. Why? Well, when we look in their brains through neuroimaging, it appears like they’re using a different kind of a network that might include language centers to solve a completely nonverbal problem. Their whole brain appears to rewire because of bilingualism.

Q. Bilingualism used to be considered a negative thing — at least in the United States. Is it still?

A. Until about the 1960s, the conventional wisdom was that bilingualism was a disadvantage. Some of this was xenophobia. Thanks to science, we now know that the opposite is true.

Q. Many immigrants choose not to teach their children their native language. Is this a good thing?

A. I’m asked about this all the time. People e-mail me and say, “I’m getting married to someone from another culture, what should we do with the children?” I always say, “You’re sitting on a potential gift.”

There are two major reasons people should pass their heritage language onto children. First, it connects children to their ancestors. The second is my research: Bilingualism is good for you. It makes brains stronger. It is brain exercise.

Q. Are you bilingual?

A. Well, I have fully bilingual grandchildren because my daughter married a Frenchman. When my daughter announced her engagement to her French boyfriend, we were a little surprised. It’s always astonishing when your child announces she’s getting married. She said, “But Mom, it’ll be fine, our children will be bilingual!”

By Jose Armas

4/13/11

New Mexico Latinos turned out in unprecedented numbers to vote Republican  to make Susana Martinez, the first Latina governor in history.  She certainly captured our imagination, especially since she branded herself as the “bold education reform” candidate.  So after her first 100 days, what’s the report card on this charismatic leader? First lets set the stage:

•  New Mexico is the only Latino majority state in the union.  Latino children make up more than 60% of students, outnumbering whites nearly 2 x 1.

•  Our state is branded among the worst education systems.  With good reason, less than half of all students graduate in four years.

•  To the credit of outgoing Gov. Bill Richardson, last year Latinos helped him pass the Hispanic Education Act (HEA), the only law in the country to specifically focus on addressing the Latino education crisis.

Of course, these initiatives have yet to take hold and Latino conditions are so dismal that we anxiously looked to what our new bold governor would do.  So, after completing her first legislative session, here is a report card from a Latino perspective.

•  Our Governor pushed — and got a 1.5% cut in education. Then days after the session ended, her education secretary, Hanna Skandera dropped the bombshell that cuts were in fact, going to be more than double that amount.

•  Under another Republican governor 40 years ago, our education budget made up 55% of state expenditures.  Today Martinez has managed to slash that budget to nearly 39%, the lowest in recorded history.  This is creating outrage among school districts throughout the state.  And others…

•  Skandera,  an outsider was brought in to design her bold education reform plan.  Skandera, in turn, brought in eight other outsiders to fix us. Skandera is white.  And her hired guns are all white, and none are educators. She’s been bold all right.

•  The HEA called for an annual status report of Latino education and for an Advisory Committee to provide direction.  The first status report was posted on the department of education web site, days before Richardson left office.  Days after becoming governor, Martinez had that report pulled.  The Advisory Council, who  was never asked for their counsel, decided to convene itself and then declared they wanted input before the education reform plan is finalized, which is now expected any day. The Council now, any day,  awaits the possibility of being fired for their bold initiative.

Our state constitution calls for “perfect equality” for all New Mexicans and mandates that education must be “adequately funded”.  Martinez’ budget is now 25% below what has been determined to be “adequately funded.”

Latinos are now, ironically, looking at the real possibility of filing a civil rights case against a Latina governor.  After all, 75% of all students are Latino, Indian and Black.  We are among the poorest states due in major part to our broken education system. Bringing in white, non-educators to fix us promises turmoil.  “Bold education reform” is not going to happen by slashing education to its lowest levels ever. Our dream of “perfect equality” appears to be fading further away.

Oh, in another slap at Latinos, Martinez fought to repeal the law that allows the  undocumented to have driver’s licenses.  When her bill got rejected, Martinez immediately began a very public campaign to continue her assault on this law that makes driving safer here by requiring everyone to have insurance and passing a driving test.

Martinez also got lots of fanfare for signing a law allowing dogs to go into restaurants.  Presumably, to eat with the rest of us lowly, uneducated masses.

So what’s the report card for our historic Latina governor?  Well, the national GOP appears to be making her their latest golden poster girl. But for Latinos, we were hoping for “bold education reform”; but we foolishly expected bold, but responsible reform.  Alas, after 100 days, it appears that our freshman  Gov. Martinez  needs to be put in “time out.”