Every Day is Magic: Ada Limón
In her 2015 collection, Bright Dead Things, a National Book Award finalist for poetry, Ada Limón writes of moving to Kentucky: “Confession: I did not want to live here.” It’s perhaps not a surprising sentiment coming from a coastally oriented person who was raised in Northern California, attended college in Seattle, and then spent over a decade in New York City.
But Limón and her husband, Lucas, have been in Lexington for seven years now and the effects of settling into this place are noticeable in her new book, The Carrying (Milkweed, Aug.). It’s a phenomenally lively and attentive collection replete with the trappings of living a little closer to nature. While Bright Dead Things is marked by a preponderance of light, such as images of fireflies and neon signs, The Carrying features numerous appearances by various trees, birds, and beetles. Limón also demonstrates a greater willingness to be explicit in naming colors, particularly green. “It’s crazy green, the whole book,” she says. “Lexington is the greenest place I’ve ever lived.” Similarly, where in Bright Dead Things, Limón tells a lot of stories and anecdotes, in The Carrying she is very present in her thoughts and experiences.
As it turns out, these shifts in focus have another, altogether unexpected source. While putting Bright Dead Things together, Limón was diagnosed with chronic vestibular neuronitis, which can cause bouts of vertigo. “If I’m really having vertigo, it’s pretty intense and I really have to focus,”
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First National Poll of Latinos in 2020 Finds 35% of Households Have Experienced a Layoff as a Result of COVID-19
“As the Latino community grapples with the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a higher rate of fatalities compared to other populations, the nation’s first in-depth poll of the Latino population in America for 2020 has found that 35% of Latino households have already experienced a job loss, while more than 65% of respondents reported having difficulty buying or finding necessities such as food, household supplies or medicine.
[Poll results here | Slide deck here]
The poll was conducted by Latino Decisions in partnership with SOMOS, the country’s largest physician-led health delivery network. Of SOMOS’s nearly 3,000 physicians and 800,000 patients, nearly all are immigrants or first-generation Americans, and over two-thirds are Latino…”
White House Seeks To Lower Farmworker Pay To Help Agriculture Industry
“…Last month, the U.S. State Department said it will start processing more applicants seeking H-2A temporary guest worker visas to ensure U.S. farmers have foreign workers in time for spring planting.The most recent push to lower wage rates for workers on H-2A visas has drawn pushback from some strange bedfellows: immigrant-rights advocates and immigration hard-liners usually aligned with Trump.Erik Nicholson, national vice president for the United Farm Workers, says people who have worked in agriculture for decades are concerned they are going to lose their jobs. And he said vulnerable guest workers are not being provided proper hand-washing facilities and still being forced to live in cramped housing…”
U.S. Latinos among hardest hit by pay cuts, job losses due to coronavirus
“Hispanics are more likely than Americans overall to say they or someone in their household has experienced a pay cut or lost their job because of the coronavirus outbreak, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted March 19-24…”
Coronavirus layoffs disproportionately hurt black and Latino workers: ‘It’s almost like doomsday is coming’
“People at an economic disadvantage are “already not doing so great in a good day, let alone in a rainy day,’’ he said.Jose Ricardo is already bracing to dip into his savings to pay next month’s bills for his mobile home in Chula Vista, California. Ricardo, a waiter at a Japanese restaurant in San Diego, is working only 16 hours a week, down from the usual 32 hours two weeks ago.“I’m really nervous,’’ said Ricardo, 61. “We are used to working hard.”With new restrictions on restaurants to serve takeout only, Richardo no longer has the extra income from tips. He makes $12 an hour.“People pay tips because they get a service. We’re taking care of them,’’ he said. “Now, with takeout, they pick it up and bye-bye.”
Ricardo, who lives with his wife, mother-in-law and two children, said he’s anxiously waiting to see how lawmakers will help him and other workers.
He’s holding out hope. “We will recover for sure,” he said…”
USMCA brings meaningful supply chain benefits, trade experts say
“With house passage of trade deal, experts are hopeful the USMCA will become a reality in 2020.
Trade experts say supply chain professionals have much to cheer about now that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is closer to becoming a reality. The biggest deal? The agreement’s efforts to address customs administration and trade facilitation, which experts say will go a long way toward streamlining cross-border shipments.
“From beginning to end, it’s the…”
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House Praised For Passing Bill Giving Undocumented Farm Workers Pathway To Citizenship: ‘Bipartisanship Lives’
“House representatives are receiving praise for passing a bipartisan bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for thousands of undocumented farm workers in the U.S.
The Farm Workforce Modernization Act passed in a 260-165 vote, gaining support from 34 Republicans and succeeding where other efforts to see a significant number of undocumented immigrants have failed.
While the bill could be shot down in the Republican-controlled Senate, immigration advocates have hailed its success among House Republicans as a positive sign…”
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Latino Californians have more trouble making ends meet
“…For three years, Kimberly Esquivel and her family lived in a studio apartment in Oakland, with Kimberly and her sister sleeping in the main room and her parents and two brothers in the hallway.
Esquivel’s father is legally blind and has a kidney condition that prevents him from working. Her mother sells jewelry, but it hasn’t provided enough money to improve their living situation. They can’t afford a car and food bills add up. Kimberly, 18, and her 20-year-old sister want to go to college, but they can’t do it until the family’s finances become more secure.
The Esquivels’ precarious situation is not unique. In California, more than 50 percent of Latino households are hard-pressed to make it financially, despite the state’s booming economy and strong labor market, according to a new report from Oakland’s Insight Center for Community Development…”
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Hispanic Unemployment Rate Ties All-Time Low
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The number of Hispanics and Latinos employed set a record high in August as their national, seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate matched its record low of 4.2%, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday show.
In August, the unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos, aged 16 and up, was 4.2%, down from 4.5% in July, returning to the record low of 4.2% in April and May – which broke the record low of 4.3% set two months earlier in February. BLS began tracking Hispanic-Latino employment data in 1973.
285,000 more Hispanics had jobs in August, as the 27,866,000 employed broke the record for Hispanic employment of 27,701,000 set in December 2018. The number of Hispanics participating in the workplace rose in August, as did Hispanics’ labor force participation rate, which increased from 66.4% to 66.7%.
The number of unemployed Hispanics fell by 98,000 to 1,216,000, down from 1,314,000 in July…”
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New Jobs Report Shows Record Unemployment Lows for Hispanics, Women May 3rd, 2019
“…At 4.2% the Hispanic unemployment rate is the lowest it has ever been, and at 3.1% the adult women unemployment rate reached its lowest since 1953…”
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Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States
“…While immigrants from Mexico dominated the flows post-1970, the makeup of newcomers has changed since the 2007-09 recession. Recently arrived immigrants are more likely to come from Asia, with India and China leading the way. Countries such as the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Cuba, El Salvador, and Venezuela have also seen sizeable emigration to the United States. By contrast, there were fewer Mexican immigrants in the United States in 2017 than in 2010, representing the biggest decline of all immigrant groups…”
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Youth training program signs up more than half a million
“Just four months after its implementation, a federal youth training and scholarship program has already signed up over half a million beneficiaries, more than half-way to its goal of reaching one million by the end of the year.
Labor and Social Welfare Secretary Luisa María Alcalde said today that the “Young People Building the Future” program has signed up 501,559 youths, 378,650 of whom are now receiving a monthly scholarship of 3,600 pesos (US $190).
Alcalde said 75,507 businesses..”
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Latinos’ Incomes Higher Than Before Great Recession, but U.S.-Born Latinos Yet to Recover
“…Overall gain is driven by rise in share of higher-income immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for more years… U.S.-born Latinos have yet to recover financially from the Great Recession.The Great Recession of 2007-09 triggered a lengthy period of decline in the incomes of American workers. Since hitting a trough stretching from 2012 to 2014, their financial fortunes appear to be on the mend – in 2017, a decade after the recession began, the median personal income of American workers stood 3% higher than in 2007…”
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Asian Americans Are the Least Likely Group in the U.S. to Be Promoted to Management
“Asian Americans are the forgotten minority in the glass ceiling conversation.
This was painfully obvious to us while reading the newly released diversity and inclusion report from a large Silicon Valley company: Its 19 pages never specifically address Asian Americans. Asian men are lumped into a “non-underrepresented” category with white men (we’ll say more about that below); Asian women are assigned to a category that includes women of all races. In contrast, the report addresses Hispanics, African Americans, and Native Americans as distinct categories. Ironically, the chief diversity and inclusion officer of the company remarked about its efforts, “If you do not intentionally include, you will unintentionally exclude.”
But excluded from the report was the fact that Asian Americans are the least likely racial group to be promoted into Silicon Valley’s management and executive levels, even though they are the most likely to be hired into high-tech jobs. This was a key finding in a 2017 report we coauthored for the Ascend Foundation (“The Illusion of Asian Success”), analyzing EEOC data on Silicon Valley’s management pipeline…”
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Starting From the Bottom: Why Mexicans are the Most Successful Immigrants in America
Who’s more successful: The child of Chinese immigrants who is now a prominent attorney, or a second-generation Mexican who completed high school and now holds a stable, blue collar job?
The answer depends on how you define success.
In fact, according to a study by University of California, Irvine, Sociology Professor Jennifer Lee and UCLA Sociology Professor Min Zhou, contrary to stereotypes, Mexican-Americans are the most successful second-generation group in the country. The reason is simple: The study considered not just where people finished, but from where they started.
The report serves as counter-point to arguments raised by Amy Chua, a Yale Law School professor better known as the Tiger Mom. In a new book, The Triple Package, Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, argue that some groups—namely Chinese, Jews, Cubans, and Nigerians—are more successful than others because they possess certain cultural traits that enable them to be…”
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Against Trump’s wishes, Mexican professionals keep visas in new trade deal
By Anita Kumar And Franco Ordoñez
August 28, 2018 04:35 PM
Updated August 28, 2018 11:12 PM
WASHINGTON
Tens of thousands of Mexican professionals who come to work in the United States will be able to keep their visas as part of the new U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, the Mexican government says, delivering a political loss to the Trump administration who sought to slash the number of visas as part of NAFTA re-negotiations.
The Mexican Economy Ministry told McClatchy that…”
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Upwardly Mobile
The number of Mexican-born professionals living in the United States has more than doubled since 1995. They’re not the undocumented workers you see in evening-news mug shots or aerial photographs of a littered and barren desert. They’re college graduates — some with multiple degrees — who join their blue-collar counterparts in their journeys north…
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NAFTA talks focus on low wages for Mexican autoworkers
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has promised to bring auto manufacturing back to the United States from Mexico.
The success of NAFTA negotiations could be determined by how willing the Mexican government is to let him try.
As top officials from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico scramble to come to some sort of deal on the continental free trade pact by next Friday, the overwhelming focus of their discussions is the complicated issue of auto rules…
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HSBC Highlights Corporate Optimism’s Resilience Over Global Trade Uncertainty
Protectionism has cast a shadow of uncertainty over global traders, and North America’s trade relationships are in flux.
Early in President Donald Trump’s presidency, the U.S. withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. One year later, the nation’s participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is also changing as the U.S., Canada and Mexico engage in negotiations that are expected to continue through April, according to Bloomberg reports this week.
Despite ongoing change and uncertainty, however, new analysis from HSBC finds corporates across North America remain confident in their future global trading operations…
…Eighty-seven percent of Mexican professionals, 77 percent of U.S. professionals and 70 percent of Canadian professionals say they are optimistic about increasing cross-border trade volume over the next year…
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Autentico: The Definitive Guide to Latino Career Success
R Rodriguez, AT Tapia – 2017
… When Judith Turnock and I wrote Cracking the Corporate Code we were aware that although
the book was about the success of the thirty-two African-Americans we cited, interest in the book
would go far beyond that group. … FRIDA KAHLO, Mexican painter W hy of whom this …
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Managing Diversity in Organizations: A Global Perspective
M Triana – 2017 – books.google.com
This book equips students with a thorough understanding of the advantages and challenges
presented by workplace diversity, suggesting techniques to manage diversity effectively and
maximize its benefits. Readers will learn to work with diverse groups to create a productive..
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