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From the Los Angeles Times

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Study finds education gap for illegal Mexican migrants' children

They finished two fewer years of school than peers with legal immigrant parents. The research on Los Angeles area residents shows the need to help such families become legal, the report's authors say.

by Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times

October 22, 2011

The majority of children of illegal immigrants from Mexico in the Southland fail to graduate from high school, completing an average of two fewer years of schooling than their peers with legal immigrant parents, a new study has found.

The study by UC Irvine professor Frank Bean and three other researchers documented the persistent educational disadvantages for such children — who number 3.8 million, with about 80% born in the United States.

The study's authors said their findings highlighted the need to help such families gain legal status and a more secure future, arguing that deporting all of them was unrealistic.

"By not providing pathways to legalization, the United States not only risks creating an underclass, but also fails to develop a potentially valuable human resource," the report said.

Lupe Moreno of the Santa Ana-based Latino Americans for Immigration Reform, however, said the study's findings do not justify granting legalization to undocumented migrants, who she believes should be deported and made to reenter legally. Moreno, the daughter of an illiterate Mexican bracero worker who worked the fields herself but graduated from high school, also blamed schools for failing to help the children of illegal immigrants graduate.

"Amnesty is the wrong solution," she said. "I'm putting it on the schools — they need to do better educating these kids" regardless of their parents' legal status.

The study analyzed data from a 2004 survey of 4,780 adult children of immigrants in the five-county Los Angeles metropolitan area. Among them, 1,350 were children of Mexican immigrants; 45% of them had undocumented parents.

The study found that children of illegal immigrants averaged 11 years of education, compared with about 13 years for those whose parents were legal residents. But once illegal immigrants found ways to legalize their status, the study found, their children's educational levels rose substantially.

And the study found that mothers had the largest influence: Children whose mothers were legal residents but whose fathers weren't completed about 12 1/2 years of education. If the father was legal and the mother wasn't, the children finished about 11 years of school.

Bean said children of illegal immigrants face high levels of stress, lack money for academic enrichment activities and, particularly for boys, pressures to work that lead many to drop out of school. The study, however, found no differences in the education levels of boys and girls born to illegal immigrants.

Patricia Quijano, a senior at Edward Roybal Learning Center in downtown Los Angeles, said immigration status definitely matters. A U.S. citizen by birth, Patricia has a 3.8 GPA and dreams of attending a California State University to become a high school counselor. But she said she hasn't been able to qualify for fee waivers, grants or scholarships because her Mexican parents don't have papers and can't document their income.

Her father works for cash at a carwash, earning an average monthly income of $200 during winters and $800 during summers. Her mother is unemployed. And Patricia's minimum-wage job at a Salvation Army after-school program has ended, leaving the family with no money for college applications, SAT or ACT exams, even home Internet access.

Although she has managed to maintain good grades and career ambitions, she said most of her friends with undocumented parents lose hope and give up at school.

"They say, 'My parents weren't born here, so why try hard when I can't go to college?'" Quijano said. But if their parents could become legal, she added, "they would think they had an opportunity so [they] would try hard to make their parents proud."

In contrast, she said her friends whose parents have green cards or are U.S. citizens have more stable lives and are able to get better jobs, scholarships and other benefits.

Since the country heavily depends on the labor of illegal immigrants, politicians should find ways to deal with the problem, Bean said.

"We need the work these people do but haven't figured out a way to make them regular members of society," he said. "So we're reproducing a very handicapped and disadvantaged generation."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-illegal-academics-20111023,0,5789070.story

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Brooklyn mother dies shielding schoolchildren from gunfire

An 11-year-old girl and another parent were also hit by bullets during the Friday after-school shootings, police said.

Zurana Horton, 34, “was seen moments before she was shot hovering over several children to protect them as shots were fired,” a police report said. She died Friday at the scene. Neighbors are saying that Horton had 13 of her own children and that she might have been pregnant, NY1 said.

Family members told the New York Post that Horton had been planning to move from the crime-ridden Brownsville area of Brooklyn. “She's getting married, but now she can't do any of that,” her cousin told the Post. Neighbors who had gathered at her home were expressing sadness and outrage, news reports said Saturday.

The tragedy unfolded shortly after students were released from Public School 298, also known as Bette Shabazz School. The students were dispersing when a gunman on a nearby rooftop opened fire on a group of rivals, police told reporters. Horton and another mother, who was also picking up children from school, were across the street at the Lucky Supermarket when the shooting started. Horton shielded several children from the bullets.

“She probably saved lives,” police spokesman Paul Browne said.

A sixth-grader, who is 11, was grazed on the cheek and another 31-year-old mother was struck by bullets in her arm and chest. Both were treated at a hospital Friday night.

Police apparently retrieved 12 shell casings from an automatic pistol from the streets in the area. Investigators are looking at whether the shooting was related to a fight between groups of teenagers on the street below where the gunman was perched atop the five-story-building. A $12,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the shooter. The organization 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement is offering $1,000 on top of that, NY1 reported.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/

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From Google News

Michigan

Pharmaceuticals outpace alcohol as drug of choice in Bay County

BAY CITY — Bay County has long had a reputation as a home of heavy drinkers, but another demon has edged out alcohol as the most abused substance.

In 2010, for the first time ever, more Bay County residents sought treatment for prescription drug abuse than for alcohol addiction, said Barry T. Schmidt, prevention specialist at the Neighborhood Resource Center, 709 Ninth St. in Bay City.

“We never thought we'd see it, but according to the data, it's happening,” said Schmidt.

The numbers were compiled by the Riverhaven Coordinating Agency, a substance abuse treatment and prevention arm of Bay-Arenac Behavioral Health, an agency serving Arenac, Bay, Huron, Montcalm, Shiawassee and Tuscola counties.

The data shows that, of area residents who received state-funded substance abuse treatment in 2010, 41 percent listed prescription painkillers as their primary addiction.

Alcohol abuse accounted for 39 percent of state-funded adult treatment admissions last year.

By comparison, less than 34 percent of adult admissions involved prescription drugs in 2009.

Among teens, 13 percent of treatment admissions were for prescription drug abuse, and 20 percent for alcohol abuse, in 2010.

Schmidt did not have data for treatment funded by private insurance. He said, however, those numbers typically are about the same as those for state-funded care.

News of the shift came as a shock to Goldie J. Wood, director of Neighborhood Resource Center, a Bay City nonprofit dedicated to providing substance abuse prevention services education, early intervention and programming.

“I've never heard of such a thing,” said Wood. “Alcoholism has always outweighed them all, always, by far. I never, ever thought I'd live long enough to see this.”

Kurt Miller, a spokesman for Bay Regional Medical Center, also was taken aback.

“Goldie gave me those numbers and I said, ‘You're kidding,'” said Miller. “I was surprised at how much it had grown.”

He said emergency room admissions for drug overdoses have increased 450 percent nationwide, a trend Bay Regional doctors call “a tremendous problem.”

“It amazes me the amount of prescription drugs that are being abused recreationally,” said Dr. Jeffrey Territo, emergency room doctor at Bay Regional Medical Center.

Territo said he sees more patients who are clearly “doctor shopping.”

“They're going from emergency room to emergency room, doctor to doctor, to get drugs,” he said. “We're finding that they've gone from Flint to Saginaw to Bay City.”

Often, patients request specific medications, said Territo.

Doctors can squelch some of the problem by running the patient's name through the Michigan Automated Prescription System, a program that tracks prescriptions for certain medications.

“A lot of times, if you tell them you're going to do a MAPS report, they'll leave,” said Territo.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the number of people who have overdosed on prescription drugs now exceeds the number who overdosed during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and the black tar heroin epidemic of the 1970s, combined.

The Centers for Disease Control listed Michigan as one of 15 states in which drug overdoses surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death.

“Now you can see why we want to get (prescription drugs) out of people's hands as quickly as possible,” said Schmidt.

“We know it's getting worse because there are a lot of prescriptions being given out.”

Data tracked through MAPS show that for each of Bay County's 107,000 residents, there were 52.86 doses (single pills) of Schedule II and III drugs given last year, said Wood.

Schedule II and III drugs include narcotics and stimulants that have a high potential for abuse and could lead to psychological and physical dependence, according to the DEA.

In 2010, Bay County physicians wrote 82,842 prescriptions for Schedule II and III drugs, state records show. Those doctors' orders totaled more than 1.64 million single doses of opiates and more than 4.04 million single doses of stimulants, for a grand total of more than 5.69 million single doses of Schedule II and III drugs, data show.

“That's a lot of pills,” said Wood. “It's about time people take the blinders off and start to recognize that this is a problem.”

In 1997, pharmacists across the country prescribed 74 milligrams of opioids per person, DEA records show. By 2007, that number had jumped 402 percent to 369 milligrams per person.

Throughout Michigan last year, doctors prescribed more than 1.06 billion total doses, or 107.93 pills for every man, woman and child, said Schmidt.

“That's outrageous,” he said.

A number of initiatives to combat prescription drug abuse are under way or in development.

The Bay County Prevention Network's subcommittee for prescription drug abuse is developing community education programs.

Wood and Miller also are working together to produce continuing medical education curricula for doctors and other health care providers. The materials are expected to be put into use after the first of the year.

“We're going to start educating our medical providers as to what the problem is and how those things are getting out to the streets,” said Miller.

In the past 13 months, the DEA and local police agencies have collected more than 168,000 pounds of prescription pills and tablets.

Locally, Bay City police and Bay County Sheriff's deputies collected more than 100 pounds during two National Prescription Drug Take Back Day events, said Bay City Community Policing officer Daniel Anderson.

“The problem (of prescription drug abuse) is huge,” he said.

A third collection is planned from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at three locations in Bay County — the Bay County Law Enforcement Center, 501 Third St. in Bay City; Michigan State Police Bay City post, 405 N. Euclid Ave.; and Delta College Department of Public Safety, 1961 Delta Road in Frankenlust Township.

Any prescription medication in pill or tablet form can be dropped off, no questions asked. Medications need not be in their original containers. Syrups, patches, syringes and diabetic supplies will not be accepted.

“There are no questions asked. The drugs don't even have to be in their original bottles,” said Anderson. “We want to get the drugs out of the cupboards and medicine cabinets, where they can be stolen and abused.”

http://blog.mlive.com/news/baycity_impact/print.html?entry=/2011/10/pharmaceuticals_out_pace_alcoh.html

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