11/18/02 Fort Worth Star Telegram: "Mechanics held in Meacham 
raid not tied to terror,"
    Fort Worth - The 15 airline mechanics who were arrested and 
charged with violating immigration laws after a raid at Fort Worth Meacham Airport this summer came to America to live the 
American dream, their defense attorneys say.
    Federal agents scrutinized their backgrounds, fearful that these 
men, who had access to security-sensitive areas at the nation's 
airports, could have ties to terrorists.
    But as the cases wound their way through federal court, the 
terrorism suspicions never developed into facts. They were never mentioned in the indictment or the plea agreements for eight of the 
men who pleaded guilty to immigration violations. Asked about the terrorism inquiry, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Jarvis, the lead prosecutor, would only say, "There were no terrorism ties." Jarvis 
declined to comment further about the case because of the pending 
trial.
    In a court document dated Nov. 6, Jarvis wrote in response to a defense lawyer seeking access to FBI interview reports: "Most (if not 
all) of the defendants in this case were interviewed by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with efforts to gain intelligence information to use to prevent and disrupt terrorist 
operations."
    The airline mechanics detained June 28, particularly the Filipinos among them, were asked whether they had any links to the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf. The group has become notorious for 
several kidnappings in the southern Philippines, and U.S. authorities 
said the group is allied with al Qaeda.
    The arrests and prosecutions outraged some Filipino-American community advocates and defense attorneys who say federal 
authorities unfairly used ethnic profiling against the workers. The indictment named 10 Filipinos, two Mexicans and three Peruvians.
    "They Filipinos have been treated unjustly for such a minor offense, while going easy on the Mexicans and Peruvians charged with the 
same offense, " said Gus Mercado, regional director of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations and advocate for the Filipinos. "This case has become so politicized, and thats why were looking for political solutions . These God-fearing, hardworking 
Filipinos and their families have already been through hell. They dont belong in there with hardened criminals."
    "How could the authorities be so hard on these Filipinos, including those whose families in the United States have legal papers? George Santarinas wife is a U.S. citizen. Herman Bendovals wife is an 
approved permanent resident, and Rosauro Banabans wife has an 
H1B temporary worker visa as a teacher in Los Angeles. Rosauros 
father worked for the U.S. government in the Philippines for 33 years 
and received personal commendations from four American presidents," Mercado reported.
    A spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service denied 
the profiling accusations but acknowledged that the cases might have been handled differently before the Sept. 11 attacks. As the 
government directed federal law enforcement and the military to focus 
on preventing future attacks, the INS found itself on the domestic front 
line of the war on terrorism. The raid at Meacham Airport reflects the agency's new mission.
    "Times have changed. Our methods of looking at cases have changed," Ligon said. "National security is our No. 1 priority at INS 
now. It used to be apprehension of criminal illegal aliens. That's down 
to No. 2."
    But Dallas lawyer Michael Samonek, who represents Eliseo Cruz Tolentino, a Filipino, questions why prosecutors pressed felony charges with potential maximum sentences of five to 25 years. If this were a 
typical immigration case, Samonek said, authorities would have 
referred the workers' cases to an immigration judge and pushed for 
swift deportations. That could have been accomplished in a couple of weeks, he said.
    Richard Fernandez, a well-known local immigration specialist who 
has been hired by the Filipino advocates to represent the Filipino detainees, confirmed that false attestations are not a big deal to the 
INS. "They usually take but a few weeks to adjudicate." The 
defendants in this case have been incarcerated since June 28, 2002.
    Another attorney, Andrew Ottaway, representing George Santarina, characterized the frivolity of the case against the Filipinos by saying 
that lying on an I-9 form is not a crime of moral turpitude. "It is not such 
a bad thing, its just like lying on a resume, or on a first date, that 
certainly does not fit the suggested punishment."
    "This is an instance of selective prosecution of a selective 
populace -- Filipinos," Samonek said. "The government still holds a 
cloud of terrorism over them." Five of the Filipino defendants maintain their innocence and are scheduled to go on trial December 9.
    The raid at Meacham Airport was part of a series of sweeps at 
airports nationwide aimed at tightening security by checking the employment records and legal status of airport employees. Operation Tarmac, launched after the Sept. 11 attacks, has netted hundreds of arrests at airports in Boston, Washington, Houston and other cities. 
Most of those arrested were charged with immigration violations, such 
as overstaying their visas or providing false information and documents 
to gain employment.
    On June 28, about 40 agents from the Border Patrol, INS and the 
North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force under the FBI raided Spirit Aviation, 4601 N. Main St., and arrested 28 people. Fifteen were 
indicted. Spirit Aviation, a repair facility, is a subsidiary of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Spirit Airlines.
    The plea agreements show that most of the men arrived in the 
United States with a B-2 tourist visa, which typically expires after six months. They got their jobs by falsely stating on a federal employment-verification form called an I-9 that they were "lawful permanent resident aliens" or green card holders. Two said they 
were U.S. citizens, according to the indictment.
    Claudia Montani, an assistant federal public defender, said she 
never heard of any terrorism allegations against her client, Oscar Rabutaso, a Filipino who returned this month to his home country 
after spending four months in jail. He pleaded guilty to giving false 
information to gain employment. He was a good man, a hardworking mechanic, who previously worked for Philippine Airlines," Montani 
said. "He's home with his wife and children."
    Some of the workers were enticed by word-of-mouth from friends 
and colleagues to try their luck in Texas, said Fort Worth lawyer 
Douglas Greene, who represents David Ley-Casanova, a Mexican citizen. Ley-Casanova left a good job as an airline mechanic in 
Mexico to find more lucrative work in Fort Worth, Greene said. "The 
word was, 'If you're here, get an alien registration card, and Spirit will 
find jobs, and you're good to go working in the U.S.,' " Greene said. 
One defendant, Jose Sil-Acosta, a Mexican citizen who was released 
on bail, failed to show up for a court hearing in September after his attorney had worked out a plea bargain. He was scheduled to plead 
guilty to falsifying an INS document and probably would have been sentenced to time served, said his Fort Worth attorney, Warren St. 
John. "I think he got scared," St. John said. "I guess he fled to 
Mexico."
    The five men scheduled to take their cases to trial appear poised 
to reject possible plea bargains as "an easy way out." Dallas lawyer 
John Haughton, who represents Rosauro Camacho Banaban, a 
Filipino national, said his client maintains his innocence. "If they 
plead guilty to a felony and are deported, they have a felony conviction 
that will bar them from returning to the United States for a significant amount of time, possibly forever," Haughton said. "That's a 
consequence not warranted."
    In the Philippines, the mechanics' arrests amid suspicion of 
terrorist ties to Abu Sayyaf made front-page news. Sheryll Ann 
Guemo, a Filipina who came to Texas on a tourist visa to visit her 
jailed father, Remigio Guemo, told the Star-Telegram in August that investigators falsely suspected the Filipino workers of having ties to 
Abu Sayyaf.
    "They're trying to link them to Abu Sayyaf," she said. "My father 
and his co-workers, they are devout Catholics who will never think of hurting anybody or doing anything wrong."

11/18/02 Reuters: "New York's Chinatown reeling from last year's attacks,"
    New York's Chinatown, which once teemed with tourists and 
echoed with the clack of sewing machines at garment factories, 
has not recovered from the economic blow dealt by the attack on 
the World Trade Center more than a year ago, according to a 
report released on Monday.
    "Not a single industry has recovered" fully in Chinatown, said 
Dr. James Parrott, Chief Economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute, 
who briefed journalists on the report, "Chinatown One Year After September 11th", by the Asian American Federation of New York (AAFNY).
    "The unemployment rate in Chinatown is at least twice or 2 1/2 
times the level (of the city's 7.8 percent)," Parrot said.
    The AAFNY's research director Shao-Chee Sim said "many of 
the 8,000 people dislocated" in the three months after the attacks 
were still unemployed.
    The job losses fell most heavily on middle-aged female Chinese immigrants who depended on the garment industry, which has 
since September steadily shuttered 65 factories, or a quarter of 
the 246 factories that once crammed the downtown neighborhood's narrow, winding streets, the report said.
    Those lucky enough to have gone back to work are working 
reduced hours and have taken an average 48% pay cut from pre-
attack levels to $3.01 per hour, well below the city's minimum wage 
level at $5.15, according to AAFNY.
    The study found $490 million was lost in the garment industry over 
the year, while less than $60 million was made available in the form 
of loans and grants to businesses in Chinatown. It said about $25-
$30 million would be needed to provide job training for dislocated workers.
    Business at Chinatown's world-famous restaurants has not 
rebounded, the report said.
    For nearly half of the roughly 400 restaurants in Chinatown, 
revenue generated from tourists was on average 40% lower this 
summer compared to the same period in the previous year, 
AAFNY's study showed.
    At Chinatown's oldest souvenir shop, the tourists who once 
jammed the store to buy its porcelain and paper goods have been replaced by local immigrants paying their bills.
    The shop, 32 Mott Street General Store Inc, founded in 1891, is 
one of few shops in Chinatown authorized to serve as a bill collector 
for local workers who do not own bank accounts.
    Manager Paul Lee blamed the continued closure of parking at 
Park Row, down the road from his shop in the southern part of 
Chinatown, for choking traffic in the name of security.
    "The jams prevent buses from unloading tourists," he said. His 
store used to serve busloads of tourists on the Gray Line tour bus, 
which no longer stops daily at Chinatown.
    Chinatown, one of the largest and oldest ethnic enclaves in the 
United States, is asking for more federal funding to stimulate 
investment and develop job training courses.

11/12/02 Stanford Daily: "Students hold rally for Filipino veteran rights,"
	Yesterday, on the afternoon of Veterans Day, members of the 
Pilipino-American Student Union gathered in White Plaza to raise 
awareness about Filipino World War II veterans who have been denied 
benefits by the U.S. government and to circulate a petition calling for 
Congress to reintroduce the Veterans Equity Bill.
	Chanting slogans such as "What do we want? Justice for 
veterans," members of PASU said that they wanted to make Stanford 
students aware of the 12,000 Filipino-American veterans in the United 
States and the 35,000 Filipino veterans in the Philippines who are still 
waiting to receive U.S. government benefits.
	In 1944, after 100,000 Filipinos were drafted by the United 
States to fight in World War II, the U.S. Congress passed the GI Bill of 
Rights to provide full benefits to all those who served, irrespective of race, 
color or nationality. However, in 1946, when the Philippines gained its 
independence, Congress passed the Rescission Act, by which Filipino 
veterans were deemed ineligible for all U.S. veteran benefits except for 
certain service-connected disability and death benefits. 
	PASU members asserted that, although in 1990 the Immigration 
and Nationality act did grant U.S. citizenship to Filipino veterans, 
those veterans, now in their late 70s and 80s, are still not receiving the 
benefits that all other veterans have been receiving for the past 50 years. 

10/28/02 Associated Press: "Controversial Asian-Latino Political Bloc Possible in NYC Redistricting,"
    New York -- The Bloomberg administration supports a draft of a new district map that differs from a proposed plan released earlier this week by a government commission, a published report said.
    While both plans call for 29 districts with nonwhite majorities, the mayor's proposal would seek to strengthen Asian political influence in Brooklyn by putting a larger group of Asian residents in a mixed Asian-Latino district, The New York Times reported in its Friday editions.
    The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund voiced concerns about whether Asian voters and candidates would benefit from being linked with other minority groups.

10/22/02 Associated Press: "Even Across the Pacific, All Eyes on Hawaii Gov. Race,"
    Honolulu -- The race for Hawaii governor this year promises to be one of the closest races in history. Since she lost in the 1998 election, Republican Linda Lingle has raised $721,986 from the mainland, according to the state Campaign Spending Commission. Democratic nominee Mazie Hirono raised $60,945 from the mainland during the same period. Stoking mainland interest is the possibility that the next governor could end up appointing a replacement for at least one of Hawaii's elderly U.S. senators.
    Lingle, who lost to incumbent Gov. Ben Cayetano by a mere 5,000 votes in 1998, has polled ahead of Hirono, the lieutenant governor.
    But aside from shaping the state over the next four years, the next governor could also play a role in shaping the U.S. Senate, said Matt Matsunaga, Hirono's Democratic running mate.
    Both Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka are Democrats. And both are 78 years old.
    ``I think it (the race) is being closely watched because of the possibility for the United States Senate appointment,'' said Matsunaga, son of the late U.S. Sen. Spark Matsunaga. ``With the advanced age of our two United States senators and the governor's ability to appoint one should that vacancy come to fruition, I think the national parties are both keeping a close eye on this race.''

10/11/02 Associated Press: "Democrats Crowding Field for Mink's Seat,"
    Honolulu Seventeen Democrats are vying to fill the remaining weeks of the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink's current term. They include former Gov. John Waihee, Ed Case, former state Sen. Malama Solomon, and former Honolulu City Councilman Kekoa Kaapu. The others are not widely known.
    Since concluding his second term as governor in 1994, Waihee, 56, has worked as an attorney and lobbyist with a Washington-based law firm. He recently restarted his old law practice, Waihee and Nip, with attorney Renton Nip.
    Case, 50, who lost the Democratic nomination for governor to Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono in the Sept. 21 primary, announced his candidacy on Sunday and filed his nomination papers on Monday on Maui.
    Another prominent Democrat, Mufi Hannemann is also giving serious thought to the race. He ran in a special House election in 1990 and was narrowly defeated by Mink. ``I am trying to balance between my supporters wanting me to be the mayor of Honolulu and the need in my mind to send someone who can hit the ground running,'' Hannemann said, noting that he has served in four presidential administrations, both Democratic and Republican, in various appointed positions. He also said timing will be a factor, depending on when the special election will be held.
    State Rep. Bob McDermott (R) said he would file. He is the only living major party candidate who has run against Mink. He said, ``I only need a plurality, so if I can get all the Republicans to vote for me, I will win,'' he said. ``There are some big names among the Democrats, but they will split the Democratic vote.''  However, Dalton Tanonaka, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, said he is considering the race.
    The state Supreme Court is considered whether to allow the vote to be held with the regular election on Nov. 5, saving the state $2 million. The special election now is set for Nov. 30, with another special vote Jan. 4 to fill the next term if Mink wins the general election, as Democrats expect.
    State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa said she will not run in the special election to finish Mink's term, and said she believes Mink's husband, John, should finish her term. But Hanabusa said she would run in a second special election that would be held in January if Mink is re-elected posthumously on Nov. 5. Mink's name remains on the ballot despite her death on Sept. 28.

10/9/02 "Barbs fly in 49th Assembly race,"
    Pasadena -- While economic development and education have been common themes in the 49th Assembly District race, Republican challenger George Shen has injected a new issue, accusing Assemblywoman Judy Chu of being out of touch with the district's ethnic groups.
    Chu, a Democrat, is defending her seat after winning a special election last year.
    Shen said his advantage is an ability to understand and communicate with the ethnic communities living in the district specifically Latinos, Asians and whites, an ability he said his opponent is lacking.
    "You must be able to cross cultural and language barriers," Shen said. "One size fits all in the 49th won't work."
    A former U.S. Marine, Shen said he learned the Spanish language and has also kept up with the Chinese culture through his dealings in international trade. He said he has used these skills to better understand the concerns of ethnic minorities, especially those who recently immigrated.
    Chu brushed off the suggestion that she is unable to effectively communicate with her constituents. "I have worked extensively with all the different communities of the district," she said. "My first involvement in politics had to do with the English-only movement (in Monterey Park) and battling the xenophobia at that time."
    She said she has worked to create forums, first as a councilwoman then as an assemblywoman, that bring ethnic groups together. She has office staff who speak Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese, she added.
    During her term, Chu was able to obtain funds for infrastructure improvements at several local schools and advocated for redevelopment projects to increase the sales tax base in cities like El Monte and Rosemead. She co-authored a proposal that would raise the tax rate on the wealthiest Californians to 10 percent to help staunch the hemorrhaging from the state's budget a move she said could raise more than $3.9 billion. The bill has yet to reach the full Legislature.
    Chu also supports changing the state Constitution so that a majority vote can pass a state budget, ostensibly avoiding future deadlocks.
    Shen said his primary aim is to rebuild California's economy through trade agreements and a roll-back of regulations, like recent Legislation to limit carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles.
    "California is lagging behind. Our sheer size hides a lot of problems," Shen said. He would emphasize boosting exports on a statewide level while working to bring manufacturing and construction jobs into the district.
    Shen attacked Chu for supporting a bill that would have encouraged placing gay youths in foster care homes with gay parents. Chu was roundly criticized by conservative groups when the bill was introduced.
    Shen said he believes in equal protection for all, but rejects any law that would give gays the same protected class status afforded some minority groups.
    Chu, chair of the Select Committee on Hate Crimes, said the bill was meant to protect "the most vulnerable of the vulnerable." It did not mandate foster families accept the gay lifestyle, she said, but worked to protect gay youths from being mistreated or kicked out of their homes.
    A lingering issue in the district is the planned completion of the Long Beach (710) Freeway extension. Chu has supported continuing the freeway through South Pasadena, but said she also would support an interim measure to bring it through the city of Alhambra to Huntington Drive. She asked for a seat on the Assembly's Transportation Committee in order to advocate for the project.
    "I want a group together so we have the political will to get this project moving," she said.
    Shen would only say the project was a "done deal."
    "As a state Assembly person, I won't be able to overturn that, and I'll leave it at that," he said. Shen said he wants schools to be more accountable locally and is a firm supporter of the "no child left behind" policy espoused by the Bush administration. He also said he disagreed with the Republican Party on the issue of "socialized medicine," saying he would support government intervention to lower the cost of prescription medication for seniors.
    "My opponent is doing nothing," Shen said. "She is a career politician and she wants to stay in power and that's all she wants."
    As of Sept. 30, Chu had raised $234,000 for her campaign. Shen was in the process of filing a campaign disclosure form with the Secretary of State's Office. His treasurer, Scott Burkle, said he had raised about $40,000.

10/7/02 Associated Press: "Calif. Assembly Speaker Appoints First Woman Majority Leader"
    Sacramento -- California Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, an Oakland Democrat, has been appointed as the first woman and the first Asian-American majority leader of the Assembly.
    Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson announced late Friday he had selected Chan to the Assembly's top leadership post.
    ``Ms. Chan brings with her a wealth of experience I expect to tap extensively as we deal with the significant legislative challenges in the upcoming session,'' Wesson said in a written statement.
    Chan, 53, was elected to the Assembly in November 2000 and served as Majority Whip during the 2001-02 session. Before her election to the Assembly, Chan served on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.
    ``In my district, I represent everyone,'' Chan told the San Jose Mercury News on Friday. ``But I think the Asian- American community will be very proud and supportive of having representation at the highest level.''
    The majority leader is responsible for leading Assembly Democrats, overseeing fund-raising by the Democratic caucus and working with the majority floor leader to make sure sessions run smoothly. The post is key in a state where Democrats control both chambers of the Legislature and all but one statewide office.
    Chan is seeking re-election next month. She won in the 2000 election after then-incumbent Audie Bock switched party affiliation from Green Party to independent.
    In the Assembly, Chan has pressed legislation to promote affordable housing, study whether to tax junk foods and exempt Holocaust survivors from paying income tax on reparations. Last year Chan wrote a new law to encourage counties to build school partnerships by donating surplus computers to schools.
    She and Palo Alto Democrat Joe Simitian also successfully pushed manufacturers of antifreeze to add a bitter taste to protect children and pets from accidental poisoning.
    Chan was born in Boston to Chinese-American immigrant parents and graduated from Wellesley College. She earned a master's degree in education policy analysis and administration at Stanford University.

10/6/02 Sacramento Bee: "Matsui's war chest is open for colleagues: The 12-term Democrat channels most of his copious campaign funds into tougher House races"
    Washington -- Rep. Robert Matsui has raised more than $515,000 for his re-election campaign, but barely a dime of that has been spent on wooing Sacramento-area voters to cast their votes for him in November.
    Blessed with a safe House seat and a reputation for watching out for his constituents, the 12-term Democrat doesn't have to spend much time or money winning re-election.
    Without so much as a single television or newspaper ad, Matsui typically wins with about 70% of the vote.
    So what does he do with all the campaign money he raises? He helps finance the campaigns of other Democrats.
    In the 1999-2000 election cycle, Matsui raised more than $700,000 in his campaign committee. According to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, about half of that went to elect Democrats elsewhere in the country.
    The largest single recipient of Matsui's largess is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the political arm of House Democrats. In the last election cycle, Matsui contributed about $300,000. This year, Matsui already has given about $165,000 to the DCCC and, he said, "I'll do more."
    Matsui figures that in the 1999-2000 election cycle, there were only five or six House Democrats who raised more for the party than he did, and most of them were in the top echelons of the leadership, led by House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri.
    Rep. John Doolittle (R) of Rocklin, CA doesn't think Matsui's concentration on party support is any disservice to his Sacramento constituents, who by a 2-1 margin are mostly Democrats.
"I would think they'd think of this as a real advantage," Doolittle said. "It's an advantage because he does raise so much for his side of the aisle that they listen to him. It gets him support."
    Some of the fund raising Matsui does for the DCCC is expected because of his seniority on the House Ways and Means Committee, the committee that writes tax, Social Security, health, trade and welfare laws. It is one of the most powerful committees in the Congress, and serving on it is a magnet for political contributions.
    In an interview, Matsui said he thinks it's an "obligation" to do even more.
"Particularly given the closeness of the House and the fact that the stakes are so high, it is very important," Matsui said.
    "I don't want to see the Republicans privatize Social Security," he said. "I don't want to see them be more concerned about higher-income people as they were in the tax bill. I think it is very critical for Democrats to control the House and the Senate given the shape the economy is in. Control of the House will put people like myself in a position where we make more of these decisions."
    But Steven Weiss, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors political fund raising, said fund raising on the order of Matsui's is all about personal standing within the House club.
    "The more money you raise, the more money you can contribute and thus enhancing your standing among your colleagues," he said.
    Matsui insisted, however, that he is not trying to curry favor with other House Democrats so that he can win election in the Democratic caucus to a leadership post.
    He said his chief interest is helping Democrats close the seven-seat majority Republicans hold in the House so that he can rise to Social Security subcommittee chairman.

10/4/02 Associated Press: "Hawaii Holding Special Election to Fill Rep. Mink Seat,"
    Honolulu -- State officials have decided to hold a special election next month to fill the late Rep. Patsy Mink's seat for just five weeks, saying it is required by the U.S. Constitution.
    The order Monday by the state's chief elections officer, Dwayne Yoshina, could mean three successive elections in two months for the 2nd District seat -- Nov. 5 with Mink on the ballot, Nov. 30 to fill the rest of her term, and, if Mink wins the first vote, Jan. 4 for the next term.
    Gov. Ben Cayetano said he wants to avoid a lawsuit such as the one filed in Ohio to force a special election to replace former Democratic Rep. James Traficant, who was expelled from Congress in July after he was convicted of bribery, racketeering and tax evasion.
    ``That's not going to be the case in Hawaii,'' the governor said Tuesday.
    Each special election is estimated to cost $2 million. On Monday, state Senate Minority Leader Sam Slom said it was outrageous to spend so much to fill the seat for such a short period when the state faces critical budget problems.
    Candidates, whether representing parties or unaffiliated, have until Oct. 15 to file for the special election in the district that covers rural Oahu and all other islands.
    The winner would have the advantage of incumbency in the Jan. 4 election, if it becomes necessary.
    ``The United States Constitution requires that citizens must have representation in Congress,'' Cayetano said. ``In a democracy, we cannot deny the right of representation for one-half of Hawaii's population to save money. This is obviously especially true at this critical time in our nation's history.''
    Cayetano noted that House vacancies are treated differently from those in the Senate, where offices are filled by gubernatorial appointment. The Constitution requires that House seats be filled only by election.

9/29/02 Los Angeles Times: "Patsy Mink: Liberal, feminist was Hawaii congresswoman for 24 years"
    Washington Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii, an ardent liberal and feminist who served 24 years in Congress, died Saturday. She was 74 and had been battling viral pneumonia for several weeks.
    Ms. Mink died at Straub Clinic and Hospital in Honolulu, her Washington office said. She had been treated there since Aug. 30 for the pneumonia, which stemmed from chickenpox.
    Ms. Mink was elected to Congress in 1964 and left office in 1977 to run for the Senate, a race she lost. She was re-elected to the House in 1990 and had won subsequent elections by wide margins. She represented most of Hawaii, with the exception of Honolulu.
    Ms. Mink easily won a primary election this month and was favored to win re-election in November.
    Sen. Daniel Akaka, a longtime colleague, praised Ms. Mink on Saturday as a "petite woman with a powerful voice and a peerless reputation as a champion for equal opportunity, civil rights and education."
    Ms. Mink's "vision of hope and passion for justice" helped bring about statehood for Hawaii and created new opportunities for the state's residents, he said.
    Born in 1927 on Maui, Ms. Mink became a lawyer and member of the Hawaii House and Senate while it was still a territory. In Congress, she was an early opponent of the Vietnam War and supported abortion rights and opposed the death penalty.
    Ms. Mink was an author of Title IX of the Education Act of 1972, which gave a major boost to women's athletics. The law says both sexes must be treated equally in any education program or activity receiving federal aid.
    More recently, she opposed the toughening of welfare laws signed by President Bill Clinton.
    In a 1999 book, she suggested it was sex discrimination that resulted in her pursuit of a political career.
    Ms. Mink said she applied to about a dozen medical schools during her senior year of college and was not admitted anywhere, despite good test scores. She went to law school instead but said she was rejected by law firms because she was married and had a young child. She eventually opened her own practice.
    In the period between her two House terms, Ms. Mink also ran unsuccessfully for governor and mayor of Honolulu. She served under President Jimmy Carter as assistant secretary of state for oceans, international environment and scientific affairs.
    She was president of the liberal group Americans for Democratic action from 1978 to 1981.
    "She was very strong on the environment. She was for equal opportunity for all people ... She was willing to stand up and be counted," former Democratic Gov. George Ariyoshi said.
    Ms. Mink was to face Republican state Rep. Bob McDermott in the November election for the House. The deadline to replace her on the ballot has passed.
    State law allows a deceased candidate's name to appear on a ballot and includes provisions for a special election to fill the seat. House seats can only be filled by election, not by gubernatorial appointment.
    Ms. Mink is survived by her husband, John Mink, and daughter Wendy.

9/19/02 Associated Press: "Colorado Governor Criticized for Not Appointing Asian-American Judge,"
   Denver -- Minority bar associations are criticizing Gov. Bill Owens for
rejecting an Asian-American lawyer for a judgeship, saying the move will discourage other minority lawyers from applying to the bench.
   Kerry Hada said he was dumped from what appeared to be a sure appointment after advisers told Owens his views were left of center.
   ``What is most disturbing is now you don't know who's running the
confirmation process,'' said Democratic senator and lawyer Penfield Tate.
``You don't know who is whispering to who, saying, `This is what we want
on the bench.'''
   Owens' spokesman, Dan Hopkins, said Hada was not appointed after
an interview and an extensive background check.
    He added that the governor has an ``aggressive track record of
appointing minorities'' when they are nominated by the judicial nominating commissions.
   He said that of the 21 Hispanic nominees the governor has received, he has appointed 10. Hopkins said the governor has received only three black nominees and has appointed one. The nominating commissions have recommended only one Asian- American, and that was Hada, 52.
   The former Airborne Ranger was one of four finalists who met with Owens
last week. He was considered a finalist for one of four district court vacancies in Arapahoe County.
   Last Wednesday, the four finalists, Nancy Hopf, Marc Hannen, Mike
Spear and Hada, met with Owens.
    Hada, in a memo circulated to many federal and state judges, said Owens
told him he was highly praised by both people inside and outside the legal profession and that he had passed two nominating commissions with flying colors.
   ``However, Gov. Owens said there was a problem. He said that he had
heard from key advisers that I might be judicially left of center,'' Hada wrote.
   Owens asked Hada to prepare a ``position paper'' overnight and send it to him the next day, Thursday.
    On Friday, Hada said Owens' assistant telephoned him to report that Magistrate Marilyn Leonard of Jefferson County had been picked for the
position.
   ``It's a slight to the minority bar,'' said Wayne Vaden, chair of the Sam
Cary Judicial Committee, an organization of black lawyers. ``Kerry is an Asian and really a big advocate in the minority community.
   Hada, who grew up in Denver, practices domestic law, personal injury,
and criminal defense in state and federal courts.

8/20/02 Sacramento Bee: "Ex-UCD scientist acquitted of theft: He was accused of stealing vials of protein gel to take to China. The defense called it a 'manufactured case.'"
    A Yolo County jury found former UC Davis researcher Bin Han not guilty of embezzlement Monday, three months after he was arrested and charged with stealing 20 vials of protein gel used in university research.
    The prosecution's case, which had started with allegations of economic espionage and felony charges, dwindled to nothing as the 12-person Superior Court jury acquitted Han of the only remaining misdemeanor charge.
    The verdict brought strong applause from the courtroom full of more than 20 Han supporters and tears to the eyes of his wife, Hongxia Wen. It came four hours after the trial's closing arguments.
Han, who was originally jailed for 18 days without bail, said he would look for another job, but that it would take some time for his life to return to normal.
    Deputy District Attorney David Akulian said earlier that such a verdict does not mean Han is innocent, but that he could not be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
    The prosecution dropped its charge of theft of trade secrets in June, and a judge later reduced the embezzlement charge to a misdemeanor because the gel was worth less than $400.
    The case had provoked accusations that Han, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Chinese origin, was a victim of ethnic discrimination. The prosecution argued that Han intended to use the gel, found in his freezer, to set up a company in China.
    "I think that UC Davis needs to treat their people fairly," Han said after the verdict. "Race discrimination is a big problem for this university."
    Defense attorney Stewart Katz called the prosecution a "manufactured case" originating from an employment dispute. Han had argued over whether he would receive premier authorship on a research paper, and when his employment contract was later discontinued, he threatened to be a laboratory whistleblower.
    "When he made clear he didn't intend to go quietly into the night, they -- with little regard to the truth or common sense -- threw anything they could at him," Katz said. "This case was UC Davis versus Bin Han."
    Steve Drown, a UC Davis attorney, said in an earlier interview that the case was in the hands of the justice system and the university would accept the verdict. He said UC Davis is investigating Han's complaint of employment discrimination.
    "We really hope that other postdoctoral researchers learn from Bin Han's case and will stand up for themselves," said Ivy Lee, president of the Chinese American Political Action Committee.
    During closing arguments, Katz presented an extensive timeline of events to show that although Han took the protein gel, used in corneal research, to his home freezer, he had no intention of using it for profit.
    Han meant to return it, Katz argued earlier, but was distracted by other problems at work.
    Katz highlighted e-mails among Han's superiors to try to show an intent to persecute the researcher. One suggested taking away the prestigious position of first author on an academic paper.
    "I think it might be ugly -- Bin would be very, very unhappy, and might seek a way to appeal? Or worse yet, get back at us," read the e-mail.
    The prosecution had presented as evidence a plane ticket to China in Han's name and a PowerPoint presentation, also with Han's name, that proposed taking corneal research to China.
    But Katz said Han simply intended to travel to visit his ailing mother.

8/19/02 San Diego Tribune: "INS inundated with criticism over visa plan: Proposal described as vague, 'knee-jerk' reaction to 9/11"
    Washington - Since the Immigration and Naturalization Service announced a proposed rule in April that would eliminate the existing six-month visas for foreign tourists in favor of case-by-case reviews, federal officials say there has been an overwhelming negative response.
    The proposal - which experts say reflects a classic clash of security concerns vs. an open society - has prompted 10,000 written comments and e-mails with the government. That's the most in recent memory, officials said.
    At one point, the crush of e-mails prompted the INS computer system to crash.
    Despite the criticism, INS officials said the proposed rule change is just another policy tool to enhance border security after the Sept. 11 attacks.
    The rule is geared toward halting the flow of millions of foreign visitors who have consistently overstayed their visas. That group represents at least 40% of this country's more than 8 million illegal immigrants, according to the INS.
    The Bush administration wants to eliminate the automatic six-month B-1 and B-2 visas for business and foreign tourists. The proposed rule states that it would impose a "period of time that is fair and reasonable for completion of the purpose of the visit.'"
    Instead, border inspectors would determine the "nature and purpose" of the visit, with 30 days imposed unless visitors can explain to immigration officials why they need to stay longer.
    The rules would not apply to most foreign tourists visiting the United States. Most are admitted without visas under the "visa waiver" program covering 28 countries, including Canada, most of Europe, Japan and other industrialized countries.
    Possible extensions on visitor visas also would be reduced from a maximum one year to six months.
Although INS officials hoped the proposal would take effect sometime this summer, the agency has not indicated when that might happen. Some critics believe more changes are forthcoming.
    In the meantime, tourism and immigration groups are riled about the latest rule proposals. Some have organized their responses in e-mails to the agency, decrying the "knee-jerk" reaction of the Bush administration.
    Some complaints are about economics: Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida - brother of the president - worries that the plan could harm the state's tourist industry.
    Some critics believe the state with the most to lose economically is California, the most visited state with an estimated 9 million foreign visitors last year.

8/8/02 press release: "AAJA Unveils Study By USC Revealing Shortage of Asian American Male Broadcast Journalists in the TV Industry,"
    There is a critical shortage of Asian American male broadcast journalists, according to a first-ever study unveiled today that quantifies the problem and addresses some of the reasons behind it. 
    The research -- entitled "Asian Male Broadcasters on TV: Where Are They?" -- was conducted by the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications and was released at the 15th annual convention of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) August 7-10, 2002 in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. 
    In the top 25 television markets, there are a total of 85 Asian females on-air and 19 Asian males on-air, resulting in a nearly 5 to 1 ratio of women versus men, the USC study found. 
    "The results of this study as well as the results of surveys done by RTNDA [Radio-Television News Directors Association] lend credence to the concerns that our male broadcast journalists have been raising in the past few years, that the gender disparity among Asian Americans in broadcasting is significant," said Victor Panichkul, AAJA President. "When our numbers are compared to the numbers of male and female African American, Native American, or Hispanic broadcast journalists, what we see is a problem that impacts our members more significantly than other people of color," Panichkul said. 
    In light of the findings, AAJA will re-evaluate its current programs to see how the organization can better target them toward Asian American males with an interest in broadcast journalism, Panichkul said. In addition, AAJA hopes that other industry organizations will take part in helping to find solutions to this problem. 
    "We can't turn our back on this problem if we expect journalists to paint an accurate picture of our society," said Randall Yip, AAJA Vice President for Broadcast. "Good Asian American male journalists are out there. We need to go out and recruit them. Journalism will be a better profession if we do."
    Some of the findings in the study include: 
    - Asian Americans make up a small percentage of the student population in U.S. journalism schools, but males far out-number females by approximately 4 to 1. 
    - In making career choices, Asian American male students are highly motivated by parents, prestige and starting salaries. They are more likely to go into science-related occupations. 
    - There is a lack of key Asian American male broadcast role models. (Such as Connie Chung is for Asian American females.) 
    The results from the USC study confirm other research done on the makeup of broadcast newsrooms. A recent Ball State University study found that Asians make up 2.7 percent of the broadcast newsroom in 2001, or about 650 people. Asian males constituted only 1 percent of the workforce, while Asian females made up 1.7 percent.
    Meanwhile, there are more Hispanic, African American and white males than females in the newsroom, the survey found. "AAJA will be taking a hard look at this problem, which has gone on for far too long," said Mae Cheng, AAJA Vice President for Print, who helped commission the study. "With these numbers to back what we've been saying all along, AAJA will be much more vocal about the need for more Asian American males in broadcast in the hope that the industry will join us in addressing the problem." 
    The USC study is based on surveys of the top 25 television markets and top journalism schools in the United States. Interviews with program managers, news directors, and agents in the television industry as well as a focus group of Asian American students were also conducted.

8/7/02 Associated Press: "Cambodians Decry Deportation,"
    Vanna Seth has a friend and fellow Cambodian citizen who may be deported by federal authorities.
    The Providence man, who she would not name, was convicted six years ago for illegally discharging a firearm, Seth said. He served a five-year sentence, yet the man, now in his mid-20s, has been detained for a year, she said, as the Immigration and Naturalization Service decides whether he should be returned to Cambodia.
    Seth last saw her friend about a month ago. She said he doesn't understand why he's still being detained, and there's nobody who can tell him what he should do.
    Seth's friend is among some 50 Cambodians who, according to the Cambodian Society of Rhode Island, face deportation after a criminal conviction, under revamped federal immigration laws and a March treaty between Washington and Phnom Penh that allows Cambodian criminals to be returned to their native country.
    Seth joined about 100 Cambodians and other groups Monday to protest the possible deportations by marching to the INS office in downtown Providence.
    Nationwide, about 1,400 Cambodians face such a fate, said KaYing Yang, executive director of the Southeast Asian Resource Action Center in Washington.
    The refugees can be deported under 1996 changes to immigration laws, which expanded the crimes for which someone can be deported. Resident aliens could also be deported for crimes committed before 1996 under the revised law.
    ``We have a responsibility to enforce the law equally with respect to all foreign nationals,'' said INS spokesman Russ Bergeron, ``Fundamentally, these individuals are not United States citizens and because they are not, and they have been convicted of a crime, they are subject to being removed''.
    The Supreme Court ruled in June 2001 that legal immigrants convicted of certain crimes are entitled to a court hearing before they can be deported.
    Yang said the immigrants are not aware they can appeal their deportation orders. Many have lived most of their lives in the U.S.and scarcely know the country from which they emigrated, she added.
    There are about 17,000 Cambodians in Rhode Island, nearly all of them refugees, said Pich Chhoeun, director of the Cambodia Society of Rhode Island. He said many of the deportees fled the poor, violent southeast Asian country when they were young -- and are now supporting families in America. To send them back would be to tear families apart, said Chhoeun, a Cambodian emigre who became an American citizen six years ago.
    Chhoeun said six Cambodians have been deported recently. He said he did not know the crimes of the others who may still be sent back.

8/5/02 Boston Globe: "Activists hail vote guiding changes Chinatown project, rezoning at issue,"    
    In a nonbinding vote taken Saturday night by about 900 Chinatown residents age 16 or older, voters opposed, by 669-220, the Liberty Place complex, a proposed residential projects.  Voters also backed rezoning of the adult entertainment district in the lower Washington Street area and requested a city policy to allow residents to speak out on projects affecting Chinatown.
     Activists hope the referendum, which they say represents the ''true voice'' of Chinatown, will pressure the city's Zoning Board of Appeal into reversing the Boston Redevelopment Authority's unanimous approval of the complex last Friday. Also approved was Dover Residences, a smaller, four-building complex.  The zoning board is expected to approve the variances for Liberty Place in a meeting at noon tomorrow. 
    City officials have said that residents overwhelmingly favor the projects, but Chinatown activists said they asked the board to postpone its decision until residents could weigh in with the referendum. The request was denied. 
    City spokesman DeWayne Lehman. said the BRA and the city have worked with residents in three community meetings and received 1,200 letters and signatures of support - and very few letters of opposition. Lehman said that the zoning board likely will consider the referendum and continue to work with residents to address concerns. 
    But activists said the city's stance reflects a history of decisions that have hurt Chinatown residents, including one in 1974 to designate part of the neighborhood for adult entertainment.
    Liberty Place, to be built at 660 Washington St., would be a 28-story tower with 439 apartments, including 10 units of subsidized housing. 
    Opponents, fearing the spread of gentrification, wanted more. Supporters - mostly small business owners - approve of the mainly middle-class income range. They hope the development will lure back more former residents and help dim the neon lights of local sex shops. 

7/30/02 Associated Press: "Minorities see job bias, study says,"
    Non-white Californians recently faced a 25% chance of running into discrimination when applying for jobs, especially in customer service-heavy industries such as the medical, restaurant and retail fields, according to a report released Monday.
    African-Americans ran the highest risk 29% -- of being refused employment because of their race, followed by Asians and Latinos, said Rutgers University professors Al and Ruth Blumrosen based on 1999 federal data.
    Nationally, chances of job discrimination among non-whites ran much higher, with Asians leading the pack at 39%, followed by Latinos and blacks, the study found.
    Although the report does not examine causes, Al Blumrosen said that perhaps "there's a tendency (for employers) to hire people who look like customers" in service industries.
    "All of the highest five industries are places where interpersonal relationships are involved between customers and employees," he said.
    Over the past three decades, instances of job discrimination have diminished, the report found.
    About 8 million more non-whites and women are working in key industries than in 1975, after adjusting for growth in general and industry-wide populations, the study found.
    "A significant number of people have actually gained very substantial employment opportunities," Al Blumrosen said.
    Within the state, Southern California claimed more than half the share of workers who could experience discrimination, and the San Francisco and Oakland areas each accounted for 9% of such workers, the study found.
    Tracking and fighting discrimination in the hiring process can be difficult, and unions and other watchdog groups are often helpless to protect people who haven't yet been hired, said John Borsos, director of the Service Employees International Union Local 250's hospital division.
    "In general, the health-care industry has a lot of room for improvement," he said.
    The state's Department of Fair Employment and Housing also investigates discrimination complaints brought to its attention.
    The study produced its estimates by comparing average shares of non-whites in various industries with employers whose non-white employment fell below 5% of such averages.
    Federal law requires employers with such minuscule non-white workforces to prove they have not discriminated against job applicants.
    Through the comparison, the researchers estimated how many people below the industry average lost out on jobs and what percentage of jobs in the industry came from possibly discriminatory firms with meager non-white employment numbers.

7/25/02 Sacramento Bee: "Judge rules immigrants can seek amnesty.  Despite 16 years of wrangling, he says program's still valid."
    Despite 16 years of legal and legislative maneuvering by the government, tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants nationwide remain eligible to seek legitimate status under a 1986 amnesty program, a federal judge in Sacramento ruled Wednesday.
    U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton noted that events during the intervening years will make it more difficult to process the applications, but said immigration authorities must face the reality that up to 350,000 people were unlawfully barred from applying for amnesty.
    He gave the attorneys for the government and the immigrants 45 days to come up with a joint plan -- in the form of an injunction -- for implementing his ruling.
    The order scuttles yet another attempt by the U.S. attorney general and the Immigration and Naturalization Service to rid themselves of one of the longest-running class-action lawsuits in the nation.
    It was filed in 1986 on behalf of immigrants who were disqualified from the amnesty program because they had temporarily left the United States at some previous time.
    Karlton found in 1988 that such a restriction was invalid under the terms of the amnesty statute -- called the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). As a remedy, he ordered an extension of the application period.
    That 14-year-old decision "remains the law of the case," the judge declared in Wednesday's order.
    In their latest motion for summary judgment, government lawyers argued on behalf of Attorney General John Ashcroft and the INS that a 2001 law supersedes the amnesty program and makes the immigrants' suit moot.
    Not so, said Karlton. He found that the Legal Immigration Family Equity (LIFE) Act merely provides many of the class members an alternate route to legal residency.
    For instance, he said, family unity benefits are more favorable under the amnesty measure than the LIFE Act, and an immigrant eligible to apply for status adjustment under both statutes might prefer to proceed under the older law for that reason.
    The government cited an INS regulation that allows the agency to consider an application under the terms of the amnesty program if it fails to meet the LIFE criteria.
    But the judge was not ready to place the immigrants' fate at the mercy of INS discretion.
    The 1986 statute was meant to allow more than 3 million immigrants -- including 1.6 million California residents -- to emerge from the shadow world of the undocumented. Those granted amnesty were eligible for work permits, lawful residency and -- eventually -- citizenship.
    To qualify, applicants had to show their continuous presence in the United States from 1982 to May 4, 1988, when the application period closed, but "brief, casual and innocent" absences abroad were permitted.
    INS implementation regulations, however, disqualified an immigrant who had been out of the country without prior approval of the agency.
    Once Karlton invalidated that interpretation of the statute, the case bounced around for years among his court, the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. Congress even passed a law in 1996 stripping the judge of his jurisdiction, and he was forced to dismiss the case. He reopened it after the LIFE Act repealed that law.
    "The intervening delay has made both the identity of potential class members and the means of informing them of their right to apply more difficult," Karlton acknowledged in Wednesday's order. "Moreover, the passage of time has undoubtedly affected the availability of evidence to support their claims.
    "In addition, the resources and people (then) available to process the legalization program ... undoubtedly have been allocated elsewhere. Finally, the agency now has institutional problems arising out of recent events that did not exist in the past."
    The latter reference is, at least in part, to last month's proposal by President Bush to split off the INS from the Justice Department.

7/23/02 San Jose Mercury News:
"Crackdown on immigrants: Ashcroft: Address Changes Must Be Reported within 10 Days,"
    Millions of legal immigrants living in the United States will have to notify
the government of a change of address within 10 days of moving or risk
deportation, as part of a plan announced Monday to enforce an often-ignored 50-year-old law.
    U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the decision is part of a national
security plan that would help secure U.S. borders by making it easier to
track non-citizens.
    The enforcement affects at least 10 million legal permanent residents,
according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and visitors and
students who stay in the United States more than 30 days. It also covers
illegal immigrants, although few are expected to step forward.
    ``By clarifying the existing requirement that non-citizens report their address to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, we are able to
increase our ability to locate quickly an alien if removal proceedings must
be initiated,'' Ashcroft said at an anti-crime forum in Alberta, Canada.
He did not detail how the INS will handle the new reporting system or whether the Justice Department plans to use the law to charge immigrants retroactively.
    But immigrant advocates in the Bay Area and across the country worry that in its pursuit of terrorists, the agency will penalize millions of law-abiding
immigrants for a minor infraction.
    ``It won't make our country safer, and it will make newcomers to this
country targeted,'' said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National
Immigration Forum, a pro-immigration organization based in Washington, D.C.  ``This is like an overdue library book.''
    In a statement, the Justice Department acknowledged that the INS ``has not effectively enforced these existing requirements in the past.'' Failure to abide by the rule has long been a criminal offense punishable by a fine, imprisonment or deportation.
    Immigration opponents criticized an overwhelmed INS for not already strictly
enforcing the rule. Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration
Studies and an advocate of tougher border controls, acknowledged that the
current mandates are already ``way beyond what INS can handle.''
    It was unclear whether the measure would have allowed for better tracking of the terrorists in the Sept. 11 attacks. They moved frequently without
reporting it, and many had overstayed their visas.
    Some immigrant advocates cited a recent case in Atlanta in which a
Palestinian permanent resident, the father of two children who are U.S.
citizens, is facing deportation because he failed to notify the INS of his
address change in 1999.
    The Palestinian immigrant, Thar Abdeljaber, was pulled over by police for a minor speeding violation, then questioned by the FBI because he had a North Carolina map with several locations circled when he was stopped by police.
    Abdeljaber was not charged, but the INS began its own query and discovered his address change infraction.
    Ashcroft did not provide details of how immigrants should report address
changes.
    ``Changing your address is not a big thing,'' said Mahesh Anand, an Oracle
engineer who came from India on an H1B work visa in 1996. ``But saying that if you don't change your address and you forget to notify us we can deport you, doesn't make sense. That's disturbing.''
    Anand has changed jobs and moved four times since he arrived in the United
States, only notifying his company of the change.
    ``I know they're trying to make rules to help them in their fight against
terrorism. But this is targeting innocent people,'' said Anand, 32, who
lives in Fremont.
    Stacy Tolchin, a San Francisco immigration lawyer, said she is concerned that there is a potential for abuse.  
    ``The INS has stated that it only intends to do this on special provisional
cases and in one respect that narrows the field of people who are going to
be affected,'' said Tolchin, a lawyer with Van Der Hout & Brigagliano. ``But
this really increases the chances for selective enforcement and immigrants
may be targeted because of their nationalities.''

7/22/02 Associated Press: "MD Gov. Names Asian-American and Gay Judges,"
    Baltimore -- Gov. Parris N. Glendening named an Asian-American woman and an openly gay woman to serve as judges on the Baltimore City District Court as a way of ``breaking down barriers.''
    Jeannie Hong becomes the first Asian-American judge in Maryland history.
    ``The strength of Maryland is its diversity, and with these two appointments we are celebrating that diversity and breaking down barriers,'' Glendening said in a prepared statement. ``I am confident Ms. Hong and Ms. Weinstein will make Maryland a more fair, just and inclusive (place) to live.''
    Hong, 36, a Korean American, heads the Vehicle Analysis Network in the
state's attorney's office, and is the office expert on prosecuting    carjacking cases.
    Hong is married to Michael Shaw, an attorney, and they have two young
children. She was born in Seoul, South Korea, and became a U.S. citizen in
October 1977.

7/19/02 Associated Press: "Group Slams TV Networks for Lack of Diversity,"
    Los Angeles -- A coalition of ethnic groups slammed the major television networks Wednesday for failing to significantly increase diversity in programming and called on advertisers to pressure CBS, which it says has the worst record.
    The group released its third annual diversity ``report card'' at the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists in midtown Los Angeles. ABC and Fox upped their grades slightly over last year, moving from D-minus to C-minus and C-minus to C, respectively. But both NBC and CBS slid backward. NBC moved from a C to a D-plus, and CBS moved from a D-plus to a D-minus.
    The report focused on the inclusion of Asian Pacific Americans, Hispanics and American Indians. The NAACP will present its own report later this summer.
    The coalition saved its harshest words for CBS. Members cited several shows set in cities with large minority populations that feature mostly white casts, such as ``Presidio Med.''
    Karen Narasaki, chair of the Multi-Ethnic Media Coalition, criticized the show for failing to include any Asian Pacific Americans among its main cast.
    '``Presidio Med' is based in San Francisco, where one in three people is Asian-American and where a significant portion of the medical profession, from orderlies to nurses to doctors are Asian-American,'' she said.
    CBS said it intends to cast more Asians in guest roles as the series progresses.
    The coalition is urging main corporate sponsors of CBS -- General Motors, Proctor & Gamble, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Philip Morris, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, and AOL Time Warner -- to pressure the network to increase diversity.

7/17/02 Sacramento Bee: "Shrinking case: UC researcher charge now a misdemeanor,"
    Woodland, CA - On Tuesday, the case against former UC Davis researcher Bin Han shrank when a Yolo Superior Court judge Thomas Warriner ruled that the embezzlement charge against Han is -- if proved -- only a misdemeanor.
    The vials of the protein gel that Han is accused of stealing from UC Davis -- though they hold the potential to be the key ingredient in valuable research -- are themselves worth less than $400, the threshold for felony theft, the judge ruled Tuesday.
    Han had earlier faced a felony charge of theft of trade secrets that was dropped by prosecutors. Police initially speculated that Han had plans for the gels after his lab co-workers told investigators Han had ordered scientific materials sent to a business at his home address and paid for supplies with his own credit card.
    Han was arrested in May by UC Davis police after officials searched his home and found 20 vials of protein gel, as well as data related to his university research and a plane ticket to China in Han's name.
    Police searched the researcher's Davis home after co-workers told officials they believed Han had ordered scientific materials and had them sent to a business at his residence.            
    Co-workers made the accusation days after Han, a staff researcher in the ophthalmology department of the UC Davis Medical Center, was told his research grant would not be renewed at the university.
    Supporters of Han claim university officials singled out the researcher for retaliation because he questioned why he didn't receive top billing on an important scientific paper. They also claim he was about to blow the whistle on officials for allegedly unapproved lab practices.
    Han's backers also believe the naturalized citizen is being targeted because of his ethnic background.
    "The only thing Bin Han is guilty of is being Chinese," said Pilar Barton, a field representative for the University Professional and Technical Employees Union, which represents Han.
    About 50 supporters of Han rallied in front of the Yolo County courthouse in Woodland on Tuesday before the researcher's preliminary hearing.
    During the two-hour hearing, co-workers of Han testified that on May 7, Han picked up the vials of protein gel from Thermogenesis Corp., a Rancho Cordova company that synthesizes blood products. Han was supposed to deliver 40 of the vials to the UC Davis laboratory, but only 20 made it to the lab. Police found the other 20 in Han's freezer.
    Co-workers also testified that Han was told May 13 that his grant would not be renewed and he must return all university property, including his lab keys. Han still had the vials when police searched his home May 17.
    Since 1989, Han has worked in various research capacities at the university. Most recently he has worked in the lab of Dr. Ivan Schwab, a professor who specializes in disorders of the cornea. Schwab told The Bee in an earlier interview that he and his colleagues are experimenting with making a new ocular surface for people whose corneas have been damaged.         
    The protein gels found in Han's freezer were an integral tool in that process. They would be of no value to anyone who didn't know how to use them, Schwab added.
    Trista Madsen, director of clinical affairs for Thermogenesis, said the protein gels used by Han and his colleagues were given to the university at no cost. The gels have not received Food and Drug Administration approval for sale in the United States. She estimated that they cost the company about $5,000 to make, but the plasma itself from which the gels are made was purchased for about $125 from a blood bank.
    Han is scheduled to appear in court July 22 for a pretrial hearing on the misdemeanor charge of embezzlement. If convicted, he could face a year in jail.
    Han's attorney, Stewart Katz, called the ruling a victory. He said Han also would contest his termination by the university.
    Han's supporters likened his case to that of Wen Ho Lee, the Chinese American scientist accused of espionage in 1999. The government claimed Lee sent nuclear technology secrets to China. But dozens of those charges were dropped against Lee before he went to trial. The lab where Lee's alleged espionage took place was the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is run by the University of California.
    Speaking at Tuesday's rally, Cecelia Chan, executive director of the Wen Ho Lee advocacy group, WenHoLee.org, called for prosecutors to drop all charges against Han.
    "Any one of us can suffer from the same kind of discrimination," she said.


7/16/02 Sacramento Bee: "Racial data issue qualifies for ballot,"
    A controversial initiative that would ban government agencies from
collecting racial data has qualified for the March 2004 ballot, California
Secretary of State Bill Jones announced Monday.
    The proposal is championed by affirmative-action opponent Ward Connerly, who intentionally submitted just enough signatures to miss the November 2002 ballot but qualify for 2004. Connerly has said that he prefers the delay because of fund-raising concerns and a desire to avoid gubernatorial-year politics.
    After a full check of Connerly's petitions, county officials reported that
he had 694,586 valid signatures, more than the 670,816 required to qualify
for a statewide ballot, Jones announced.
    The initiative would prevent most state and local agencies from collecting
and maintaining racial statistics.
    Connerly says race should be a private matter and that many Californians do not conform to racial classifications found on government forms.
    But critics, including the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People and the Mexican- American Legal Defense and Education Fund, say the information is necessary to prevent discrimination and ensure public services are sufficient.


7/15/02 Los Angeles Times: "Long School Commutes Anger S.F. Asians: Many Students Travel Across Town To Promote Integration. A Legislator Has Seized on The Issue,"
    San Francisco -- Les Ho is 13 now, old enough to know that he had plenty of
reasons to fail. Instead, the boy who grew up speaking Chinese, the son of a
single, immigrant father, mastered the routine of public education, often
slogging through three hours of homework a night. He will begin high school this fall with a tidy transcript of A's and Bs and aspirations of becoming a doctor.
    Then he will begin a new routine.
    Denied admission to one of the city's best schools, just blocks from his
home on the west side of San Francisco, Les will rise early. He'll dash off, catch the N Bus, then the 28, then the 30--an hour's commute to an inferior
school across town where he's been enrolled by a computer. He is the future,
many Asian Americans fear, of public education in San Francisco. Often by
design, but this spring because of a computer glitch too, the city school
district is sending scores of students away from their schools of choice and
across town to campuses that they deem inferior.
    The shift has rekindled charges that Asian Americans, the majority group at
many top schools, are forced to shoulder the weight of integrating and
strengthening the city's troubled public schools. Asian Americans have
renewed charges that they are victims of their own academic success.
    Proposal Raises Fears
    And now a self-styled firebrand on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
has supercharged the debate by raising the possibility of splitting the city
school district in half. The proposal has set the city abuzz with fears that
Supervisor Leland Yee and his supporters are attempting to create two
separate and unequal school districts--in loose terms, one for Asians and whites, the other for blacks and Latinos.
    Yee, a shoot-from-the-lip child psychologist who emigrated from China at age 3, says he's merely trying to reduce red tape and make one of the largest school districts in California more responsive to parents and children.
    Suddenly, though, this Democrat and child of '60s protest is fending off
charges that his district breakup proposal may cripple the long struggle to integrate schools.
    Yee insists that he's simply trying to represent the interests of his
constituents in a middle- and upper-middle-class district on the west side of San Francisco. The region, near Golden Gate Park, is known as the Sunset and is populated largely by Asian American families.
    San Francisco educators, he said, don't like to be second-guessed--and have made him the target of unfair criticism since this spring, when he first
hinted at the possibility of splitting up the school district.
    "It's the institution," Yee said of the school system, sounding more like
the UC Berkeley student he once was than the vote-hungry politician he's
accused of becoming. "Whenever there is any attack on that institution, they
get their dander up, and they will distort and do what they need to do to
protect themselves."
    Yee has tapped into a deep bed of resentment among Asian Americans in the fierce debate over how to properly shepherd one of the state's most diverse school districts.
    In March, a computer program apparently botched its enrollment program, sending hundreds of children either to the wrong school or to no school at all. Many Asian American parents remain convinced that their children made up the bulk of those affected by the glitch.
    To Asians and Pacific Islanders, who make up 35% of San Francisco and 50% of the school district, it was a slap in the face. Reaction to the glitch
rapidly ballooned into full-fledged panic.
    Parents Are Suspicious
    Many Asian American parents believe the school district is shuffling their children around to boost test scores at bad schools and make the district eligible for more grant money.         
    School administrators deny that.
    "This system punishes people who work hard, and they don't realize how many real lives are being affected," Kwong said.
    Yee quickly stepped into the fray. He has asked the city attorney's office
to study the legal possibilities of not only splitting the school district
in half, but of allowing the city to take over the school system.
    Yee says nothing less than the survival of the public education system is at stake.
    "There were days when parents would just suck it up and send their child to whatever school they were told," he said. "Now you have better-educated
parents with a little moxie, who say: 'If you don't give me what I want, I
will take my kid, I will work seven days a week, and by golly I will get the
best education available. And that's in a private school.' "
    The ruckus is the latest chapter in San Francisco's long debate over how
much weight should be placed on ethnicity when determining where children should go to school.
    Despite its liberal reputation, San Francisco was no different from most
other cities across the country 25 years ago when it came to segregation.
Its best schools were typically left for white students.
    A 1978 lawsuit by the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People
forced a court decree that instituted busing and overhauled staffs at poorly
performing schools, which had been largely attended by black students.
The district also put in place a racial quota system, capping any one ethnic
group at either 40% or 45% of a student body, depending on the school. That
system, initially, was praised by civil rights organizations as promoting
diversity.
    But by the mid-1990s, the glow of the court victory had faded. Latino and
African American students were still dropping out at alarming rates.
    Asian Americans became the majority in many schools, as many whites began moving to the suburbs or placing their children in private schools.
    But because of the quotas, some Asian Americans were having trouble getting into their neighborhood schools. At the prestigious Lowell High School,
Chinese Americans became a dominant majority of the student body. To maintain the balance mandated by the NAACP consent decree, officials
required Chinese Americans to score higher on standardized tests than other
ethnic groups to gain admission to Lowell.
    In 1999, Chinese American families filed a lawsuit claiming that racial
balancing violated their rights. San Francisco agreed to stop using race to
place students in classrooms. Instead of quotas, school administrators began
relying on other factors to place students, including test scores and a
broad definition of "merit"--community service, family income and "ability
to overcome hardship."
    Yee has not heard back from the city attorney's office about his school
district splitting proposal and says it could be months before he does. Most
analysts believe his plan is illegal.
Under state law, a new school district cannot be created if it will increase
the cost of educating children or increase segregation. School
administrators believe Yee's proposal would fail on both counts. The plan
would also have to be approved by the local and state boards of education,
which is not likely.
    Faced with outrage from across the school district--some from Asian American leaders--Yee seems to be backpedaling. Last month, he joined the rest of the Board of Supervisors to unanimously approve a resolution--entirely symbolic
and nonbinding--calling for a single, unified school district.
    Political Motives Seen
    Many remain confounded by Yee's proposal and believe its roots lie in the
murky pool of politics.
    Yee recently won the Democratic primary for a state Assembly seat, and will compete against Republican Howard Epstein in the November general election.
    Yee's prospective district would include much of the Sunset
neighborhood--home of most of the parents upset over the treatment of Asian Americans--and many believe he is pandering for votes. Others feel Yee may be floating the proposal to draw attention to his would-be successor,
another Chinese American politician, Ed Jew.
    Meanwhile, amid all the contorted debate over race, diversity and politics
in San Francisco are the underlying realities that have made the issue so
emotional for many Asian Americans.
    To John Ho, a plant operations engineer at an Oakland hospital, it's about the fact that his son, Les, can't get in to his neighborhood school. Can't
go to school with his friends. Won't be home in time to help his father, who
is disabled, around the house.
It's about the fact that, right or wrong, Les believes he's being targeted
because of his ethnicity--that his hour long commute isn't designed to
improve his education, but someone else's.
    "I work hard. I pay my taxes," John Ho said. "I want to know why my kid
can't go to school in my neighborhood. That's it."

July 4-10, 2002 Asianweek.com: "Demanding Justice: APA community groups rally for man they say is wrongly sentenced,"
    David Wong, 37, has spent the last 18 years in prison. Locked up in the Auburn Correctional Facility in upstate New York, Wong is serving time for second degree murder a crime, eyewitnesses and supporters allege, that he did not commit. APA organizations are rallying for Wongs release and demanding that the criminal justice system re-examine its cultural and linguistic inadequacies.
    Originally, Wong was serving time for armed robbery he committed when he was 19. It was his first and only offense. He was imprisoned in Suffolk County, New York and was later moved to the Clinton Correctional Facility on June 1984.
    During that time, fellow inmate Tyrone Julius was fatally stabbed on March 12, 1986 and died on March 27. The principal prosecution witnesses were Peter Dellfava and Richard LaPierre, who claimed that Wong had committed the crime. The defense pointed out that there was no physical or forensic evidence, or motive that tied Wong to the crime. The four defense witnesses also claimed Wong did not commit the crime. Wong was subsequently convicted of second- degree murder, and in August 1987 was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
    However, years later defense evidence from Dellfava shows that he may have been lying in order to receive a transfer to a less dangerous prison and to receive a favorable letter of recommendation from the prosecutor to the parole board. Witnesses later surfaced naming Nelson Gutierrez as the killer. They claimed that the perpetrator had a visible limp, and noted that Julius and Gutierrez were said to have been involved in a violent altercation prior to the stabbing where Gutierrezs leg was severely injured.
    Jaykumar Menon is Wongs representative and a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights. Wayne Lum became involved in the case 10 years ago and is coordinator of the David Wong Support Committee.
    Wongs supporters claim that he may not have received a qualified interpreter who spoke his dialect. Prior to the trial, the court-appointed lawyer informed the judge that Wongs native dialect was Mandarin, which is incorrect, resulting in incompetent translations.
    "It was an all-white jury. Wong claimed that they picked on him as an Asian because they needed a scapegoat, and they exploited his vulnerabilities as an immigrant and railroaded him to this murder charge," Lum said.
    The Organization of Chinese Americans has drafted a letter in support of Wong. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance are asking the local district attorney to reconsider the case.
    Wongs lawyers are hoping to file a motion with the court in several weeks to show new evidence that Wong did not commit the murder and that conviction be reversed.

6/21/02 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Sikh brothers win $5 million in bias suit against Arco"
    Harinder, Gurinder and Gagandeep Bains, three Sikh brothers who fled religious persecution in their native
India, immigrated to the United States in 1987.
    They settled in Okanogan, a small north-central Washington city, became U.S. citizens and developed a gas-station and gasoline-hauling business called Flying B.
    In March 2000, soon after the business entered into a contract with Arco to haul gasoline from the Arco Cherry Point refinery in Ferndale to a
gasoline tank farm on Harbor Island, the Bainses say they experienced their
first taste of raw ethnic discrimination.
    The brothers and their East Indian employees were routinely harassed by Arco employees, according to a civil rights suit filed in U.S. District Court in
Seattle. They called them things like "rag heads" and "camel jockeys";
forced them to use slower pumps and to stand in the rain while other drivers
did not; and in one case, demanded that a Flying B employee clean up an oil
spill with his turban, Sikh headwear of high religious importance.
    After the Bainses complained to Arco superiors in Seattle and at Los Angeles
headquarters about their treatment, Arco severed their contract without
notice.
    On Tuesday, after a six-day trial, a Seattle jury deliberated just four
hours before awarding the brothers $5 million.
    An Arco spokesman said company officials were disappointed with the verdict and were weighing an appeal.
    In court papers, Arco attorneys claimed Flying B drivers lacked proper
training and insurance, were seen speeding, tailgating, running stop signs,
smoking in cabs and failing to turn off engines while pumping fuel.
"When these behaviors persisted despite repeated warnings, Arco's terminal manager made the decision to suspend to suspend Flying B from loading or unloading fuel at Cherry Point or Harbor Island," Arco attorneys wrote.
    The Bainses denied Arco's safety claims during the trial. Their attorneys
said the allegations were meant to divert the jury from the harsh truth of
ethnic discrimination.
    Seattle civil rights attorney Ed Budge said "Arco may have thought it could capitalize on public fear by claiming the
Bains brothers and their Sikh tanker drivers were 'unsafe,' even though
there was no contemporaneous documentation on any violations in Arco's records. We had confidence that the jury would see through that."
    The jury awarded the Bainses $50,000 in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive fines. During trial, the Bainses attorneys asked for a little more than $8 million, equaling one day's average worth of net profits for
Arco in one recent year.


6/15/02 Associated Press: "Mother of Vincent Chin, 1982 Hate Crime 
Victim, Dead at 81,"
    Farmington Hills, Mich. -- Lily Chin, who waged a fight for justice in the 
anti-Asian bias killing of her Chinese-American son Vincent Chin, has died.  She was 81.
   She died Sunday of cancer at the Farmington Hills Health Center, The 
Detroit News reported.
   On June 19, 1982, two white men beat her 26-year-old son Vincent Chin 
to death outside a nude dancing club in Highland Park where he had been 
celebrating his upcoming wedding.
   Prosecutors said the men attacked Chin because they thought he was 
Japanese and blamed Japanese competition for the plight of the U.S. auto industry.
   Lily Chin was a silent but focused figure at the trials of her son's attackers, unemployed autoworker Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz. The 
men accepted pleas to manslaughter charges and were sentenced to three 
years' probation and fined $3,780.
   Those sentences prompted an outcry by Asian-American and civil rights 
groups. A federal grand jury later indicted Ebens and Nitz on civil rights 
charges. Nitz was acquitted and Ebens was acquitted on appeal.
   ``Like many parents who have lost a son or daughter due to violence, she 
wanted justice for her son,'' said Roland Hwang, a former president of the civil 
rights group American Citizens of Justice. ``She has a special place in our hearts.''
   Several months after the final legal decisions in the case, Lily Chin returned to China, saying it was too painful for her to stay in the United States. She returned to the United States several months ago for cancer treatment.
   Born in Heping, China, Lily Chin came to the United States after World 
War II to marry David Bing Hing Chin, a World War II veteran and a resident of Highland Park. The couple adopted Vincent, their only child, in the early 1960s.
   Survivors include sister Amy Lee, nephew Lewis Lee and niece Jenny Lee. A memorial service was set for 10 a.m. Saturday at the William Sullivan & Son Funeral Home in Royal Oak. Burial will be in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Detroit.

6/6/02 San Francisco Chronicle: "UC Davis researcher released,"
    A Chinese American lab worker was freed on his own recognizance 
Tuesday after the Yolo County district attorney dropped charges that he was
preparing to flee to China with trade secrets belonging to UC Davis. 
    Bin Han must still return to court in July to answer charges that he 
embezzled 20 vials of experimental proteins from a UC Davis lab. 
    Nevertheless, supporters of the 40-year-old researcher are comparing his case to that of Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese American scientist accused of spying only to plea bargain to a minor charge. 
    "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to read between the lines here," said 
Richard Allaye Chan Jr., the Sacramento attorney representing Han. Chan said Yolo County prosecutor David Akulian dropped earlier plans to ask that Han be held without bail after reviewing evidence that the protein he allegedly took was available elsewhere and that the process being developed at UC Davis has been described in scientific journals and is therefore not a secret. 
    Yolo County Superior Court Judge Arvid Johnson did confiscate Han's 
passport, but allowed the 40-year-old researcher to return to his Davis home 
17 days after he was arrested by campus police and charged with trying to steal the process that UC Davis scientists Ivan Schwab and Rivkah Isseroff are developing to grow replacement corneas to cure a rare form of blindness. 
    Despite the prosecutorial retreat, UC Davis officials defended their handling 
of the case and rejected suggestions that they had jumped to conclusions 
because Han is Chinese. 
    "The university is very sensitive to these issues in light of the Wen Ho Lee 
case, and we have seen no basis for ethnic discrimination," said UC Davis 
campus counsel Steve Drown. 
    Campus police produced the affidavits that led to Han's arrest on May 18.   They detail a growing suspicion among fellow lab workers that began after Han picked up 40 vials of protein used in the experiment, but delivered only 20 vials to UC Davis. 
    These suspicions escalated after Han's superiors heard that he had
set up a company and that he was preparing to fly to China. 
    "It looks like Bin established a company to facilitate initiation of certain cell culture technology -- likely in China, since that's where he is headed in a few
days," UC scientist Isseroff wrote to her collaborator, Schwab, in an
e-mail dated May 14. 
    When they arrested him on May 18, campus police found that Han had a 
ticket for a flight scheduled to depart for China the next day. 
    But Pete Livingston, with the University Professional & Technical Employees, the union that represents technicians at UC Davis, laid out a
different sequence of events leading up to Han's arrest. 
    Livingston said Han went to the union office the day before his arrest to say 
that his job had been terminated after he complained to Isseroff and Schwab 
that he wasn't being given sufficient credit on the scientific papers detailing
their work. Han told the union the ostensible reason for his dismissal was
that the grant funding his work had ended. 
    There were also allegations, which Han denied, that he had allowed some 
mice to die. 
    Han complained that he had not been allowed to retrieve personal effects 
from the lab. 
    "The similarities to the Wen Ho Lee case are not lost on us," Livingston said.
    But Schwab, the UC scientist who alerted campus police to the alleged theft, vehemently denied any racial profiling and said Han was using the
discrimination allegations to deflect attention from the vials of material
found in his home. "All of a sudden, this is being turned on me and my
department when all I did was report a theft," said Schwab. 
    He noted that Han is the lead author on a paper in the journal Cornea 
detailing a recent experiment. 
    Chan, the attorney, said his client will offer a simple explanation for having the protein in his refrigerator when he returns to court in July on the embezzlement charges. Meanwhile, Chan suggested campus police had jumped the gun by assuming Han a flight risk. He said his client had a single round-trip ticket, purportedly to visit his aging parents in China, while his wife and two children remained at their home in Davis.

6/6/02 San Marcos Daily Record: "New city officials take office,"
    Two years ago David Chiu became the first Asian American Mayor 
in the state of Texas.
    Tuesday night he and two other council members stepped down from the San Marcos City Council and welcomed three newly elected officials to take their places during a special meeting to canvass the returns of Saturday's runoff.
    Robert Habingreither was sworn in as mayor, Susan Clifford Narvaiz was 
sworn in as council member place 3 and Bill Taylor took the oath of council 
member place 4. Narvaiz and Taylor replaced council members Jane 
Hughson and Joe Cox.
    As he left the dais Chiu thanked the community for allowing him to serve. 
He also released a statement asking his supporters to join him in supporting the new mayor. "We, as a city, have been through and election process that was energetic, hard fought and in the end decided by the voters," his letter stated.
    Habingreither defeated Chiu by 23 votes in the runoff.  Chiu said he had 
decided not to ask for a recount of the votes.
    "I trust the city staff and all the volunteers counting the votes," he said. "The election's over.  I don't want to put my supporters through another anxious 
moment. We need to get back to business and get behind the new mayor."
    Habingreither is the chair of Southwest Texas State University's technology department. He said he hopes to bring the city and the university together through his role as mayor.

6/5/02 Associated Press: "Diversity on TV still wanting, study finds,"
    Black characters get more television time than other minorities but they
tend to be relegated to sitcoms, according to the study from the University of California, Los Angeles released yesterday.
    Black characters were more likely to appear in comedies, with 39% of 
all black characters in sitcoms compared with 31% for whites, 23% for
Hispanics and 21% for Asians.
    Other minorities have their own cause for complaint, the study found. 
Black and white characters combined represent 92% of all prime-time 
characters in the study but constitute 82% of the U.S. population, it said. 
That left scant room for other ethnic groups.
    Asian Americans comprised about 3% of all characters, and Native 
American were "invisible," according to the report.
    Calls seeking comment from the six broadcast networks included in the
study were not immediately returned yesterday.
    The networks have been under pressure from civil rights groups since 
1999, when a mostly white lineup of new shows aired.
    While nearly all series episodes were multiracial, ethnic characters
typically served as background "props" unimportant to the story, the study
found.
    Darnell Hunt, the study's author, and author of a 2000 Screen Actors Guild
study with similar findings, said diversification has been stymied by white control of the entertainment industry.
    "Minorities are even more underrepresented in key behind-the-scenes creative and decision-making positions than they are on the screen," according
to the UCLA study.
    Researchers analyzed 224 episodes of 85 comedies and dramas that aired
in October and November on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN and WB. It's the first part of a five-year study tracking on- and off-screen black participation in
network TV, the university said.

6/3/02 Pasadena Star News: "Chinese executives bids for residency allegedly impeded,"
    Pasadena -- A series of federal lawsuits says that the Immigration and Naturalization Service has for years stonewalled and rejected the residency applications of Chinese executives based in the United States.
    The plaintiffs include a Rowland Heights man whose wife just left him and their 6-month-old daughter, apparently so she could return to her family in China and care for her dying father.
    Because the former couple's green card applications were denied, his 
wife isn't allowed back.
    Attorney Robert L. Reeves whose Pasadena law firm won permission 
last month from U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real to consolidate its nine plaintiffs into one discrimination lawsuit said he doesn't understand why
the government has given the executives such a hard time.
    "They let in the terrorists. They ignore the early warnings. And the legitimate businessmen they treat like terrorists," Reeves complained.
    INS spokesman Francisco Arcaute in Los Angeles declined to comment on 
the allegations because of the pending lawsuit.
    The plaintiffs include seven businessmen and two of their wives. Most of the plaintiffs live in the San Gabriel Valley and run the U.S. operations of companies based in China.
    The plaintiffs say their success depends not only on their presence here, but upon their ability to travel between the United States and Asia to meet with clients, attend trade shows and collect money.
    They say the unexpected delays and rejections of their applications have
been traumatizing and also have hampered business, which translates into lost U.S. tax dollars.
    Their attorneys say that, while it typically takes the INS 12 to 14 months
to grant an application for legal permanent residency, their clients have
been waiting five to eight years.
    In each case, the INS referred the applications for "overseas
investigation," which, says plaintiffs' attorney Robert DuPont, "is like
being sent to purgatory."
    DuPont supplied internal INS documents showing that, between 1995 and 1998, the INS issued identical form letters for several of the clients, saying the cases were being referred to investigators in China because too many Chinese executives have tried to defraud the INS.
    "This office has recently experienced a high volume of fraud with regards to
such `multi-national' companies and their supposed managers," the letters
said.
    "It has been determined that many so-called multi-national companies are
one-man operations or `fronts' that have no foreign, parent companies," the
letters say. "This has particularly been the case with numerous businessmen
from the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, who set up their self-owned businesses and then claim to be a subsidiary of a foreign company overseas."
    DuPont says the letters don't cite any individual problems with the 
executives, and show how the INS has painted them with a broad brush.
    He said it is one thing to more closely scrutinize the applications and
verify the documents and information. But because the INS has so few 
investigators overseas, the referrals send the applications into
bureaucratic "black holes."
    Among the plaintiffs is Cheng Fu Wang, 46, of Arcadia. Wang, vice president of the United States branch of the Liaoning Construction Group, has lived in the United States almost 11 years with his wife and son, who is now 19.
    He says Liaoning is a vast company with 30,000 employees, nearly all of them in China.
    In an interview Thursday, Wang said through an interpreter that he was first
interviewed for a green card in 1994, but INS officials kept requesting more
information from him. Four years later, he said, the INS said it planned to
deny his application.
    A court motion by the INS says it has received conflicting information over
the years that caused them to repeatedly open and close the case, and that there was indeed an overseas investigation in March 2000 by two INS
investigators stationed in Beijing.
    Wang said he and his family have been ineligible to travel between China and the United States since 1998, which he says has made it hard to do business.
    He said he was unable to attend his mother-in-law's funeral last October,
and he also cannot visit his mother, who is paralyzed.
    He said his wife has been extremely depressed about the situation, and
family members have sent her local medicinal remedies to help her feel
better.
    "Generally, the green card application has become a suffering nightmare," Wang said. "There are many other Chinese nationals in this situation who feel the same way but they dare not sue the INS for fear they will be deported for good."
    Zhenhai Wu, 53, of Rowland Heights says he is the president of the United
States subsidiary of Harbin Hudsen Enterprise Group, which has 3,000
employees and $25 million in annual income.
    He said he applied for his green card in 1994 but was never approved 
because of bureaucratic delays.
    The INS court filing provides a long list of filings and reviews in Wu's
case.  It says the INS ultimately rejected Wu's applications and appeals in 
2000 after concluding Wu is no longer affiliated with Harbin, which Wu denies.
    He said his wife left him May 15 after six years of marriage, leaving him to
raise their 6-month-old daughter, Doris. He hasn't heard from her since but
assumes she went back to China to look after her sick father.
"The child is innocent and she's suffering," Wu said. "She has no mother.  She has no mother."

6/2/02 San Marcos Daily Record: "Habingreither edges out Chiu in mayoral runoff,"
    San Marcos voters narrowly elected a new mayor Saturday, culminating a bitterly-contested runoff in which issues including the recent southwest 
annexation were clouded by allegations of unethical behavior and racist 
campaign literature.
    Dr. Robert Habingreither, chairman of the Department of Technology at 
Southwest Texas State University, was elected to the office of mayor by a 
mere 23 votes -- 1,520 total votes compared to 1,497 for incumbent Mayor David Chiu.
    "If feels like a big job and I'll do my best to make San Marcos a better city," Habingreither said in a phone interview after the results were announced. "
That was my goal from the beginning."
    Habingreither's strongest support came from the newly-annexed area, and he led early-voting as well as election-day totals.
    "I had fun the entire time until last week," Habingreither said, referring to 
circulation of an unsigned campaign letter that attacked the gender and racial diversity of the current City Council.
    The letter, purportedly from a group calling itself San Marcos Citizens for 
Traditional Values, prompted outrage from all candidates as well as the Hill 
Country Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) the Christian Fellowship Ministerial Union of San Marcos and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
    Calls for a federal inquiry into the source of the letter were made during a 
joint press conference among those groups last week, and Habingreither said it's important to him to pursue that investigation.
    "When the letter came out it made me sick. I came very close to pulling out of the race because I felt so put upon by that," he said. "One of my goals will be to find out who wrote that letter. I want them to be dealt with legally and in the harshest way possible."
    Chiu dismissed the controversy surrounding the letter. "What happened last week is the little stuff," he said. "The big picture is a city divided in two because of annexation -- so the first job of the mayor is (to try) to bring the city back together.
    "The healing process has to begin with Dr. Habingreither. If I was the mayor my first job would be to begin the healing process. Now Bob Habingreither is the mayor so he needs to begin that healing process."
    Chiu, who said he was at his daughter's graduation when he heard the numbers, declined to say whether he would seek a recount because of the narrowness of the vote.
    "I don't know," he said. "At this moment I would have to think about it."

5/31/02 Sacramento Bee: "Jury rejects race as factor in UC Davis scientists
case,"
    A jury in Sacramento federal court on Thursday rejected the claims of two 
Chinese American scientists that they have been subjected to racial 
discrimination at the University of California, Davis.
    A jury of five men and five women found that race was not a factor when the research laboratory of Ronald Chuang and his wife, Linda Chuang, also a researcher, was relocated in 1996.
    Similarly, the jury found that race played no part in Ronald Chuang's failure to secure full-time employment status at the university.
    Ronald Chuang, a professor in the department of pharmacology of the UCD School of Medicine, is an internationally known AIDS researcher.
    The couple claimed their lab was moved to inadequate quarters, disrupting work on a $1.7 million federally funded project.
    Ronald Chuang further claimed he was passed over for a promised 
appointment to a tenured position.
    School of Medicine administrators countered that Ronald Chuang had made no formal application for a tenured post, and the space occupied by the couple's lab was needed for a genetics research program.
    U.S. District Judge David F. Levi initially dismissed the Chuangs' 1997 
lawsuit, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it in 2000. The 
appellate court found that racial comments alleged by the couple cast enough doubt on the school's explanation of its actions to warrant a trial.
    "The fact they are Chinese had nothing to do with any of the decisions that were made by the medical school dean and his staff," said Nancy Sheehan, attorney for the university.

5/30/02 Yale Daily News: "Lin Trounces Lee in Corporation Election: 
Architect garners over 83% of largest vote total in Corporation history,"
    Yale President Richard Levin announced Thursday that alumni elected Maya Lin '81 Architecture '86 to the Yale Corporation over Rev. W. David Lee, Divinity '93 by a wide margin, ending the most controversial and contentious Corporation election in University history.
    Lin received 41,575 votes, over 83% of the total turnout, while Lee received 
16.7% of the vote. 43% of the eligible alumni cast ballots, a participation rate 
far higher than that of any recent Corporation election.
    "It is a great honor to have been elected to the Yale Corporation. Yale has given me so much and I am glad to have the opportunity to be able to give back to my alma mater," Lin said in a statement. She added that she has not spoken to the press throughout the process because she did not want to appear to be "campaigning" for the seat.
    Lee, who in the previous nine months conducted by far the largest campaign 
in Corporation history, said he was doing well and that he thought Lin would be a valuable trustee. "I think Maya Lin is a great asset to the board," Lee said. "I always thought she should be and again it was never about the person but about the partnership." He also said that he was not dismissing the possibility of running again this fall. "I am in dialogue with the same people when we met in the beginning to talk about it to see if that is an option," Lee said. "We will know in a couple weeks."
    Lee stressed his commitment to Yale-New Haven relations and emphasized the importance of a stronger town-gown "partnership" throughout his campaign, 
the initial part of which was funded by Yale's labor unions. His efforts eventually took him to speaking engagements in New York and Philadelphia and earned 
him the endorsement of politicians like Sen. Joseph Lieberman '64, Law '67 
and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano.
    Following Lee's initial mailings and campaign actions, a group of alumni led by former University Secretary Henry Chauncey '57 and Frances Beinecke '71 spent over $80,000 on mailings urging Yale alumni to vote against Lee. The Association of Yale Alumni also spent over $60,000 on several controversial mailings its board of governors said were intended to educate alumni about Lee's candidacy.
    At the least, the high profile of this year's election resulted in remarkable voter participation. Of the 111,833 ballots Yale sent to all alumni who earned degrees at least five years ago, a record 49,899 came back marked with a vote for the Corporation - a turnout more than two and a half times the norm during the past 20 years.

5/30/02 Associated Press: "Campaign Targeting Mayor Chiu Denounced 
by NAACP, Lawmakers,"
    San Marcos, TX -- Two state lawmakers have teamed with the NAACP and a local religious group to denounce what they call "racial and voter intimidation'' in the San Marcos city council and mayoral runoff election
set for Saturday.
    A campaign letter circulating in San Marcos criticizes Mayor David Chiu, 
who is seeking re-election, for supporting state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, who the letter said is ``one of the leading proponents of abortionists and radical homosexual agenda in Texas.''
    The letter also criticizes the governing style of Chiu, a Chinese American, and lists the ethnicity and marital status of several council members and questions whether it is ``time for a council that reflects traditional Texas family values.''
    Wentworth, R-San Antonio, and Rep. Rick Green, R-Dripping Springs, as 
well as the local NAACP chapter president said they did not know who sent the letter, which says it was ``Paid for by San Marcos Citizens for Traditional Values.''
    All were quick to denounce the letter and will hold a news conference
Wednesday to discuss the issue. Green said he believed that all six
candidates, two mayoral candidates and four running for two city council
seats, will attend.


5/30/02 Reuters: "Chinatown's Sept. 11 Victims Seek Work and Luck,"
    At Just Fashion Inc. on Canal Street in Manhattan's Chinatown, a stone's 
throw from what used to be the World Trade Center, the clacking and humming of the sewing machines have gone silent. The cacophony of Cantonese shouted over the psst! sound of the steaming presser is no longer heard. And the scent 
of soy sauce chicken over rice and dumpling soup no longer permeates the workfloor at lunchtime. The cramped factory has shut down and its 40-odd 
workers have been thrown out of work, victims of the economic slump that struck Chinatown's garment industry because of the Sept. 11 attacks which destroyed the World Trade Center. 
    For weeks after the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, Chinatown's streets were choked with debris from the twin towers and its stores and factories were cut off from deliveries and tourists. 
    The crowded streets of the nation's largest enclave of ethnic Chinese, 
crammed with restaurants and souvenir shops, are bustling again after months 
of slow business. Many of its 800,000 residents who lost jobs after the attacks
are working again. 
    But more than 40 of Chinatown's 250 sewing factories, which employ some of the area's newest immigrants from China and are Chinatown's largest employers, shut down and have not reopened. 
    "It is really tough to find a job in the factories again," said Xiuyi, 31, who has one child in nursery school. Xiuyi, a native of Guangdong in southern China, said she is finding it difficult to find alternative work because she only speaks Chinese. English was not a requirement for the people, most of them women, who worked in the garment factories. "It is tough. I don't speak English," Xiuyi said in Chinese before setting off for an interview with a cleaner dispatch firm in midtown. 
    A recent survey by the Asian American Federation of New York, showed that nearly 7,700 workers, or one in four of Chinatown's workers, were laid off in the three months after the attacks -- many of them seamstresses in their 40s and 50s.     Most spoke little English and had few marketable skills. "When 9/11 happened, their dream was crushed," said Shao-Chee Shim, the federation's research director. 
    GLIMMER OF HOPE 
    There is a glimmer of hope, however. As the busy summer season approaches, New York's multinational fashion designers, who like using 
Chinatown garment factories to snip and cut small lots because of its convenient location, have been calling orders in to the factories that remain open. "Orders are picking up. Some factories are reopening. About two thousand of (those laid-off) have gotten jobs by now," said May Chen, who helps lead the garment workers union representing more than 10,000 workers in lower Manhattan. "Some 
of them switched careers or found jobs outside Chinatown. But they say they'd 
rather stay in the garment industry because they can get benefits," Chen said. 
    Many of those rehired at Chinatown's garment factories are scraping out subsistence wages at reduced hours, nearly half of pre-attack levels of an 
average $10,000 a year. Their jobs had helped them with health insurance and 
other benefits for their families, but laid-off seamstress veterans are unlikely job candidates for an already shrinking industry. 
    "I am too old to get a job," said 50-year-old June Lei, who is wait-listed to take 
a home attendant training course funded by the state for Sept. 11 victims at Chinatown Manpower Project. "I want benefits, that is most important. Meanwhile 
I study English," she said in Mandarin with a heavy Cantonese accent. 
    Since January, nearly 500 laid-off workers in Chinatown have signed up for 
free classes at the Chinatown Manpower Project in computers, nail care, home health-care training, and most of all, spoken English. At least 100 people are on 
the wait-list and many were turned away, says program director Ying Si Huang. 
The program's $1 million emergency fund for Sept. 11 victims will run out by September. 
    Chinatown merchants said some of the manufacturing jobs in the 
neighborhood have been farmed out to the emerging garment district of Sunset 
Park, Brooklyn, one of the other growing Chinatowns in New York's outer 
boroughs along with Flushing in Queens. They said that workers laid off in Manhattan's Chinatown, who were among the 60% of its employees commuting 
from outer boroughs, may have more luck finding jobs in their own neighborhood.

5/24/02 Associated Press: "18 Months in Prison For Torricelli Donor: 
Judge Discounts Allegations of Threats,"
    Newark, NJ -- A business executive who made $53,700 in illegal 
contributions to New Jersey Sen. Robert G. Torricelli's campaign was 
sentenced today to 18 months in prison, the last major event in the three-
year investigation into the Democratic senator's finances.
    David A. Chang, the key government witness in the investigation, had 
claimed in a legal brief seeking leniency that the senator threatened his 
life and urged him to lie to prosecutors. U.S. District Judge Alfred M. 
Wolin, however, said there was no credible evidence "that a public 
official was trying to injure" Chang.
    "David Chang has now been caught in his own web of lies. Today, 
justice was served," Torricelli said in a statement.
    In addition to the prison term, Chang was fined $20,000 and barred 
from political or campaign fundraising.
    The federal investigation closed in January without any charges 
against Torricelli, who is running for reelection. Prosecutors gave their 
material to the Senate ethics committee, which is looking into the matter.
    Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Ceresny asked the judge to seal the 
prosecution's memorandum detailing Chang's aid.
    In an 18-page filing Wednesday, Chang claimed Torricelli urged him 
to leave the country rather than cooperate with the investigation and 
asked him to falsely claim the cash and gifts were loans. Chang also 
accused Torricelli of threatening him by talking about friends with 
organized-crime connections and following him into a convenience store 
with a prominent waste disposal contractor.
    Torricelli's advisers denied the senator sought to prevent Chang from 
cooperating with the investigation and described Chang as mentally 
unstable and a habitual liar.
    They said the senator felt vindicated by the fact that prosecutors 
decided not to file criminal charges in his case.

5/15/02 San Francisco Chronicle: "Lack of TV Diversity Hit: Prime-time casts 
made up mostly of white men, study says,"
    Although there have been some positive developments in the past year, 
prime- time network TV -- whether they are dramas, comedies, reality programs, game shows or other broadcasts -- disproportionately emphasizes white men 
over all other people, says the third annual study by Children Now, a national 
group that monitors federal and state legislation, issues reports and publishes pamphlets and other materials for parents and children.
    "In key areas, the networks have actually gotten worse since they promised to diversify three years ago," says Patti Miller, director of Children Now's Children 
and the Media program.
    For several years, Children Now, the NAACP and other organizations have criticized network TV for its lack of diverse programming. On Monday and 
Tuesday, Miller met with network executives in Los Angeles to go over Children 
Now's study, which concludes:
    -- Just 7% of prime-time situation comedies in the 2001-02 TV season had 
racially mixed casts -- down more than half from the previous season.
    -- Game shows in network prime-time were all cast with whites.
    -- During the 8-to-9 p.m. time slot, when children are most likely to tune in, 
61% of all network shows are peopled with casts considered all white or all 
black.  Shows at 10 p.m. feature more diverse casts, but children are less likely 
to watch those shows, the study says.
    -- Although the percentage of Latino representation increased from 2% to 4%
 in the 2001-02 TV season, these increases were primarily limited to secondary 
and nonrecurring characters, and Latinos were overrepresented as service 
workers, unskilled laborers and criminals.
    Homogeneity in casts, whether it is all black or all white, contributes to a kind 
of TV segregation, the study says. Children should see positive characters and people of their same race on television and should see those characters and 
people interact in healthy relationships, including with different races, according 
to research cited by Children Now.
    Network representatives wouldn't comment on Children Now's study, saying 
they hadn't seen the report, and Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, also refused to comment.
    Today's report, which is available online at childrennow.org, addresses only network TV and not cable or pay-per-view. Miller admits that cable television -- 
with its wider range of shows, and availability of such speciality channels as BET (Black Entertainment Network) -- does a better job than network television of showcasing more diverse programming, but not every child has access to cable television, so the Children Now study focuses on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, UPN 
and the WB.
    Among the other findings by the Children Now report:
    -- More gay and disabled characters appeared on prime-time television in the 2001-02 season, but white males played the majority of those roles.
    -- Women represent just 36% of all prime-time characters.
    -- The majority of white youth shown on prime-time network TV interact with 
their parents, but only a fourth of Latino youth does.
    The report was conducted by Katharine E. Keintz-Knowles, a former University 
of Washington communications professor, and is the most comprehensive report 
ever done on prime-time programs' diversity, Children Now says. Titled "Fall 
Colors 2001-02," the study breaks down scores of different categories. For 
example, it focuses on situation comedies because they are the most widely 
watched shows among children.

5/15/02 Oakland Tribune: "Affirmative action ruling gets UC Berkeley's 
attention"
    In a decision that may have implications for California's ban on racial 
preferences, a federal appeals court in Detroit, Mich., ruled Tuesday that 
the University of Michigan law school can continue to base admissions 
partly on race.
    "We find that the law school has a compelling state interest in achieving a 
diverse student body," the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 5-4 
decision overturning a district court decision outlawing preferences.
    But in a minority opinion, Justice Danny Boggs, an appointee of President 
Ronald Reagan, said seeking a critical mass of minority students was as unconstitutional as Harvard's effort to limit the number of Jews admitted a 
century ago.
    The law school's process of assigning preference points for a number of 
things to applicants, including race, closely follows the 1978 Supreme Court 
decision in UC Regents v. Bakke. The court held that diversity is in the public 
interest, but racial quotas are not allowed.
    The ruling by a bitterly divided court will definitely be appealed promptly to 
the U.S. Supreme Court, attorneys on the losing side said.
    Race preferences are banned by citizen initiatives in California and 
Washington. A Texas appeals court invalidated race preferences at the 
University of Texas law school and preferences are now banned in Texas and Louisiana.
    The Center for Individual Rights sued UM in 1997 on behalf of Barbara 
Gutter, a mid-40s white mother of two, who was denied admission to the law 
school. Gutter argued she would have been admitted if she hadn't been white.
    UM argued that without racial preferences the number of African American 
and Latino students would drop sharply, denying both minority students and 
members of the racial majority the benefit of a diverse student population.
    The university attorneys cited the experience of Boalt Hall law school at UC Berkeley.
    When racial preferences were banned by the UC Regents in 1997, no African Americans, no American Indians and just seven Latino students were admitted 
to the entering class that year. An African American admitted the previous year 
under affirmative action, who delayed entering until 1997, was the only African American in the class.
    The fall 2002 entering class at Boalt includes 14 African Americans, 17 
Latinos and one American Indian student -- 11% of the class of 299 students. 
In 1996, before the ban, there were 15 African Americans, 28 Latino students 
and one American Indian.

5/15/02 New York Times: "Court Says Law School May Consider Race in Admissions,"
    A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the Constitution permits 
colleges and graduate schools to seek a "critical mass" of black and Hispanic students in assembling their entering classes each year, as long as those rough targets do not harden into precise quotas.
    Voting 5 to 4 in a closely watched case, the United States Court of Appeals 
for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati overturned a ruling by a federal judge in Detroit 
and upheld the admissions policies of the University of Michigan Law School.
    The university has said its policies were intended to assemble a class diverse 
in both its racial and ethnic makeup and its intellectual perspectives.
    In its decision, the court subscribed to Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.'s pivotal, 24-year-old Supreme Court opinion in the landmark Bakke case, which has 
been used to justify race-conscious admissions policies at public universities 
as well as private colleges.
    The ruling yesterday, which bitterly divided the full nine-judge court, is 
expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court by the lead plaintiff, Barbara 
Grutter, a Michigan woman who argued that she had been rejected by the law 
school in 1996 because she was white.
    The law school case and a second University of Michigan case involving the admission of undergraduates have been closely followed by supporters and opponents of affirmative action because they are the only cases that are in 
close range of being appealed to the Supreme Court. In the 1978 Bakke case, 
the Supreme Court struck down a separate policy for minority applicants at the 
medical school of the University of California at Davis but appeared to support 
the idea that race could be factored in as a plus in deciding whether to admit a student.
    In recent years, federal courts in several states, including those with 
jurisdiction over the Universities of Georgia, Texas and Washington, have 
issued contradictory rulings on the issue.
    The two Michigan cases have also been somewhat at odds. Last year, a 
federal judge in Detroit ruled that the Michigan law school policy was 
unconstitutional, because, he said, it appeared to set quotas for minority 
applicants. But ruling in a separate case, a different federal judge upheld 
Michigan's admissions policy for undergraduates, which automatically awards 
20 points on a 150-point scale to black and Hispanic applicants and to underprivileged white applicants. The same court that issued yesterday's 
decision is expected to rule in the coming weeks on a challenge to the 
undergraduate policy brought by several rejected white applicants, and 
whichever side loses has suggested that it, too, would appeal to the Supreme 
Court.
    The ruling in yesterday's case does not necessarily foreshadow a decision 
to uphold the undergraduate admissions policy, since a specific point system 
was not used in the law school policy.
    Much of the confusion over the court's position on race-conscious admissions 
can be traced back to the Bakke ruling, which was composed of six separate opinions. In his opinion, Justice Powell wrote that the assembly of a diverse 
student body was of compelling interest to the state because it benefited not 
only minority applicants, but also the white classmates who might learn from 
them. It has never been entirely clear, however, how many of the justices agreed 
with Justice Powell's particular argument in defense of diversity, although his 
opinion has been used to underpin admissions policies ever since.
    In writing for the five-member majority yesterday, Judge Boyce F. Martin Jr., 
an appointee of President Bill Clinton who is the chief judge of the appeals court, wrote that the Michigan policy was consistent with Justice Powell's argument, 
and thus constitutional. Judge Martin, echoing statements made by the dean of 
the law school, defined "critical mass" not as a fixed quota but as a rough number sufficient "to ensure under-represented minority students do not feel isolated or 
like spokespersons for their race, and do not feel uncomfortable discussing 
issues freely based on their personal experiences." From 1987 to 1994, Judge 
Martin said, the percentage of minority students in the university's entering law 
school class has ranged from 12% to 20%. Assessing that range, Judge Martin concluded: "the law school does not employ a quota or otherwise reserve seats 
for under-represented minority applicants."
    Writing for the four-member minority, Judge Danny J. Boggs, a Reagan 
appointee, sided with the lower court judge, saying that seeking a "critical mass" 
of minority students was the equivalent of a quota, and "involves a 
straightforward instance of racial discrimination by a state institution." Judge 
Boggs cited figures more current than Judge Martin's, saying that from 1995 to 
1998, the percentage of minorities admitted to the law school barely wavered, 
from 13.5% to 13.7%.

5/13/02 Asianweek.com: "For All Us Laundrymen," by Emil Guillermo
(emil@amok.com)
    Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! I havent seen any
Hallmark cards yet, but you can clip this column out, and send it to an APA.
    As far as Im concerned, APA Heritage couldnt have come at a
better time.  These days it seems we are inundated with news that needs
historical context.  Unfortunately, many in our community - a mixture of recent
immigrants and the young clueless dont seem to know enough about the
past to understand the present.
    One prime example: those darn Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts. You
can pick up materials for the national boycott at www.boycottaf.com. Or you
can merely go by the stores and let them know that since your taste does not
include racist images, youre shopping elsewhere. If that sounds like you,
youve passed the test: youre sane enough to take on the 21st century.
    Its the other folks around you Im concerned about, the ones who
are wondering how many more "Wong Brothers Laundry" shirts in different
colors they can add to their collection.
    If you are one of those who have stood by and scratched your head
and asked, "Whats the big deal?" or said aloud, "Chill out, all you humorless
PC, 60s leftovers, then this column is for you.
    The Professor would like to inject a massive dose of history.
    The most offensive Abercrombie T-shirt featured two smiling,
slant-eyed gents (short, naturally) wearing pointy-type bamboo rice paddy
hats, presumably the proprietors of "Wong Brothers Laundry Service,"
standing by their motto, "Two Wongs Can Make it White."
    Why is that offensive?
    Its the laundryman image. In Chinese American history, the
laundryman is about as seminal as it gets.
    While most Chinese were in California, about 30% of those in the
1870s were in Idaho, Montana and Nevada looking for gold. You may not
think of Butte, Mont., as a bustling Chinatown, but in 1880 Butte was like a
big-sky version of San Francisco. The Chinese population comprised 21.1%
of the town, mostly all men, looking for their fortunes.
    But heres why Chinese cowboys didnt become a hallmark of the far
West: In 1883, the Montana Territorial Supreme Court declared all mining
claims by aliens like the Chinese to be void. In the wake of that
discrimination, the Chinese men scrambled for work. Since there were few
women, they were forced to turn to "womens work," hiring themselves as
domestic servants or setting up shop as cooks, tailors and laundrymen. Its
all that society allowed for them.
    Making fun of the laundryman is like making fun of slaves.
    According to Lan Cao and Himelee Novas book Everything You
Need to Know About Asian American History, by 1905 Butte had 32
Chinese laundries.  In time the trend spread to the point where 25% of all
employed Chinese men worked in a laundry. By 1890 in California, 69% of
all laundrymen were Chinese.
    But Emil, you ask, shouldnt we celebrate the entrepreneurial
resourcefulness of these laundry workers?
    Sure. But look what happened in San Francisco of all places. Heres
a fact thats hard to believe, but in the late 1800s it was fairly common for
people in our city to send out their laundry to Honolulu or Canton!   Thats
not exactly express service.
    Chinese laundryman came to San Francisco to fill the need. But
since there were so many of them, the city actually passed discriminatory
ordinances intended to "drive (the Chinese) to other states."  Cao and
Novas book tells how the Laundry Ordinance set up outrageous licensing
fees that were aimed to put the Chinese out of business. If you used a horse
in your delivery, you paid a lower fee. If you didnt use a horse, you paid a
fee that was nearly 800 percent higher. Guess who didnt use horses?
    Back in Butte, the Chinese laundries and other small businesses
came up against an organized boycott by labor unions and the local
chamber of commerce that attempted to destroy their presence. The
Chinese actually hired a well-known white attorney, former U.S. Senator
Colonel Wilbur Fisk Sanders, to sue the unions. The Chinese won, and
the laundrymen were considered one of the first civil rights protestors in
APA history.
    You dont mess with the Chinese laundryman image. When
Abercrombie & Fitch put out that shirt, it was not exactly honoring APA
civil rights pioneers.
    The other recent story that beckons history is the California
Department of Insurances record of the coolie trade. It was dwarfed by
the major story that insurance companies in the 19th century actually bought
insurance policies on the lives of black slaves. Check out their website at
www.insurance.ca.gov.
    The coolie part is but a footnote, but there it is. Manhattan Life
provided a policy "that insured shippers for their cargo of 700 Chinese
coolies on a journey from China in 1854."  If you ever wanted historical
proof of your objectification, there it is. Chinese people were insured like
a Ming vase. But not considered as pretty.
    Let me finish by saying the most surprising reactions Ive received
from the Abercrombie story have indeed been from Asians who actually
sent me e-mails cussing me out in Chinese. One even suggested that as
an APA of Filipino descent, I was hardly Asian, since the Philippines is
comprised of islands, making me an "islander."  What a load of chicken
poop.
    My friends, in America, Asian is Asian - immigrant or native born.
We may define ourselves proudly by ethnicity, but we live in a society that
continues to define us by history. Ethnicity is important, but we have
blood and geographic ties to a much larger commonality. We may act like
were in separate rooms in a big hotel, but when you come out of them,
youd have to be a blind man to not understand that were in this together.
Thats why we celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.


5/9/02 Associated Press: "JACL to Apologize for Condemning WWII Draft 
Resisters in Weekend Ceremony,"
    San Francisco -- The Japanese American Citizens League is planning 
a public ceremony to apologize for denouncing more than 300 Japanese-
Americans who resisted the draft during World War II.
    With the apology, the nation's oldest Asian-American civil rights group is 
seeking to mend a longtime rift in its community.
    Those who resisted the draft did so to protest the internment of United States citizens of Japanese ancestry. They were condemned by other Japanese 
Americans, including JACL leaders, who felt the protest sent the wrong 
message at a time when anti-Japanese feeling was already very high.
    The ceremony is scheduled for May 11 at a community center in San 
Francisco. Mits Koshiyama, who served three years in prison for refusing to 
report to a physical examination for the draft, plans to attend.
    ``It's a step in the right direction,'' said Koshiyama, now 77. ``The JACL has 
taken this long, over 50 years, to say that they were wrong in oppressing the 
resisters. Some things take an awful long time.''
    Koshiyama was sent to Heart Mountain Camp in northern Wyoming with his parents, three sisters and three brothers. In all, about 120,000 people of 
Japanese ancestry were forced into 10 U.S. internment camps on orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
    In 1942, Japanese-Americans were classified enemy aliens. After that 
changed in 1943, some chose to serve in the military.
    Koshiyama and others, however, refused to be drafted.
    ``It was unfair for the government to ask us to fight for democracy in a free 
world while I and my family were incarcerated,'' he said. The family was 
``denied the very things we were supposed to fight for. All we said was, 'Give 
us back our rights and we would be happy to serve.'''
    The resisters were denounced by the JACL and others as traitors and 
cowards. In 1947, President Harry Truman pardoned wartime draft resisters, 
but Koshiyama said there is still lingering resentment toward the Japanese-
American resisters.


5/8/02 Associated Press: "Remembering Santa Fe, New Mexicos 
Internment Camp,"
    Santa Fe, NM -- Bill Nishimura returned to the site where he lived in a 
Japanese internment camp during World War II and New Mexico's blustery 
spring weather blew back plenty of memories. ``When the wind blew like this, 
we stayed in the barracks,'' Nishimura said. ``Today, we have so much 
vegetation.''
    Nishimura, who now lives in Gardena, Calif., was among the 200 people 
who attended the late April dedication of a monument near the site of the 
former internment camp.
    The monument is located at a city park that overlooks a Santa Fe 
neighborhood and the National and Rosario cemeteries.
    "The (American) government really starved us in Santa Fe,'' said the 82-
year-old Nishimura. ``We got enough to eat, but this was an all-male camp, 
so we were starved for female companionship.''
    Nishimura said he had moved around Southern California during World 
War II to avoid zones that were off-limits to people of Japanese ancestry. But 
he wound up being interned and was sent to Santa Fe in 1946 just before the 
camp here closed.
    Some Japanese citizens and U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry were 
able to return to civilian life at the end of World War II in late 1945. But 
Nishimura was sent to an internment camp at Crystal City, Tex., until 1947.
    "I always thought I would be deported,'' he said. "To my surprise, Uncle 
Sam said, 'If you wish to stay here, you may do so.' So I felt Uncle Sam still 
has a warm heart in him.''
    City Councilor Patti Bushee led the effort to have the monument built. Her 
proposal ran into opposition, mostly from individuals who pointed to Japanese atrocities against U.S. soldiers captured on the Philippine peninsula of Bataan.
    Eventually the Santa Fe City Council voted to build the monument, with 
Mayor Larry Delgado breaking a tie vote.
    Delgado, who was re-elected last month, said the monument was a good 
thing.
    "History is something we don't sweep under the rug,'' Delgado said Saturday.
    Also at Saturday's ceremony was Joe Ando of Albuquerque. His family was 
rousted from their farm in Tracy, Calif., shortly after Pearl Harbor.
    Ando went to southern Arizona with his mother, but his father went to 
Lordsburg, N.M., then to Santa Fe.
    Ando said his father rarely talked about his experiences, so he began 
researching the Santa Fe Internment Camp upon moving to New Mexico.

5/7/02 Associated Press: "Hmong Vets Seek Burial Honors,"
    California has the largest population of Laotians and Hmong. About 45% 
of the country's Hmong population lives in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
    The Lao Veterans of America want federal law changed to define some 
45,000 Hmong veterans, including 2,000 in Wisconsin, as U.S. veterans so 
they could receive U.S. military funeral honors, said Wangyee Vang, 
national director for the group headquartered in Fresno, Calif.
    ``We are working with the congressional people to educate them,'' he 
said. ``We have served under that flag so when we die we would like to 
have this honor.''
    U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, D-Wis., is researching possible legislation for 
the federal government to provide a U.S. flag and play taps at the funerals 
of Hmong veterans, spokesman Phillip Walzak said.
    Cha Vang of St. Paul, Minn., son of Gen. Vang Pao, who led the secret 
military in northern Laos during the war, said his father supports U.S. 
military funeral benefits for Hmong veterans as a way to honor their 
sacrifices.
    Marv Freedman, executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of Vietnam 
Veterans of America, said what Hmong veterans want makes sense, given 
their commitment to U.S. troops.
    ``But trying to change the federal law on this is not realistic. I don't think it 
can be done,'' he said.

Dear NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (newshour@pbs.org):     
    Regarding your August 21, 2001 story on the conflicting court rulings on 
affirmative action at the University of Michigans law school and undergraduate school, I was shocked your story omitted any mention of Asian-Americans.
    I publish "Asian-American Politics" at www.asianam.org. From 1992 to 2000, 
the number of Asian-Americans has increased from 4% to 9% of the students at the University of Michigan Law School. It is possible that Asian-Americans now outnumber the combined total of African-American, Hispanic and Native-American students at the University of Michigan Law School. Ignoring 9% of the students 
indicates your reporter and producer have lost their impartiality, if not their grasp on reality.
    When race based admission policies at universities were banned in California, Texas, Massachusetts, and Florida, the number of Asian-American students admitted to universities in those states increased by 20-40%, which indicates that bigots for the left were previously engaging in reverse discrimination against  Asian- Americans.
    Ignoring Asian-Americans implies:
    1) Asian-Americans dont exist;
    2) Asian-Americans dont matter;
    3) Bigots for the left can engage in reverse discrimination against Asian-
Americans with impunity, and the liberal media wont report it;
    4) Bigots for the left condone discrimination in favor of African- Americans, Hispanics and Native-Americans at the expense of Asian-Americans;
    5) the liberal media is conspiring to hide reverse discrimination against Asian-Americans in order to persuade Asian-Americans to support affirmative action.
    I challenge you to run a story on the effect of affirmative action on Asian-
Americans and how the elimination of race based admission policies has 
benefited Asian-Americans.

Don W. Joe
"Asian-American Politics"
www.asianam.org.