12/27/04 Sunfire News: John Chiang Named Chair of the Board of Equalization,
by Bill Wong
    The California State Board of Equalization (BOE) today unanimously voted to name Member John Chiang as Chair, replacing Carole Migden who vacated her Board position after being elected to the California State Senate.   Member Claude Parrish was re-elected to serve as Vice-Chair.
    The issues facing the Board this year affect all Californians, said Chiang. The implementation of the Tax Amnesty Program, the expanded investigation effort to crack down on the sale of counterfeit cigarettes in the underground economy, and the fees collected on television and computer monitors to fund the new E-waste recycling program will bring millions of previously uncollected dollars to California . These critical dollars will fund programs to support our schools, police and fire protection, health care and our environment. I am honored to serve as Chair.
    John Chiang was elected to his first term as 4th District Member of the State Board of Equalization (BOE) in 1998, and re-elected in 2002. In 2002, John also presided as Chair of the Board. He represents more than 8 million persons living in 73 cities throughout most of Los Angeles County . Chiang is California s highest ranking Asian Pacific American state elected official.
    During Chiangs seven-year tenure on the Board, he has had more legislative proposals signed into law than any other Member in the Board of Equalizations 125-year history. Chiang also organized the first Board of Equalization, Franchise Tax Board, and Internal Revenue Service seminar for nonprofit organizations and joined with the Los Angeles County Assessors Office to hold a tax seminar for religious organizations. He also organized business and labor forums on fighting tax evasion in the underground economy.
    The BOE administers tax programs in four general areas: sales and use taxes, property taxes, special taxes and fee programs, and the tax appellate programs.
    The five-member Board is the only publicly elected tax commission in the nation, and is comprised of Betty T. Yee of San Francisco, Acting Member, First District, Bill Leonard of Sacramento/Ontario, Second District, Claude Parrish of Rancho Palos Verdes, Third District, and John Chiang of Los Angeles , Fourth District. State Controller Steve Westly serves the Board in an ex-officio capacity.

12/18/04 Minneapolis Star Tribune: Forum shows rancor still high after shootings of Wisconsin hunters,
    Eau Claire, Wis. -- Nearly a month after the deadly shootings of six hunters in northern Wisconsin , a forum to talk about the incident showed that tensions were still running high.
    Norman Rademaker, a member of the Exeland Area Rod and Gun Club, told about 120 people that violence similar to the Nov. 21 shootings in Sawyer County would happen again if Hmong continue to hunt there.
    "For the safety of all concerned hunters, the only way to avoid future possible trouble is for Hmong to not return to hunt anywhere near the area where the greatest tragedy in hunting memories occurred," Rademaker said Thursday at the forum, sponsored by the Eau Claire Human Rights Coalition.
    Rademaker's comments drew gasps and groans from some in the crowd, nearly half of whom were Hmong.
    Chai Soua Vang faces six counts of murder in the Nov. 21 shootings, which started after a dispute over a tree stand on private property.
    Vang, of St. Paul , told investigators that the other hunters used racial slurs and that one shot at him first, according to court records. Two survivors said Vang fired at them first.
    Rademaker said Hmong hunters repeatedly have trespassed on private hunting land in recent years, severely straining relations with other hunters and landowners.
    Eau Claire City Council Member Thomas Vue told the forum that Rademaker's statement assumes that Hmong hunt irresponsibly and are prone to violence. That's simply not the case, he said.
    Chikou Xiong, an Eau Claire Hmong resident, said he was offended by Rademaker's remarks. "I'm hearing a lot about how dumb and stupid the Hmong are," he said. "I'm so sorry to those families for what happened. But you have to learn to forgive. [Hmong] have had to do a lot of that."
    Near the meeting's conclusion, Rademaker and Xiong spoke briefly and shook hands  

12/17/04: Wrongfully Convicted in America,
by Lisa Wong Macabasco
    After serving 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, David Wong took another leap toward freedom on Friday Dec. 10, 2004, when Clinton County District Attorney Richard Cantwell dropped murder charges against him. Wongs conviction had been overturned on an appeal in October due in part to the potential bias of the trial judge, Timothy Lawliss. The judge has since recused himself from the retrial.
    In a letter from Clinton County Jail, Wong said the victory belonged to his support committee and his lawyers, whom he called the true heroes.
    My freedom did not come easy, but Im happy Im now able to put my nightmare behind me, and Im excited for my freedom and the prospect of my future, Wong wrote.
    He now awaits the courts official ruling and faces a new struggle against a pending order of deportation.
    His life is the biggest waste of all, says Wongs niece, Fei Yeung. She felt relieved but also angry that he has spent so much of his life incarcerated. Im 27, and Im ready to begin my life and career. Hes lost all that. Hes in his 40s, and hes going to start his life now? Its not fair.
    Yeung says Wong missed his sisters wedding and his fathers funeral while in jail. My family and I have lost a beloved uncle, brother and son, she says.
    Wongs supporters now face the difficult task of preventing his deportation due to his status as an undocumented non-citizen. Jaykumar Menon, Wongs lawyer, says he does not know of a case in which someone who was wrongfully convicted and subsequently ordered deported was allowed to stay in the United States . Wayne Lum says the committee was pursuing political and diplomatic channels to fight the deportation order and admitted, Legally, its very difficult to overcome.
    After 17 years, the David Wong Support Committee and his allies in the community will not allow Wong to be deported, says Kwong Eng.
    Wongs 20-year odyssey through the criminal justice system is an eye-opening look at one Asian in America in the between the cracks in the law. His story is the lesson of a man wrongfully convicted and trapped at the nexus of race, immigration, crime and the law.
    Coming to America
    Wong is one of three children raised by their mother (above) in the Fujian province and later in Hong Kong . He came to the United States in the early 1980s as a teenager, working long shifts at different restaurants at below minimum wage.
    Arrested and Sent to Prison: June 1984
    At 21 years old, as a busboy in Manhattan s Chinatown, Wong is arrested for participating with co-workers in an armed robbery of his employers Long Island house in 1983. Wong is sent to Clinton Correctional Facility in northeastern New York to serve an 8-to-25-year sentence.
    A Brutal Murder: March 1986
    On the afternoon of March 12, 1986, Tyrone Julius, a 32-year-old inmate at Clinton Correctional Facility serving a sentence for second-degree murder, is stabbed in the neck with a five-inch blade in the middle of the prison yard and dies 11 days later. Wong and Tse Kin Cheung, an inmate from Hong Kong , are the only Chinese inmates and the only ones searched out of the 70 to 100 inmates present at the time of the stabbing. No weapon and no blood are found on either man.
    Found Guilty: July 1987
    Wong, who speaks little English and claims he had never met Julius, is tried for Julius murder by an all-white jury in Clinton County Court. Four inmates testify to Wongs innocence. The prosecutions case is based on the testimony of two witnesses: Ryan LaPierre, a corrections officer who viewed the scene through binoculars from a tower more than 100 yards away, and inmate Peter DellFava. Wong is convicted and sentenced to an additional 25-years-to-life for second-degree murder. Cheung writes to prominent Asian American activists telling them that Wong was framed.
    Yuri Kochiyama Organizes the David Wong Support Committee: 1990
    Yuri Kochiyama (above), a longtime civil rights activist and staunch political-prisoners advocate, visits Wong in prison. Kochiyama creates the David Wong Support Committee, operating out of her Harlem apartment.
    New York Times Eye-opener: March 1999
    A New York Times article reveals new anecdotal evidence suggesting Wong is innocent. Reporter David W. Chen (left) quotes former prison employees who say Wongs innocence was common knowledge at the prison. Former inmates who witnessed the murder said it was an act of revenge by a former rival. Cheung says inmates were scared to speak up for Wong because they feared for their safety.
    Julius widow, Sharon Julius, states she never heard of Wong or his conviction for the murder of her husband. She also says she received threatening letters and phone calls well after Wong was arrested telling her to stop investigating the case and therefore assumed his murderer was still at large.
    Wong loses every major appeal since his 1987 conviction, but Wongs lawyers at Manhattan s Center for Constitutional Rights continue to question the credibility of witnesses and cite misconduct by the prosecutor, errors in Wongs defense and the lack of an adequate translator. LaPierre admitted in his testimony that he did not see the stabbing or the weapon. DellFava may have tried to gain early parole in exchange for his testimony. Wongs original lawyers also failed to interview witnesses who identified the attackers as two Hispanic men.
    Wong also did not have access to a translator who spoke his Fuzhou dialect; he had to use a translator who spoke Mandarin instead, which he barely knew. The Times article quotes Wongs translator during the trial, Jo-An Ting, who had never worked as a translator before and admitted to feeling nervous and unprofessional during the case: If some outside person evaluated my work and said that I was not competent, then I accept, she says.
    After the publication of the article, the Times receives a letter from a prisoner who claims to have witnessed Julius murder and asserted that Wong was innocent and nowhere near the scene at the time.
    Appeal Rejected: April 16, 1999
    A State Court of Appeals judge rejects hearing an appeal on Wongs case, saying there is no question of law.
    Within the year, Manhattan private investigator Joseph Barry locates DellFava. DellFava admits to having lied at Wongs trial in order to secure a parole recommendation and a prison transfer. He says that a corrections officer persuaded him to blame Wong because he knew little English and had few friends in prison.
    The Tide Turns: April 2002
    Almost one dozen current or former inmates sign affidavits or tell investigators that Julius was murdered by Nelson Gutierrez, a longtime rival with a record that included drug charges and first-degree manslaughter. One former peer counselor and inmate legally swears that Gutierrez confessed to the murder to him. DellFava recants his testimony, and LaPierre, while still adamant about Wongs guilt, supports a new trial.
    The wives of both Gutierrez and Julius verify that the two were rivals and had an earlier altercation at Rikers Island. In May, Sharon Julius signs an affidavit that says Gutierrez killed her husband. Inmates come forward who say they saw the stabbing but said nothing out of fear of retaliation. Gutierrez won parole in 1994 and returned back to the Dominican Republic, where he died of an apparent drug overdose in May 2000.
    The case is one of very few taken up by criminal law professor William E. Hellerstein, head of Brooklyn Law Schools Second Look Clinic, which focuses on investigating wrongful convictions.
    It was clear to me and to the students that David Wong was innocent from the beginning of the case, Hellerstein says. The facts didnt make any sense going the other way.
    A Glimmer of a Chance: Jan. 7, 2003
    Judge Timothy Lawliss, acting judge of the Clinton County Court in Plattsburgh, N.Y., agrees to hear the fresh evidence in the case and then decide whether the murder conviction still stands.
    Reversing the Story: April 2003
    At the evidentiary hearing, DellFava admits he lied in order to get the hell out of that prison even though no official deal was made. Three former Clinton inmates, including friends of Gutierrez, testify to seeing Gutierrez stab Julius.
    Judge Deals a Blow: October 2003
    Lawliss denies Wong a new trial, ruling there is not enough evidence and questioning the credibility of the witnesses. Clinton County District Attorney Richard Cantwell now says DellFavas past fraud and perjury convictions made him an untrustworthy witness.
    Judge in Question: Dec. 2, 2003
    The New York State Appellate Division in Albany reviews the case. The court looks at whether Lawliss should have recused himself from the trial because of his close connections to the prosecutor, who used to be his law partner.
    A Ray of Hope: Oct. 21, 2004
    A five-judge panel in New Yorks Appellate Division unanimously overturns Wongs murder conviction based on the new evidence. Unlike the county court, the state court does not find DellFavas testimony incredible. The decision questions LaPierres testimony because of his great distance from the murder scene and says the testimony of the former inmates should not be discounted. The case is sent back to Clinton County Court for a new trial.
    Behind the Scenes of the Case: The David Wong Support Committee
    The David Wong Support Committee was formed in 1990 by longtime civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama, but members say it is often Wong who inspires the committee to stay optimistic.
    Hes the spirit of the committee he keeps everyone else up when were down, says Siddhartha Joag, an artist and member. Hes so selfless. Hes constantly asking what were doing to support others. Hes not just indulging in his own case, even though hes lost most of his life for no reason. It shakes you.
    Joag says his impression of Wong upon meeting him was that he was calm, friendly, well-read and just a good guy.
    On Sept. 8, three dozen supporters went to Albany to show their support at the Appellate Division hearing. Even though none of the committee knew Wong before his case, many have developed a close relationship with him.
    A lot of us feel personally attached to him, Joag says. Hes a friend.
    Hes using his case as a vehicle for change in the system, Joag says. He doesnt even believe in his own exoneration being important. For every one David Wong that gets a retrial, there must be 1,000 that are on death row for a crime they didnt commit.
    While Joag admits it has been difficult to get support from the Asian American community for someone who is both an undocumented immigrant and a convicted felon, William E. Hellerstein, Wongs lawyer, says the communitys support has been strong and that support for the case shouldnt stop there.
    The fact the Asian American community has been so supportive has been a blessing, Hellerstein says. The entire world should care about this case. Any decent, right-thinking human being should care.
    This is a grievous injustice, Hellerstein states. This man is innocent. Everyone knows it.

12/15/04 Los Angeles Times: Forever 21 Settles Dispute With Garment Workers.
By Leslie Earnest, Times Staff Writer
    Garment workers who claimed they labored in sweatshops making clothes for Forever 21 Inc. have settled with the retailer, both sides said Tuesday. 
    The settlement, which involved 33 workers, marks the end of a nationwide boycott against Los Angeles-based Forever 21, according to the Garment Worker Center and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, which represented the workers.
    Terms of the agreement weren't disclosed. Christina Chung, an attorney with the legal center, declined to say whether it involved any money.
    "Forever 21 has stated that, as a company, it is committed to making sure the clothes it sells are made under lawful conditions," she said. "We believe for a retailer to say that is significant."
    Larry Meyer, Forever 21's chief financial officer, said the company looked forward to working with advocates "to improve working conditions in L.A. " The retailer admitted to no wrongdoing. Meyer declined to comment further.
    The settlement also resolves a defamation suit Forever 21 filed in March 2002 against the Garment Worker Center and other groups, both sides said. The retailer had claimed it was unfairly targeted in a "vicious" public campaign. 
    The workers filed suit in 2001, saying they were denied lawful wages and exposed to dangerous work conditions. They claimed they sewed, ironed or packed Forever 21 clothing six days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day, for far less than minimum wage. 
    For more than three years, worker advocates rallied student groups and consumers, urging them not to shop at Forever 21. Chung said that effort had now ended.

12/14/04 OMelveny & Myers website
O'Melveny Represents Ex-FBI Agent Indicted in Spying Probe
    O'Melveny partner Mark Holscher is leading an O'Melveny team representing Denise K. Woo on a pro bono basis. Woo, a former FBI agent, was indicted December 6 on charges that she tipped off the target of a national security probe that he was under investigation. Holscher argues that Woo was actually trying to help an innocent man, and that the FBI is trying to use her as a scapegoat. Los Angeles counsel Michael Camunez and associates Angela Machala and Kelly O'Donnell are also working on the high-profile case.
    Woo, who is Chinese-American, was briefly assigned to the FBI's Chinese counterintelligence squad in Los Angeles . In 1999 she was recruited for a covert operation involving the investigation of a family friend, a Chinese-American man who worked for a defense contractor and who was suspected of passing sensitive information on to the Chinese government. He was never charged with any crime. Woo, however, was placed on administrative leave and subsequently fired.
    At her arraignment, Woo was charged with disclosing the existence of a national security wiretap, revealing the identity of a covert operative, and lying to FBI agents.
    ''Denise Woo was forced to assist in an espionage investigation of an innocent man, and the FBI unfortunately has sought to criminalize her efforts to prevent a terrible tragedy,'' said Holscher, who previously led the successful defense of Taiwanese-American physicist Wen Ho Lee against 58 espionage charges brought by the Department of Justice. The American Lawyer later described the representation "one of the most conspicuous acts of pro bono daring in 2000."
  

12/12/04 Associated Press: Hunter Killings Heighten Racial Tensions,
 By Robert Imrie
    Hayward, Wis. - The fatal shootings of six white deer hunters by a Hmong man in northern Wisconsin last month have fueled racial animosity against the growing immigrant population, according to Hmong community leaders.
    Hmong residents have reported receiving threatening letters and being taunted with ethnic slurs. At a community prayer service in Rice Lake , the area where the six slain hunters lived, one woman said she saw a bumper sticker that read: "Save a deer, shoot a Hmong." 
    "It is like boiling water again. Hopefully, in a few years, the water will probably cool down again," said Cheu Lee, owner of the Hmong Times newspaper in St. Paul, Minn., home of the country's largest Hmong community. 
    Chai Soua Vang, who lives in St. Paul , faces six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder for allegedly gunning down eight hunters after a trespassing dispute on some of the victims' land. Vang said the men fired on him first and used racial slurs; the two survivors said Vang shot them first. 
    Many Hmong, who began arriving in the United States from Southeast Asia 25 years ago, said they have experienced prejudice before. But some said feelings have become particularly hardened since the shootings in Wisconsin , home to 46,000 Hmong. 
    Police recently arrested a white man and cited him for misdemeanor property damage for painting the word "killer" on two trailer homes and a truck owned by Hmong neighbors. 
    Joe Bee Xiong, executive director of the Eau Claire Hmong Mutual Assistance Association, said his organization received an unsigned letter urging the Hmong to go back "where they belonged." 
    The Wausau Area Hmong Mutual Association said it has received calls from people making inappropriate comments about the Hmong. Ker Vang, executive director of the Hmong Association of Green Bay, said a Hmong woman there reported being called derogatory names. 
    The tension has also caused other Asian ethnic groups to take notice. 
    Tan Phan, a Vietnamese businessman who owns manicure salons in Eau Claire and Janesville , said he warned his wife that people may think she's Hmong and not Vietnamese. "Maybe some people may want to take revenge," he said. 
    Joe Bee Xiong, who is president of an umbrella group of 17 Hmong associations in Wisconsin , blames the media for exacerbating racial tensions because of the focus on Vang as a Hmong immigrant while ignoring his American citizenship. 
    "I personally worry that we are divided, and things will be getting worse, from both sides," he said. 
    Nathan Hecker, a white logger and hunter in Hayward , agreed. He said some people in northern Wisconsin dislike Hmong immigrants, citing the common perception that Hmong hunters "tend to shoot everything that moves and take it home squirrels, birds, rabbits." 
    "There can be good and bad people wherever. But some people feel that way. That's not going to help matters," he said. 
    The feelings come at a time when authorities are trying to resettle an expected influx of nearly 3,200 Hmong refugees in the state. The refugees are among more than 15,000 Hmong leaving Thailand for the U.S. in coming months. 
    So far, leaders of Catholic Charities for the Dioceses of La Crosse and Green Bay , the agencies in charge of resettlements in northeast and western Wisconsin , have reported no major problems because of the shootings. 
    "The majority of our people are trying very hard to understand this is not a race thing. This is about hunters. It is a hunting incident," said Kaying Xiong, who leads a task force advising the governor on the resettlement.
     "It is not about the Hmong. It is not about immigrants. It is not about refugees."

12/9/04 Associated Press: Foreign nurses face new hurdles: Change to aggravate worker shortage, 
By Laura Wides
    Immigration officials beginning Jan. 1 will block a shortcut that allowed thousands of foreign nurses, predominantly from the Philippines , to get fast-track U.S. work permits, the State Department announced Thursday. 
    According to a State Department bulletin issued Wednesday, until further notice, the government will not process applications filed after January 2002. What has been a 60-day wait could now take up to three years or more. 
    "It's basically going to cut them off," said Charles Oppenheim, head of the State Department's immigrant visa control division. 
    The change could leave a gaping hole for hospitals across the country that increasingly rely on foreign-born nurses to reduce their nursing shortage. 
    U.S. authorities have warned that the country could face a shortage of roughly 275,000 nurses by 2010, though exact estimates are difficult to come by. Technology will likely reduce the number of nurses needed in the future, but the aging U.S. population will require more. 
    Nurses in the United States said they hope the new limits will help refocus attention on training and recruitment of nurses within the country. 
    "If the industry has ready access to nurses from whatever, then they ease their shortage and never address why we don't have a sufficient domestic nursing work force," said Cheryl Peterson, senior policy analyst for the American Nurses Association. 
    Peterson said federal and state government need to do more long-term work force planning in the health care industry and improve pay and work conditions to avoid future shortages. 
    But in the short term, the change will hurt hospitals, health economist Len Nichols said. 
    "The Philippines are our major source of imported nurses, and we've been doing that at a clip of thousands a year for a while now," said Nichols, vice president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based think tank. 
    Gwen Matthews, a senior vice president for Glendale Adventist Medical Center just north of Los Angeles , said she is worried because the 430-bed hospital plans to open a new wing in two years and will need 90 new nurses. 
    "I'm doing a lot of local recruitment, but we do expect it's going to take foreign employment as well," she said. "We anticipate we will have more than what the local market can provide." 
    Nurses are not the only workers affected by the change. They fall in a category that also includes doctors and tech workers, but their work permit options are more limited under immigration rules. 
    Robert Salasar, 31, a nurse from the Philippines , began working at a Los Angeles area hospital in July and is awaiting his green card. 
    "It's much better pay and less patients," he said of his job here, "and you can have it personalized and individualized for each one." 
    Salasar now worries about friends and family back home who will have to wait years to get the chance he had. 
    Recruiters have long sought nurses from the Philippines , where schools train nurses to work in the United States . 
    Canadian and Mexican nurses can also obtain visas to work in the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement, but not enough Canadians opt to come south, and Mexico doesn't produce sufficient numbers of U.S.-qualified nurses, Nichols said. 
    The new quota limit is actually the indirect result of a more efficient immigration process. After Sept. 11, 2001, the system became backlogged due to updated security measures. Many foreign workers from the Philippines, and to a lesser extent India and mainland China, got by on temporary work permits as they waited for their "number" to come up for a green card. 
    Now those cases are being processed, and the government said beginning Jan. 1 it will no longer issue new temporary work permits for workers from these countries until it deals with the backlog, which could take several years. 
    Immigration attorney Carl Shusterman, whose firm represents hospitals throughout California and helps about 350 Filipino nurses a year find jobs in the United States, said he frequently obtains a work permit for qualified nurses in 60 days, allowing them to work as they wait the roughly three years for their permanent residency. 
    "There's no way for us to keep a nurse here for three years until we have the job," Shusterman said. "It's like meeting some guy, falling in love and saying you can't be together for three years."

12/8/04 Dallas Morning News: " Hmong-Americans feel fallout from hunters' deaths,"
by Esther Wu
    Minneapolis - Two years ago Mee Moua became the first American of Hmong descent to be elected to public office. As a Minnesota state senator, Ms. Moua has become a voice for the Hmong-American community. It was a role she relished. She is very proud of her heritage.
    And after Cy Thao was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives last month, Ms. Moua, who won her bid for re-election, said she thought things were finally changing and "Hmongs are becoming fully integrated as Americans."
    But now it seems as though the world has turned upside down for Ms. Moua as well as many other Americans of Hmong descent.
    On Nov. 21, Chai Soua Vang opened fire on a group of hunters near Rice Lake , Wis. , after they confronted him about trespassing. Mr. Vang, a Hmong-American from St. Paul , Minn. , who served in the California National Guard, has been charged in the deaths of six hunters. Mr. Vang told officials he fired in self-defense and that the hunters shouted racial epithets at him.
    It is a tense time for many Hmong-Americans in the Midwest .
    Last week, the word "killer" was painted on the homes of three Hmong-American families in Minnesota . And the National Socialist Movement has been distributing recruitment fliers using the shooting as an example of why immigrants should not be allowed in the United States .
    "Quite frankly, I'm upset and very frustrated," Ms. Moua said. "After 30 years in this country, people still don't know who we are. There is so much misinformation being published. I keep reading about the 'Hmong hunting culture' or that Hmongs don't understand public and private land use.
    "This is all wrong. There is no Hmong hunting culture. Of course the terrain is different so hunters may hunt differently in Laos than they do in America . But hunting is hunting. And within that culture, all hunters are deeply territorial about where they hunt. And by the way, we are Hmong-Americans. We are law-abiding citizens who respect the rights of others."
    Ms. Moua also objected to the media's use of the term "Hmong hunter" to describe Mr. Vang, saying it suggests that this incident was racially motivated, when that has not been established.
    Ms. Moua was one of several community leaders who met informally Sunday with members of the Asian American Journalists Association, an organization that I serve as president.
    Minneapolis and its twin city, St. Paul , have an estimated 35,000 Hmong residents, the highest urban population of Hmongs in the United States .
    During the Vietnam War, the Hmongs were our allies, fighting alongside the U.S. armed forces to slow down the advancing communist forces from North Vietnam into South Vietnam .
    The Laotian and Vietnamese governments' campaign to extinguish these people after the war prompted U.S. officials to allow the Hmongs to relocate here. Although Hmongs have lived in this country for 30 years, Ms. Moua voiced her concern that misunderstanding the Hmongs has resulted in perpetuating a "foreigner" attitude toward them.
    After the shooting, Ms. Moua said, she was asked what the Hmong community is going to do about the incident.
    "When similar crimes have occurred, race has not played such a role," Ms. Moua said. "No one ever asks, 'What is the black, Hispanic or white community going to do when a member of their group is accused of a crime?' "
    Ilean Her, who works for the counsil on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans, reiterated the need to separate the community from the crimes of one man.
    "What happened was a criminal act. We are not here to justify what happened. But we are concerned with what seems to be a rush to judge and condemn this person. We live in a country where there is something called rule of law and we have to let the system judge him."

12/6/04 Texas Lawyer: Three Candidates Turn to House To Resolve Election Disputes,
by Mary Alice Robbins
    Up to 149 members of the Texas House of Representatives eventually could sit as judges to decide election contests filed by three Republicans including two incumbents who lost the Nov. 2 election.
    Rep. Talmadge Heflin of Houston, former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Eric Opiela of Karnes City filed petitions for election contests with the Texas Secretary of State's Office on Nov. 24. According to the Harris County Clerk's Office, a Dec. 1 recount shows Heflin lost by 33 votes to Democrat Hubert Vo, a businessman. Opiela lost by 854 votes to Democrat Yvonne Gonzalez-Toureilles of Alice , according to the vote tally Gov. Rick Perry certified last month.
    Rep. Jack Stick, of counsel at Austin 's Burns Anderson Jury & Brenner, faxed his election contest petition to the secretary of state on Nov. 25 and is asking the House to investigate his 569-vote loss to Democrat Mark Strama of Austin .
    An election contest is like a lawsuit, says Mark Brown, director of the legal division for the Texas Legislative Council.
    "It's just a suit that's going to be handled by the Legislature rather than a court," Brown says.
    Section 8, Article III, of the Texas Constitution gives each house of the Legislature exclusive jurisdiction over the election of its own members.
    Texas Election Code Chapter 241 establishes the procedures for filing and the hearing of a contest. The statute requires House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, to appoint a master of discovery, who must be a House member, to determine whether an election contestant's petition is frivolous or states the grounds for the contest, Brown says. The master also supervises the discovery of records and the taking of depositions, he says.
    Under Chapter 241, Craddick must refer election contests to a standing committee, special committee or the House sitting as a committee of the whole. Brown says the committee will hold a hearing, similar to a trial, during which the candidate challenging the election and the winning candidate will have opportunities to present evidence. The committee will make a report to the House, stating its findings of fact and conclusions of law, and any member of the committee who dissents can file a minority report, Brown says.
    Brown says the individual contesting the election can withdraw the contest at any time before the committee submits its report to the House. That happens in many cases, he says.
    If the contest reaches the House, Brown says, the matter can be debated much like a bill. The House can declare as the winner either the candidate who contested the election or the candidate whose election is being challenged, Brown says. The House also can find that it can't determine the outcome, void the election and order a new election.
    Few election contests result in a new election being called. The last time it happened was in 1981, when the House considered Brown v. Schoolcraft, Brown says.
    After Rep. Al Brown, D-San Antonio, lost his bid for re-election in 1980, he filed a petition to contest the election of his Republican opponent, Alan Schoolcraft.
    Austin attorney Randall "Buck" Wood, who represented Al Brown, says his client succeeded in having a new election called but got "killed" at the polls. Schoolcraft had defeated Brown, a three-term incumbent, by 1,038 votes, the San Antonio Express-News reported on Jan. 9, 1981. Wood says Brown lost to Schoolcraft by about a 2-to-1 margin in the new election.
    "Voters do not like having to re-vote these elections," says Wood, a partner in Ray, Wood & Bonilla.
    Cyndi Krier, a former Bexar County judge who represented Schoolcraft in the election contest, says Wood's explanation is an over simplification. Krier, now the vice president for government relations at USAA, a San Antonio-based insurance company, says a primary issue in the case was an attempt by the county's voter registrar to throw out ballots cast by military personnel. The voters did not like military voting rights being challenged, she says.
    The election contest that has drawn much of the attention this year is Heflin v. Vo because Heflin, a 22-year incumbent, formerly chaired the House's budget-writing committee. Heflin alleges in his petition that at least 260 votes were illegally cast or illegally discarded in the District 149 race. "We will prove by clear and convincing evidence that illegal Democrat voters stole the true outcome of this election from the real voters in House District 149," alleges Andy Taylor, Heflin's attorney and a principal in Houston 's Andy Taylor & Associates.
    Larry Veselka, Vo's attorney and a partner in Houston 's Smyser Kaplan & Veselka, says he doesn't believe Heflin has met the pleading burden for the election contest. Veselks says Heflin is pleading voter fraud and that Heflin's petition should have identified the people who allegedly voted illegally and how they voted in the election. Heflin did not do that in the petition, he says.
    "If they have evidence of fraud, it was incumbent on them to bring it forward," Veselka says.

 
12/1/04 www.kfdm.com: Jap Lane In Orange County Is Getting A New Name,
    Kara Stevens The Orange County Judge says his county will follow the lead of Jefferson County and change the name of Jap Lane .
     Jap Road in Jefferson County was renamed several months ago because some people find the use of the word "Jap" to be offensive.
    People living on Jap Lane have mixed emotions about the change.
Judge Thibodeaux expects the name to be changed in January.
    No word yet on what the new name will be.
    "A lot of us have lived on this road for years and it's our history and it's like they're wanting to change our history."-Penny LeLeux, Lives On Jap Lane
    PENNY LELEUX'S FAMILY MOVED TO THIS AREA IN ORANGE COUNTY IN THE 1850s.
    MANY OF HER RELATIVES STILL LIVE ON THIS STREET.. JAP LANE .
    "My sister lived there, my mother lived there, my grandomother lived there, we've got seven generations living on this road right now."-Penny LeLeux, Lives On Jap Lane
    LELEUX IS LIKE MANY PEOPLE WHO LIVE ON JAP LANE WHO DON'T WANT THE NAME OF THEIR STREET CHANGED.
    LELEUX SAYS IT'S NAMED IN HONOR OF A FAMILY THAT LIVED NEAR HERE MORE THAN A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
    BUT SOME PEOPLE DON'T SEE IT THAT WAY.
    "It's because of the Japanese rice farmers that lived here. I've known that my whole life and I was always proud of that fact. It wasn't ever anything derogitory, in fact, I think it was named Jap Lane before the word Jap became derogitory."-Penny Lane, Lives On Jap Lane
    LELEUX ECHOS THE FEELINGS OF MANY PEOPLE WHO LIVE ON BOONDOCKS ROAD IN JEFFERSON COUNTY.. FORMERLY NAMED JAP ROAD .
    THE STREET RECEIVED NATIONAL ATTENTION A FEW MONTHS AGO BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE SAY THE NAME JAP IS A RACIAL SLUR.
    THE STREET'S NAME WAS CHANGED.
    ORANGE COUNTY OFFICIALS SAY JAP LANE WILL ALSO.. BY EARLY NEXT YEAR.
    "What we politically correct 20, 30 years ago may not be so now so we definitly need to deal with it."-Orange County Judge Carl Tibodeaux
    "Everyone else is coming in and telling us what to do and I think I saw a comment one time that it's like someboday saying they don't like the color of your house, that you have to change the color of your house. It's ridiculous. It's just political correctness gone haywire."-Penny LeLeux, Lives On Jap Lane
    LELEUX SAYS THE NAME ' JAP LANE ' WAS NEVER INTENDED TO OFFEND ANYONE.
    SHE SAYS IT HONORS THE FAMILY THAT SETTLED THERE AND SHE HOPES PEOPLE REMEMBER THAT.


11/23/04 Associated Press: Suspect in shooting of hunters in Wisconsin says he was fired at first, court documents say,
By Robert Imrie
    Hayward , Wis. - A man suspected in the killings of six hunters told investigators he began firing after a shot was fired at him and some of the victims called him racially derogatory names, according to documents filed Tuesday.
    A judge set bail at $2.5 million for Chai Vang, 36, of St. Paul , Minn. , who is suspected in the killings Sunday of six deer hunters and the wounding of two others.
    Bail was set after investigators filed documents arguing there was probable cause to hold Vang in the shootings. No charges had been filed.
    Vang, a Hmong immigrant from Laos , was arrested Sunday about four hours after the shootings as he emerged from the woods with his empty SKS 7.62 mm semiautomatic rifle.
    Sawyer County Sheriff Jim Meier said a dispute over Vang's use of a tree stand -- a raised platform used by hunters -- on private property preceded the gunfire.
    Vang told investigators he didn't realize he was on private property when he climbed the tree stand, according to the probable-cause statement released Tuesday. The county has thousands of acres of public hunting land, some of it "virtually around" the private property where the shooting occurred, Meier has said.
    A hunter approached and told Vang he was on private property, and Vang started to leave as other hunters approached, the statement said. Vang said the hunters surrounded him and some called him racial slurs.
    Vang said he started walking away but looked back to see the first hunter point his rifle at him and then fire a shot that hit the ground 30 to 40 feet behind him, the statement said.
    Vang told investigators that's when he started firing at the group, according to the statement.
    Five people died at the scene and a sixth died Monday in a hospital. Two others were wounded. The dead were identified as the landowner, Robert Crotteau, 42; his son Joey, 20; Al Laski, 43; Mark Roidt, 28; Jessica Willers, 27; and Denny Drew, 55, who died Monday at St. Joseph's Hospital in Marshfield. Willers' father, Terry Willers, remained hospitalized Tuesday in fair condition, while the other wounded hunter was released.
    Officials said the victims were part of a group of 14 or 15 who made their opening-weekend trip to the 400-acre property an annual tradition.
    "This was his first time out with that group. He was delighted to be invited," said Karen Roidt, mother of victim Mark Roidt.
    According to an account Meier gave Monday, two or three hunters spotted a man in a hunting platform on Crotteau's land, then radioed back to the rest of the party at a nearby cabin and were told no one should be there. Meier did not indicate who the account came from.
    One of the men asked the intruder to leave, while Crotteau and the others in the cabin hopped on their all-terrain vehicles and headed to the scene, according to the account.
    "The suspect got down from the deer stand, walked 40 yards, fiddled with his rifle. He took the scope off his rifle, he turned and he opened fire on the group," Meier said.
    He was "chasing after them and killing them," Deputy Tim Zeigle said. "He hunted them down."
    Authorities have said there was only one firearm among the eight hunters and it was unclear whether anyone returned fire.
    Some Hmong leaders questioned whether racial differences may have figured in the shootings.
    There have been previous clashes between Southeast Asian and white hunters in the region. Locals in the Birchwood area, about 120 miles northeast of the Twin Cities, have complained that the Hmong do not understand the concept of private property and hunt wherever they see fit.
    Sang Vang said his brother has lived in the United States for more than 20 years and is a U.S. Army veteran.
    Vang's arrest made some Hmong citizens in his hometown fearful of a backlash. Hmong leaders in St. Paul condemned the shootings Tuesday and offered condolences to victims' families.
    "What happened in Wisconsin is in no way representative of the Hmong people and what they stand for," said Cha Vang, who said he was representing "the greater law-abiding Hmong community." He is no relation to Chai Vang.
    About 24,000 Hmong live in St. Paul , the highest concentration of any U.S. city.
    Minneapolis police said they arrested Chai Vang on Christmas Eve 2001 after he waved a gun and threatened to kill his wife. No charge was filed because she didn't cooperate with authorities, spokesman Ron Reier said. St. Paul police said there had been two domestic violence calls to his home in the past year, but both were resolved without incident.

11/22/04 Sacramento Bee: Ex-spy suspect receives award, hero's welcome,
By Emily Bazar
    When Army Capt. James Yee was presented with a "Courage and Inspiration Award" by a local Muslim organization Saturday night, a diverse audience rose to its feet to congratulate him: 
    Muslims and Christians, Arab Americans and African Americans, imams and politicians.
    Asian Americans made up an especially large contingent at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) fund-raiser, which drew more than 400 people to the Hilton near Arden Fair mall. 
    Many Asian Americans said they attended because they felt a special bond with Yee, a Muslim Army chaplain formerly stationed at the U.S. military prison in Guantnamo Bay , Cuba . 
    Yee, who is Chinese American, was charged last year with mishandling classified information, and spent 76 days in solitary confinement. Military officials had said they might have a Guantnamo-based spy ring on their hands, but the government's case against Yee disintegrated. The criminal charges against him were dismissed earlier this year. 
    "Things like this should stop," said Linda Ng, president of the Sacramento chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans. "That's why all of us are standing together." 
    One of Yee's assistants at Guantnamo, Ahmad Al Halabi, also attended the fund-raiser. Al Halabi was tried this year at Travis Air Force Base as a member of the alleged Guantnamo spy ring. 
    As in Yee's case, the espionage charges against Al Halabi unraveled. In September, Al Halabi pleaded guilty to relatively minor charges of mishandling military materials; his rank was reduced to airman basic and he was given a bad-conduct discharge. 
    Al Halabi had originally been accused of attempting to spy for his native Syria . The naturalized U.S. citizen spent 10 months behind bars and could have faced execution. 
    When Yee accepted his award Saturday night, he acknowledged Al Halabi, saying the two were victims of "this new culture of eroding civil liberties." 
    "There are many others who are considered heroes, who are considered courageous and inspiration(al). Many of those who may even be here tonight in this audience," he said. 
    The West Point graduate told the crowd that the Army has accepted his resignation, and he will be honorably discharged Jan. 7. He is stationed at Fort Lewis , Wash.  
    "At this time just one short year ago, I was still fasting Ramadan and praying the Ramadan prayers, alone, without the benefit or the rewards of praying in congregation, while still locked up in the naval brig down in Charleston , South Carolina ," Yee said. "So I'm thankful that this year is different." 
    Yee and Al Halabi declined to be interviewed Saturday. Earlier in the week, Yee's civilian defense attorney, Eugene R. Fidell, said his client was warned by military officials that his public statements would be scrutinized. 
    "He was handed a letter that contained a not-so-veiled threat of disciplinary action in case he said anything critical of the Army," said Fidell, who is based in Washington , D.C. "To a person who had already spent 76 days in solitary confinement, you can't overlook a threat like that." 
    The letter, dated April 6, informed Yee that "speech that undermines the effectiveness of loyalty, discipline, or unit morale is not constitutionally protected." 
    Military officials also declined to comment on Yee's Sacramento speaking engagement and his case.
    "No one's talking about the Yee case. It's pretty much an 'over' issue," said Lt. Cmdr. Chris Loundermon, a spokesman at U.S. Southern Command in Miami . "He can tell you what he wants to tell you." 
    Though the military has deemed Yee's case "over," the chaplain's story continues to reverberate.
    Area Muslims believe the government singled out Yee because of his religion.
"I do think it was a witch hunt," said Frank Johnson, a 53-year-old Pocket resident who attended Saturday's event. "If you say you're Muslim, it's almost like you're open to harassment." 
    Yee's case also has become a flash point for Chinese Americans. A host for Cantonese-language talk radio in the Bay Area made it the focus of her show. The Chinese American Political Action Committee, active in the Sacramento area, co-sponsored an online petition asking the Army to apologize to Yee. 
    "As Chinese Americans, we need to speak out," Ng, of the Organization of Chinese Americans, said Saturday. "We should all be treated equally." 
    Chinese American activist Alberta Lee, 31, was asked to present Yee's award, but couldn't because she was out of town.
    Lee, a University of California , Davis, law student, is the daughter of Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear scientist formerly at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 
    Wen Ho Lee was suspected of spying, but the case against him largely fell apart. He received a rare apology from a federal judge. 
    Alberta Lee said she feared from the outset that Yee's case was similar to her father's, particularly when she learned that Yee is Chinese and Muslim. 
    "My first thought was, 'This is going to be exactly like my dad's case all over again,' " she said. "The government really painted them both to be very sinister people." 
    On Saturday, Yee addressed the issue of profiling, albeit indirectly. He asked audience members whether they carry copies of a "Know Your Rights" card distributed by CAIR. 
    "If you don't," he said, pausing, "please get one. You may need it, at least for the next four years."

11/22/04 Tri-Valley Herald: Mr. Torrico goes to Sacramento: Newark councilman will be among youngest of the Assembly members,
By Rob Dennis
    Fremont -- Alberto Torrico is sitting in his second-floor law office across the street from Washington High School, mulling his meteoric rise from political novice to state assembly man.
    Amid the photographs and other memorabilia on the wall behind his desk is a piece of campaign literature with a picture of his 4-year-old son, Mateo. He's holding a sign that reads, "Please vote for my dad."
    "If I had to turn the clock back two years, I probably wouldn't even have run for this seat," Torrico says, when asked if he ever thinks about his next political move. "The campaign was extremely grueling for my family."
    Torrico, who also has a newborn daughter, says he doesn't think his family could go through another tough race, and he doubts he will seek higher office.
    "That's part of the problem with Sacramento ," he said. "Everybody in the state Assembly, instead of thinking what's best as a state Assembly member, they're thinking about what's best for when they run for their next office. And they're thinking about these short-term votes and short-term solutions and politically popular solutions."
    It seems strange for someone who will be sworn in Dec. 6 as one of the youngest members of the Assembly -- a group with an average age of almost 51 -- not to be considering his political future. And Torrico's protestations notwithstanding, some local observers believe his star will continue to rise.
    But then again, the 35-year-old Torrico has specialized in confounding expectations.
    For now, he says he's focusing on what he will be able to accomplish in the next two years -- or six in the event he's re-elected twice, the maximum allowed by term limits.
    During the March primary campaign, he unveiled a 16-page "Blueprint for California 's Future," outlining specific plans on key issues such as education, jobs and balancing the state budget.
    But he also has a simpler, big-picture goal for the end of every year.
    "If we can't answer the question, 'Have we improved people's lives?' If we can't say 'yes' to that, then we're wasting our time," he says.
    Torrico was a talented soccer player, as a junior at Irvington High School , and student in the Fremont school district's Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program when he first met Tony Gelfuso.
    Torrico wanted to be the first member of his family to go to college. Gelfuso -- who worked for the district for 33 years as a counselor, teacher, and finally coordinator of the GATE program -- helped make that happen. He also helped Torrico's three siblings.
    "If it hadn't been for (Gelfuso), I don't know what would have happened to me and my brothers," Torrico said. "So I always consider myself lucky that I had someone who looked out for me and made suggestions and guided me along the way."
    Gelfuso also remembers Torrico fondly, describing him as a strong-willed, assertive kid who "was good for Irvington , and Irvington was good for him."
    "He had something special," Gelfuso said. "He just took the bull by the horns -- wanted something and he went after it. ... We got a plan together, and by God he stuck to it, and look where he is."
    The son of immigrants, Torrico was born in San Francisco in 1969. Nine years later, the family moved back to their native Bolivia , where Torrico would meet his wife, Raquel Andrade.
    The family stayed there for two years before returning to California , moving into his uncle's Union City home. Shortly afterward, the family rented their own home in Fremont . The eldest of four boys, Torrico helped his parents clean office buildings to make ends meet, but his parents always emphasized education first, he said.
    Torrico graduated from Irvington in 1987 and got his wish: He attended Santa Clara University , graduating four years later with a bachelor's degree in political science.
    After college, while working as a policy aide for Ron Gonzales, then a Santa Clara County supervisor and now the mayor of San Jose , Torrico decided to pursue a law degree. He graduated from Hastings College of Law and passed the bar exam in 1995.
    He went to work for the Van Bourg law firm, representing labor unions throughout California for four years. The contacts he made there would stand him in good stead when he ran first for Newark City Council, and then state Assembly.
    In 2000, he joined the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority as senior assistant counsel. In the months to come, he would buy a home -- another wish fulfilled -- and launch an independent legal practice. But his plate was about to get even more full. He was about to enter the political arena.
    Three years ago, Torrico went before 13 members of the Fremont-Newark Democratic Forum to pitch himself as a candidate for Newark City Council. It was his first run for public office, and he blew them away.
    "When you heard him articulate his plan for Newark , he was just heads above all the other applicants," said Fremont Councilmember-elect Bob Wieckowski, who met Torrico at that meeting and now shares the law office with him. "He turned everybody's head."
    Endorsed by the forum, Torrico would win that council seat by a scant 32 votes. But that was just the beginning.
    In January 2002, he was elected chair of the Democratic Committee for the 20th Assembly District, which includes Fremont , Newark , Union City and Milpitas , and parts of Castro Valley, Hayward , Pleasanton and San Jose .
    His goals were to raise money and set up a volunteer operation for Democratic campaigns, and to recruit qualified, talented candidates for local offices.
    "I didn't believe local elections should be nonpartisan for Democrats, because if you look at the voting history of Fremont , in particular, Republicans vote with Republicans even in nonpartisan elections," he said.
    His attention turned to the 20th Assembly seat held by Fremont Democrat John Dutra, who could not run again because of term limits.
    Dutra, a real estate magnate, had brought his personal wealth to the table when he decided to run for Assembly in 1998, Wieckowski said. None of the potential contenders this time around could say that, and none had Torrico's contacts with organized labor.
    "There's only so many people active in politics, only so many players who would even consider doing it," Wieckowski said.
    "He asked the local candidates who was interested, and the bottom line was, other than (former Milpitas Mayor) Henry Manayan, there was nobody."
    Torrico, though, believed the Assembly candidate should come not from Santa Clara County but from the Tri-City area, which makes up three-quarters of the district. And a name kept coming up when he asked around: his own.
    "Repeatedly, people told me they weren't interested, number one, and number two, they told me that I should consider running," he said.
    "I talked to my wife. ... I talked to the pastor of my church. We thought about it a lot and talked about it a lot, and we came to the conclusion that I would start exploring the possibility of running. If the doors were open, we would continue walking through the doors. If the doors closed, then it wouldn't be the end of the world."
    In the end, Torrico narrowly edged out Pleasanton Mayor Tom Pico and three other candidates in a tight March Democratic primary that shattered campaign spending records for the district.
    As expected in the heavily Democratic district, he followed up by beating Republican Cliff Williams in the Nov. 2 general election, garnering a hefty 69.3 percent of the vote. But he also threw his support behind Democrats running for local offices, and Wieckowski said it made the difference.
    "I'll tell you right now, Bob Wieckowski and (newly elected Fremont Mayor) Bob Wasserman would not be getting sworn in if it wasn't for Alberto Torrico," he said.
    "I saw bodies walking precincts that I've never seen before, because (Torrico) made a phone call."
    In all, as many as 400 volunteers worked on the campaign in the months leading up to the election, and 200 of them hit the streets on Election Day. Torrico took his leadership role seriously and helped keep the multiple campaigns organized, Wieckowski said.
    "One of the brilliant aspects of Alberto that people are just learning about is his ability to execute on a plan," Wieckowski said.
    "He walked into one of my committee meetings and said, 'This is the last meeting we're having. Everybody's going to work now. ...' He's stepped on some toes, but I think we needed that. We needed that discipline."
    They weren't the first toes Torrico had stepped on.
    During his first year on the Newark council, Torrico voted against what he called the city's harsh policy of placing liens on the property of people who are delinquent on their garbage bills. It was only the third 'no' vote on the council in five years, and it drew the wrath of longtime Mayor Dave Smith.
    Smith said he was "shocked and appalled" by Torrico's move, saying he thought the new councilman was pandering to his constituents. Torrico was unrepentant, countering that Smith's title "isn't 'king of Newark .' It's 'mayor.'"
    In the little more than two years since, though, Smith said Torrico has come to understand and appreciate "the Newark way." And Torrico acknowledged as much at his last council meeting Thursday night, when the mayor presented him with a plaque in recognition of his service.
    "I think it's great," Smith said about Torrico's election to the Assembly. "It's the first time that we have had someone in the state Legislature with a Newark address. ... I think he'll represent not only us and the city, but the whole district, well."  

11/22/04 Cox News Service: Civil Rights Enforcement is down,
By Eunice Moscoso
     Washington - The government's enforcement of civil rights laws has declined sharply during the Bush administration, according to a study released Sunday.
    Even though the level of complaints received by the Justice Department has remained relatively constant, far fewer criminal charges have been filed.
    Federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against 159 defendants in reported violations of civil rights laws during 1999. By 2003, the number had dropped to 84, according to the study by TRAC, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research center at Syracuse University in New York . The charges include abusive police tactics, racial violence, slavery or involuntary servitude and blocked access to clinics.
    During the same period, charges against terrorism suspects increased dramatically, and charges of weapons violations doubled. In addition, federal charges of immigration violations increased more than 28 percent, according to the study.
    Civil rights groups said the report's findings were not surprising. "This confirms what everyone in the civil rights community has known for the past four years, which is that President Bush's Justice Department does not have a commitment to full enforcement of the nation's civil rights laws," said Christopher Anders, legislative counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union.
    Anders also said that the Bush civil rights record is worse than that of previous Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, the current president's father.
    Justice Department officials did not return several phone calls seeking comment.
    During his bid for re-election, Bush told the annual meeting of the National Urban League, a nonprofit group that seeks economic parity and civil rights for African-Americans, that the administration has vigorously enforced civil rights laws.
    The statement was repeated various times by campaign officials.
    The Syracuse study also found that some of the decline in pursuing civil rights cases has to do with prosecutorial discretion. In 2003, prosecutors filed formal charges in only 5 percent of civil rights cases referred to them. By contrast, they pursued formal charges in 90 percent of referred immigration cases.
    The main reasons cited to not pursue the civil rights cases included lack of evidence of criminal intent, no federal offense evident, no known suspect, and "declined per instructions from the Department of Justice."
    The study includes data from Justice Department files, annual reports to Congress and publications from U.S. courts. Some of the material was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
IN THE KNOW
More findings
The civil rights study released Sunday also found:
The rate of civil rights complaints to the government has been steady since 1999 at about 12,000 a year.
Civil sanctions against civil rights violators have declined -- from 740 in 2001 to 576 in 2003. Civil suits can involve voting rights violations, employment and housing discrimination and other matters.
The Justice Department's referrals for prosecution in civil rights cases also dropped under the Bush administration -- from 3,053 in 1999 to 1,903 in 2003.
From 1999 to 2003, the number of people charged by the Justice Department with terrorism-related offenses increased from 99 to 899, and the number of people charged with weapons violations more than doubled from about 4,900 to more than 10,000. The number of people charged with immigration violations increased from 16,219 to 20,833 during the same period.
Civil rights cases have always been rare. During the last five years, the United States prosecuted more than 450,000 people on various charges. Only a small fraction of those -- about one in 1,000 -- were aimed at civil rights violators. By comparison, about 600 of every 1,000 involved drugs, weapons and immigration.
SOURCE: Cox News Service

11/19/04 HoustonChronicle.com: State certifies Democrat Vo's House victory: Heflin's lawyer says the campaign still has options,
By Janet Elliott
    Austin --  Democrat Hubert Vo officially defeated veteran Republican state Rep. Talmadge Heflin by 32 votes in the closely watched House District 149 race, the secretary of state's office announced Thursday.
    The official certification of the Nov. 2 election gave Vo one more vote than the 31-vote margin he had after the final ballot tally last week in Harris County . 
    The secretary of state's office said the canvassed vote was 20,694 for Vo and 20,662 for Heflin. 
    Republican Gov. Rick Perry has certified the state's election results, Bill Kenyon, spokesman for the Secretary of State's Office, said today.
    "The voters have spoken and we're excited," said Mustafa Tameez, a consultant to Vo's campaign. "We're grateful that this process has come to a conclusion."
    But Heflin's lawyer, Andy Taylor, said the extra vote "came out of thin air with no explanation why it wasn't counted earlier."
    "Why does the number keeping changing?" Taylor asked. "It raises serious doubts about the accuracy of the count and underscores the importance of knowing what really happened." 
    Taylor said that Monday is the deadline for Heflin to request a recount from the secretary of state, and Nov. 29 is the deadline to file for an election contest. 
    "We're still considering our options right now," he said. 
    Taylor said the recount doesn't have to be completed before Nov. 29 and is not a prerequisite to filing for an election contest.
    There have been several election contests in the Texas House in recent years, but none has reversed an election result. Most were withdrawn after they were filed. 
    Political newcomer Vo's narrow upset of Heflin, the powerful House Appropriations Committee chairman, surprised many in Austin .  Tameez said that Vo, a real estate developer, has been invited to attend an orientation at the Capitol for freshmen lawmakers.
    Vo's victory is the first Democratic gain in the House since 1972, when Democrats still had a strong majority. Republicans won a majority in 2002. 
    So far, only one House race is officially headed for a recount. Kelly White, an Austin Democrat who lost a challenge to Rep. Todd Baxter by 147 votes in District 148, has requested a recount.
    The Associated Press contributed to this story.


11/18/04 Fairbanks News-Miner: State election review begins after final tally,
By Rachel D'oro (AP)
    Anchorage --President Bush is still the overwhelming choice among Alaskans and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is still returning to Capitol Hill. 
    There were no surprises in the final unofficial vote tally from the Nov. 2 election conducted by bipartisan review boards at the Division of Elections' regional offices in Anchorage , Fairbanks , Juneau and Nome . 
    Some overseas absentee and special advance ballots, however, remain to be counted by a state review board that begins the final certification process today. But any lingering votes should make no difference in any but the closest races, such as House District 9. 
    In that contest, Republican Rep. Jim Holm of Fairbanks has a 27-vote lead over Democratic challenger Scott Kawasaki. The race is too close to call with 65 votes still uncounted, said Shelly Growden, supervisor of the Division of Elections central Alaska region. Those votes will be counted in Juneau on Monday during the state review process.
    The present margin of votes in that race is 0.4 percent of the total, slightly below the 0.5 percent difference under which either candidate could demand a recount at the state's expense, Growden said. 
    Candidates can't officially request a recount until the election is certified.
    "Candidates have expressed to me a desire to get this over with, but it's a process that's outlined in state law," Growden said. "My end of it is finished until there would be a recount, if there's a recount."

11/16/04 Associated Press: Abercrombie & Fitch to Pay to Settle Suit, 
By Paul Chavez
    Los Angeles - Abercrombie & Fitch Co. has agreed to pay $40 million to black, Hispanic and Asian employees and job applicants to settle a class-action federal discrimination lawsuit that accused the clothing retailer of promoting whites at the expense of minorities, lawyers said Tuesday. 
    The settlement, approved Tuesday morning by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, requires the company to adhere to a consent decree that calls for the implementation of new policies and programs to promote diversity and prevent discrimination in its workforce. Abercrombie & Fitch also must pay about $10 million to monitor compliance and cover attorneys' fees, although the agreement contains no admission of wrongdoing by the company. 
    "We have, and always have had, no tolerance for discrimination. We decided to settle this suit because we felt that a long, drawn out dispute would have been harmful to the company and distracting to management," chairman and CEO Mike Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday. 
    In trading, Abercrombie & Fitch shares closed down 93 cents, or 2.1 percent, at $44.08 on the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites). Wall Street had known the settlement was coming; last week, in its third-quarter earnings report, Abercrombie & Fitch had said it would pay $50 million to resolve the litigation.
    The lawsuit originally was filed last June in San Francisco by Hispanic and Asian groups charging that Abercrombie & Fitch, known for its "classic casual American" clothing styles, hires a disproportionately white sales force, puts minorities in less-visible jobs and cultivates a virtually all-white image in its catalogues and elsewhere. A second, similar lawsuit was filed against the company last November in New Jersey . 
    The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission joined the private plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which alleged that Abercrombie & Fitch violated portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The lawsuit specifically accused the company of engaging in recruiting and hiring practices that exclude minorities and adopting a virtually all-white marketing campaign. 
    "The retail industry and other industries need to know that businesses cannot discriminate against individuals under the auspice of a marketing strategy or a particular 'look'. Race and sex discrimination in employment are unlawful, and the EEOC will continue to aggressively pursue employers who choose to engage in such practices," said Eric Dreiband, the EEOC's general counsel. 
    The EEOC estimated the lawsuit would affect more than 10,000 Hispanic, Asian or black men and women. 
    The consent decree calls for Abercrombie & Fitch to hire a vice president of diversity and hire up to 25 diversity recruiters. The company also promised that its marketing materials would reflect diversity. 
    The original lawsuit was brought on behalf of nine young minorities, including students and graduates of Stanford University and the University of California , who were denied jobs or fired based on their race. 
    "This agreement promises to transform this company, whose distinctiveness will no longer stem from an all-white image and workforce," said Thomas A. Saenz, vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. 
    On the Net: Abercrombie Claims: http://www.abercrombieclaims.com

11/12/04 High profile: Brenda T. Rhoades,"
By Esther Wu
    Brenda T. Rhoades has gone from cleaning houses to holding court.
Last year, at age 39, Judge Rhoades became one of the youngest appointees to the federal judiciary. She is one of only two U.S. bankruptcy judges in the Eastern District of Texas, which includes Plano , Sherman , Texarkana , Beaumont and Tyler . 
    She was appointed to the bench last August, becoming the first and only Asian-American federal judge in the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas , Louisiana and Mississippi . Of the 1,200 federal judges in this country today, only 11 are Asian-American. 
    Ms. Rhoades was born in Seoul , South Korea . Her father was an American serviceman and her mother, Sunye, is from a prominent Korean family. In 1977, estranged from her extended family and her husband, Sunye and her two daughters left for the United States . Ms. Rhoades was 11 and her sister, Lynda, was just 9. 
    They settled in Alaska , and though they could barely afford the rent on their one-bedroom apartment, Sunye refused to permit her daughters to participate in the free-lunch program at school. She said she had not come to America to take handouts. 
    Once when Ms. Rhoades broke her eyeglasses, she became upset because there was no money for replacements. Lori Van Sky, a school counselor, offered Ms. Rhoades a job cleaning her house after school. 
    "She knew I wouldn't accept charity, so she offered me a chance to earn my own way," Ms. Rhoades says. 
    Ms. Rhoades continued to work her way through school, receiving her B.S. from Texas A&M University in 1986, and her J.D., magna cum laude from Arizona State University College of Law in 1989. She has served in several professional organizations, and she was co-chair of the programming committee for the National Asian Bar Association's annual convention, which convened in Dallas last week. 
    When Ms. Rhoades was appointed to the bench, Ms. Van Sky, who is now retired in Montana , was there to watch her former student take the oath of office.    
    Why did you want to become a judge? 
    I've wanted to be a judge for as long as I can remember. I remember standing before the federal judge during my naturalization ceremony and being sworn in. He gave a wonderful speech about the Constitution and the American way. He talked about how this country was a melting pot, and that even though we weren't white Anglo-Americans, we were still part of the larger community. We never felt as though we belonged in Korea , because we were half American. The fact that a federal judge had the authority to change someone's life ... well, it was incredible.     
    How has your past affected who you are today? 
    I think I bring a level of compassion and understanding to the bench ... and the ability to view things from different perspectives. In a year, I may hear between 8,000 and 10,000 cases from businesses filing Chapter 11 to cars being relinquished for nonpayment. There are several thousand car cases each month alone. These could easily become routine. But because I know how important it is to have a car, to be able to get to a job, well perhaps I take a little more time with each case. 
    What is a typical day like for you? 
    I take my 6-year-old daughter Rachel to school. Then on my way to work, I get on the phone and talk to the courtroom deputy to see if any emergencies have come up during the night. Court convenes roughly from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. but we often go late into the evening. ... My husband, Michael, is a stay-at-home dad. When I get home, I try to have supper with Rachel and my 2-year-old son, Brian. Then I'll spend a few hours signing orders online. 
    How are you maintaining your cultural heritage? 
    My mother lives with us now, so we eat a lot of Korean foods. And my 2-year-old is like a parrot, mimicking everything he hears his grandmother say. We eat at the Korea House [restaurant] frequently, and when we walk in, Brian will say "ahn young ha se yo," or "hello" in Korean. I don't think he knows what he's saying yet, but he knows it's Korean. 
    Do you ever worry about being a token minority on the bench? 
    I'm sure there are those people who would think that. But I'm sure that the vast majorities who know me know otherwise. Being the first Asian and the first woman on the Eastern District Bankruptcy bench, people are more likely to suggest that I'm a token woman rather than a token Asian. At the end of the day, I just worry about being the best judge I can, and I don't really worry about being a token anything. 
    Has being an Asian-American ever limited you? 
    I remember in high school a boy calling me ... [a racial slur] and knocking my books out of my hands. I got into a fight with him because I wasn't going to allow him to do that to me. 
    Being Asian is always a factor. Not because being Asian has anything to do with my ability, but because there are some people who may try to put stumbling blocks up because of it. 
    But you know, that never alters the fact that with enough hard work, and with enough principle, integrity and the help of good mentors you can overcome any blocks.

11/11/04 Dallas Morning News: Representative weighs contesting race he lost: If Houston lawmaker takes issue to House, election could be voided,
    Austin An attorney for a defeated Republican lawmaker hasn't ruled out a rarely used challenge that could reopen fresh wounds in the Texas House and ultimately test the loyalties of members in the Republican-controlled chamber.
     Longtime GOP Rep. Talmadge Heflin of Houston lost his bid for re-election to Democratic challenger Hubert Vo by 31 votes. Mr. Heflin's representatives say they're still considering all their options as they examine provisional and mail-in ballots. 
    One of those options could send the issue back to the House, which could vote to void the election. 
    "Republicans in the House are stuck between losing their best and most qualified budget guy and looking like they're trying to steal an election," said Ross Ramsey, the editor of the political newsletter Texas Weekly, which tracks Texas politics. "And if Heflin wasn't such an important part of the budget machinery over there, I don't think they would risk this fight." 
    But, without a strong contender to replace Mr. Heflin as chairman of the powerful House budget-writing committee and facing another tough budget year and a likely tax bill, it could be worth a "full court press" for the Republican leadership, Mr. Ramsey said. 
    Mr. Heflin's other option is to request a recount. 
    "What we're doing right now is gathering information and obtaining evidence of instances where illegal votes were wrongfully counted and where legal votes were wrongfully rejected," said Andy Taylor, Mr. Heflin's attorney. 
    If Mr. Heflin chooses to challenge the results, the issue would go to the House probably during the legislative session scheduled to begin in January. Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick would decide if the chamber will take up the issue, now ruled by Republicans by an 88-62 margin. The full chamber would then decide if it would order Gov. Rick Perry to declare the election void and set a new election. 
    The House can only accept Mr. Vo as the winner or order the governor to call a new election. The chamber has no authority to declare Mr. Heflin the winner. 
    Austin political consultant Bill Miller, who gives political advice to Mr. Craddick, said lawmakers in the House would put aside partisan preference and respect the election process. 
    "All of those individuals have run for office and they know that the ballot box is where it begins and ends," Mr. Miller said. "They're there because voter preference has been shown at the ballot box." 
    As chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Mr. Heflin led the chamber through a $10 billion budget shortfall. Lawmakers were able to adopt a balanced budget that did not raise taxes, but wielded hefty cuts to state agencies and social programs such as the Children's Health Insurance Program. 
    Mr. Heflin's first session was in 1983. The businessman and Webster Parish, La., native served as vice chairman of the budget-writing committee in previous sessions under Democrat Rob Junell, before Republicans took control of the House in 2003. 
    Rep. Vilma Luna, D-Corpus Christi, serves as vice chairwoman of the committee. Waxahachie Republican Rep. Jim Pitts has been mentioned as a possible successor. 
    Mr. Vo, 48, a Houston real estate developer, came to the United States as a refugee from Saigon 30 years ago. If he is sworn into office, he would be the first Texas House member of Vietnamese descent.

11/9/04 International Examiner (pacificnews.org): State Senator Blazes Political Trail for Hmong,
by Nhien Nguyen
    Seattle The night Minnesotas Mee Moua became the first Hmong American state legislator in the nation in 2002, political participation spread like wildfire in the Midwest Hmong community and beyond.
    The impact of Mee Mouas historic accomplishment reached Hmong Americans across the country. In Washington State , some say that when Moua became senator, they were woken up from a dream; they realized that they were really here in America . Mee Moua, who visited Seattle on Oct. 26 to rally the Asian Pacific Islander vote, never thought she would become senator at the young age of 32.
    Maybe when Im 50, and when my kids are grown up, said Moua, now 35, in an interview with the International Examiner.
    Nor did Moua realize that she would become a national rising star of API politics. This year, she has been busy flying across the country, invited to speak as a voice for the Democratic Party, a Kerry surrogate, and recently as keynote speaker at the JACL (Japanese American Citizens League) national convention this past summer.
    Marlan Maralit, APIA Vote director, helped bring Moua to Seattle for the John Kerry campaign rally because she had very inspirational stories that could help motivate the Asian vote.
    And stories Moua had, as she opened her speech describing the one backpack her parents carried with them on their journey to America in 1978.
    Born in war-torn Laos in 1969, Moua escaped to Thailand with her family at the age of five and lived in a refugee camp before resettling in the United States .
    Moua went on to graduate at Brown University and received her masters from the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of TexasAustin. It was during her pursuit of a law degree at the University of Minnesota that Moua became interested in politics. Helping one of her uncles who became involved in campaigning, Moua began to attend precinct caucuses and conventions.
    There, Moua said, she learned a dirty little secret. She became aware of the power of simply showing up and stacking the precinct with community members. Getting representatives either in person or by letter proxy, Moua led a truly grassroots effort to motivate her community through the political process. It became all consuming to me, she said.
    As the political process was slowly demystified for Moua, she realized politicians were not anymore brilliant than I am.
    The night I was elected, I cried so hard because I was so humbled that someone like me was chosen [for office], Moua said in her speech.
    Since the time Moua won the Minnesota Senate District 67 seat left by St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly in a 2002 special election, several other Hmong Americans in her state ran for office, including positions in the state house of representatives, city council and school board. Moua notes that the API community, especially Southeast Asians, have a unique political history. Historically, the Hmong have always wanted to be recognized and have equal opportunity to participate.
    Moua lists the major challenges for the Hmong community political participation as both lack of familiarity with the voting process and of the candidates. Moua says that once a candidate has made a connection with the community, there is tremendous support and loyalty for that candidate.
    The Hmong community, Moua says, need a sense of personal connection to candidates and to the political process. They will not just read the newspaper, or voters pamphlet to get information. During her visit to the Pacific Northwest, Washington State Hmong community leader Charlie Chang, Mouas uncle, accompanied Moua on gatherings of Southeast Asian communities in Seattle and Portland . Chang said the local Hmong communities were happy to have Moua visit the area. Mee does not just represent Hmong, but also Southeast Asians, says Chang, a board commissioner for the Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs (CAPAA). Everyone was happy to see her and they hope she will come here more often.
    During the Seattle rally, Moua urged the audience at the Asian Resource Center , filled with APIs of all backgrounds, to grab the mike every chance they get. She said, Speak up loudly and clearly youre not just speaking for yourself.
    State Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, who introduced Moua at the rally, referred to her as sister of same skin. Santos said, She is one of the most genuine, articulate, passionate and loving woman that I know.
    Never mind that she is one of the most powerful Asian Pacific Islander woman in the country.
    So, whats in store for Moua after her work for the 2004 election? Moua plans to seek re-election in 2006.
    After that, Moua said, I will assess and see.

11/7/04 Dallas Morning News  Election reflects area's change: Rising Asian presence in Houston suburb seen in state House contest,
    Houston The regulars at Sally Jo's Old Houston Bar-Be-Que weren't surprised to see a Vietnamese-American bidding to upset their longtime Anglo state representative in last week's election.
    (Photo caption: Businessman Hubert Vo led Talmadge Heflin, a 22-year Republican incumbent, by 38 votes in the House District 149 race.)
    Their neighborhood, suburban Alief, has changed. Once a bastion of whites who fled Houston in the 1960s and '70s, Alief began going international in the late '80s and it has become a polyglot, 18 percent Asian, 20 percent black and 21 percent Hispanic. 
    Many businesses in the area are now Asian. When it opened in 1979, Sally Jo's shared a strip center with an Anglo grocery, Mary Jo's Furniture and Rack and Roll billiards and bowling, owner John Gembala said. Now it's surrounded by Asian restaurants and shops.
    "I give them full credit for bringing the area back up," said breakfast regular Darla Bogard, noting that parts of Alief were blighted in the early '90s as whites fled the immigrant influx.
    Elections are reflecting the growing Asian presence. A part of the area sent a Pakistani-American Muslim to Houston City Council last year, and it is within an eyelash of electing Vietnamese-American businessman Hubert Vo to the Texas Legislature.
    After counting, Mr. Vo, a Democrat, led Talmadge Heflin, a 22-year Republican incumbent and House Appropriations Committee chairman, by 38 votes out of 41,000 cast Tuesday in the District 149 race.
    Whether Mr. Vo ultimately wins depends on the tally of mail-in and provisional ballots expected to be announced today. And the final outcome could be delayed further by a request for a full recount.
    Asians voted heavily for their own last Tuesday, but Mr. Vo, who speaks Spanish, also appealed to other immigrants, campaign manager Karen Loper said. He also benefited from Heflin missteps, she said.
    In recent years, Mr. Heflin neglected his constituents as he climbed the statewide GOP ladder, Ms. Loper said. Many voters also were offended by his unsuccessful court battle to take custody of his Ugandan housekeeper's son over her objections.
    Mr. Heflin's office declined a request for an interview.
    "I voted for Vo," said Republican T.C. "Chris" Crawford, "but mine was as much a protest against Talmadge Heflin as anything."
    Although some analysts said Mr. Vo's strength is a harbinger of future immigrant-driven Democratic gains in Harris County , Mr. Crawford, a retired oil company sales representative, said he thinks most Asians tend to be Republicans.
    "If you're Asian, 10 to one you're fiscally conservative," Mr. Crawford said.
    Mr. Vo agreed and said that he is conservative on tax and budget matters, but "the majority of Democratic issues fit what I believe." And he expressed confidence that his views reflect the majority in District 149.
    Mr. Crawford predicted that, if Mr. Vo wins, he'll have an Asian Republican opponent next time and, even if he doesn't win, District 149's legislator in the near future will be Asian. Another Vietnamese-American held Mr. Heflin to 55 percent of the vote in 2002.
    Not everyone's happy with the change, which has given Houston one of the biggest Asian populations in the country.
    John Gembala, who owns Mary Jo's, said he's still making money but would like to do more business with Asians. The problem is they tend to trade only with one another, he said.
    "This is America , he said. "We don't mind them coming as long as they adapt."
But he may be the one who adapts, he said. Pointing to his catering menu offering barbeque, Mexican and Italian food, he chuckled and said: "The only thing I don't have on there yet is Chinese."

11/5/04 San Francisco Chronicle: Former Vietnamese refugee 'muddles way' to Sacramento : Self-effacing lawyer wins Assembly seat,
    Orange County voters made Van Tran the highest-ranking Vietnamese American public official in the country this week when they elected him to the state Assembly. Yet the former refugee cannot relate to the term trailblazer. 
    "It's more accurate to call me a pathfinder, because I still muddle my way through sometimes," said Tran, a 40-year-old Republican from Garden Grove who will represent the 68th Assembly District. "I look around and can't get advice from my own community because no one has walked that path. I find my own path." 
    Tran, a lawyer, understates his political savvy, which he began cultivating as an intern for former GOP Rep. Robert Dornan in 1985. He later served on the Garden Grove Planning Commission and was elected to the City Council in 2000. 
    Tran didn't muddle through the race for the seat being vacated by termed- out Assemblyman Ken Maddox. He won it Tuesday by 58 percent to 42 percent over Democrat Al Snook, after a fund-raising effort that collected $800,000. 
    Tran's victory speaks to the growing political influence of Vietnamese Americans, a relatively new immigrant community that began arriving in the United States about 30 years ago. His run of success can be attributed to his popularity not only with Vietnamese Americans but with the larger community as well. 
    Of the 3,000 contributors to his campaign, Tran estimates that about 60 percent were Vietnamese American individuals and organizations. The rest came from a constituency that share Tran's conservative views. The self-described "Reagan kid" is anti-abortion, opposes gay marriage and supports President Bush's tax cuts and the war in Iraq . 
    As a 10-year-old boy in 1975, Tran and his family fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon and moved to Grand Rapids , Mich. The family settled a few years later in Orange County , now home to 133,000 Vietnamese Americans, the largest concentration in the United States , according to the 2000 census. 
    Tran's across-the-board appeal with his constituents is a blueprint for success for Vietnamese Americans running for office. It was also used by Lan Nguyen, who appears to have won one of two Board of Trustee seats to the East Side Union High District in Santa Clara County . 
    Nguyen was endorsed by a diverse group of individuals and organizations, including Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, and La Raza Roundtable, a community outreach group. 
    "We owe an incredible debt to the Vietnamese community, which provided a strong base," said Bryan Cong Do, Nguyen's campaign coordinator. "At the same time, we wouldn't have won without the bigger outside support." 
    The pathfinder in Tran encourages Vietnamese Americans to become more politically engaged. 
    "It's a message I preach nationwide -- come back to your community, contribute, work hard and be proud of who you are," he said. "I'm happy to say that's part of my job."

11/4/04 Wall Street Journal: Arizona Limits Illegal Immigrants' Access to Benefits,
    Arizona's approval of a measure to crack down on illegal immigrants' access to public services, and punish state employees who fail to report those seeking such services, offers a glimpse of the future debate over immigration policy.
    Proposition 200 will require residents to present proof of immigration status to get health-care, child-care and other benefits, such as a public-library card. It also requires proof of citizenship for those registering to vote.
    The proposition passed with 56% approval, a smaller total than anticipated, and is expected to be challenged in court by civil-rights groups. Still, its passage highlights mounting frustration in many states over the influx of immigrants believed to be draining state coffers; a growing perception that the government isn't doing enough to staunch their entry; and a sense of insecurity spawned by news of deaths and crime along the border.
    In 1994, the courts struck down a similar initiative in California , known as Proposition 187, which was backed by Gov. Pete Wilson. Among other things, it would have barred children who were brought into the U.S. illegally from attending a public school.
    Both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry skirted the controversial subject of immigration in their campaigns. Mr. Bush is likely to face pressure to address an issue that is divisive within his own party. His "guest worker" program, which would allow foreigners to work in the U.S. if their employer certifies that they couldn't find an American for the job, is likely to confront opposition from groups that want to slow immigration.
    "The public is clamoring for the immigration system to be fixed," says Tamar Jacoby, senior fellow at Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. "They want immigration on the political agenda."
    Hundreds of thousands of immigrants enter the U.S. illegally each year, and about eight million are believed to be living here presently. Since California sealed its border in the 1990s, Arizona has become the gateway of choice for illegal immigrants from Mexico .
    The Arizona measure drew strong criticism from moderate Republicans, including Sen. John McCain, as well as Democrats. The initiative's biggest backer was the conservative group Federation for American Immigration Reform, or Fair, based in Washington , D.C.
    Randy Pullen, chairman of the Yes for Proposition 200 campaign, says it will be used as a model for other states seeking to curb illegal immigration, such as Colorado . "This is about benefits and who is entitled to them," he said, citing state-subsidized postsecondary education and health care as two areas that the measure encompasses.
    Steve Roman, chief spokesman for the group opposing the initiative, says: "We agree with the public's frustration. But the proposition doesn't put one new guard on the border. It doesn't stop a single immigrant from crossing."
    Several civil-rights and Latino advocacy groups are preparing to challenge the initiative in courts, on the basis that it doesn't spell out what benefits would be affected and is unconstitutional.  


11/3/04 Associated Press: "NYs First Asian-American Legislator Elected: Jimmy Meng Beats Republican Meilin Tan,"
    New York (AP) Voters in an ethnically diverse district in Queens sent the first Asian-American to New York's legislature on Tuesday, with 70 percent of votes in the 22nd Assembly District going toward electing Flushing businessman Jimmy Meng.
    Meng, 61, far outnumbered his Republican rival, Meilin Tan, who received 20 percent of the vote. Tan is also Asian-American. In plain numbers, Meng got more than 13,000 votes compared to just over 3,800 for Tan.
    Meng attributed his victory to his campaign's attempt to reach as many people as possible. "I campaigned door by door," he said.
    The district's boundaries were re-drawn in 2001 with the aim of getting an Asian-American to the state Legislature. Meng ran for the seat in 2002, but lost the Democratic primary to Barry Grodenchik. He beat Grodenchick in this year's primary, although not without some controversy over potential voter fraud.
    Meng, originally from Taiwan , has lived in Queens for more than 25 years, with his wife and three children. He has been active in both the ethnic and business communities.
    Flushing is known for its diverse population. Fifty-one percent of residents in the Assembly district are Asian-American. That district is also home to the first Asian-American councilmember in New York City , John Liu.

11/3/04 cnn.com
Of 13,660 respondents in exit polls, Asian Americans were 2% of the electorate. 
44% voted for Bush and 56% for Kerry.  Survey conducted for the Associated 
Press and television networks by Edison Media Research/Mitofsky International.  
The margin of error is plus or minus 1 percentage point for overall sample, 
larger for subgroups.

 

 
10/29/04 AFP: Cheney, Gore and Kerry kin set to hula in battleground Hawaii,
    Honolulu, Hawaii (AFP) - US Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and his Democratic predecessor, Al Gore (news - web sites), targeted Hawaii voters after the state became a last-minute battleground in the US presidential campaign. 
    Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry's daughter, Alexandra, was also stumping for her father in Hawaii this weekend after polls showed Kerry and President George W. Bush in a dead heat in the traditionally Democratic state ahead of Tuesday's election. "With less than a week before the November 2 election, Democrats are not taking anything for granted and will continue to campaign nationwide," Kerry's campaign said in a statement.  The political proxies are battling to secure the usually politically- insignificant 50th US state's four electoral college votes, which suddenly appeared to be up for grabs just days ahead of one of the tightest presidential elections in years.  A Honolulu Advertiser poll on October 23 showed Bush with 43.3 percent support and Kerry with 42.6 percent, while a second poll last Sunday gave Kerry 46 percent support to 45 percent.  Since it became the United States ' newest state in 1959, the palm tree-laced islands have only swung towards a Republican presidential candidate twice: in 1972 for Richard Nixon and 1984 for Ronald Reagan.  
    On Friday, Gore and Alexandra Kerry were due to appear together at a rally for Filipinos at a working-class Honolulu high school.  The Kerry campaign is hoping to dent Bush's strong support in Hawaii 's burgeoning Filipino community.  On Saturday, Alexandra Kerry will take part in a traditional and honored form of political advertising in a state where billboards are banned: she will stand by the side of the road under a palm tree brandishing a small cardboard sign backing her father and his running mate John Edwards.  Cheney hits the tropical paradise turned unexpected electoral catfight Sunday when he will appear at a Republican rally at the Hawaii Convention Center in the main city of Honolulu .  Both Republicans and Democrats suddenly began flooding the Hawaiian airwaves with a wave political ads not seen here for years as the campaigns reserved their spending for traditional battleground states.  And former US president Bill Clinton gave satellite-link interviews with Hawaii-based reporters on Wednesday to plug Kerry's campaign in the state which will be the last in the nation to cast its votes on November 2.  Just one week ago, Kerry backers in Hawaii were spending their energy making telephone calls to mainland states where the battle between the candidates seemed tightest, including Colorado .  All that has changed dramatically, with Democratic supporters suddenly finding themselves in the front lines of the battle for the White House.     But the visits from the mainland US political heavyweights to the isolated islands pose unexpected challenges. 
    Fiercely proud Hawaiians are watching to see if Cheney, Gore or Alexandra Kerry will mangle tongue-twisting Hawaiian words or tuck into exotic island delicacies that may seem odd to them. 
    Media speculated on whether any of the trio of stumpers would venture to eat poi, the pasty purple product of the taro plant, or whether they might tuck into lau-lau, a meat course wrapped in ti leaves. 
    In addition, the candidates are likely to be sensitive to being photographed on Waikiki 's white-sand beaches while some mainland Americans are warding off snowstorms, political observers noted.

10/29/04 AFP: Asian Americans fight language barrier in US elections,
    Washington (AFP) - When Chungin Chung, an Asian American community leader, was invited to meet US vice-presidential candidate Senator John Edwards ahead of the November 2 election, she was excited but politely declined.
    "I just cannot do that," said the president of the Korean American Citizens League in the northwestern state of Oregon , recalling a recent invitation by Democratic party officials to join a meeting with Edwards at Portland airport.
    "Firstly, I am non-partisan and secondly, I would rather spend my time educating and serving voters on issues at stake in this presidential election," said Chung, who immigrated to Portland in 1981 and has since become a naturalized US citizen. 
    While appreciating the invitation by Edwards aides, she said she was disappointed that the Democratic party as well as its rival the Republican party had never offered any programs that could help her community in the area. 
    "The least they could have done is help us educate the Asian American voters on what the issues are in the elections," said Chung, who is trained in public administration. 
    This is a critical issue, she said, because many of the voters in the community were first generation immigrants not conversant in English. 
    "Indeed, the biggest problem facing Asian Americans in this election is the language barrier," said Chung, who led her group in the first widely distributed Korean translation of the Oregon ballot. 
    Aside from choosing their president, Americans would also have to pick 435 members of the House of Representatives, a third of the 100-member Senate and governors of 11 states and many local officers as well. 
    In 37 states, they will also have to choose on 157 diverse issues on the ballot, including measures on homosexual marriage, forest management, health care, taxation and the legalization of marijuana. 
    Some of the issues are complex. Worse still, questions on the ballots may not be in any of the 20-odd languages of the six million Asian Americans eligible to vote in this election. 
    Under US law, local election officials should provide bilingual voter registration applications, ballots and language assistance when a certain percentage of the population of their jurisdiction is composed of a language minority group. 
    Although 16 counties in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Texas and Washington state are covered by the language assistance law, there are substantial populations in these states still requiring language assistance, community leaders said. 
    "The crucial effort to educate our voters is borne on the back of volunteers," lamented Janelle Hu, national director of APIAVote, a coalition of groups promoting public policy and the electoral process among Asian Americans. 
    As about two-thirds of the Asian American population is foreign born, language assistance remains an important tool in increasing political participation, she said. 
    Hu added that political parties "would be well served to pay more attention to this issue," especially since one third of Asian American voters in this election will be first timers. 
    APIAVote has set up a national hotline to provide telephone assistance in 20 Asian languages during the elections, including Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin, Toisanese), Korean , Tagalog, Hindi and Punjabi. 
    Additionally, APIAVote partnered with Election Protection, a coalition of civil rights organizations, to translate into Asian languages voting materials in seven states. 
    "There are some counties which haven't trained their poll workers and on election day, we have seen how some of the these translated ballots and materials that are mandated by law to be provided are not even available," Hu said. 
    The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, among legal groups catering to the community, said it would conduct election monitoring and exit polling to uncover any cases of discrimination against Asians. 
    Glenn Magpantay, the Fund's attorney, said that in the 2000 elections, "interpreter shortages led to Asian voters being turned away, with reported incidents in California and New York . 
    "There was no one to assist them, and poll workers were rude, hostile, and made racist remarks about Asian American voters and their English proficiency," he said. 
    The Fund has mobilized 600 attorneys, law students, and volunteers covering "precincts with a history of voter intimidation and racist remarks made by elected officials against members of the community," Magpantay said.

 
10/27/04 AFP: Hawaii hit by political quake as it becomes new 'battleground' state
    Honolulu , (AFP) - The US island state of Hawaii has been hit by a political earthquake, turning the tropical paradise into a new battleground just days ahead of the country's presidential election.
    Two polls this week showed that President George W. Bush has suddenly caught up with Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) in the traditionally Democratic bastion, putting him in a position to become the first Republican presidential candidate to take Hawaii in 20 years.
    The news that the two are in a dead heat here has badly shaken Democratic voters who until this week had taken it for granted that the tropical paradise would back Kerry in one of the tightest elections in years.
    "I am astonished, truly astonished," said Democratic supporter Jerry Comcowich, as he stood under the palm trees at the Hawaii Kai Golf Course, overlooking surfers slamming through the shore break on nearby Sandy Beach.         "At first I was amused by the thought that after all these years of abject neglect (by) the national party leadership, the voters in Hawaii may actually decide the outcome of a presidential election.
    "That thought lasted about five seconds, then I became horrified. What if Bush takes the Hawaii vote?" said the dismayed specialist in ocean and earth studies at the University of Hawaii .
    A Honolulu Advertiser survey of 600 likely voters on Saturday put the two candidates almost even in Hawaii , with 43.3 percent backing Bush against 42.6 percent for Kerry, with 12 percent undecided.
    The poll was conducted between October 13-18 and had a margin of error of around four percentage points.
    The shock to Democratic party faithful here only worsened Sunday when a Honolulu Star-Bulletin and KITK-TV survey showed Bush ahead by 46 percent to 45 for Kerry, compared to August when Kerry had a seven point lead.
    That poll of 612 likely voters was carried out between October 17-20 and had a margin of error of around four points.
    In the 2000 election, Bush also appeared to surge in Hawaii in the closing days of the campaign, but ended up with only 37 percent of the vote -- a local landslide for Democratic candidate Al Gore.
    "How can we elect a congressional delegation that rivals that of Massachusetts as far as being liberal, and at the same time vote for Bush?" asked businessman Garry Francell, disbelievingly.
    A shell-shocked Comcowich believes that some Hawaiian voters are suddenly reluctant to change presidents because Bush has succeeded in making them feel fearful and uncertain amid the war on terror and in Iraq .
    The state's Republican governor Linda Lingle, who campaigned on the US campaign with Bush, says the president's leadership is the key, and that the strong economy here and Bush's attention to the state are helping him.
    And experts said that while most of Hawaii 's population remained of Asian origin, more caucasian Americans had retired here, possibly swaying the voting demographic.
    Since achieving statehood in 1959, the Democratic bastion of Hawaii has only gone Republican only twice in a presidential election, with Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984.
    While the state only has four electoral college votes, they could prove critical if the vote goes down to the wire on November 2 as widely expected.
    Reeling Kerry campaign officials have raced to but last-minute television time for commercials that could begin appearing as early as Tuesday evening, marking the first surge in political advertising here in 20 years.
    Hawaii , the newest state in the union, "has always felt like the poor stepchild of the United States , a mere tropical playground," said Mark Stitham, a psychiatrist who lives on the waterfront in Kailua .
    "With less than one percent of the US population, Hawaii 's importance in presidential elections has been less than insignificant," Stitham said.
    "And being several time zones away (from most states), the election is virtually over before the Hawaii voter has even gone to the polls."
    Stitham, a Republican, said Kerry's "patrician attitude" may be hurting him in the easy-going Hawaiian islands , where a "hang loose" local style is more the norm. "But I'd still bet on Kerry taking Hawaii ," he said.
    While supporters of both Kerry and Bush were stunned by Bush's last-minute spurt, many Hawaiians were thrilled by the possibility that their state could at last play a role in choosing the leader of the free world.
    "It turns our perspectives upside down," said Doug Carlson, a public relations counsellor in Honolulu . "It will be the joke of all jokes if it comes down to the wire and Hawaii makes the difference," he said.
    "Maybe now Hawaii residents will get to know how it feels" to be in a battleground state, Carlson said.  

10/25/04 Associated Press: Democrats court OR's evenly-divided Asian-American voters,
    Portland, OR (AP) -- Democrats have dispatched Asian-American voter outreach specialists Oregon to try to capture a segment of the population they say could swing the state either way on Nov. 2.
    The Democratic National Committee has tagged Oregon as one of four states where Asian-Americans could tip the vote. The others are Washington , Nevada and Minnesota .
    The Asian-Americans appear to be split about evenly in party loyalties.
    But some say they are miffed because the parties did not seek them out earlier.
    Recently, Chungin Chung, chairman of the Korean American Citizens League, declined an invitation to meet vice presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards at the Portland airport.
    ``I was excited they contacted us, but I told them, 'Our community was not contacted throughout the year. I don't want to be your photo op,' ``he said.
    The Democratic National Committee launched its Asian-American get-out-the-vote drive just before the state's Oct. 12 voter-registration deadline.
    ``I'd never even heard of the Democratic National Committee until last weekend, when their representative approached me. I had to wonder, why now?'' said ThuVan Hoang of Portland, a member of the local nonpartisan coalition, called API Voice -- the voice of Asian Pacific Islanders. ``And I've never even been contacted by the Republicans.''
    The Portland area's Asian-American activists say they have eagerly sought attention with mixed results, especially compared to the effort to mobilize the black and Latino communities.
    The local Korean American Citizens League just completed the first widely distributed Korean translation of the Oregon Voters' Pamphlet. Chungin Chung said volunteers did the translating and found funds to print 2,000 copies. In future years, she hopes to include other Asian languages.
    Sharon Owyang, the Democratic National Committee's DNC's Asian-Pacific Islander field director, said she understands how local activists feel but said the national party has been in contact with Asian-Americans in Oregon in the past.
    She said this is a first-time effort to connect the community with national leaders for this and future elections.
    Oregon Republican officials said their party hasn't sent staff for the Asian-American community. But Solomon Yue of Salem , Oregon 's Republican National Committeeman, said that he and Margaret Wu -- the Republicans' get-out-the-vote field director for Oregon -- both are Chinese-Americans and examples of the party's inclusiveness.
    ``This is our party's way of telling the Asian community, 'You can achieve the American dream without the government's protection.' ``she said.
    Asian-Americans make up about 4 percent of Oregon 's population but their numbers have grown by 16 percent in three years and continues to increase.

 
10/22/04
APAICS IDENTIFIES 176 APIA CANDIDATES FOR NOVEMBER 2 ELECTION     
    Washington, D.C. The Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS) has identified 176 Asian Pacific Islander Americans who are running in the November 2 General Election.  Summary: 
One candidate for U.S. Senate 
Ten candidates for U.S. House of Representatives 
Eight candidates for State Senate - all in Hawaii 
91 candidates for State House - 32 outside of Hawaii 
Seven candidates for Hawaii State Board of Education 
59 candidates in local races 23 in Hawaii

10/22/04 Associated Press : Neglected Hawaii Emerges As Swing State,
    Honolulu - Often dismissed as too small, too isolated and too Democratic to worry about in presidential contests, Hawaii suddenly has a close race. Democrats say Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) still has an edge over President Bush (news - web sites) in the contest for Hawaii 's four electoral votes, but the race has become awfully tight for their comfort. With late poll closings 11 p.m. EST on Nov. 2 and a slow count, Hawaii politicians are talking about offering a dramatic conclusion to what could be an ultra-close national election.
    "We may make the difference," said Linda Chu Takayama, campaign manager for Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye (news, bio, voting record), who is all but assured of victory in his own race for an eighth term. "Surprise, surprise. The polls I've seen show it up and down but always within the margin of error."
    The only statewide media poll, more than two months ago, showed Kerry leading Bush, 48-41. Private polling reviewed by strategists for both Kerry and Bush more recently suggests the race is still that close.
    Hawaii may not be a big-vote, difference-making tossup state like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, but the race is remarkable in a state Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) won by 20 percentage points in 2000 and one that has been solid blue on most election maps.
    Democratic strategists in Washington privately admit they have neglected Hawaii , but no more. They have dispatched political operatives to shore up Kerry's support and believe the race is now about as close as Washington state and Oregon, two long-standing battlegrounds that both parties think are leaning toward Kerry.
    Open campaigning for the presidency is just getting started in the islands. The first major rally for Kerry and Sen. John Edwards (news - web sites) was Friday near the state Capitol. Campaign signs for Bush and vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney (news - web sites) are just now popping up along roadsides.
    Local candidates in leis line major thoroughfares and freeway entrances with their own signs in Hawaii 's colorful honk-and-wave style of campaigning. But during the campaign no major national political figure, much less Bush or Kerry, has set foot in the state, 4,800 miles from Washington .
    "They're going to rely on us to carry the election here," said Republican Gov. Linda Lingle. Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) and Richard Nixon are the only GOP presidential candidates ever to win Hawaii 's vote. They, like Bush, were running for second terms.
    Republicans say Bush has been helped by cable television ads running in the islands, where cable viewership is high. Bush and his party have outspent Kerry $17 million to $5 million on national cable TV ads that include Hawaii .
    Also, with the tourism industry recovering from the Sept. 11 attacks, Hawaii 's unemployment rate is 3.1 percent, lowest in the nation. And Republicans say they're doing better than expected among the state's large number of veterans.
    On the other hand, Democratic Sen. Inouye told The Associated Press while campaigning on Oahu this week that anger over the deployment of a disproportionate number of National Guard troops from Hawaii , the state's highest-in-the-nation gasoline prices and Bush's support for gun legislation are factors that help Kerry.
    Also, Ralph Nader (news - web sites) failed to submit enough valid signatures to be included on the ballot this year as an independent after winning 6 percent in 2000 running on the Green Party ticket.
    Lingle, elected in 2002 as the state's first Republican governor in four decades, has campaigned with Bush on the mainland and has traveled to Iraq (news - web sites) to boost state support for the war and the 10,000 Hawaii-based troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites).
    At home, Lingle has played Bush surrogate for weeks as she campaigns for Republicans to wrest control of the Hawaii House.
    On the Democratic side, Inouye said, "Every day I'm talking about Kerry. It's going to be close but not as close as people think."
    Former Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono, who lost the 2002 gubernatorial race to Lingle, said the Democrats weren't assuming anything this time. Hirono, head of Hawaii Women for Kerry-Edwards, said, "I've heard the Republicans say they're going to deliver Hawaii for Bush. Well, maybe they're taking Hawaii for granted, but we're not."
    Said Republican Party Chairman Brennon Morioka: "Every indication that we have is that it's almost a dead heat right now."  

10/22/04 Los Angeles Times: Vietnamese Show Clout in Funding,
    The growing political and economic muscle of the nation's Vietnamese community is on display in two Orange County elections, in which a pair of candidates including one who is expected to become California 's first Vietnamese American state legislator has attracted nearly $1 million in contributions.
    Most of that money has gone to Van Tran, a Garden Grove councilman running as a Republican for a seat in the Assembly. Tran has gathered about $800,000 both from traditional GOP donors and from Vietnamese Americans locally and across the country. About a third of his cash came from outside Southern California, including money from fundraisers in Philadelphia, Dallas, Washington state and Virginia.
    Andy Quach, a Westminster councilman who is running for mayor, also has raised a substantial amount of money about a quarter of the $177,000 he has taken in so far outside the area. Vietnamese American donors in San Jose , Sacramento , Oakland and San Francisco have contributed. 
    The money is testament not only to the perceived electability of the candidates but also to the economic and political vitality of the ethnic group from which it was raised, political experts said. Following a well-established pattern for immigrants, Vietnamese Americans have grown increasingly active in politics.
    "These are candidates who have made it economically, and that moves them toward political participation," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior scholar at the School of Policy , Planning and Development at USC. Their donors "are people who want to see these candidates succeed. It's not quite like buying access. It's gaining visibility and credibility in the political system."
    Thanks to a Republican voter majority in his district, Tran, an attorney, is expected to become the first Vietnamese American in the state Legislature. His Democratic opponent is businessman Al Snook, a perennial candidate who has raised $2,650.
    In Westminster , the election of Quach, a business consultant, is less sure; he is facing incumbent Mayor Margie L. Rice and Ha Mach, a real estate broker. Rice has raised about $40,000 and Mach has raised less than $5,000.
    About one-third of the money Quach raised through Sept. 30 came from Westminster and Garden Grove , cities that are home to Little Saigon, a business and residential district that has the largest concentration of Vietnamese outside Vietnam . The area has about 135,500 of the roughly 450,000 Vietnamese who resettled in California after the fall of Saigon in 1975, and about 1.1 million such emigres nationwide.
    Eight candidates with Vietnamese surnames are on the ballot in Westminster and Garden Grove , where ethnic Vietnamese constitute 31% and 21% of residents, respectively. That's double the number who ran in 2000.
    In Santa Clara County , home to the nation's second-largest concentration of Vietnamese Americans, there are five such candidates on the ballot.
    While the numbers may not be significant by comparison, there are 42 Latino-surnamed candidates on the Orange County ballot what is significant is that several "have serious credentials, are raising serious money, mobilizing a serious bloc of voters and carrying a serious chance to win," said Christian Collet, a researcher with UC Irvine's political science department.
    A victory for Tran would be "a high-water mark for a community that has been more famous for casting aspersions than it has for casting ballots," Collet said, a reference to the throngs demonstrating in Westminster five years ago against a store owner's display of Vietnam's communist flag.
    Instead of protesting, he said, "tens of thousands [will be] voting to send a homegrown activist to Sacramento ."
    Tran has come a long way from his first political job in 1985 as a 20-year-old working for then-Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove). Dornan was bounced from office in 1996 by a Latina , Democrat Loretta Sanchez, whose strategy included wooing Latino and Vietnamese American voters.
    Tran, eyeing the seat of termed-out Assemblyman Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove), raised the bulk of his money $600,000 last year to fight off a primary challenge from fellow Garden Grove Councilman Mark Leyes, whose backers include Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle, a longtime friend. Tran got 57% of the vote to Leyes' 43%.
    Once he won the nomination, he set to helping Quach and other Garden Grove candidates, including Janet Nguyen for the City Council, Trung Nguyen for school board and Bill Dalton for mayor, running against Leyes.
    Seeking money from Vietnamese Americans was part of a broader fundraising strategy, said Tran, who emigrated from Saigon as a 10-year-old in 1975.
    "It's a natural constituency, and I can raise quick money because I've worked with the community for nearly two decades," Tran said. "The point was to diversify [the fundraising base], and I've done that. I have well over 3,000 individual donors, and I'm very proud of that."
    Among individuals who gave the maximum allowed by state law $3,200 each for the primary and general elections virtually every name is Vietnamese, including donors from Stockton and Sacramento, as well as Orange County.
    Some of the donations to Quach are larger because Westminster has no limits on campaign contributions. His donations include $10,000 from a family that owns jewelry stores in Westminster 's Asian Gardens Mall and $7,900 from a company with grocery stores in Westminster , Garden Grove and San Jose .
    Many of the donors sought him out, said Quach, who came to the U.S. in 1980, at age 7, after his father had been jailed for five years by Vietnam 's communist government. He said that, for many contributors particularly those from out of town donating wasn't seen as a way to gain access but as an exercise of their right of free speech.
    "Every ethnic American, at the end of the day, has a great love for this country," he said.
    The fundraising efforts of Tran and Quach follow a well-worn playbook that has worked in other ethnic communities, USC's Jeffe said. For example, former Gov. George Deukmejian sought support for his 1982 race from ethnic Armenians; state Treasurer Phil Angelides, a veteran Democratic officeholder, has long networked among ethnic Greeks, she said.
    "The Vietnamese American community is following the pattern that most underrepresented groups have followed to be players in the political arena," she said.


10/15/04 Assemblymember Judy Chu Issues Statement on Death of Senator Alfred Song First Asian American Legislator
    Sacramento Assemblymember Judy Chu ( D-Monterey Park ) today issued the following statement on behalf of the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus regarding the death of former Senator Alfred H. Song.
    The Asian Pacific Islander community lost one of its true pioneers this week.  Senator Song was not only the first Asian Pacific Islander American to serve in the Legislature, he remains the only Korean American to have served in the Legislature and the only Asian Pacific Islander American to serve in the California State Senate.
    Senator Song was a trailblazer who lived a life of many firsts.  He was the first Korean American commissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force.  In 1960, he was the first Asian Pacific Islander American elected to the Monterey Park City Council.  He became the first Asian Pacific Islander American elected to the State Assembly in 1962, and four years after that, to the State Senate.  As a legislator, Senator Song founded and chaired the Senate Democratic Caucus.  He authored landmark legislation that included the first Consumer Warranty Act, an act creating the office of the State Public Defender, and his proudest accomplishment, a law On behalf of the California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, we express our condolences to Senator Songs family.  He will always be remembered for his contributions to our great State and the Asian Pacific Islander American community.
    Senator Alfred H. Song, 85, died Monday of natural causes at an assisted living center in Irvine .

10/15/04 San Francisco Chronicle: Minority mortgage gap report
Denial rate turns worse for S.F. area Asians, Latinos in 2003 over 2002,
    A larger share of Asians and Latinos was denied mortgages in the San Francisco metropolitan area in 2003 than in 2002, according to a study of government data by an advocacy group.
    The so-called denial rate among black applicants decreased year-over-year, but of the 120 U.S. cities studied, San Francisco had the largest gap between the black share of conventional mortgages and the black share of the population.
    In addition, the report by ACORN, the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now, found that each of the minority groups studied - - black, Latino and Asian -- remained more likely to be denied home loans than their white counterparts, even when those minority applicants earned similar high incomes.
    Officials at the Washington , D.C. , group, which advocates for low- and middle-income families, said the data show that despite the region's ethnic diversity, minorities in the Bay Area face many challenges in getting home loans.
    Specifically, ACORN researchers cite the fact that upper-income Latinos were denied mortgages at 2.5 times the rate of whites in the same earnings bracket. Upper-income blacks and Asians were 1.7 times as likely to be denied a mortgage as their white peers. The study defined upper income as those earning 120 percent of the median income, or above $109,800.
    In addition, blacks received 1 percent of the conventional home purchase loans, although the black population in the San Francisco area, defined as Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties, stands at 5.2 percent.
    ACORN's findings are based on data on mortgages and applications collected by the federal government under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The study does not take into account borrowers' credit scores and down payment levels, which can play an important role in determining whether to approve a home loan.
    Mortgage industry representatives, for their part, say the survey does not signal widespread discriminatory lending, but a need for more education about the mortgage process, credit scores and debt.
    "The lending industry should be as aggressive as possible in providing outreach to minority groups that would allow them to lift themselves up if (their) personal financial situation and history would not allow them to enter into homeownership," said Darryl Fry, board member of the California Mortgage Bankers Association and president of ComUnity Lending in Morgan Hill .
    But lenders also need to take into account seasonal or cash income, or other assets that could boost minority applicants, ACORN researcher Valerie Coffin said.
    "Financial literacy is all fine and good," she said. "But not everyone can fit into the square box."
    In the San Francisco area, 20 percent of blacks were denied home loans last year, two times the 9.8 rate for whites. The denial rate for Latinos was 21.1 percent, up from 17.2 percent in 2002 and 2.2 times the rate for whites. For Asians, the denial rate was 15.2 percent, up from 11.9 percent in 2002 and 1.6 times the white denial rate.
    The picture was similar in other Bay Area cities. In San Jose , blacks were two times as likely to be rejected as whites. Latinos and Asians were turned down 2.2 and 1.4 times, respectively, more often than whites.
    In the Oakland metropolitan area, which includes Alameda and Contra Costa counties, blacks were denied mortgages 2.4 times as often as whites. Latinos and Asians were 1.8 times and 1.5 times as likely to be denied, respectively.
    In both San Jose and Oakland , the denial ratios for blacks and Latinos relative to whites were lower compared with 2002, but they remained higher than the ratios in 1993.  

10/12/04 Washington Post: Ore. Rep. Wu Admits 'Inexcusable Behavior',
    Portland , OR -- A Democratic congressman in a tight re-election race admitted Tuesday that while he was a college student 28 years ago, he was disciplined by school officials for "inexcusable behavior" toward an ex-girlfriend.  
    The admission by Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., came immediately after a report published in The Oregonian newspaper saying a former girlfriend from college once claimed Wu tried to force her into having sex. The lengthy report said the woman, whom the newspaper did not identify, declined to comment.
    In a statement, Wu said he had a "two-year romantic relationship that ended with inexcusable behavior on my part."  
    "I take full responsibility for my actions and I am very sorry," Wu said. "I was disciplined by Stanford University for my behavior, and I worked with a counselor. This single event forever changed my life and the person I have become."  
    He didn't elaborate on what he had done or what school officials did to discipline him. The paper said he lost a pending appointment as a dormitory resident assistant.  
    Wu, 49, is facing a tough re-election challenge this year from Republican Goli Ameri. He is seeking his fourth term in Oregon 's 1st Congressional District.  
    The newspaper said none of the information in its story came from Ameri or any Republican officials or activists. Wu declined to speak to the newspaper for the story.  
    A former patrol commander at Stanford, Raoul Niemeyer, told The Oregonian that the 21-year-old Wu was brought to the campus police annex in the summer of 1976 after his ex-girlfriend alleged that he tried to force her into sex. They had broken up that spring, it said.  
    According to Niemeyer, Wu told police that what happened was consensual.       Niemeyer did not see or meet with the woman but said his officers told him she was bruised and that she and Wu previously "had some type of a relationship."  
    "Whether it was an amorous one or whether it was just platonic or what, I never was able to determine because, you know, the guy, he basically clammed up after that and wouldn't talk," Niemeyer told the paper.
    Wu was not arrested. The woman ultimately declined to press charges and did not file a formal complaint with the school, former Stanford officials said.
    But before the next school year began, Wu was "de-selected" for a job as a dormitory resident assistant, Lyman Van Slyke, a history professor who oversaw the dormitory, told the newspaper.
    Current Stanford officials would not discuss what happened between Wu and the woman or the university's handling of the matter, citing university policy and student confidentiality laws, the newspaper said.


10/12/04 Sacramento Bee: Elections still province of white voters,
    The outcome of several races and measures on the Nov. 2 California ballot is uncertain, but experts say one thing is sure: Three in four likely voters are white.         When the Census Bureau announced in 2000 that white residents had slipped below half the state's population, many people assumed a political power shift was imminent. Holding down the rear are largely agricultural counties with high percentage of Latinos and low personal incomes - places such as Imperial, Merced and Stanislaus counties.
    A third of the state is Latino, the lowest per-capita income group in California . Many Latinos are too young to vote, not citizens or illegal immigrants. Others who can vote don't; Latinos account for a majority (57 percent) of adults who are not registered to vote, according to the PPIC.
    Marin and Imperial counties represent the polar extremes of wealth and political participation in California .
    A whopping 84 percent of registered voters cast ballots in Marin County in the last presidential election; little more than half did in Imperial County .
    Statewide, turnout was more than 70 percent. First and last among California counties in participation, Marin and Imperial are sums of their parts.
    Marin is largely white (84 percent) with a median household income of $71,306, according to the 2000 U.S. census. Only one in five residents is below the voting age.
    "Folks here pay attention to what's on the ballot, the connection between candidates and measures, and what that means not only to their community but their household," said Registrar Michael Smith.
    Imperial is agricultural and poor, with a median household income of $31,870. Abutting the U.S.-Mexico border, it is predominantly Latino (72 percent) - nearly a third of whom are too young to vote.
    "Because of our agricultural community, a lot of people work hours that exceed the hours the polls are open," said Registrar Dolores Provencio.
    California counties have been receiving record numbers of applications for absentee ballots because of a 2002 law that allows anyone - not just the elderly and the homebound - to permanently vote absentee.
    But only 13 percent of registered voters in Imperial County have requested absentee ballots compared to 40 percent in Marin County .
    Counties depend largely on local funding to operate their elections office and conduct registration drives. A recent infusion of federal and state money is mostly earmarked for replacing voting machines.
    "We don't have a person go out and promote voter registration drives because we're so limited here," said Provencio, who has only three full-time employees.
    Marin County , by comparison, has a full-time staff of 10 people to serve a larger population - 246,000 to 149,000 - and far more eligible voters.
    "While the office does not have a lot of people in it, there's a community that we call on at election time," including 20 part-time workers and 700 volunteers, Smith said. "They get engaged, involved and, as such, get the vote out."
    Voter registration is largely the responsibility of political parties. Democrats have a big edge on Republicans in registration in California : 44 percent to 37 percent, according to the PPIC.
    But lack of political engagement has made recruiting minority voters a low priority.
    Ramakrishnan said money that could have been spent in California this presidential year by the parties was diverted to more competitive states. "Another thing that's happened to discourage spending is a large increase in independent voters," Ramakrishnan said. "The parties like to know who they're targeting."
    In the past decade, the number of "decline to state" or independent voters in California has increased from 1.5 million to 2.5 million even as turnout has declined.
    In the 2002 primary, California slipped below the national voter turnout average for the first time in a decade.
    Some analysts blamed the record low 34 percent participation of registered voters on lackluster support for Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and his Republican challengers.
    Turnout jumped to 61 percent in the historic 2003 recall that swept Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger into office - but receded to 39 percent in this year's primary.
    In an effort to bolster voter participation, Schwarzenegger recently signed legislation ending California 's experiment with March primaries and returning the elections to June.
    Davis ' election in 1998, which ended 16 years of GOP governors, was widely attributed to a rapid increase in minority voters, especially Latinos.
    They were said to have become permanently politically energized by anger at Republican Gov. Pete Wilson's endorsement in 1994 of Proposition 187. The voter-approved measure to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants was overturned by the courts in 1994.
    But the minority share of the California electorate dropped from 36 percent in 1998 to 24 percent in 2002, according to exit polls. The white share rose from 64 percent to 76 percent.
    The margin continued in this year's primary. In Los Angeles County , where 40 percent of the state's Latino voters reside, only 37 percent of registered voters turned out.
    Turnout has been above the state average in recent years in Sacramento County - 72 percent in the 2000 presidential election, 66 percent for the gubernatorial recall and 50 percent in this year's primary.
    The county has a lower Latino voting population than other urban areas in the state. It did not pass the 5 percent federal threshold requiring the printing of Spanish-language ballots until after the 2000 census.
    Fewer than 2,000 Spanish-language ballots have been requested this year.
    "We still don't have the numbers some other counties have," said Registrar Jill LaVine. "This is something we're going to have to build on."
    Smith, the Marin County registrar, laments other residents of the state are not as politically engaged as the people he serves.
    "People who don't vote, don't have a political voice," he said. "If they want to be heard, they darn well better get involved." 

10/8/04 Yale Bulletin and Calendar: "Story of a 'solitary yellow in a white world' is tale of hope, says Koh"
-- By LuAnn Bishop
     The portrait of Yung Wing, Yale's first Asian alumnus, was alongside Law School Dean Harold Koh as he recounted Wing's life story in a recent talk.
    When Chinese native Yung Wing came to campus in the mid-1800s, there were "precious few people of color, no women and virtually no non-Christians," said Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh in a recent talk.
    "As the only yellow in a white world, Yung Wing was at best a curiosity and at worst a freak," asserted Koh. Yet, Yung Wing's story is ultimately one of "accomplishment," he noted. "In a very real sense, he is the spiritual ancestor of every one of us of Asian heritage who studies or works here at Yale today."
    The dean's talk was the first in a year-long series of campus events honoring Yung Wing, who became Yale's first Asian alumnus -- and likely the first Asian to earn a bachelor's degree from any Western institution -- when he graduated from the University 150 years ago. The event brought an overflow crowd to the Graduate School on Sept. 27.
    Koh began his talk, titled "Yellow in a White World," by recounting Yung Wing's tale: His early education in China by Christian missionaries, including Yale alumnus the Reverend Samuel Robbins Brown; his journey to the United States and his matriculation at Yale, where he "made a sensation for bearing off repeated prizes for English composition" and first conceived the idea of bringing other Chinese youths to the West for education; and his return to his homeland, where he found that he had been so changed by his experience in America that his countrymen could no longer understand his Chinese and he could barely understand theirs.
    Yung Wing spent most of his life traveling between the East and the West, never really at home in either place, Koh said, noting that "In America , he felt Asian; in Asia , he felt American." When Yung Wing volunteered to fight for the Union army during the Civil War, for example, he was turned down because "he was not really an American," added the dean.
    In China , Yung Wing worked to promote the nation's modernization. In the 1870s, his earlier vision was realized when he convinced the Chinese government to send 120 youths to schools in the West, including Yale, "to promote mutual cultural understanding and to extend the reach of the Chinese empire," Koh said. Although the Chinese Educational Mission was abruptly ended after only nine years, those students went on to become China 's "first generation of 20th-century railroad builders, engineers, medical doctors, naval admirals and diplomats," Koh noted.
    While leading the Chinese Educational Mission, Yung Wing received an honorary degree from the Law School , "which makes him, I'm almost sure, the first Asian ever to receive a degree from the school of which I am now dean," said Koh. Yung Wing married an American woman, who returned with him to China , where he later served in the provincial government and became a diplomat. The couple's two sons both went to Yale, and Yung Wing is buried alongside his wife in Hartford , Connecticut .
    "Perhaps in Yung Wing's story, you've heard echoes of your own life," said Koh to the audience, noting that it was certainly true in his own case.
    Koh's own parents came to the United States from Korea about 100 years after Yung Wing. His mother was a freshman studying sociology, and his father was one of the first Koreans, "if not the first," to earn a law degree in America , he told the audience.
    "Like Yung Wing, my parents came away from their educational experience determined to promote mutual understanding between the United States and their home country, Korea ," he explained. His parents founded the East Rock Institute in New Haven to carry on that cause, and his father served as the Korean ambassador to the United Nations and as a minister at Korea 's embassy in Washington , D.C. He was also an educator who taught courses on East Asian law and society at institutions throughout Connecticut , including Yale.
    Like Yung Wing, Koh's parents helped hundreds of Korean students come to the United States to study, and they frequently invited those students to dinner in their home.
    "So many Korean students came to my house that we had a regular chair that was just left available for whoever was coming to dinner that night," Koh said. "When I was [ U.S. ] assistant secretary of state, I went back to Korea a few years ago. Hundreds of well-meaning Korean government officials came to me and said, 'I ate dinner at your house.'"
    There are many truths that can be gleaned from Yung Wing's story, Koh told the audience. Chief among these, he said, is "a lesson about making our own choices, no matter how difficult they might be."
    Koh remembers watching "Perry Mason" as a youngster and asking his father if he should become a lawyer. "My father turned to me and said just two words: 'Study physics,'" he recalled.
    The dean told the audience he later realized that underlying his father's urging were certain "assumptions about choices" -- notably, that law is for "insiders" and "we are outsiders in this country," whereas physics is a profession that is "truly open to Asians"; and that law is not an exact science, and "we will suffer from its inexactness," while in exact sciences such as physics, "they cannot discriminate against you," explained Koh.
    Although Koh did study physics for nearly 10 years, he decided that law was his true vocation. He wasn't daunted by the "old boy network" and, he said, "It didn't matter that law was not an exact science because, as it turned out, I wasn't very good at exact sciences."
    Over a century after Yung Wing, Koh still found few Asian faces among his classmates at Harvard, and the only Asian names he encountered in the Supreme Court cases he studied "were always litigants and never lawyers," recalled the dean, adding that the history of Asian Americans is "not a story of victors of justice, but victims of injustice."
    Today, the world of academia is very different, he said. "If you look over classrooms at Yale and the Yale Law School , you see a huge increase in the number of yellow faces." The population of Yale College is now 13% to 15% Asian American, and about one-tenth of the international students at Yale are of Asian ancestry. "More than that, the world is not nearly as white as it was. The United States has become a strikingly diverse country, and the number of Asians is growing," he said. "What we have now is a different kind of Asian experience."
    Another lesson inherent in Yung Wing's story is that of one's obligation to others, asserted Koh, urging audience members "to be a bridge between two cultures, to be a ladder for those who come behind, to be a beacon to those who look for us for leadership because of our unique educational advantages, and most of all, to represent not just those people who are like us in appearance, but those who stand for the same principles."
    Yung Wing's story also reveals "how one person, even a solitary yellow in a white world, can make a difference," said Koh, pointing to the Yale alumnus' legacy -- the Yale Library's world-renowned East Asian Collection, which was founded with a gift of books from Yung Wing; the Yale-China Association, which promotes East-West cultural understanding and educational exchange; the Yale China Law Center, which is working to modernize that nation's legal system; and the delegation of Chinese university administrators who came to Yale this summer to learn about the operations of U.S. universities, which Koh described as a "modern-day Chinese mission to New Haven."
    All this shows that "people can change institutions, institutions can build legacies and legacies can make history," asserted Koh.
    "And so, my friends, that's Yung Wing's story. It is a story of what it means to be yellow in a white world. It's a story of choices; it's a story of hope; it's a story of obligation; it's a story of accomplishment," said Koh. "But most of all, I think, it's a story of justice -- the justice that Asian Americans seek, and the justice that Asian Americans can create with the help of their friends and their colleagues."
    Noting that Martin Luther King Jr. once said "The moral arch of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice," Koh concluded: "If Yung Wing were here, I think he would have to agree."

 
10/8/04 AsianWeek.com: Vietnamese Americans Heat Up Over Bush vs. Kerry,
    Outside of a Vietnamese coffee shop in San Francisco , two older Vietnamese men are smoking and talking about the first presidential debate. "Kerry did very well, but Bush came out solid and strong," Tinh Nguyen said. "Kerry might still have a fighting chance. Too bad we are voting in California . We can't help President Bush from here."
    The scene reflects typical Vietnamese American voting patterns. A national poll conducted before the debate by Bendixen & Associates and New California Media found that a whopping 71 percent of Vietnamese Americans said they favor Bush; only 27 percent are for Kerry.
    It's not surprising, coming from a community that counts Viet Dinh and Anh Nguyet Duong as two of its heroes. Dinh, as an assistant to Attorney General John Ashcroft, drafted the USA PATRIOT Act, and Duong, called "the Bomb Lady" by the press, created the thermobaric or "bunker-busting" bomb that was mentioned in the first Bush-Kerry debate and used against al Qaeda in Afghanistan . Both Duong and Dinh had been boat people escaping communist Vietnam .
    But Francois Truong, on the other hand, says he definitely belongs to the 27 percent. An openly gay Vietnamese, Truong says he can't believe that Vietnamese would vote overwhelmingly for Bush. "I'd do anything to get Bush out."
    What does he think of the Vietnamese who support Bush? "They're stupid. Haven't they seen what happened to this country since Bush has been in office?"
    The reasons Vietnamese Americans are voting for Bush are many, but it essentially comes down to this: Republicans are perceived as being strong against terrorism and, more importantly, communism. The majority of the Vietnamese population is foreign-born, having fled communism as refugees, and many still remember what it was like to live under a dictatorship. Kerry, who fought in the Vietnam War but became an anti-war activist, is perceived by many as untrustworthy. Recently, he blocked a bill that, in order to pressure Vietnam to end its human rights abuses, would have reduced U.S. aid to the country.
    Minh Tran, who came to the United States in 1981 at age 22, for instance, said that Kerry doesn't deserve his vote because "Kerry did not support the U.S. resolution against human rights violations in Vietnam ."
    The Bendixen poll also found that among Asian Americans aged 18 to 39, only 27 percent would vote for Bush versus 51 percent for Kerry. Nam Nguyen, publisher of the Vietnamese Calitoday newspaper, says that within another generation, Vietnamese Americans may become less conservative "as more and more are born in the United States and their concerns are more domestic and not formed by Vietnam ."
    "But," Nguyen added, "I don't know. The next generation may just be as conservative as their parents."

10/7/04 Los Angeles Times: Acting Jobs Decline for Latinos, Asians,
    Latinos and Asians found movie and TV roles sparse in 2003, even though actors overall saw a slower drop-off in the number of jobs than in past years, according to a Screen Actors Guild study to be released today.
    The study showed that acting jobs for SAG members fell 1.6% in 2003, compared with drops of 6.5% in 2002 and 9.3% in 2001. 
    The numbers were especially bleak for Latino actors. Roles fell 10.5%, including a 31% drop for male lead roles in prime-time television. 
    For Asian actors, the number of roles fell 2.1%, and 35% for males in prime-time spots. 
    The news was bad for women as well as minorities, according to the study. Women were offered only 38% of all roles last year. White performers landed more than 73% of roles.
    SAG President Melissa Gilbert cited risk-averse producers and executives who are reluctant to diversify their casts. 
    "I would be loath to label it as racism as much as I would be willing to label it playing safe," she said. "The longtime assumption that everybody wants to be blue-eyed, blond-haired and trim still persists."
    Another possible reason, Gilbert said, is the reporting of TV viewership by Nielsen Media Research, which has been criticized for undercounting African Americans and Latinos.
    SAG researchers also blame two trends, the proliferation of "reality" shows on TV and runaway film production to cheaper foreign locales, for continuing to hurt actors. But the union did not provide specific numbers.
    The study found that, among minorities, African Americans had the largest percentage of roles, landing 15.3% of all hires. That percentage exceeds the U.S. black population, the study said, which the Census Bureau reported at 13%. However, African Americans were cast in 3% fewer roles than last year.
    Actors over 40 also found jobs wanting. Only 35% of all roles available were offered to performers over 40, and women that age were less likely to be cast than their male counterparts. Only 27% of all roles for women were offered to females over 40, while men over 40 landed a 39% share of total roles for men. 
    Only Native Americans saw a gain in the number of roles they landed, the study said. However, Native Americans still account for fewer than 1% of all roles. 
    The data were compiled by producers as part of a contractual agreement with the union. 
 

10/6/04: Statement of Congressman Mike Honda, Chair of Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, Regarding H.R. 10
    As Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), I have serious concerns about H.R. 10, the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act of 2004" introduced by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL).
    In particular, I am concerned that section 3009 of H.R. 10 will negatively impact members of our immigrant communities, including members of the Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) community, and will significantly restrict immigrants' rights by undermining basic due process protection.
    Section 3009 was not part of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations.  In fact, Section 3009 flies in the face of the Commission's call for the U.S. to "offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors."
    Among the offensive principles offered by H.R. 10, Section 3009 undermines due process by prohibiting habeas corpus review of most immigration decisions.  Section 3009 also precludes federal courts from granting stays while deportation cases are pending.  Finally, the provision authorizes the government to deport foreign nationals to countries that lack a functioning government.
    The APIA community is a diverse mix of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, refugees, and non-immigrants who are here for work or study.  Any legislative proposal that denies non-citizens access to fair and just judicial processes is harmful to the APIA community.
    Instead of focusing on the 9/11 Commission's proposals to protect and strengthen national homeland security while ensuring immigrants'  rights, the Republican leadership offers legislation that violates fundamental human rights. H.R. 10 hurts immigrants, and it hurts the diverse members of the APIA communities across this nation.
    I remain hopeful that House leaders will follow the lead of our Senate colleagues by proposing legislation that is more acceptable and adheres to the important recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

9/28/04 Houston Chronicle: Fort Bend County renames Jap Road,
By Eric Hanson
    Richmond -- Fort Bend County commissioners unanimously voted today to change the name of a dusty road near Orchard from Jap Road to Moore Ranch Road.
    With no public comments or debate, the commisioners renamed it Moore Ranch Road after a family of prominent landowners, sidestepping the controversy that swirled around Jefferson County 's recent decision to rename its own Jap Road .
    It's unclear how the Fort Bend County road got its name or even when, but Orchard's mayor, Eugene Demny, said it was originally called Moore Street, many people still called it Moore Street, and this vote just made it official.
    The swift decision to officially call the street Moore stands in sharp contrast to a decadelong debate in Jefferson County over its Jap Road . Last month Jefferson County commissioners unanimously voted to change the name to Boondocks Road after a restaurant that once operated there. 
    Fort Bend County 's paved uninhabited road runs west from South Missouri Street in the town limits for a short distance before it crosses into the unincorporated part of the county, where it turns into a gravel road until ending at FM 1489.

9/27/04: JACL Reaffirms Support For Japanese American & Japanese Latin American Redress
    Honolulu , HI - The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the nations oldest and largest Asian Pacific American civil rights organization, has voted to reaffirm its support for the ongoing redress efforts of Japanese Americans and Japanese Latin Americans whose civil and human rights were violated during World War II.  The redress resolution calls for passage of the Wartime Parity and Justice Act (HR 779), a comprehensive redress legislation now pending before the US Congress.  The redress resolution was unanimously passed on August 13, 2004, at the JACL National Convention held in Honolulu , Hawaii .
    This reaffirmation of the ongoing redress struggle draws attention to the approximately 1200 surviving Japanese Americans and Japanese Latin Americans who have not been granted proper redress.  It also underscores the need for continuing education about one of the worst human rights violations based on constitutional abrogations in US history.
    During World War II, the US government deprived over 120,000 US citizens and immigrants of Japanese ancestry of their fundamental civil liberties when it forcibly removed and incarcerated them in American concentration camps.  The US government also went outside its borders and violated the human rights of over 2,200 Japanese Latin Americans for the purpose of hostage exchange.
    This miscarriage of justice was in part acknowledged by the US Congress with the passage of historic redress legislation, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. However, there are still hundreds of persons of Japanese ancestry who have not received proper redress, and the educational mandate of the Civil Liberties Act has not been fulfilled.
    Now pending before the US Congress, the Wartime Parity and Justice Act (HR 779), introduced by Representative Xavier Becerra (D-CA), would provide:
1.)          redress for JAs who suffered grievances due to government action but did not obtain redress on technical grounds under the Civil Liberties Act;
2.)          proper redress for former JLA internees; and
3.)          $45 million to re-establish the public education fund and fulfill the educational mandate of the Civil Liberties Act.
    Redress for those members of our community whose rights have not yet been vindicated is a moral issue.  It is part of our responsibility to uphold our Constitution and defend our human rights, said Chizu Iiyama, a former internee.  Public education about the Japanese American and Japanese Latin American wartime experiences is critical to prevent the recurrence of similar civil and human rights violations.  

9/23/04 Dallas Morning News: Immigration service boasts faster processing times: Application backlog falls as agency changes who is counted,
By Michelle Mittelstadt
    Washington Would-be citizens and other applicants for immigration benefits, including green card renewals and work permits, are finding the government's sluggish processing times shrinking. 
    U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which saw its caseload mushroom to 6.2 million pending applications last fall, has pledged to reduce its backlog to zero by fall 2006. 
    The agency, the successor to the beleaguered Immigration and Naturalization Service, last summer launched an initiative to tackle a backlog that has long vexed immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. 
    "Eliminating the backlog is a huge undertaking, but it is a challenge that we are determined to embrace and see through to completion," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge , whose department oversees CIS, said Thursday. 
    With increased automation, electronic filing, the shift of manpower and additional resources, processing times are being whittled, immigration officials said. 
    For example, the nearly 13-month average to replace a green card typical last October has now dropped to below eight months, officials said. Naturalization applications, which took an average 14.5 months to process last year, now are down to 12.7 months. Work permits, which took an average 2.1 months to process a year ago, are down to 1.4 months. 
    At a panel on immigration Thursday, Mr. Ridge and his associates touted the completion of 1.1 million more applications this year than for the same period a year ago. 
    The backlog, which stood at 3.8 million applications last year, has been whittled to 1.5 million. Part of that is due to faster processing of cases, but part is also due to an accounting change made in June. 
    About 1.1 million cases were shifted out of the backlog to take off the books applications that stand no chance of being considered soon. For example, because of country quotas on family reunification, some applicants petitioning for relatives to come to the United States face waits of 10 years or more before their paperwork can be considered. The applications remain active but won't be considered until near the time when they can be granted, officials said. 
    Taking such long-running cases off immigration agents' active dockets frees the workers to process much more speedily the cases where benefits are immediately available, said Eduardo Aguirre, head of Citizenship and Immigration Services. 

9/24/04 Associated Press: Chan Complains of Limited Roles for Asians,
    Singapore (AP) - Martial arts legend Jackie Chan claims Hollywood limits roles for Asians and says it's time he became a "real actor" by taking on roles other than as a kung fu fighter, a local newspaper reported Friday.
    "It's all the same, cop from Hong Kong, cop from China . Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat and I all face the same problem, our roles are limited," said Chan, 50, referring to other Chinese action stars who have sought roles in Western movies. 
    "Yes, I get treated like a king over there but I'm not happy. I get frustrated when I see them doing things the wrong way but I can't say anything," he told The Straits Times. 
    The acrobatic, high-flying action hero was in the city-state to promote "New Police Story," a sequel to the 1985 movie that catapulted him to international stardom. 
    Chan's latest Hollywood film, an adaptation of the Jules Verne classic "Around the World in 80 Days," was a summer dud. Three others - "The Medallion," "The Tuxedo" and "Shanghai Knights" with Owen Wilson - also received lukewarm responses at the box office. 
    Although Chan returned to the United States this year for the filming of "Rush Hour III," he said he wants to move away from action movies. 
    "I've always wanted to change, to become a real actor, like (Oscar winner) Robert DeNiro. I don't want to be seen as an action hero anymore." 

9/22/04 San Francisco Chronicle: Heroine of 9/11 gets her due Chinatown honors flight attendant,
by Cicero Estrella
    Flight attendant and San Francisco native Betty Ann Ong was the first person aboard any of the aircraft hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, to contact officials on the ground. She risked her life while calmly giving essential details of the chaos onboard the plane. But at the time, Ong's heroism was overlooked. 
    Three years later, and months after the official hearings on the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Ong is getting her due as a hero. The Chinatown Community Development Center will honor Ong, who grew up in Chinatown , for her bravery aboard Flight 11 during its 27th anniversary dinner at the Westin St. Francis Hotel on Wednesday. 
    "I don't believe flight attendants have gotten the recognition they deserve," said Ong's sister, Cathie Ong-Herrera. "Really, they were our first line of defense. They were the first soldiers of that morning." 
    About five minutes after Los Angeles-bound Flight 11 was hijacked by al Qaeda members, Ong was able to contact the airline's southeastern reservations office in North Carolina via air phone from the back of the plane, according to the Sept. 11 commission. Another flight attendant placed a call to officials in Boston , where the flight originated. 
    With assistance from her fellow flight attendants, Ong told officials that the plane was probably being hijacked; that the flight crew was unable to communicate with the cockpit; that a chemical substance had been released in the first-class section; and that two crew members and a passenger had been stabbed. 
    She also gave the seat locations of the attackers, which helped law enforcement officials identify them. The call lasted 23 minutes before contact was lost. The Boeing 767 had slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center . 
    "A lot of people might say, big deal -- she made a phone call and gave information," said Peg Ogonowski, a flight attendant who worked with Ong and whose husband, John, was captain of Flight 11. "In a hijacking situation, somebody in a seat near you might be a hijacker who hasn't identified himself. She was taking a chance giving out that information. That was a brave act on her part." 
    The commission cited Ong's actions in its report as "the first of several occasions on 9/11 when flight attendants took action outside the scope of their training ... ." 
    The report also pointed out that Ong "calmly and professionally" relayed information, which contradicted initial printed reports that described her demeanor as hysterical and said she had been screaming and gasping for air. 
    Ong-Herrera and her brother Harry Ong Jr. said those early reports, printed in a newspaper about a month after the attacks and later repeated in a magazine article and a book, portrayed their sister as less than heroic and minimized her crucial contributions. 
    Ong's parents and three siblings had already found it difficult to deal with her sudden loss, but the misinformation about Ong exacerbated their grieving process. They said they didn't seek attention for Ong but wanted a more accurate account of her final moments. 
    The Sept. 11 commission report provided the family with vindication.
"When we left the commission hearings, a burden was lifted," said Harry Ong Jr., who attended the Washington , D.C. , hearing in January with Ong- Herrera. "We felt so much more free. I really felt Betty was put forward in a more positive image." 
    Nydia Gonzalez, the American Airlines official with whom Ong communicated during the hijacking, praised Ong in her statement to the commission. 
    "Betty's selfless acts of courage and determination may have saved the lives of many others," said Gonzalez. "She provided some important information which ultimately led to the closing of our nation's airspace for the first time in its history." 
    Rev. Norman Fong, program director of the Chinatown Community Development Center , is trying to spread the word about Ong. Besides planning the honor for the center's annual dinner, for which 700 guests are expected, Fong had Ong's image added last month to a 10-year-old mural that provides a mini history of Chinese Americans in San Francisco . It is on a building on Romolo Place off Broadway. 
    Fong is also spearheading efforts to name a public space after Ong -- a small street, a park or a room at Jean Parker Elementary School , which Ong attended. She also graduated from Francisco Middle School and Washington High School . 
    " San Francisco hasn't fully appreciated this wonderful woman," said Fong, who was friends with the Ong family while growing up in Chinatown . "We have our own genuine heroine, so Chinatown , let's get it straight. San Francisco , let's get it straight." 
    Ong, 45, was a flight attendant for 14 years and moved to Massachusetts after American Airlines assigned her to fly out of Boston 's Logan Airport . Her usual assignment was as purser on Boston -to- Los Angeles flights. 
    Ong's family remember her for her playfulness and humor, but after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, her co-workers told them of her more serious and professional side. During cross-country night flights, it wasn't uncommon for Ong to care for babies while their tired parents caught a little rest. On her days off in Andover , Mass. , she spent time at a Chinese senior center and took a friend there out for walks. 
    "She made sure attention was given to people who needed it most," said flight attendant Di Svoboda, who included unaccompanied children, seniors and wheelchair-bound passengers on that list. "She made people feel special, unafraid."

9/14/04 http://news.ncmonline.com, Pacific News Service
"National Poll of Asian Pacific Islanders on the 2004 Election Conducted by Bendixen & Associates and The Tarrance Group"
+ See PDF for Summary Report
+ See PDF for Presentation
    Methodology
    The results and findings in this report are based on a poll of 1,004 Asian and Pacific Islander (APIA) registered voters likely to participate in the November 2nd presidential election. The sample was designed to be representative of the approximately 2.9 million APIA "likely voters" in the United States . Bilingual operators conducted the interviews in nine languages - Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, Tagalog, Japanese, Hindi, Hmong and English.
    Fifty-nine percent of the respondents chose to be interviewed in a language other than English. All of the interviews were conducted between August 19th and August 29th of 2004. The margin of error for the full sample of 1,004 interviews is three percentage points. The polling project was organized and coordinated by Bendixen & Associates of Coral Gables , Florida and The Tarrance Group of Alexandria , Virginia .
    Major Findings
    1. Senator John Kerry and President George W. Bush are in a close race among APIA voters with two months to go before Election Day. The Democratic nominee leads by 43 percent to 36 percent over the Republican nominee with a substantial 20 percent still undecided. The President seems to have cut in half the lead that Democrats enjoyed among these voters in the 2000 presidential election when Vice President Al Gore defeated George W. Bush by 55 percent to 41 percent (the remaining 4 percent were split between Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan).
    ** Kerry has a strong lead among Chinese, Asian Indian and Hmong voters.
    ** Bush has a strong lead among Vietnamese and Filipino voters.
    ** Japanese, Korean and Pacific Islander voters split their votes equally between Kerry and Bush.
    ** Kerry does best among younger APIA voters (18-39) and those that have a college degree while Bush does best among older APIA voters (60+) and those with a high school degree. First-time APIA voters (31% of the APIA electorate) support Kerry over Bush by 16 percentage points.
    ** Kerry's lead over Bush among APIA voters in the 18 "battleground states" is the same as his lead among all APIA voters - 7 percentage points. The "battleground states" with the greatest number of APIA "likely voters" are Washington , Florida , Michigan , Oregon and Pennsylvania .
    ** President Bush's approval rating - 49 percent - seems to be contributing to his strong showing among voters that clearly favored the Democratic nominee in the 2000 election. Many political analysts believe that the approval rating of an incumbent president is a strong "predictor" of his reelection vote.
    ** President Bush and Senator Kerry have similar personal image numbers among APIA voters. Fifty percent have a positive image of the Republican nominee while 40 percent have a negative opinion of him. The Democratic nominee has a positive to negative ratio of 53 percent to 26 percent.
    ** A large majority of APIA voters (62%) think that the 2004 presidential election may very well be the most important election of their lifetime.
    2. The APIA electorate point-of-view on the major issues of the day is made clear by the study. A small majority of APIA "likely voters" thinks that it was "wrong" to go to war with Iraq . Chinese, Asian Indian and Korean voters are the strongest opponents of military action in the Middle East while a majority of Vietnamese and Filipino voters think that it was "right" to go to war with Iraq .
    ** "Jobs and the economy" was chosen by 47 percent of APIA voters as the most important issue for the next President to deal with while 22 percent told our interviewers that the Iraq war or terrorism was the number one issue. The importance of the jobs issue is underlined by the finding that only 27 percent of the APIA electorate rates the economic condition of the United States as "excellent" or "good."
    ** Vietnamese, Korean and Filipino voters believe that the "outsourcing" of jobs to foreign nations should be penalized through tax policy while Asian Indians and Japanese voters feel that the "outsourcing" of jobs overseas will help the U. S. economy by creating stronger markets for U. S. goods. Chinese voters are equally divided on this issue, one of the most controversial of the 2004 presidential campaign.
    ** Same-sex or gay marriage is supported by a small percentage (21%) of the APIA electorate but there is an important "generational gap" on this issue - older APIA voters (60+) oppose gay marriage by the overwhelming margin of 83 percent to 9 percent. Younger APIA voters (18-39) also oppose it but by a much smaller margin (12%).
    ** APIA voters support legalizing undocumented immigrants who live, work and pay taxes in the United States but by a much smaller percentage than their Hispanic counterparts. Only 51 percent of APIA voters support legalizing the undocumented while a January 2004 New California Media poll indicated that 85 percent of Hispanic voters favor the policy.
    ** APIA voters may be more "assimilated" than other voting groups dominated by immigrants. Only 23 percent of APIA voters report having experienced discrimination because of their racial or ethnic background and a majority oppose giving non-citizen immigrants living in the United States the right to vote in important local elections.
    3. The APIA electorate may be developing into a key "swing" constituency in American politics. Forty-four percent of these voters were not able to pick between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party when asked which party regards the opinions of their national or ethnic group in a more important way. The Democrats had a small advantage over the Republicans - 34 percent to 22 percent - among those APIA voters willing to choose between the two major political parties.
    ** The numbers are similar when APIA voters are asked which party they feel closer to - only 29 percent see themselves as Democrats while 25 percent say they are closer to the Republican Party.
    ** The percentage of APIA voters that remain undecided is a substantial 20 points. Most national polls show the undecided to be in the low single digits. The APIA electorate may have one of the highest concentration of undecided voters in the nation.
    ** The Democratic Party may have greater growth potential among APIA voters. Sixty-three percent of these voters have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party while only 48 percent have a positive opinion of the Republican Party.
    4. There is an important difference of opinion among APIA voters about the importance of voting ballots being printed in languages other than English. Among those interviewed in English, only 27 percent said it was "very important" to have "foreign-language" ballots while among those interviewed in another language, 52 percent said "very important."
    + See PDF for Summary Report
    + See PDF for Presentation
    About New California Media
    New California Media is a nationwide association of over 700 print, broadcast, and online ethnic media organizations founded in 1996 by the non-profit Pacific News Service. NCM's goal is to build a more inclusive public forum by raising the visibility of ethnic media and their audiences. NCM polling is supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the Overbrook Foundation, and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Foundation, among others. Multilingual polling partners include the USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism and the Chinese American Voter Education Committee. For more information, visit www.ncmonline.com

 
9/15/04 Los Angeles Times: "Asian American Voters Tilt to Kerry: But the first national poll during a presidential election of a growing segment of the U.S. electorate finds one in five are undecided."
    Washington - Asian American voters favor Democratic candidate John F. Kerry over President Bush, a new poll shows, although a significant number - one in five - is undecided.
    And although these voters largely supported the Democrats in the 2000 presidential contest, the poll suggests that the Democratic edge has thinned. Kerry has a 7 percentage point lead over Bush among Asian American voters, half of what Al Gore had over Bush among that group in 2000.
    The poll - the first national survey of Asian American voters in a presidential election - spotlights a small but growing segment of the American electorate.
    The study, found that Asian American voters favored Kerry over Bush by 43% to 36%, with 20% undecided. The survey was conducted in nine languages just before the Republican National Convention by the Tarrance Group, Bendixen & Associates and New California Media.
    "Traditionally, neither party has spent much effort reaching out to Asian Americans.... As a result I think you have a very large untapped population," said David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, which helped support the poll.
    More than half of the 6 million eligible Asian American voters are expected to register to vote in the presidential election, up by almost 1 million from the 2.4 million registered in 2000.
    A largely immigrant-based population, Asian Americans are still "undergoing a process of political acculturation" with the American system, said Don T. Nakanishi, director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center .
    Indeed, about one-third of the registered voters surveyed said their vote in this year's election would be their first.
    About 22% of the likely Asian American voters - 525,000 - live in battleground states, and their numbers have the potential to shift the election in Florida (86,000 likely voters), Washington (84,000 likely voters) and Michigan (65,000 likely voters), among others.
    But some analysts are skeptical about the Asian American community's reach on the national electoral stage. Because they are heavily concentrated in non-swing states, including California and New York , their broad political influence remains small, Nakanishi said.
    The Asian American vote remains fractured, split along key issues, age and ethnicity , the poll found.
    Chinese, South Asian and Japanese Americans tended to weigh more heavily toward Kerry while Vietnamese, Korean and Filipino Americans were more in favor of Bush.
    The economy was the key issue for these voters, the poll found. About 47% of those surveyed said jobs and the economy were the single biggest issue for the next president. Only 22% picked Iraq or terrorism.
    The poll surveyed 1,004 registered voters across Asian American communities in 47 states during the 10 days leading up to the GOP convention. Its overall margin of error was 3%, although it was as high as 9% among some subsets of Asian Americans.  

9/14/04 Wall Street Journal Noncitizen Parents Seek Voting Rights In School Elections,
    San Francisco -- On a recent evening, Latino and Chinese parents -- some of whom could not speak a common language -- gathered to organize a campaign for a common cause. They want the right to have a voice in their childrens' public schools, regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens.
    More than half of the 60,000 students in San Francisco 's public schools are either of Chinese or Hispanic descent. At least one out of three children in the city's school district has a parent who is an immigrant, either legal or illegal. Yet many of these parents say they feel alienated from their children's schooling because they aren't allowed to vote for the school board that determines education policy. "We're treated as if we don't exist," says Berta Hernandez, a legal resident who moved from Mexico 17 years ago and has two children in public schools here.
    That could change soon. San Francisco 's board of supervisors in July voted nine-to-two to put an amendment on the November ballot that would allow any parent with a child in public school to vote in school-board elections.
    Backers of the measure say residents who pay taxes and contribute to the U.S. economy should be entitled to vote on a matter that affects their daily life. But critics say that would cheapen the value of U.S. citizenship. They add that parents can be engaged in other ways, such as attending P.T.A. meetings and volunteering at their children's schools.
    Noncitizen immigrant parents say that's not enough -- there are larger issues, such as bilingual education and busing, in which they want their voices heard. At present, San Francisco school board policy requires many children to commute to schools that are far from their homes in order to achieve socio-economic diversity in the school system.
    Elsewhere in the U.S. , noncitizen immigrants are also demanding a voice in local affairs. In Washington , D.C. , a bill introduced in July would allow permanent residents to vote for members of the school board, city council and mayor. The city council will take up the bill when it returns from recess Thursday.
    The Illinois legislature in 1988 passed a law that allows any parent in Chicago to vote in local school elections as long as they have a child in one of the schools. "We have more parent and community participation in our schools, thanks to this law," says William Rice, administrator of Chicago 's school council relations.
    Several countries, including Ireland and Israel , allow immigrants without citizenship to vote.
    Even if the San Francisco proposal passes, it could still require an amendment to the California state constitution. That's likely to be difficult under Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is vowing to veto a bill passed in August that would allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. (Gov. Schwarzenegger arrived in the U.S. from Austria in 1968 with a special work visa for athletes and performers. He got a green card in 1974 and became a U.S. citizen in 1983.)
    Indeed, even immigrant communities are split over whether to extend voting rights to non-citizens. John Zhao, a Chinese immigrant who became a U.S. citizen 15 years ago, is an outspoken critic of San Francisco schools. But he believes giving noncitizens the right to vote in school-board elections is undermining a privilege. "You have to work hard to be a citizen," says Mr. Zhao, whose daughter Lona commutes two hours to school each day.
    "The reality is that the Chinese community is divided," says David Lee, executive director of the Chinese-American Voters Education Committee, a nonpartisan group.
    A national poll of 1,000 Asian-Americans to be released today found that 52% disagree with giving noncitizen immigrants the right to vote for a city commission or school board. An additional 41% said they agree and 7% didn't have an opinion. The survey was conducted by Bendixen & Associates and The Tarrance Group for the New California Media in several Asian languages.
    The education initiative spotlights an intensifying debate over immigrant rights at a time when the U.S. is absorbing foreigners in record numbers. "The story of California is the story of what will happen in other states," says Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, an immigration studies professor at New York University . California receives more immigrants than any other state and is the only one where non-Hispanic whites are outnumbered by all other races and ethnic groups combined.
    At the same time, it's not as easy as it once was to become a U.S. citizen. In 1960, the average wait was eight years. Now, it can take as long as 10 years, according to the Immigrant Voting Project, a New York-based advocacy group. Immigrants must have had a legal, permanent residency -- a green card -- for at least five years before applying for citizenship. The time lapse between applying and being granted citizenship can take months to years.
    The wait depends in part on where the immigrant lives and his or her country of origin. Some cities have greater backlogs in processing applications. And the entire process has lengthened in recent years due to increased security checks. Some of the scrutiny is directed at individuals from countries associated with terrorism, immigrant-rights groups say.
    Some special categories take less time to process, such as someone who marries a U.S. citizen or who volunteers for the U.S. military.
    Among those who came to the education meeting in San Francisco was Sokchan Zhiang, a seamstress who explains in Cantonese that she moved here four years ago from Guangzhou , China , "to give my 13-year-old son a better future."
    Ms. Zhiang has a green card, which means her status is legal. But she must wait one more year -- to reach the five in total -- before she can apply for citizenship, and then up to another five years or more before becoming a citizen. By then, her son, Jason, will have finished high school.
    David Chiu, a former immigration attorney who organized the meeting in the city's heavily Hispanic Mission district, decided to spearhead the public campaign to aid legal and illegal immigrants alike. "These parents have children in the school system, many of whom are Americans," he says.
    Immigrant voting isn't a new idea: In the late 1800s, the right to vote was used to entice noncitizen immigrants to settle the West. It was allowed until the late 1920s in 22 states and federal territories. By then, the influx of immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe prompted states to curb voting rights, according to Ron Hayduk, a political-science professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, who is writing a book about the subject. "The controversy today partly pertains to who we are talking about," he says. "They are not white Europeans."
    Despite San Francisco 's liberal bent, the education proposal has drawn strong opposition. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a former mayor of the city, said it dilutes the promise of citizenship.
    "It's political correctness gone mad -- even by San Francisco standards," says Wade Randlett, president of SF SOS, a nonpartisan group campaigning against the initiative. "Citizenship really only means one remaining thing: You have the right to vote."

9/14/04 Wall Street Journal: "Flawed Proposition,"

by Tamar Jacoby
    Immigration issues aren't getting much national attention this election cycle. Apart from a behind-the-scenes squabble in the Republican platform committee, neither convention so much as mentioned the I-word on prime time, and no one at the top of either ticket is making speeches about it. But that doesn't mean there isn't a fateful struggle playing out this fall. The battleground is in Arizona , and the stakes could hardly be higher if the presidential candidates themselves were debating border policy on TV.
    The Arizona ballot initiative -- "Proposition 200" -- appears innocuous enough. According to supporters, it merely enforces laws already on the books, requiring state residents to prove they are citizens in order to vote and barring illegal immigrants from receiving welfare benefits. But the truth is that the measure could have devastating consequences for Arizona . And a major victory of the sort proponents are gunning for could transform the national debate on immigration policy, possibly even derailing the kind of overhaul both George W. Bush and John Kerry have promised to pursue as president.
    It's no accident that this battle is taking place in Arizona . A decade of cracking down elsewhere on the border has made Arizona the gateway of choice for unauthorized migrants entering from Mexico . Because the flow is illegal and mostly transient -- workers on their way to LA or New York or Chicago -- Arizona residents enjoy few of the benefits and all of the costs of an immigrant influx. Not surprisingly, the public's irritation is spilling over into politics: voters want to send a message, no matter how flailing or inchoate, that they don't like the way we as a nation have lost control of our borders.
    Not that anyone claims the voter initiative will staunch the flow of illegal immigrants. On the contrary, even the state legislators responsible for getting Prop. 200 on the ballot recognize that at best it may mitigate a few side effects. Border policy is a federal issue; state governments have no say in it and no role even in implementing federal directives. The illegal farmhands and busboys who troop north through Arizona don't stop to vote. Unauthorized immigrants aren't eligible to receive welfare benefits. And even those who land in local hospitals and are treated, usually legally, on their way to work somewhere further north aren't going to be deterred from making the trip just because they get carded in Arizona .
    If anything, passage of Prop. 200 will make life more difficult for ordinary Arizonans. The governor's office estimates that implementing it could cost the state tens of millions of dollars. It is so vaguely worded and far-reaching -- a blanket ban on all "public benefits" and a threat of jail for all state employees who fail to report illegal immigrants -- that it could interfere with the work of just about every state agency: from state troopers to public-records clerks to mechanics at emissions-inspection stations.
    The consequences could be positively Orwellian: a bloated bureaucracy, the hassle of constantly producing ID, a much more cumbersome voting process for everyone, Anglo and Hispanic. Add in the costs of likely lawsuits and lost federal aid, and the bill climbs into the hundreds of millions. Meanwhile, passage could also slow the rapid growth that now sustains the state economy. Tourists, conventioneers, would-be residents, retirees and relocating commercial enterprises could come to see Arizona as not just off-puttingly xenophobic, but also -- thanks to the increased regulation -- a difficult place to do business. Many state industries, from hotels and restaurants to roofing, could fall on hard times.
    But the national cost, for immigration policy, could dwarf even these untoward consequences. There's a reason why the Federation for American Immigration Reform and other anti-immigrant groups have spent nearly a half a million dollars to promote Prop. 200. They expect it to win big -- polls suggest that 65%-75% of voters support it -- and plan to use these skewed results to advance their agenda in Washington : FAIR would bring the news of a 70-30 victory back to Capitol Hill and wave it around like a bloody shirt. Restrictionists would argue that the outcome vindicated their claim that the American public doesn't like immigrants and opposes immigration reform. They would take particular glee in undermining Arizona representatives John McCain, Jeff Flake and Jim Kolbe, all staunch proponents of rethinking border policy: after all, the argument would go, not even their own constituents support their reform efforts. Copycat ballot initiatives would follow in a half a dozen other states -- indeed a similar measure is already circulating in California . And other elected officials, in both the White House and Congress, would start to find even more reasons than they already cite for avoiding all discussion of immigration issues.
    This is no speculative scenario. It's exactly what happened in 1994 when California voters endorsed their Prop. 187 by a margin of 59%-41%. The measure itself was soon ruled unconstitutional. But within the year, the Clinton administration had launched a historic, all-out effort to fortify the southern frontier: a crackdown that would eventually triple the manpower and quintuple the budget devoted to border enforcement. Anti-immigrant Republicans in Congress went into high gear, slashing federal benefits for newcomers, legal and illegal alike. Still other, more draconian proposals -- for drastic cuts in immigration quotas and a national ID card for all workers -- were averted only at the last minute by an improbable come-from-behind defense.
    The consensus in favor of reform is considerably stronger today than it was in 1994. The leaders of both parties, business, labor and immigrant advocates all agree that the system is broken and that what's needed is a more honest policy: one that recognizes the reality of global labor markets and seeks to manage the flow with higher, but more credibly enforceable, legal limits for immigrant workers. But as in the case of free trade, it can be difficult to explain this logic to voters struggling with the consequences of illegal immigration. And even buoyed by consensus, elected officials are easily intimidated: look how President Bush backed off of the promising proposals he made in January.
    A victory for Prop. 200 would be particularly chilling for Republicans -- so much so that any reform legislation that did make headway in the next few years could be sharply skewed toward the preferences of Democrats and their labor allies. But ultimately both parties would almost surely be put off, and it isn't hard to imagine that meaningful change could be delayed by as much as a decade.
    The voters of Arizona have every right to be angry: we have lost control of our southwest border and they, more than anyone, are paying the price. But the solution isn't to pretend we can turn off the flow; the only realistic answer is to channel it legally. Any "message" that makes that more difficult politically can only end up making the problem worse -- and it won't be just Arizonans who will suffer as a consequence.
    Ms. Jacoby, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the author of "Reinventing the Melting Pot" (Basic Books, 2004).

 
9/9/04 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Asian Hall of Fame to debut tomorrow; Locke is among first five inductees,
    The Asian Resource Center opened its distinctive wood-and-glass doors a decade ago this month, bringing a civic and cultural hub to the International District and fulfilling the dream of the late Robert Chinn.
    With the center well-established, the foundation bearing his name is creating an Asian Hall of Fame to honor Seattle area residents who have persevered and succeeded
    Chinn founded United Savings and Loan Bank, the first such institution owned by an Asian American in the United States .
    "My father had come here and started from scratch," said his daughter, Karen Wong, president of the Robert Chinn Foundation. "We wanted the community to know there are people like that out there, who could come and live the American dream."
    The foundation will mark the 10th anniversary of the Asian Resource Center tomorrow night with a black-tie dinner, auction and induction of the first five members of the Asian Hall of Fame.
    The honorees are Gov. Gary Locke; track star Rick Noji; actor Yuji Okumoto; and painter Z.Z. Wei. Artist George Tsutakawa will be honored posthumously.
    Locke, the nation's first Chinese American governor, was a natural choice. So was Tsutakawa, the celebrated sculptor and painter best known for his graceful fountains.
    The other three are lesser known, though each has his fans.
    Noji was a University of Washington track star who holds the state high school record in the high jump. Okumoto played the villain in the second "Karate Kid" movie, while Wei is making his mark with his melancholic landscape paintings.
    "We wanted some people who were nationally known, who were outstanding in their field and had given something back to the community," Wong said.
    She credited Phyllis Campbell, one of nine co-chairs for the anniversary celebration, with coming up with the Hall of Fame idea.
    The Asian Resource Center was the first pan-Asian community center in the United States that focused on education, culture and recreation, said Campbell, president and CEO of the Seattle Foundation.
    "It was quite pioneering, so having an Asian Hall of Fame is logical because it's another pioneering concept," she said.
    The co-chairs wanted to honor good role models from different backgrounds, a mix of familiar names and the relatively unsung.
    The honor for Noji comes 20 years after he set the state record in the high jump, clearing 7 feet, 4 1/2 inches while a junior at Franklin High School . His all-time best was 7 feet 7 inches, remarkable for an athlete who stood only 5-foot-8.
    He was a six-time all-American at the UW, competed in four World Championships and was inducted into the Husky Hall of Fame in 1999.
    "I've appreciated these honors more than (during) my athletic career," said Noji, who retired from competition in 1996 to work at his family's greenhouse business in Kent , then for an Internet service provider in Seattle .
    "It's very special. I'm excited to see other Asian Americans excel in what they do," he said, adding that he also was "a little bit intimidated. Those other four honorees are great representatives."
    Okumoto has appeared in dozens of films and television shows and might be best known for portraying Chozen, the bully in "The Karate Kid, Part II."
    Among his other films are " Pearl Harbor ," "Johnny Tsunami," "True Believer" and the upcoming "Only the Brave," in which he plays a World War II sergeant in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was largely made up of second-generation Japanese Americans.
    "I try to select roles that are positive portrayals of Asian Americans," said Okumoto, a Los Angeles native who moved to Seattle four years ago.
    "It's pretty difficult to do that; you have Caucasians writing for Asians and not necessarily well. ... Whether (the character is) good or bad, I try to portray him with strength and dignity."
    Okumoto and his wife, Angela, own and operate Kona Kitchen, a Hawaiian-style restaurant in Seattle 's Maple Leaf neighborhood.
    Wei, a native of Beijing , came to Washington in 1989 as part of a cultural project and became inspired by the regional landscape. Art critics say his oil paintings -- often depicting wheat fields, country roads, rugged coastlines and late-afternoon shadows -- display a sense of loneliness.
    "I came here to this great land and real life," said Wei, as his wife, Lin, translated. "I live, I see, I feel, I think and I express with (and) through art."
    Wei said the honor of being included in the Hall of Fame is "not only a recognition for my art, but also affirmation of the value and significance of art itself, and great esteem for the value of human spirit in the 'material world.' "

9/9/04 The Daily Californian Michelle Malkin Defends Racial Profiling in Speech: Roughly 75 Protesters Interrupt Speech With Chants of 'Shame'
    Drawing more than 250 people to Dwinelle Hall last night, syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin took an unconventional stance in her speech as she justified America's Japanese internment policy and post-Sept.11 racial profiling practices.     Calling these policies necessary for national security during wartime, Malkin, an author and Fox News Channel commentator, said "civil libertarians" use the "internment card" too much, drawing on Japanese internment to counter current racial profiling practices.
    "Misguided guilt about the past continues to hamper our ability to prevent future terrorist attacks," she said.
    Drawing on her research of government documents, exhibits and textbooks, Malkin said that nearly half of World War II internees were European, which she said is glossed over in textbooks.
    Malkin also said there was a serious threat of Japanese invasion, pointing to intercepted intelligence messages describing Japanese government officials in Los Angeles , San Francisco and Honolulu monitoring military shipments into West Coast.
    Malkin tries to fill in what she said is left out of school books in her controversial new book, "In Defense of Internment: The Case for 'Racial Profiling' in World War II and the War on Terror."
    Malkin was met with nearly 75 students and activists gathered in front of Dwinelle Hall holding fliers and picket signs, some not only protesting her visit but also the Bush administration and budget cuts.
    "It's harmful to spread this type of ideology, to justify racial profiling," said Evonne Lai, co-chair of the Asian Pacific Council, who was protesting Malkin's book.
    Some students were skeptical of the facts presented in her book.
    "The thesis of Malkin's book is not only factually incorrect but dangerous -dangerous in our current political situation and incredibly insensitive to the victims of this denial of justice," said junior Matt Tokeshi.
    Dozens hoping to hear Malkin speak, including many demonstrators, were shut out of the full auditorium.
    With chants of "shame" seeping in from outside of the room and protesters banging on the door, Malkin had to stop her speech periodically to be heard.
    "The real shame is that people are too close-minded to consider the evidence I have," Malkin said, adding they "don't understand what a liberal education truly is."
    Malkin emphasized she did not advocate "rounding up all Arabs and Muslims and tossing them into camps."
    The inconveniences of profiling should not be any reason to hinder national security, she said. Inconveniences are preferable to being "incinerated at an office desk by a flaming, hijacked plane," she said, which elicited cheers from the audience.
    "Wartime profiling has nothing to do with prejudice," she said. "It's a matter of life and death."
    Malkin also said she should not be classified as a "right-wing pundit," adding she is critical of the Bush administration's profiling measures.
    "There are profiling measures already built into our laws ... that were not being implemented," she said. "I think the Bush administration bears responsibility for these failures."
    Some students from Berkeley College Republicans, which sponsored the event, said Malkin presented enough evidence to back up her claims.
    "I do agree with her point on racial profiling," said Amaury Gallais, president of BCR. "It's a very important practice that we need to put in place in order to improve our national security."

9/8/04 Detroit News:  Car Culture : Shame on Ford for 'Japanese vs. domestic' rhetoric about car pool bill ,
By Ann Job
    When will Michiganians realize that Detroit s more-than-20-year-old Japanese versus domestics battle cry is worn out and ineffective when it comes to todays legislators and policymakers?
    In fact, such ethnic labeling can backfire, as it has in California , where a Los Angeles Times writer suggests Ford Motor Co. leaders are a bunch of girlie men, using Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggers term, generally, for wimpy people.
    Heres the background: Ford Chairman and CEO Bill Ford sent a letter to California objecting to legislation allowing some gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles to use car pool lanes even if only the driver is inside.
    Using the old, 80s rhetoric, Ford told Schwarzenegger and lawmakers that the proposal amounts to a buy Japanese bill.
    Why? Because it will keep Fords new Escape Hybrid rated at 31 miles per gallon on the highway in the congested, noncar pool lanes, while solo travelers in Japanese-built hybrids such as Toyota Motor Co's Prius and Honda Motor Co's Insight will be rolling by in the diamond lanes because they meet the laws required minimum of 45 mpg.
    Did anyone in Dearborn realize or care that the Japanese comment might offend the bills co-author, George Nakano? Nakano is a U.S.-born Japanese-American from the Los Angeles area who spent four years in an internment camp in World War II.
    Did anyone consider that using the Japanese argument might not be well received in California , which has the largest Asian population in the country?
    Did Ford know that Nakano wants to buy an Escape Hybrid? Even after the letter, the lawmaker, who has been driving a Chevy SUV not a Toyota or a Honda wants one of Fords clean SUVs, according to Nakano spokesman David Fein.
    Nakano was not approached by Toyota or Honda to draft the legislation, Fein said. And Toyota hasnt raised a ruckus because its Lexus RX hybrid SUV, due next year, isnt expected to qualify for the car pool lanes either.
    Nakano simply has been a fan of car pool lanes pretty much as long as he has been in office, Fein said.
    Schwarzeneggers administration sponsored the bill, so the governors signature is a no-brainer. Spokeswoman Terri Carbaugh said the measure will focus attention on the most fuel-thrifty vehicles and encourage Californians to reduce oil use and pollution.
    Its not meant as a slap at Ford Motor, which has been active in environmental issues, she said.
    The next step will likely be a federal waiver to adjust the rules for car pool lanes on federal highways.
    I doubt the Japanese-versus-domestics argument will work on the feds either.         Ann Job is a California-based free-lancer.

9/4/04 Long Beach Press Telegram: "Asian-Americans voted Democratic in 2000; Analysts watch for 2004 impact, warn that group doesn't vote as a bloc,
    The impact Asian-American voters will have on the upcoming presidential election remains a mystery to local election experts.
    "The tendency in the last three presidential elections has really been more toward the Democrats, nationwide as well as in California ," said Don Nakanishi, director of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA.
    But will that pattern continue in November?
    Data and polling on Asian-American voters are scant compared to other ethnicities and only regional exit polls of Asian-American voters have been conducted.
    A Southern California exit poll in 2000 by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center showed 60.5 percent of Asian Americans voted for Democratic candidate Al Gore, while 33.5 percent voted for President George W. Bush and 6 percent voted for other candidates.
    Polls done earlier this year contradicted each other, showing Asian Americans wholly supporting either candidate.
    "Traditionally, research has shown that high party identification also means high voter turnout, which explains the voting pattern for African Americans and some Latinos," said Sandra Chen, a John Kerry organizer. "But for Asian Pacific Islanders, we are, according to sociologist Robert Putnam, 'still a mystery."
    Chen is a Monterey Park resident and former director of the Center for Asian Americans United for Self Empowerment.
    Asian Americans live mostly in strong Democratic states, like California , New York and Hawaii , Nakanishi said. As a bloc, Asian Americans vote at a high rate, but that doesn't translate into big numbers.
    According to the U.S. Census, 2 million Asian Americans (83 percent) registered to vote actually cast a ballot in the 2000 presidential election, 3 percent of all cast ballots.
    If the narrow margin between Gore and Bush in 2000 is any lesson, then it is that "every vote counts," Nakanishi said. But he added the lack of an Asian-American bloc in swing states may limit the impact of its voters.
    Asian Americans also make their voices heard through regular campaign contributions, Nakanishi said.
    Albert Huang, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the civil-rights group 80-20 Initiative, said Asian Americans are not a unified voting force.
    Certain factions among the community are guaranteed to vote Republican,     Huang and other experts said.
    The conservatives among Asian-American voters are typically Taiwanese and Vietnamese immigrants who still think in terms of capitalism versus communism, and a strong right-wing Christian movement among Koreans, experts said. Japanese, Filipinos and Chinese voters typically vote for Democrats, they said.
    Kirk King, an 80-20 Initiative member, said anecdotal evidence shows more Asian Americans will turn out at the polls for Bush this year compared with 2000.
    "Bush is doing a great job," King said. "I do believe more Asians are going to come out and vote for him this time."
    He said Bush's two Asian-American Cabinet members appeal to voters and his "war on terror' rings strongly with Asian Americans.
    When considered through the lens of class identity, Huang and King agree Asian Americans will tend to vote much like any nationality. Asian Americans with money and education will likely vote for Bush, as will new immigrants. Because second-generation Asian Americans often have less education and more labor-intensive jobs, they will likely vote for Kerry, they said.
    Neither party, nor the media, has conducted polls that truly represent the way Asian Americans might vote this season, said Kathay Feng, voting specialist for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center . And without the polling data, politicians really don't pay attention to Asian Americans, she added.
    This year, Asian Americans are included in the Bush and Kerry campaigns, but their two parties typically lag in outreach to Asian Americans, Feng said.
    The bigger picture shows Asian Americans do not get very involved in politics at all levels of government, Chen said.
    "Research shows that Asian Pacific Islanders vote for Asian Pacific Islander candidates," Chen said. "And that Asian Pacific Islander candidates generate political enthusiasm and participation."
    The problem is, there are few Asian-American candidates for elected office, Chen said.
    "I don't think Asian Pacific Islander voters realize the power of local elections," Chen said. "And the power of the Asian Pacific Islander vote."

9/1/04 Washington Post: "Grand Old Party Showcases Its New Diversity; Faces Change, but Ideology Is the Same,"
    New York : While the party captured only a fraction of the minority vote in 2000, this year, the GOP has the most ethnically diverse national delegation in its history. More than 800 of the 4,853 delegates and alternates at the convention, or about 17 percent, are members of racial or ethnic minorities -- up from 10 percent four years ago, according to the Republican National Committee. African American representation is up an estimated 65 percent, Asian American representation up nearly 40 percent, and Hispanics, a group the Republican Party has been heavily courting for years, make up the largest minority, adding 15 percent to the 100 percent surge Republicans saw between 1996 and 2000, party officials say.
    A stroll through the convention floor at Madison Square Garden leaves no doubt that the stereotype of the party consisting of middle-aged white men is giving way to a new makeup: younger, older, blacker, browner members. The delegation includes 297 Hispanics, 290 African Americans and 104 Asians or Pacific Islanders. But the party has recruited minorities without altering its ideology, much as a church invites new congregants into its fold. Black or white, young or old, and moderate or conservative, for that matter, the delegates here are all on the same page.

8/25/04 Minnesota Star Tribune: Wisconsin 's Hmong resettlement: Newcomers will get help from predecessors.
    She laughs now about her trial-and-error introduction to American life. But at the time, she said, it was often traumatic and humiliating.
    "These new people will not have to make the same mistakes we did," she said.
Wisconsin has earmarked about $6 million from state and federal sources to help resettle an estimated 3,600 Hmong immigrants this year.
    The money includes $1.4 million in assistance for housing and other living costs, $1.8 million for employment and training, and nearly $500,000 to expand health screening contracts with local agencies, according to figures compiled for a task force appointed by Gov. Jim Doyle.
    The total includes nearly $1 million sought by the state Department of Public Instruction for school impact aids.
    The refugees from the Wat Tham Krabok compound in Thailand will join more than 46,000 Hmong now in Wisconsin , many of them veterans of American-led military operations in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and '70s.
    Thus, the new wave of Hmong immigrants has a ready support network: tens of thousands of Hmong who have made themselves part of the region's fabric over the past 30 years.
    "These people are not strangers to us," said Xiong, who was appointed by Doyle to lead the resettlement task force. "They are the brothers and sisters, the aunts and uncles of people already living in our state.
    "This year will be like a big family reunion, and I think it's about time they were coming. This should have happened years ago."
    The final wave?
    The new arrivals are among about 15,000 Hmong leaving the shantytown camp, the last of about 300,000 refugees who fled Laos after the Communist takeover there in 1975.
    Minnesota , home to about 60,000 Hmong, expects about 5,000 refugees by year's end.
    Tommy Thompson, a former Wisconsin governor and now U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, announced in late June that the federal government will provide an additional $3.3 million this year to help settle Hmong refugees in Minnesota , Wisconsin and California . Members of the states' congressional delegations have said they will push for more federal money.
    The first refugees began arriving in June. In Wisconsin and Minnesota , the newcomers face tight job and housing markets, schools forced to lay off teachers and social agencies also dealing with budget cuts.
    Wisconsin officials sought $500,000 for services for the elderly but have received $65,000, according to the summary prepared for the task force.
    "We're very concerned about that," said Susan Levy, refugee coordinator in the Department of Workforce Development. "The elderly often feel very isolated. They need social integration. They need access to health care and nutrition programs."
    Hmong settlement patterns have been different in the two states. While most immigrants to Minnesota have gone to the Twin Cities -- St. Paul is home to the nation's largest urban concentration of Hmong -- the Wisconsin immigrants have spread out more, Levy said.
    Four new Hmong families have settled in La Crosse , three in Eau Claire and one in Menominee, said Dan Idzikowski, executive director of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of La Crosse.
    "In the next four weeks, we expect a very large influx," Idzikowski said. "There are many more going to the Eau Claire area than we expected."
    The needs of the new refugees are much the same in either state, Levy said, and Wisconsin officials paid close attention to the fact-finding visit to the Thai camp led in early spring by St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly.
    Xiong, who is completing her doctorate at Hamline University in St. Paul , said she was interested in what the delegation learned about the health and spirit of the children.
    "I want these kids to graduate from high school," she said. "I want them to go to college. They can have the American dream, and education is the one sure way to get there."
    Ensuring access
    The 25-member Wisconsin task force includes educators, religious and political leaders, refugee resettlement officials and leaders from Hmong organizations.
    The panel is to make recommendations on employment, housing, English language instruction and other issues facing the immigrants and to ensure that they have access to health, social and other services.
    "We don't have any state senators yet," she said, referring to Mee Moua, a St. Paul DFLer was elected to the state Senate in 2002. "But we're getting there. We have school board members and other officials."
    More than half of the state's Hmong residents own homes, she said. More than 90 percent are employed, and their median income is well above that of other Hmong populations in the United States .
    In Eau Claire , where 46 of the 397 students in Xiong's Locust Lane Elementary School are Hmong, the resident population includes Xiong's first-wave immigrant parents.
    "My father didn't want to come," she said. "All his family was still in Laos . But he was a soldier, so he was at risk.
    "Finally, he decided he had to go for us [children]. 'We have to take our kids somewhere where they won't have to worry about their next meal,' he said."
    The family settled first in Wheaton , Ill. , where Xiong's father worked third shift at a manufacturing plant, walking four miles to and from the job each night. In time, he was able to sponsor relatives, and the family migrated to Eau Claire .
    " Eau Claire seems very accepting," Xiong said. "The nonprofits have stepped up to help with this resettlement. There is some grumbling about this 'adding more people to an already strapped state,' but not very much. Most people have been very kind, asking what they can do to help."
    Much of the local work of preparing for the new immigrants is being done by Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, Jewish Social Services and other nonprofit agencies, which arrange for housing, interpreters and other assistance.
    In addition, each immigrant or immigrant family is connected with an "anchor" family and a mentor "to show them the basics of life here," Xiong said.
    " Wisconsin is welcoming these people," she said.
    Doyle appealed for such a reception when he addressed the first meeting of his task force.
    "We want to do this right," he said. "We welcome these immigrants with open arms and want them to have a good transition."

8/19/04: FAIR Calls for Revealing Sources in Plame, Lee Cases - Courts should Respect Anonymity of Genuine Whistle-blowers
     New York - FAIR, the national media watch group, encourages the reporters and news outlets who have been asked to reveal their sources in the Valerie Plame and Wen Ho Lee cases to cooperate with investigators. Protecting the identities of confidential sources is a journalistic right that should be recognized by the courts, but only when it protects genuine whistle-blowers, not when it shields government wrongdoing.
    Plame is the covert CIA officer whose identity was apparently leaked after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, charged the Bush administration with misuse of intelligence. Lee was a scientist falsely charged by the Clinton administration with being a Chinese spy, and officials seem to have leaked selective information about him in an effort to discredit him in the press.
    Reporters in both cases are being told by investigators to reveal the specific members of the government who transmitted information. FAIR believes that prosecutors' attempts to discover these sources is legitimate, and the ethical journalistic choice is to assist their efforts.
    The ability to protect confidential sources who reveal government wrongdoing is an important journalistic protection that deserves judicial respect. In both the Plame and Lee cases, however, the journalist's sources were not revealing government wrongdoing, but committing government wrongdoing.
    In both cases, the alleged crime was the act of revealing protected information to journalists in order to harm the government's enemies. Given that the alleged criminal acts apparently involved oral conversations between government officials and journalists, it is likely that no evidence of these purported acts would exist except for the journalists' potential testimony.
    Unless one believes that the government ought to be able to surreptitiously use its enormous information-gathering powers to attack opponents with impunity, investigators must have the ability to ask journalists for their sources in such cases, and to compel them if necessary.
    Some have presented these cases as government assaults against the freedom of the press. "Journalists should not have to face the prospect of imprisonment for doing nothing more than aggressively seeking to report on the government's actions," declared Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times (8/13/04), whose reporters have been subpoenaed in both cases. But in neither case were reporters reporting on governmental activities; rather, they were taking part in a governmental activity, namely the selective and illegitimate revelation of information to damage an individual.
    Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for a Free Press told AP (8/18/04): "All this has to do with secrecy. The government is trying to keep more and more secrets all the time, and journalists are working harder to uncover those secrets." Dalglish misses the larger context, which is that the government's misuse of the power of information involves both concealing and revealing information as it suits its purposes.
    The reporters who revealed protected information about Wen Ho Lee were not exposing government secrets, but violating an individual's privacy. And the journalists who are protecting the identity of the officials who outed Valerie Plame are actually participating in a cover-up of official wrongdoing.
    The motive and effect of government leaks are the critical questions, and courts can and should make a distinction between legitimate whistleblowing and illegitimate governmental attempts to use information as a weapon. If Valerie Plame's name had been leaked to expose an illegal covert operation, it would be an entirely different matter and should be treated as such by the legal system. The First Amendment exists so that the press can be a check on government abuse of power, not a handmaiden to it.

8/18/04 Associated Press Hiram Fong, first Asian-American senator, dies at 97,
    Honolulu - Hiram L. Fong, a son of immigrants who overcame poverty to become a millionaire businessman and the first Asian-American elected to the U.S. Senate, died Wednesday. He was 97.
    Fong, a Republican, died at his home with his wife, Ellyn, and daughter Merie-Ellen Fong Gushi at his side, said Maureen Lichter, spokeswoman for Finance Factors, a financial company Fong founded.
    Fong had been hospitalized recently at St. Francis Medical Center in Honolulu but had gone home Saturday, Lichter said. She said she did not know the cause of death.
    Gov. Linda Lingle ordered all Hawaii state flags flown at half-staff at state buildings.
    "Hiram Fong was a legend in his time," said Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii. "He will always be fondly remembered."
    Fong, once a poor shoeshine boy, rose from the slums of Honolulu to the U.S. Senate, where he served almost 18 years. He also served as president of nine companies.
    "I'm symbolic of the opportunities afforded to a person in a democracy," Fong once said on the campaign trail.
    Fong was elected one of Hawaii 's first two senators in 1959, and remains the only Republican senator the state has had. He was re-elected twice and retired in 1977.
    "Those of us who have been privileged to represent Hawaii after him owe him a deep debt of gratitude for the legacy he left behind for Hawaii in Washington ," said U.S. Rep. Ed Case, the youngest member of Hawaii 's all-Democratic congressional delegation.
    Civil rights were a focus of Fong's Senate career. His amendment to a civil rights bill required auditors at polling places to assure minority voting rights, he said.
    Fong also co-sponsored a 1965 bill assuring that Asians would be allowed to immigrate in similar numbers as people from other continents.
    Fong was born Yau Leong Fong, the seventh of 11 children of Chinese immigrants. His father worked as an indentured laborer for a sugar plantation, and his mother was a maid.
    His birth date sometimes is listed as Oct. 1, 1907. But an oral history, based on a translation of Chinese family records and conducted by a University of Hawaii librarian, lists his birth date as Oct. 15, 1906.
    Early in his adult life, Fong decided to change his name to Hiram, "just because it was a good name." Most newspaper accounts embellished the story, saying he picked the name in honor of Hiram Bingham, one of the first New England missionaries to arrive in Hawaii in the early 1800s.
    Fong began working at the age of 4, when he picked and sold algarroba beans for cattle feed. By age 7, he was selling newspapers and shining shoes on the streets of Honolulu .
    Fong worked his way through college collecting overdue bills and guiding tourists at Oriental temples. He graduated with honors in only three years from the University of Hawaii in 1930, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1935.
    "He was a great believer in the American dream because he was a product of it," said his son, Hiram Fong Jr., a former Honolulu city councilman.
    He won a seat in the Territorial House of Representatives in 1938, the same year he married high school sweetheart Ellyn Lo.
    Fong resigned his House seat in 1942 when he was called to active duty with the Army Air Corps. He left two years later as a major and judge advocate of the 7th Fighter Command of the 7th Air Force. He later retired from the Air Force Reserve as a colonel.
    He returned to Hawaii politics in 1944, serving four years as vice-speaker and six years as speaker of the Territorial House. Fong and other Republicans were dumped in 1954, the beginning of the Democratic Party's continuing dominance on Hawaii politics.
    While out of politics, Fong concentrated on his law practice and business interests. He was founder and chairman of the board of the Finance Factors "family" of finance, insurance, realty and investment companies, and was a director of several other companies.
    His burning passion after leaving public office was Senator Fong's Plantation and Gardens, a 725-acre commercial botanical garden he opened in Kahaluu in Windward Oahu in 1988.
    Fong filed for bankruptcy protection in March 2003. He attributed the filing to a dispute with his youngest son, Marvin. Lawsuits filed between father and son were dismissed in December 2003.
    Fong is survived by his wife and four children, Hiram Jr., Rodney, Marvin and Merie-Ellen.

8/17/04 Wall Street Journal:  In the U.S., Indians Gain Political Clout: Democrats and Republicans Alike Court Highly Successful Group,
By Nishad H. Majmudar
    During the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month, party Chairman Terry McAuliffe took time to thank a group of delegates and supporters for their backing, telling them: "I will never forget your friendship."
    In the audience were members of a growing and increasingly potent political force: Indian-Americans. Numbering close to two million, Indian-Americans may be a small voting bloc, but they are the nation's wealthiest ethnic minority group and a prime target for both parties in a closely fought election.
    Moreover, Indian-Americans are becoming more politically active, energized by issues such as post-9/11 discrimination and rising medical-malpractice-insurance costs for the huge cadre of Indian doctors.
    "There are two things that the parties know about: The community's wealthy and they haven't become entrenched in a single party yet," says Nishith Acharya, a former Clinton administration staffer who organized various rallies for Indian Democrats in Boston . "Both parties are making a big push to convince our community that they're the party that represents it best."
    According to the latest census data, the median income of Indian-American households in 1999, the most recent year for which data is available, was $63,669, or $21,700 above the national level. Nearly 30% of the half-million Indian-American households had incomes above $100,000, compared with 12% of all U.S. households. Many Indian-Americans made fortunes during the dot-com boom.
    During the 2000 presidential campaign, just one Indian-American ranked among fund-raisers who gathered more than $100,000 for George W. Bush. This year, four Indian-Americans are in that class of 300 contributors dubbed "pioneers" by the Bush campaign. Zach Zachariah, a Fort Lauderdale cardiologist from southern India , has earned "Ranger" status for helping raise $20 million as co-chairman of finance for the president's campaign in Florida .
    For more modest donors, Florida Indian-Americans supporting President Bush threw a series of $2,000-a-person cocktail receptions that included both Indian and American hors d'oeuvres. "The Americans love the Indian food," says Raghavendra Vijayanagar, a Tampa heart surgeon who is chairman of the Indian-American Republican Council, founded three years ago to pursue legislation on medical malpractice and small-business issues.
    On the Democratic side, a newly formed fund-raising group, South Asians for Kerry in 2004, established chapters in four cities. Last month, the New York chapter raised $1 million at a breakfast featuring the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry, and vice-presidential nominee, Sen. John Edwards. By contrast, such fund-raisers for the 2000 nominee, Al Gore, were rare in the South Asian community, which includes smaller populations of ethnic Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalese and Sri Lankans.
    At the Democratic convention in Boston , there were five separate gatherings for Indian-Americans and South Asians, compared with just one informal event at the 2000 convention in Los Angeles . In addition, the number of Democratic delegates of South Asian origin more than doubled, to 55, from 25 four years ago.
    In part, analysts say Indian-Americans are more active in politics because the first major wave of immigrants has assimilated. "People who came to the U.S. in my generation through the 1970s and early '80s were in this country to make a good life for themselves," says Inder Sud, an adjunct professor of international affairs at George Washington University . Now that the community overall has achieved economic success, it is prepared to focus more of its efforts on civic activism, Mr. Sud says.
    Some Indians also were jolted by the post-Sept. 11, 2001, security buildup, concerned that Sikhs, Indian Muslims and those with dark complexions were subject to discrimination or racial profiling. One response was a new group called the Sikh Coalition. Formed in late 2001, it runs voter-registration drives at temples and keeps a database of post-9/11 hate crimes on its Web site.
    "The tightening of civil liberties...and the resultant discrimination by federal authorities has really impacted our lifestyles," says Harpreet Singh, a Sikh Coalition co-founder.
    With the global war on terror, some Indian-Americans are worried that the U.S. is becoming too close to Pakistan , which India accuses of sponsoring terrorism in the disputed region of Kashmir .
    There are no reliable statistics on recent voting patterns by Indians, but many political activists believe Indian Democrats outnumber Republicans. The U.S. India Political Action Committee, a nonpartisan group formed in 2002 to lobby for issues of interest to Indians, surveyed its 25,000 members and found that 60% were Democrats and 40% supported the Republicans.
    But Republicans seem to be making inroads among a prominent group of Indians -- physicians concerned about the escalating cost of medical-malpractice insurance. Some of the 38,000 Indian doctors in the U.S. are particularly incensed by the addition of Sen. Edwards, a former trial lawyer who made much of his fortune by suing physicians, to the Democratic ticket.
    "The medical community would have a very hard time supporting someone who is never going to be in favor of tort reform," says Sharad Lakhanpal, a Dallas rheumatologist and Bush Pioneer. Dr. Lakhanpal also is the immediate past president of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, a group that has been courted by Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee .
    In past elections, a scant number of Indians have run for office. But this is slowly starting to change. This year, nearly a dozen South Asians are running for U.S. Congress, though just one, Republican Bobby Jindal of Louisiana , a former gubernatorial candidate, is considered a strong contender. If victorious, Mr. Jindal would become the first Indian-American elected to Congress since 1956, when Dilip Singh Saund was a representative from California .
    In hopes of fostering a new generation of political hopefuls, another newly formed group, the Indian American Leadership Initiative, began training young professionals in skills such as polling, fund raising and media relations in 2001. So far, about 300 have completed the training, though none have run for office.
    "It used to be that Indians felt like it was enough to make money and be successful," says Mona Roy, a Lexington , Mass. , patent attorney and Kerry supporter. "We were the good minority where we'd stay in the background and didn't make noise."
    For this election, Ms. Roy says she will canvass in New Hampshire , write letters to newspaper editors and make phone calls to undecided voters. "I did not do this stuff for Gore-Lieberman and I'll never forgive myself for it," she says. "I was rich, it didn't matter. "

8/14/04 Los Angeles Daily News:"Proposal called 'son of 187': Backers want constitutional amendment limiting immigrant benefits"
    Invoking the national 9/11 Commission Report, California activists are promoting a constitutional amendment to ban the state from issuing driver's licenses and non-federally mandated government benefits to illegal immigrants. 
    Sponsored partly by the co-author of Proposition 187 -- the controversial 1994 ballot measure that precluded illegal immigrants from receiving public benefits, which won the vote but was struck down in court -- the constitutional amendment would bar the state from issuing illegal immigrants any identification documents, trade licenses or breaks on college tuition. 
    "It's time that we control the outflow of money that is going to provide those that are illegally here in this country all of the benefits that they receive," said retired Republican state Sen. Dick Mountjoy of Monrovia , co-author of Proposition 187.     
    The move comes as the Legislature is considering a bill to permit illegal immigrants to have California driver's licenses, and in an election year as Democrats and Republicans reach out to immigrants and other new voters -- particularly Latinos, the largest minority group in California .
    Rick Oltman, a spokesman for the Federation of American Immigration Reform, which supports the constitutional amendment, cited the independent 9/11 Commission Report on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
    Oltman noted the report's recommendation that the federal government provide uniform standards for government-issued identification to prevent such documents from getting into the wrong hands.
    And he said the report seems to suggest that the airplane hijackers would have been aided in their mission had they been able to legally obtain driver's licenses.
    "It is clear that the proponents of mass immigration and open borders want driver's licenses for illegal aliens. They're working hard in many of the states to do that."
    State Sen. Gilbert Cedillo, D- Los Angeles , has been working for about a decade to pass legislation allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. He called the proposal "Son of 187" and assailed its organizers as anti-immigrant.
    Save Our License, the organization behind the proposal, is led by West Covina Republican activist Mike Spence. Two Republican assemblymen representing the San Diego area also endorsed it at its unveiling last week, as did two Latino activists.
    "Mike Spence and his Republican cohorts are still on a 10-year-old playbook that mainstream California does not support," said Cedillo, who authored Senate Bill 1160, which would allow illegal immigrants to apply for driver's licenses, as well as a previous bill to do the same that was signed by former Gov. Gray Davis but repealed by the Legislature after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office.
    "This is a time for us to bring our state together and look for ways to build unity, not division."
    The state Republican Party declined to comment on the proposed constitutional amendment, with spokeswoman Karen Hanretty saying only that "the party hasn't taken a position."
    But spokesman Bob Mulholland of the state Democratic Party, noting the support of Republican lawmakers for the initiative, said the initiative shows the dark side of the GOP. "Much of the Republican Party wants to bash Latinos."
    Proposition 187, heavily backed by former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, passed handily at the ballot box in November 1994 but much of it was later overturned in court, partly because it was ruled that illegal immigrants could not be denied federally-mandated health and welfare benefits.
    The new initiative, submitted for review to the state Attorney General's Office last week, deals only with state-mandated assistance, including health care and welfare benefits.
    According to the six-paragraph amendment proposal targeted for the March 2006 ballot -- it must secure 600,000 valid signatures to qualify -- state and local governments would be prevented from issuing taxpayer-funded assistance to illegal immigrants not mandated by federal law.     
    Mountjoy and Spence believe Proposition 187 would have been upheld in court had Davis, a Democrat, and current Democratic Attorney General Bill Lockyer pursued a vigorous legal defense, and as such the proposed amendment requires state officials to exhaust all appeals if the new measure is passed by voters and comes under legal attack.
    The proposal would also empower any citizen of California to sue the state for providing non-federal benefits to illegal aliens. Proponents reject the idea that passage of the measure would cause a political backlash against the Republican Party.
    "This is not anti-immigrant. We support legal immigration. Most of us are children or grandchildren of legal immigrants," Assemblyman Mark Wyland, R-Vista, said. "What this is about is the law of the land. What distinguishes this country from most other societies that have existed is the law means something."     PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT:
    Would prohibit illegal aliens from receiving state-subsidized health and welfare services. Would not prohibit illegal aliens from receiving federally mandated benefits.
    Would prohibit illegal aliens from obtaining government-issued identification documents, including driver's licenses.
    Backers must gather 600,000 valid signatures. The proposed amendment is targeted for the March 2006 ballot.

8/13/04 asianweek.com: "Capitol Watch: Arnoldtown"
By Maeley Tom
    The election of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has generated such a buzz that the most frequent question I am asked nowadays is How is life in Sacramento with Arnold as governor? He has certainly shaken up the establishment here, for better or worse. He is also still learning on the job. After nine months in office, lets take a look at how the APIA community has fared under his budget and appointments so far.
    Governors Budget Impacting APIA Communities
    Education: Education is the number one issue in our communities. Many APIA families devote their lives to giving their children the opportunity to earn a college education from either the University of California or California State University system. When the governor originally proposed a budget cut that would turn away approximately 17,000 eligible students for admission, this sent shock waves since so many of these students were APIA .
    Fortunately, the Legislature and the governor were able to forge a compromise so that many of the 17,000 qualified students seeking admission this year will now be admitted.
    Filipino Veterans: The governor proposes to cut the California Veterans Cash Benefit Program that provides a cash benefit to Filipino war veterans. This is a small benefit that California has provided to this most deserving group of aging veterans who fought for the United States during World War II. Legislative negotiators are hopeful, however, that they can push the governor into restoring these funds in the final budget package.
    Health and Welfare: The governor had proposed to limit health, cash and food assistance programs for immigrants. This would have created problems for many of the new immigrant families who rely on these funds to establish themselves in this new country. After hearing from hundreds of immigrant groups and advocates at the annual Immigrant Day rally, the governor changed his position and restored the funding.
    APIA faces in the Schwarzenegger administration?
    One of Schwarzeneggers first cabinet appointments was Secretary of Food and Agriculture A.G. Kawamura. The 47-year-old Kawamura is a founding partner of Orange County Produce. He was also the past president of the powerful Western Growers Association. His department oversees 1,800 employees. He is the highest ranking appointee of this administration and recently feted by the Orange County API Community Alliance headed by Mary Anne Foo.
    Alex Kim is the newly appointed deputy director and community liaison to the APIA community in the governors Los Angeles office. He was the former APIA community liaison for Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn.
    Mark T. Uyeda recently left a private law practice in Los Angeles to become the chief adviser to the commissioner of the Department of Corporations. Uyeda is active in Republican politics but has good friends in the Democratic circles including civil rights lawyer Dale Minami and former Davis Appointment Secretary Michael Yamaki.
    Sophie Wong, former Alhambra School Board member who headed up the statewide APIA outreach effort for Schwarzenegger, is on the transition team. If you recall, Wong received worldwide exposure when she stood right next to the governor-elect in her bright red suit during his acceptance speech on election night.
    She was quick to blame the slow appointment process on the California Performance Review, a summary of recommendations put together by a blue ribbon panel of experts on how to streamline state government to make it more cost-efficient and accountable. Recommendations include the merging, consolidating and eliminating of certain departments, boards and commissions, including the Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs. Several public hearings will take place to gather public input before the process for implementing the recommendations is decided.
    She is still working with Matt Fong, former state treasurer, on over 100 resumes. They say they have had difficulty in recruiting qualified candidates because many are in successful businesses that prevent them from relocating to Sacramento .
    Impression of Schwarzenegger to Date
    I respect the tremendous task this governor has faced in maintaining a level of services expected by Californians without raising taxes during a budget deficit. I have also appreciated his willingness to admit his mistakes and change his positions if he feels there is justification. Perhaps this budget experience has helped the governor appreciate the very complex budget issues facing the most populous state in the nation. Bottom line, thanks to the Legislatures efforts and the governors willingness to listen, the APIA community has fared better than others from the budget negotiations.
    The next test will be how this governor responds to legislation that directly affects the APIA community.

8/13/04 asianweek.com: "Rising to the Challenge,"
By Roland Nguyen
    Asian Pacific American athletes competing in the Olympics have come a long wayfrom Hawaiian swimmer Duke Kahanamoku, who was the first APA to compete and win the gold in 1912, to then 18-year-old gymnast Amy Chow, who helped put U.S. womens gymnastics on the map by capturing team gold and a silver herself at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, Ga.
    Asian Americans, while continuing to be one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the nation, remain a minority in sports, and the Olympics is no exception. It is inspiring, though, that with every successive Olympic competition, APAs are increasingly seen rising to the challenge.
    In honoring the champions competing during this Summer 2004 Olympics in Athens , AsianWeek is proud to present our second Olympics issue dedicated to the Asian American athletes who have met their challenge.
    We hope that by putting the faces of these athletes on our pages, more Asian Pacific Americans across the country will be inspired to challenge themselves, if not athletically, then in any other challenge they face, be it in the work place, school or society as a whole.

Lulu Chang also contributed to this story.
Badminton Howard
Born: Feb. 22, 1979; Ho Chi Minh City , Vietnam
Current Residence: Orange , Calif.
APA Ethnicity: Vietnamese-born Chinese
Height: 57
Weight: 153 lbs.
Event: Mens Doubles
Interesting Tidbit: Bach was chosen as one of People Magazines 50 hottest bachelors of 2004.
Bach on his APA identity:
I identify myself as American. I guess if I had to say, I would call myself Chinese American. But then if I was basing it on where I was born, Id be Vietnamese American. Its all mixed up. I mean, my last name is German, you know, like the composer.

Diving
Kimiko Hirai Soldati
Born: April 10, 1974; Longmont, Colo.
Current Residence: Magnolia, Texas
APA Ethnicity: Hapa Japanese American
Height: 51
Weight: 112 lbs.
Event: 3-meter Springboard
Interesting Tidbit: Soldati lost her mother to breast cancer in 1991 and now wears Judy Hirais wedding ring into competition.

Soldati on the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II (her father was born in an Idaho internment camp):
Its come full circle for us. The very country that imprisoned my family has embraced me and lifted me up. Im very proud of my family and I wont diminish what they had to go through by pretending that I understand it. What impresses me most is the way they didnt pass down the bitterness to their children. I am extremely proud to be American, and the reason lies in the way my family raised me. Its not about forgetting; its about forgiving. We dont forget, but not forgiving hurts no one but yourself. I am the beneficiary of amazing people who taught me a love for country as well as a love and respect for family.

Gymnastics
Mohini Bhardwaj
Born: Sept. 29, 1978; Philadelphia , Penn.
Current Residence: Los Angeles , Calif.
APA Ethnicity: Father Indian, Mother Russian
Height: 410
Favorite Event: Vault
Interesting Tidbit: While raising funds to pursue her Olympic dream, Bhardwaj caught the attention of actress Pamela Anderson, who decided to sponsor the gymnast with a check for $25,000. The former Baywatch star not only cheered on her beneficiary at the Olympic trials, but will also purportedly go to Athens to watch Bhardwaj compete for a medal.

Wrestling
Stephen Abas
Born: Jan. 12, 1978; Santa Ana, Calif.
Current Residence: Colorado Springs, Colo.
APA Ethnicity: Hapa Filipino American
Height: 55
Weight: 121 lbs.
Event: Mens Freestyle 55 kg
Interesting Tidbit: Abas has been practicing capoeira, the Brazilian martial art, for five years and incorporates its movements into his wrestling technique.

The youngest of seven children, Abas began wrestling at the age of 7 with his older brother Norman in the backyard of their Oakland home with only rocks and thorn bushes to break their falls. By the time he finished high school at James Logan High in Union City , Calif. , Abas had won the state championship three years in a row. After enrolling at California State University Fresno, Abas proceeded to garner three NCAA championships, joining his brother Gerry as the schools second four-time All-American athlete. In 2004, Abas left his post as assistant coach at Fresno State to train at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs , Colo.

Track & Field
Bryan Clay
Born: Jan. 3, 1980; Austin, Texas
Current Residence: Azusa, Calif.
APA Ethnicity: Hapa Japanese American
Height: 511
Weight: 185 lbs.
Event: Decathlon
Specialty: 100m Dash, Long Jump, 110m Hurdles, Discus
Interesting Tidbit: Clay suffers from asthma, yet he refuses to take medication out of fear that he might somehow test positive for a banned substance.

The son of a military family, Clay moved to Hawaii when he was just 5 years old. Troubled and angry over his parents divorce, the young Clay picked so many fights with players on his school basketball and soccer teams that his mother told him, No more team sports. The restriction led him to track where the angry adolescent eventually grew to become a proud high-school state champion and later a devoted college All-American athlete. Clay graduated from Azusa Pacific University in Azusa , Calif. , in 2003 with a degree in social work, and he hopes to mentor other kids like him in the future. Today, he is an outside favorite to win a medal in Athens .

Wrestling
Tele Odonnell
Born: July 16, 1982; Homer, Alaska
Current Residence: Colorado Springs , Colo.
APA Ethnicity: Hapa Japanese American
Height: 54
Weight: 121 lbs.
Event: Womens Freestyle 55 kg
Interesting Tidbit: As a child, ODonnell wrestled and pinned sheep on the homestead where she was raised so that her mother, Claire, could shear them.

ODonnell on calling fellow Asian wrestlers the Jap Pack:
We started calling ourselves that because so many of us were Asian. I hope its not offensive to anyone because its not meant to be derogatory in any way. But since then, the Jap Pack has grown. Now we have members of the Jap Pack that are not even Asianthey just want to hang out with us.

    For the second time in a row, AsianWeek has published the only guide of Asian American Olympic athletes, Asian Americans Going for the Gold.
    This 40-page booklet, made possible by the sponsorship of Pacific Gas and Electric and Providian Financial, will include full-color photos and biographies on the 20 competing athletes.
    PG&E is proud to support these important representatives of our local community in this exciting historical event, said Linda Chin, vice-president of PG&Es General Services and Performance Management.
    Added Alan Elias, senior vice-president of Providian Financial, The wonderful thing about the Olympics is that for a two-week period the diverse nations of the world can put differences aside and join together in the celebration of sport. Providian is pleased to sponsor this special edition of AsianWeek and wish all athletes best wishes in their pursuit of gold.
    APA OLYMPIAN MAGAZINE AVAILABLE: For more about our APA athletes in Athens , AsianWeek has published a 40-page magazine, Asian Americans Going for the Gold. Please check upcoming issues of AsianWeek on how you can obtain this special magazine.  

8/12/04 National Review : If You're API and You Know It ...vote Democratic?
by John Derbyshire
    The California Asian Pacific Islander (API) Legislative Caucus convened its first annual policy summit, "Speaking in One Voice" on June 7, 2004, at the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Sacramento. The Summit , the first of its kind, reflects the growing political strength and consciousness of the API community... - APA News & Review ( Sacramento ), Aug./Sept. '04
    Yes, folks, it's election season, time for the quadrennial head-scratching about the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the Jewish vote, and, of course, the API vote. (That's not a typo in the reference tag, by the way. "APA" stands for "Asian Pacific American," a newer term than "Asian Pacific Islander." Obviously modeled on "African American" - the preferred term since the 1970s for Americans visibly of black-African ancestry or part-ancestry - "APA" seems to have originated in the "Race, Ethnicity, and Politics" section of the American Political Science Association. Because of its upbeat emphasis on the Americanness of the referents, my guess is that "APA" will soon supersede "API" altogether. As the news snippet above indicates, though, it has not done so yet.)
    The VNS exit poll for the 2000 presidential election showed 2 percent of voters identifying themselves as "Asian," breaking 55-41-1-3 for Gore-Bush-Buchanan-Nader. More APIs will be voting this year - probably 2.2 percent of the electorate. How will their vote break? Permit me to scratch my head.
    In the first place, it is instructive to look at what "API" (or the newer, more user-friendly "APA") actually means. Asia stretches from the Suez Canal to the Bering Strait, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Coral Sea . Whatever "API" signifies, it is certainly not a race in either the biological or the social-construction sense. A Samoan has no more in common with an Iranian than he has with an Irishman; a Pakistani is further removed from a Korean on any given criterion - linguistic, cultural, religious, phenotypic, or genetic - than he is from a Norwegian. "API" is in fact a very odd category, even more absurdly artificial than "Hispanic." The folk gathered thereunder have only this one common characteristic: They, or their recent forebears, hail from somewhere between Istanbul and Tahiti .
    How many APIs are there? The US census for the year 2000 showed 3.6 percent of the population identifying as "Asian alone," with a further 0.6 percent as "Asian in combination with one or more other races." As always in the dismal business of racial classification, it is hard to be sure that the definitions from one source match those from another - especially when a source has an interest in inflating its figures! - but it seems to me that the 2000 census definition of "Asian" agrees pretty well with "API." After another four years of increase, via immigration and the natural reproduction of a mostly young population, probably around 4.5 percent of the U.S. population could fairly be classified as APIs. (That 4.5 percent includes many non-citizen residents unable to vote - hence the discrepancy with the 2.2 percent of the electorate mentioned above.)
    So...how are they going to vote? I'll give my best guess in a moment. First, let's look at how API activists would like their people to vote. The clue here is in the title of that policy conference in the news clip I started with: "Speaking in One Voice." A concerted effort is under way to get APIs voting as a bloc. There is, for instance, the "80-20 Initiative."
    Here is the logic behind 80-20. Around 110 million Americans will vote in November. If my guess that 2.2 percent of these voters will be APIs is correct, that means about 2.4 million API votes. If half those votes were to go to candidate X and half to candidate Y, then X and Y would each get 1.2 million API votes. If, on the other hand, APIs were to vote as a bloc, with 80 percent voting for X and only 20 percent voting for Y, then X would get 1.92 million API votes while Y would get only 0.48 million - a difference of 1.44 million votes nationwide (60 percent of 2.4 million).
    Now, any American presidential hopeful worth his salt would juggle chainsaws while standing in a pit of rattlesnakes with his hair on fire to win the favor of 1.44 million voters. This is especially true after the 2000 close photo-finish. And the outline analysis I have offered above does not even take into account regional weightings. Over half of APIs live in California , New York , or Hawaii . At the time of the 2000 census, three-quarters lived in just ten states, containing 47 percent of the U.S. population.
    Reading the aforementioned APA News & Review and looking at the 80-20 Initiative website, it is not insuperably difficult to figure out which names the API activists would like to see substituted for candidate X and candidate Y in the previous paragraph. The 80-20 Initiative is in fact a vote-gathering exercise on behalf of the Democratic party, and if there is any organization with "API" or "APA" in its name endorsing George W. Bush for president, I have not been able to locate it.
    At a first glance this is not very surprising. There's nothing new about ethnic-bloc voting; in U.S. politics, there is hardly anything older. And for at least a century, well-defined groups of new immigrants have always turned first to the Democratic party as their representative. A conglomeration of such groups - even one as artificial as is gathered under the "API" label - is likely to do so, too. Furthermore, a high proportion - around 80 percent, I would guess - of movers and shakers in the world of API activism are Chinese, and Chinatown has always been a Democratic bastion. One of the first things I ever saw in the U.S. was a large banner strung across Mott Street , in New York 's Chinatown , promoting the mayoral campaign of Democrat Abe Beame in English and Chinese.
    On further thought, there are good reasons why recent API citizens should be less likely to bloc-vote Democratic than was formerly the case. Certainly you can still find ill paid sweatshop and restaurant workers in Chinatown; but of recently naturalized API immigrants, to judge from my own and my wife's naturalization ceremonies, the largest groups by far are middle-class technical or professional people from India and China (or Taiwan). Their usual first reaction to our outrageously high levels of income taxation is stunned horror. They have a good work ethic, are strong for law and order, regard the welfare system as an amoral racket to be gamed (though one which, I am sorry to say, they often join in the gaming of), and are surprisingly often on the restrictionist side of the immigration debate.
    So what does the Democratic party offer APIs? To judge from the 80-20 Initiative website, the answer seems to be: victim status.
    [L]iberty and justice remain an unrealized dream for Asian Pacific Americans, APAs. A low glass ceiling hangs instead over our heads, denying us the opportunity to rise to the top of our professions, just as it hung over women and blacks until recently.
    API is the new black, you see. This notion has more resonance with middle-class APIs than you might think. Both Chinese and Indian immigrants bring with them to the U.S. a profound sense of having been historically wronged: the Chinese by the "century of humiliation" (Opium Wars to WW2) at the hands of Western powers and Japan, the Indians likewise by a century under British imperialism. There is also, running through Chinese culture, a strong emotional tendency toward self-pity, illustrated by a high proportion of Chinese novels, movies, and TV shows, and noticeable even in ancient literary productions. This is fertile soil for the seeds of victimology.
    There is also the appeal of socialism. We think of East and South Asian immigrants as vigorously entrepreneurial, and indeed many are. There is, however, a strong counter-current running deep in both cultures. In Confucian China and those nations influenced by Confucianism, the dream of every capable young man and the entire object of the educational system was, for two thousand years, to get a government job. (Confucius himself spent his whole life seeking state employment.) Statism was not such a force in pre-modern India, but that country only recently emerged from a half-century of Fabian socialism, and the appeal of state employment must still be strong among many Indians.
    Whether these psychological and historical factors are enough to fulfil the hopes of the 80-20 proponents, I rather doubt. My guess is that 2004 exit polls will show only a modest strengthening of the 55-41 Gore-Bush split, due largely to the solid anti-Bush sentiments of Arab and Muslim Americans (who mostly count as "Asian" in census figures). I'd be surprised if the bias went beyond 60-40, though.
    A split of the order of 80-20, as desired by the API activists, would, I believe, be a very bad sign for the country. The U.S. electorate already has one racial bloc voting 90-10 for Democrats. If we were to acquire another such, even a pseudo-racial bloc like the APIs, voting 80-20, the thought might begin to occur to the 69 percent of Americans who are un-black, un-Hispanic, and un-API that they might try an 80-20 strategy themselves. Let's see: 69 percent of 110 million is 75.9 million; 60 percent of that is 45.5 million. Now that is a voting bloc.

8/12/04
Top-10 Companies for Asian Americans according to Diversity Inc. 
1. JP Morgan Chase 
2. SBC Communications 
3. Xerox 
4. Prudential Financial 
5. Marriott 
6. General Electric 
7. Army and Air Force Exchange Service 
8. KPMG 
9. Price Waterhouse Coopers 
10. Verizon Communications 
Courtesy of Bill Imada

8/6/04 AsianWeek.com: Newcomer High Immigrant Supporters Strike Back at S.F. Superintendent.
By May Chow
    Tensions were inflamed in late June when San Francisco School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, the first African American woman to hold that post, made veiled accusations of racism against Newcomer High School s mostly Chinese student body.
    Students who heard the superintendents comments are totally baffled by the insinuations of racism because they know the diversity that exists in Newcomer, said Cyntha Cen, whos been teaching ESL reading and language development at Newcomer for the past two years.
    Ackerman told the San Francisco Chronicle on June 28: I understand racist behaviors and racist policies when I see them. Its the elephant in the room that none of us will talk about. Im really disappointed, and the minute you bring it up, everybody gets offended. Im now saying enough is enough. Im going to call it the way I see it.
    The School Board and Ackerman want to place XCEL Academy classrooms at the Newcomer campus next year, taking up about 40 percent of the schools instructional space. The new students are mostly black and Latino. The population at Newcomer is about 50 percent Chinese; 35 percent of Newcomer students are Spanish speakers from Mexico and Central and South America .
    Cen said race is not the issue: From the very beginning, we were concerned with the impact another school, which will bring approximately 180 students and use 40 percent of our instructional space, will have on our school program.
    Newcomer, located in Pacific Heights at 2340 Jackson St. , was founded in 1979 and has served as a learning center for recent immigrant students. It offers the districts only one-year transitional program for limited English proficient students.
    Phil Ting, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, criticized the way the district handled the decision. Others pointed directly to Ackermans role.
    She never met or talked with Newcomer students to get our input, so its not fair that she said that we were racist, said Vanessa Zhan, a former Newcomer student.
    Demands from the Newcomer advocates include an apology from Ackerman, as well as a community meeting with her, and a guarantee that the displacement of Newcomer students will last for one year only.
    As the child of immigrants, I understand the importance of inviting parents from different cultures into the system and allowing them opportunities to become more involved in the school.

8/6/04 Associated Press: Unabashed Racist Leads Tenn. GOP Primary,
    Memphis, Tenn. - An unabashed racist will represent the Republican party in the November election for a congressional seat after a write-in candidate failed to derail his effort.
    With 86 percent of the primary vote counted Thursday, write-in candidate Dennis Bertrand had just 1,554 votes compared to 7,671, or 83 percent, for James L. Hart, a believer in the discredited, phony science of eugenics. 
    In November, the GOP candidate will oppose Rep. John Tanner, a Democrat who has represented the northwest Tennessee district for 15 years. 
    Hart, 60, vows if elected to work toward keeping "less favored races" from reproducing or immigrating to the United States . In campaign literature, Hart contends that "poverty genes" threaten to turn the United States into "one big Detroit ." 
    "I didn't expect to win," Hart said. "I thought their network would beat my ideas."
    He has run for the 8th District seat before and drawn little attention. But people began to notice this time because he was the only Republican on the ballot.
    Since the deadline for getting on the ballot had passed, Bertrand, also a Republican, began a write-in campaign, saying he wanted to protect the party's honor.
    "I think his beliefs are not beliefs of any party that I know of," Bertrand said Thursday night. "I knew it was going to be a really long shot, but in good conscience, I had to at least give it an attempt."
    Bertrand, a financial analyst and former military officer, was on active duty with the National Guard when the deadline to get on the primary ballot passed.
    Hart said he will have lots of time to campaign for the general election since he was forced Wednesday to resign from his job as a real estate salesman because of the attention he drew during the primary.
    "They didn't say 'You're fired' in exactly those words, but it was pretty clear what they wanted," Hart said.
    While campaigning, Hart sometimes wears a protective vest and carries a .40-caliber pistol, but he said he has run into no trouble.
    "When I knock on a door and say white children deserve the same rights as everybody else, the enthusiastic response is truly amazing," he said.
    If a black person opens the door, he says he simply drops off campaign literature and leaves.

8/5/04: Asian American Conservative To Release Book Justifying Internment of
Japanese-Americans http://michellemalkin.com/archives/000337.htm

8/4/04 Honda: Investigation Granted into Chaplain Yee Case Inspector General Agrees to Request for Formal Inquiry
    Washington, DC - US Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose) today announced that the Inspector General (IG) of the US Department of Defense has agreed to his formal request for an investigation into the US Army's court martial of James Yee, the Muslim chaplain who resigned from the Army on August 2 after being subjected to months of questionable military legal procedures.
    "Chaplain Yee's treatment by the US Army clearly warrants an investigation into the handling of his entire case, including whether his detention was supported by adequate evidence and appropriate legal charges," Congressman Honda said. "I have grave concerns about the government's track record of unsubstantiated charges - most notably in the case of Wen Ho Lee - and Chaplain Yee's case raises serious questions about the way the military administers justice."
    Citing "irreparabl[e] injur[ies]" to his personal and professional reputation due to the Army's "unfounded allegations," Chaplain Yee on August 2 submitted a letter of resignation to the Army, requesting formal discharge as of January 7, 2005.
    The issue stems from the September 10, 2003 arrest of US Army Chaplain Yee, a commissioned officer of Islamic faith whom Army officials held in solitary confinement for 76 days on a variety of charges ranging from treason to mishandling classified documents.
    The Army later dropped all criminal charges, opting to pursue a non-judicial punishment that Chaplain successfully fought on appeal before his full reinstatement.
    In response to allegations that the Army denied Chaplain Yee the military courtesies commensurate with his rank and targeted him because of his religious affiliation with Islam, Rep. Honda publicly called for an investigation into the matter to ensure that the Army complies with accepted rules of law.
    On June 4, Rep. Honda sent a letter to Joseph Schmitz, Inspector General of the Department of Defense, formally requesting an investigation into the Army's criminal probe and court martial of Captain Yee.
    Rep. Honda authored the letter in conjunction with House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Ike Skelton (D-MO), House Armed Services Total Force Subcommittee Ranking Member Vic Snyder (D-AR), and Armed Services Committee member Adam Smith (D-WA).
    In the wake of Yee's announced resignation, Rep. Honda contacted the IG's office seeking an update of his request for an investigation. The IG informed him that, in response to his request, it "will conduct an investigation into the issues raised with respect to" the matter of Chaplain Yee's treatment by the Army. The IG will initiate its investigation this fall.
    "I am pleased that the Defense Department has decided that they will investigate the circumstances surrounding Captain James Yee's detention," Rep. Smith said. "It is important that this matter is investigated and that any improprieties surrounding this case are resolved."


8/4/04 Houston Chronicle: Second Jap Road may be renamed: Fort Bend city plans to reinstate its original title,
    Richmond, TX - It may be a dusty country lane with only one sign marking its name, but Fort Bend County officials are taking no chances.
    Road had two names
    Stavinoha said the small section of the road in the town limits has been referred to by locals as Moore Street .
    "From FM 1489 to (town) it was called Jap, so for a long time the road has had two names," Stavinoha said.
    Before the item can be placed on commissioners' agenda, Stavinoha said, county officials have to confer with the local 911 agency to make sure the name does not conflict with the names of any other roads in the area.
    "If that works out, then we will go back and name it Moore the way Orchard wants it to be," Stavinoha said.
    Stavinoha said Fort Bend 's elected leaders decided to act on the matter after the debate arose in Jefferson County .
    "It was brought to our attention we had a Jap Road here, so we decided to do something before it causes a controversy," he said.
    Change sought for years
    Sandra Tanamachi, of Lake Jackson , taught school in Beaumont for 10 years and had been trying to get Jefferson County to rename Jap Road for at least a decade.
    Tanamachi also wrote a letter to Fort Bend elected leaders recently asking them to change the name.
    She said she's pleased to learn that commissioners will consider the issue.
"I think that is just wonderful news," she said Tuesday. " Moore is much better than what it was."
    Meanwhile, Demny has already written to commissioners asking for the name change.
    "It is not a good name for a street. I didn't like it, " Demny said. "It should be called Moore all the way through to FM 1489."

8/3/04 Seattle Post-Inbtelligencer: Army chaplain Yee to resign: Muslim cleared of spying charges cites 'irreparable damage' to career,
    Army Capt. James J. Yee of Fort Lewis, a Muslim chaplain cleared of espionage charges when the government's case against him collapsed in March, has decided to leave the military.
    Yee, 36, a West Point graduate, cited continuing frustrations, including "irreparable damage" to his career that began with unfounded leaks last year, his 76 days in prison last fall without a hearing and a continuing gag order imposed by the Army that prevents him from defending himself publicly.
    Yee, who lives with his family near Olympia , asked to be discharged next Jan. 7 and expects to pursue a graduate degree in international relations, said his lawyer, Eugene Fidell of Washington , D.C. Because of the military gag order, Yee cannot comment, Fidell said.
    The Army must approve the resignation. Fidell said he believes the Army will grant it.
     Fort Lewis spokesman Lt. Col. Bill Costello confirmed that Yee's superiors had received the letter, but said he did not know when Yee might get an answer.
    "It'll go through the chain of command, and they'll either approve it or disapprove it," Costello said.
    A portion of Yee's letter, released through Fidell, cited several reasons the chaplain is leaving the service.
    "In 2003, I was unfairly accused of grave offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and unjustifiably placed in solitary confinement for 76 days. Those unfounded allegations -- which were leaked to the media -- irreparably injured my personal and professional reputation and destroyed my prospects for a career in the United States Army," Yee wrote.
    "The only formal punishment I received (on matters having nothing to do with national security) was overturned, but at the same time official statements again unfairly tarnished my reputation," Yee said.
    Indicating frustration at the Army's gag order since then, Yee said "my ability to defend myself against this pattern of unfairness has been impeded by official correspondence, the clear purpose of which is to chill the exercise of my right to free speech."
    Yee said he has waited months for an apology from the government "but none has been forthcoming. I have been unable even to obtain my personal effects from Guantanamo Bay , despite repeated requests. In the circumstances, I have no alternative but to tender my resignation."
    Yee, who studied Islam and Arabic in Syria , was arrested Sept. 10 while serving on temporary duty at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba , where suspected Islamist terrorists are held. Federal authorities initially arrested Yee for carrying purported classified documents out of Guantanamo and linked him to a possible espionage ring.
    Espionage charges never were filed. Instead, the Army charged Yee with failing to obey orders by mishandling classified materials and wrongfully transporting them without proper containers.
    In November, the government added more charges: making a false statement, storing pornography on his government computer and committing adultery with a female military officer. The woman was granted immunity to testify against him.
    The government's case unraveled, however, as Yee's hearings were postponed six times over several months. The government's legal staff accidentally mishandled classified materials, and prosecutors eventually acknowledged they were uncertain whether Yee had classified materials when he left Guantanamo .
    After the criminal charges were dismissed in March, Yee was reprimanded on the adultery and pornography charges. A general, however, overturned those final blemishes on Yee's record.
    Yee's case, though, has drawn national attention. Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, last month calling for an investigation into the fairness of the military justice system and Yee's treatment. In April, Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts in April voiced similar concerns to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

8/1/04 Los Angeles Times: "Republicans Open Little Saigon Office," 
    Hoping to reclaim central Orange County Republicans who have drifted from the party, GOP leaders opened a campaign office Saturday in Westminster 's Little Saigon.
    And in a gesture meant to underscore GOP strength within Westminster , Mayor Margie Rice announced her switch from Democrat to Republican at the Bolsa Avenue office opening.
    "When I joined the [Democratic] Party 54 years ago, it was for the working people, the little people," she said. "This party no longer represents them, and I think the Republicans do."
    The new GOP office, on the second floor of the Asian Village strip mall that houses Vietnamese restaurants, medical clinics and beauty supply stores, represents a strategic foothold in an area that has become more Democratic in recent years, Republican leaders concede.
    GOP leaders say their goal is to register 10,000 Republicans in the 68th and 69th Assembly districts in central Orange County to make up for defections to the Democrats. Republicans still outnumber Democrats in the 68th District by a ratio of 4 to 3. 
    The Westminster office opening overflowed with party faithful and leaders, including Senate candidate Bill Jones, county GOP chairman Scott Baugh, Assemblyman Todd Spitzer (R-Orange) and 68th Assembly District candidate Van Tran.
    Tran, a Garden Grove councilman, could become the first Vietnamese American to be elected to a state legislature. He is running against Democrat Al Snook, a Korean War veteran who operates an insurance business.
    More than half of Vietnamese American voters age 55 to 64 in the 68th District are registered Republicans. But that number drops to 35% among voters 18 to 24, the independent research group Pacific Opinions says.
    Spitzer, who donated $10,000 to the effort to register Republicans, said, "Unless we're very proactive and go door to door and connect with voters, we won't be successful."


7/31/04 San Gabriel Valley Tribune: GOP targets Liu in bid to gain Assembly seats,"
    Pasadena -- The California Republican Party has targeted Assemblywoman Carol Liu and three other state Democratic legislators for defeat in the November election.
    Republican leaders say internal polling has shown Liu, D-Pasadena, is vulnerable to a challenge from a well-funded, moderate Republican and are promising to pour money into her opponent's coffers if the trend holds.
    The decision represents a major break for Republican challenger Lynn Caffrey Gabriel, who stands to gain both technical and financial assistance in her campaign to unseat Liu.
    "We are are very optimistic that we are in a very good position and welcome the fact that the leadership has noticed it,' said Sheila McNichols, campaign manager for Gabriel. "If we work really, really hard they (the state GOP) will probably provide some support farther down the line.'
    State Republican Party spokeswoman Karen Hanretty said the four seats were selected after reviewing past election performances and voting patterns in last year's gubernatorial recall election.
    But Hanretty cautioned that Gabriel will have to prove herself a credible candidate to keep the state GOP interested in the race.
    "We will certainly help with the ground game and get out the vote efforts,' Hanretty said. "Then we will have to see how her numbers progress over the next couple of months.'
    Liu is considered the least vulnerable of the four, which also includes Assemblywomen Nicole Parra, D-Bakersfield; Barbara Matthews, D-Stockton, and Gloria Negrete McLeod, D-Montclair.
    "They must be planning to put a lot of negative campaigning in here because the numbers are not in their favor,' Liu said when told of the decision.
    With voter registration in the district favoring Democrats by 10 to 14 percentage points, Liu said any Republican challenger will have an uphill battle trying to beat her.
    "I don't know if you can do that with somebody whose only claim to fame is being an activist Republican,' Liu added.
    Liu won the last election, in 2002, by 23 percentage points, beating moderate Republican Dan O'Connell.
    Additionally, voters in Liu's district narrowly defeated the recall last year.
    But the GOP is more interested in the fact that the 60 percent of voters who selected a replacement candidate chose either Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sen. Tom McClintock, both Republicans. 
    Fred Register, campaign consultant for Liu, said if the Republicans start pouring money into the race, the Democrats will do the same.
    "The two parties pretty much move in lock-step on this,' Register said. "If the Republicans target Carol, then the Democratic caucus will rally to her defense.'
    Register said he also thought it noteworthy that Schwarzenegger did not visit Liu's district during a recent swing through the state, though he did make appearances in other districts being targeted by the Republicans, most notably in McLeod's district when he called Democratic lawmakers "girlie-men.'     
    The nonpartisan California Target Book, which handicaps political races across the state, has listed the Liu-Gabriel contest as one to watch.
    Publisher Allan Hoffenblum, a former GOP consultant, said Republicans are attracted to the seat because they believe Liu has not made much of an impact as an assemblywoman and because Gabriel, a moderate, has deep pockets to finance her own campaign.
    The test, Hoffenblum continued, will be whether Gabriel can win the support of independent voters and the "soft Democrats' who voted for Schwarzenegger.
    "It would be a mild upset for the Republicans to pick up the seat,' Hoffenblum said.
    The campaign has been mostly quiet thus far, due in large part to wrangling over the budget in Sacramento and a focus on the presidential race.
    But Gabriel's campaign Web site offers a taste of things to come. On it, she slams Liu as a tax-and-spend Democrat, in bed with labor unions and pro-bureaucracy all traditional Republican attacks.
    Liu also is painted as a "backbencher' for not showing more leadership in the Assembly and an ardent supporter of recalled Gov. Gray Davis' policies.
    "The voters retired Gray Davis,' the campaign material says, "Let's do the same to Carol Liu!' Liu first won the seat in 2000 with a slight edge in Democratic registration. Those numbers were bolstered in 2001 when the state Legislature redrew districts to protect incumbents.
    Moreover, she said the presidential campaign will only help her out come Nov. 2.
    "This is a district that is going to work really hard for the Kerry campaign, really work hard to get out the base,' Liu said.

 
7/29/04 San Francisco Chronicle: "Democrats tap rich lode: Young, well-off social liberals.  Pakistanis Big New Supporters of Corzine,"
    Boston -- Eric Greenberg, who made a fortune founding Internet companies during the technology boom, describes himself as a "centrist, moderate Republican." The 40-year-old San Francisco-area resident supported President Bush in 2000 and raised $100,000 for Republicans. Then, he says, the administration alienated him by restricting stem-cell research, a move he believes curtails medical science.
    So when Mr. Greenberg let a Democratic senator, Nevada 's Harry Reid, know that he was now willing to help beat Republicans, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee swung into action. Its chairman, Sen. Jon Corzine of New Jersey , quickly got in touch with Mr. Greenberg to hit him up for funds and get him to raise money from his friends. So far Mr. Greenberg has donated and raised about $400,000 for Democrats, including $140,000 at an event for the senatorial committee. His firm, Innovation Investments, is also a $100,000 co-sponsor of the Democratic convention here.
    Thanks in part to wealthy backers like him, Mr. Corzine's committee, which was $6.5 million in the red two years ago, has pulled in $49 million in this election cycle. That's just $1 million shy of the amount raised by the Republicans' equivalent group, a feat unthinkable a year ago. The Democratic committee has received money from 9,072 individuals so far this year, compared with 5,168 for the entire 1999-2000 election cycle. The bonanza raises the chances of a Democratic gain in the Senate, where the Republicans' current one-vote edge had been widely expected to increase.
    A money machine built by Mr. Corzine, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs Group, is just one element of the fund-raising prowess Democrats are displaying this year. The success is especially striking because the 2002 campaign-reform law's ban on "soft money" -- unlimited gifts to the parties from labor unions, companies and rich people -- was thought to cripple Democrats.
    Mr. Corzine is also finding new ethnic groups to tap. One is Pakistani-Americans, many of whom are angry about immigration-law changes and a focus on Middle Eastern men under counterterrorism policies. Shahid Khan, a Boston-area pharmaceutical consultant, was drawn in through a Pakistani-American friend who works for a senator. Last winter, in his first outing in the donor world, Mr. Khan attended a fund-raising retreat in Miami Beach and ran into Mr. Corzine. Later, Mr. Corzine saw him on the beach and invited him over. Sitting on chaises longues, they talked for an hour.
    Mr. Khan has since thrown himself into fund raising for Mr. Corzine's committee, pulling in about $200,000 at events in New Orleans , Chicago , Boston , Baltimore and New York . Organizers of the New York event were so thrilled with what they raised, $65,000, that they decided to team up with Indian-Americans in a fund-raiser for Mr. Kerry. It drew 500 people and brought in $1 million.
    Mr. Khan's efforts have unearthed people like Omar Amanat, who founded online trading firm Tradescape at age 24 and sold it to ETrade Financial Corp. for $280 million. Mr. Amanat, of South Asian descent, is a former Bush supporter who abandoned the president over concern about infringement on civil liberties. He helped organize the recent New York fund-raiser.
    Last Thursday, between calls to Alabama lawyers and hip-hop music moguls in New York , Mr. Corzine listened to a request from a Texas donor: six seats at a Red Sox-Yankees game Sunday night just before the convention in Boston . Not a problem, said the senator. His committee had bought 150 tickets, at face value. It was now selling them to donors at $5,000 a pair, an arbitrage that would make a Goldman trader envious.  

7/27/04 The New Republic 's Democratic Convention Blog, 7/27/04
http://www.tnr.com/blog/dnc?pid=1850: "Clinton xenophobia,"
    BORROWED: One of the few flaws in Bill Clinton's masterful speech was a dollop of gratuitous, demagogic xenophobia. During his discussion of the budget deficit, Clinton was careful to note that some other countries might be profiting from Bush's economic policies. "[T]hey have to go borrow money. Most of it they borrow from the Chinese and the Japanese government. Sure these countries are competing with us for good jobs, but how can we enforce our trade laws against our bankers? ... [I]f you believe it is good policy, if you believe it is good policy to pay for my tax cuts with the Social Security checks of working men and women, and borrowed money from China and Japan, you should vote for them. If not, John Kerry's your man." This may be true, but there's something unseemly about resurrecting the Yellow Peril this way. Then again, it does feel like fair payback: When Republicans were pushing for the Bush tax cut in 2001, one of their key lines of argument was that if America paid off its debt ahead of schedule, as Democrats were saying we should use the then-huge budget surplus to do, we'd be forced to buy back Treasury bills at needlessly high rates from ... you guessed it: Asian bankers. As my all-knowing colleague Jonathan Chait informs me, one Wall Street Journal editorial addressed this argument to former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, punctuating it with the classy line: "Arigato, Rubin-sahn." 
    Clinton 's line was no quirk. When I asked a Democratic speechwriter about it last night, he told me that with polls showing economic-competition issues like outsourcing to be "off the charts," as the campaign progresses "there's going to be a lot more of that." What comes around goes around, it seems. 
--Michael Crowley
posted 11:57 a.m.

7/25/04 San Jose Mercury News: Asian-American media seeking 
candidates' ads: Some Ethnic Groups Feel Taken for Granted,
    As Democrats and Republicans court blacks and Latinos, Asian-
American media are accusing both parties of ignoring Asians in their 
efforts to attract minority voters.
    New California Media, a San Francisco-based advocacy organization representing ethnic media nationwide, charges that the Kerry-Edwards 
campaign, after saying it would spend $1 million on advertising in Latino 
media and $2 million to reach African-Americans, has said nothing about reaching out to Chinese, Filipino, Indian and other Asian-Americans. 
Together those groups account for nearly 5 percent of the U.S. population, 
but fewer than 2 percent of registered voters.
    The issue is more about symbolism than ad revenues, several prominent Asian-American journalists said at a news conference Wednesday in San Francisco . While wealthy Asians are highly valued for their political 
fundraising potential, they said, ordinary citizens are taken for granted 
when it comes to counting ballots.
    Though their numbers are smaller, Asian-Americans are growing at a 
rate nearly equal to Latinos -- the nation's largest minority group. Yet Asians 
are emerging as the unnoticed electorate.
    ``If they have an ad budget for other minorities, why not Asian-Americans?'' asked Tim Lau, vice president of the Western edition of Sing Tao Daily, a Chinese-language newspaper with a U.S. circulation of more than 100,000. ``We're seen as good campaign donors, but we're not taken seriously as 
voters. I'm disappointed in the lack of sincerity in the Kerry campaign, and 
I don't think Bush is any different.''
    Litto Gutierrez, editor in chief of the 60,000-circulation Philippine News, 
said he was upset because the Kerry campaign media strategy ``sends the negative message that some ethnic communities count more than others. I 
don't care so much about selling ads. But I want them to send the message 
that every one of our votes counts.''
    Sandy Close, director of New California Media, said the group targeted 
the Kerry campaign because of this week's Democratic convention in 
Boston . ``We'll move on to the Bush campaign when the Republican 
convention approaches,'' she said.
    The Kerry campaign responded quickly. In a letter to Close, campaign 
manager Mary Beth Cahill wrote that ``it has always been the intention of the campaign'' to advertise in Asian-American media, and that it was working 
with advisers to ``determine the best way to invest our resources.'' She gave 
no details, however, and Close said the group had asked to meet with 
campaign officials.
    Rep. Mike Honda, D-Campbell, who heads the Congressional Asia 
Pacific American Caucus and serves as a Kerry adviser, said the candidate 
had assured the caucus that ``Asian-Americans will not be an afterthought.''
    ``They understand the Asian-American community is large, but that it's also 
not monolithic,'' Honda said. ``It breaks down into so many ethnic groups and languages, and it is so complex that it takes a sophisticated effort to reach out 
to voters.''
    Likewise, the Bush campaign has not detailed its media plans for reaching Asian-Americans. ``We enjoy great support from Asia Pacific Americans,'' 
said campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt. ``We will continue our dialogue with every community.''
    Nationwide, the Asian-American community grew 42 percent from 1990 to 2000, and the U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2050 it will account for 8 percent of the population. A 2002 report showed 2.5 million registered Asian-American voters out of 4.7 million eligible.
    Nearly four out of every 10 Asian-Americans live in California , according to 
the 2000 census. That's one explanation for the lack of urgency in getting the campaign message out: California is solidly Democratic and not in play in the Electoral College contest that will decide the winner in November. But Honda 
said significant pockets of voters could make a difference in swing states, such as the Chinese in Washington state, Filipinos in New Jersey and even the 
Hmong in Minnesota .
    Feelings of political exclusion are acute in the Chinese-American community, which represents one-quarter of all Asian-Americans. The Committee of 100, 
an organization of high-profile Chinese-Americans, has raised the question of racial bias among the general public as one reason for Asians' disproportionate representation at the national level. Only seven of 535 members of Congress 
have Asian ancestry.
    ``Asian-Americans feel they face a glass ceiling, and that's true in politics 
as well as in corporate life,'' said John Chiang, a member of the Committee of 100 who serves on California 's State Board of Equalization. ``I don't think we're being taken for granted in the presidential election, but we're not very high in the queue.''

7/20/04 JACL Commends Jefferson County Commissioners on Decision to Rename Jap Road.  Commissioners vote 4-1 and ask roads residents for suggestions of new name (San Francisco, CA) 
    After several hours of discussion and testimony presented by advocates on both sides of the issue, the Jefferson County, Texas Commissioners Court voted 4-1 yesterday afternoon to rename Jap Road, a county street that was originally named to honor the contributions of a local farmer, Yasuo Mayumi who lived on the road in the early 1900s. 
    After the vote, County Judge Carl R. Griffith, Jr. appointed two residents of the road to head a committee to present a suitable new name to the Commissioners Court by July 29. 
    The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the nations oldest and largest Asian Pacific American civil rights organization celebrating our 75th anniversary this year, commends the Commissioners for their courageous vote and thanks them for their open-mindedness and sensitivity in deciding to remove the slur and heal the hurt caused by the name of the road. 
    In Jefferson County, this was an extremely controversial issue which is why we are especially grateful to the Commissioners Court for understanding that while history and tradition should be valued, they cannot be allowed to stand in the way of change where those traditions are hurtful, commented George Hirasaki, President of the JACL Houston Chapter. Yesterdays vote dignified the honorable intent of the original namers of the road, and it reflected well on the county. 
    So many people really put hearts into making this change happen -- local residents who have waged this campaign for decades, coalition partners who felt the pain of the Japanese American community and got involved, and certainly the Commissioners themselves who made a difficult vote, added John Tateishi, JACL National Executive Director. This is a wonderful outcome for all of us. We also hope that when the good people of Orange County, Texas hear this decision they will understand why Jap Road had to go and then do the same with Jap Lane. 
    The effort to rename Jap Road began in the mid-1970s and was reinvigorated in early 1990s when then-Beaumont resident and JACL member Sandra Tanamachi saw the road and decided that she as a teacher could not continue to educate her students about doing the right thing while remaining silent about the road name. Along with Tom Kuwahara and with support from the JACL Houston chapter and a coalition of civil rights organizations, they brought the issue to national prominence, culminating in the historic hearing yesterday. 
    Im so pleased, commented Sandra Tanamachi. The people of Jefferson County have been very good to me and my family. I knew that once they understood why the name was so hurtful that they would do the right thing. 
    The JACL also wishes to express its gratitude to the thousands of people who supported the name change by signing the petitions -- circulated both online and locally which were presented to the Commissioners Court during the hearing.
    We are hopeful that the Orange County Commissioners will recognize the reasons for the Jefferson County decision and decide to rename Jap Lane in the Orangefield-Vidor, Texas area.


7/20/04 The Beaumont Enterprise : "End of Jap Road : Residents of area will be able choose new name,"
    Beaumont -- Jefferson County commissioners voted unanimously Monday to get rid of a road name widely considered a slur toward Japanese-Americans.         And in a nod toward the residents of Jap Road , commissioners have asked them to choose the new name. 
    The 4.3-mile stretch of county road in Fannett sparked an emotional three-hour public hearing with 22 speakers requesting a change, 23 asking to keep the name and numerous others contributing written comments. 
    Thomas Kuwahara, 56, of Lafayette , La. , a leader in the effort to change the name, said he hopes residents choose a name that honors Yoshio Mayumi, the Japanese rice farmer who lived on the road in the early 1900s. 
    "We didn't want to pick a fight. We didn't want to cause any heartache. We just wanted something that wouldn't offend Americans of Japanese ancestry," Kuwahara said. 
    Polly Wright supported keeping the name, which predates World War II, to honor Mayumi and the area's history. Wright said her home was built with lumber from Mayumi's. 
    "We feel like they have given us a bad name, and we would like an apology," she said of those who requested the name change. 
    County Judge Carl Griffith asked Wright's husband, Wayne Wright, and Earl Callahan to work with fellow Jap Road residents and recommend a new name by July 29. Commissioners would vote on the replacement Aug. 2. 
    At the close of the hearing, Griffith and all commissioners except Mark Domingue, who represents most residents of the road, said they supported changing the name. 
    Commissioner Bo Alfred said that he does not know what effect "Jap" has on Japanese-American people but he knows how another slur mentioned a few times during the hearing affects him as an African-American. 
    "The n-word was passed about. Every time it was passed, it was a pierce in my heart," Alfred said. 
    Domingue said that he did not support a change. He said commissioners should "surf this wave of political correctness" and instead educate people about the road's history. His vote was recorded as a "yes" because he said nothing during the actual vote. 
    The controversy made news from one end of the country to the other, with stories appearing in publications including the New York Times and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. A Los Angeles-based crew from a Japanese television station attended Monday's hearing.
    After the hearing, Sandra Tanamachi, a teacher in her 50s, shared a tearful congratulatory hug with her son, Tim Nakata, 35. 
    Tanamachi launched a failed effort to change the name more than a decade ago while living in Beaumont . Her family visited The Boondocks, a restaurant then operating on the road, and the road name so offended Nakata that at first he refused to get out of the car. 
    "It's dehumanizing. You feel like less of a person in their eyes when they use that term," Nakata, a San Antonio resident, said. 
    Tanamachi, now living in Lake Jackson , said the change elated her. 
    "I have no hard feelings to the community. I never have. I always knew there were good caring people, and their intentions were always good," she said. "I know they'll find a name they'll really like, and that they can be proud of also." 
    Both sides cited history to support their arguments. 
    Those requesting a change spoke of the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, the service of Japanese-American soldiers in rescuing the "Lost Battalion" in the south of France and individual instances of racism. 
    Supporters of keeping the name spoke of the honorable history of the Mayumi family and the respect they garnered in the community. 
    Griffith said that he, Wayne Wright and the Anti-Defamation League would pay for a historical marker at the intersection of Jap Road and Texas 73 to explain the history of the name. 
    Jodi Bernstein of the ADL's southwest regional office in Houston said that she received a check and several pledges toward the proposed marker at the close of the meeting. 
    The Jefferson County road is not the only one of its kind in Southeast Texas . Orange County has a Jap Lane , named for similar reasons. 
    County Judge Carl Thibodeaux has said there are no plans to change that name.

7/20/04: Largest Asian American Delegation in History To Attend 2004 Democratic Convention.  McAuliffe: Most Inclusive Convention in American History Washington, D.C. 
    The Democratic National Committee today announced that 211 Asian Pacific Islander Americans (APIA) will participate in the 2004 Democratic National Convention, resulting in the largest APIA delegation in the history of political conventions. 
    "The participation of the APIA community in the Democratic Party is reaching record highs," said Chairman Terry McAuliffe. "That growing participation is one reason why I am confident the APIA community will help the Democratic Party win back the White House this November." 
    This year's APIA delegation represents 3.9% of total delegates, up from 3.0% at the 2000 convention, and is part of the 40% of minority delegates attending this year's convention, the most diverse convention in the nation's history. 
    The 2004 Democratic National Convention will be held in Boston July 26-29 and will include the adoption of the 2004 Democratic Party Platform, which includes recommendations on issues important to the APIA Community such as increasing access to healthcare by breaking down language barriers, encouraging small business growth, combating racial profiling, and making college affordable for middle-class families. 
    The convention will focus on the Kerry-Edwards vision for an America that is, "Stronger at Home, Respected in the World," and will conclude with the official nomination of John Kerry and John Edwards as the Democratic ticket.


[webmaster note: Asian Americans make substantial campaign contributions.  Substitute Jews for Asian Americans in this article to determine whether the reporter is a Bigot for the Left]
7/19/04 Associated Press: Asian Population Lacks Political Clout,
By Genaro C. Armas
    Washington - Asian Americans are the country's second fastest-growing minority behind Hispanics. But unlike Latinos, they have virtually no national political clout.
    Eager to change that, activists and political leaders are relying on tried-and-true methods like voter registration drives and educational efforts to get more people to the polls. 
    Yet when it comes to courting Asian voters, political parties appear to be more influenced by some simple math, courtesy of the Census Bureau.
    There were more than 9 million Asians in the United States of voting age in July 2003, up 1 million from three years earlier. Among minorities though, Asians lag behind the 26.3 million Hispanics and 25.7 million blacks of voting age.
    - People of Asian-Pacific Islander background comprised just 2 percent of voters in the 2000 election, compared with 10 percent for blacks and 5 percent for Hispanics.
    - Nationally, Asians represent just 4 percent of the U.S. population, and there is a large immigrant segment in the United States who aren't citizens and therefore can't vote.
    "Asian votes should be courted, not taken for granted," pleads Cao K. O, executive director of the Asian American Federation in New York .
    "At the same time, politicians and the political parties don't know how to court the Asian vote and many in the community do not know enough about the political process," he says. "There's no easy answer."
    David Lee of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee in San Francisco calls it a cycle that "feeds into itself." Parties historically haven't sought Asians' vote and spend little money to get them registered.
    Census data shows the nation's Asian population rose 12.6 percent between 2000 and 2003, behind only the 13 percent increase among Latinos. Hispanics tend to lean Democratic though their votes are increasingly being targeted by Republicans.
    But deciphering how Asians vote can be tricky given the lack of detailed study in the area, says political scientist Paul Watanabe at the University of Massachusetts . Exit polling in 2000 found 55 percent of Asians backing Democrat Al Gore and 44 percent for President Bush. Watanabe cautions against reading too much into such figures because data on Asians are often based on interviews with a small number of voters.
    Drawing on rough estimates, Lee, O and others say there appear to be a roughly equal number of Asians registered as Democrat or Republican, plus a large contingent of independents. In theory, that means Asians could be pivotal in deciding a tight presidential campaign.
    Yet another factor that may be affecting the influence of Asians is that the states in which they constitute the largest shares of the population, such as Hawaii , California and New York , aren't considered toss-ups for the election.
    Of those states generally considered battlegrounds, Oregon , Nevada and Washington have the largest Asian population, though they still make up no more than 6 percent of the state's total population in each case.
    Several nonpartisan groups have targeted those battleground states to get more Asians registered to vote.
    But the efforts can also be stunted by the large number of different languages among those Asians who speak something other than English. That means more money to pay for education efforts or registration drives because ads and materials have to be printed in many languages.
    "It can be very costly, very quickly," Lee says.
    S.B. Woo, a former Democratic lieutenant governor of Delaware, heads a group called the "80-20 Initiative" that hopes to garner 80 percent of the Asian vote nationally this fall behind one presidential candidate, regardless of the party.
    Woo says that would transform Asians into a critical national voting bloc.
    Watanabe is critical of the strategy. Efforts should "principally be concentrated at the local level than attempting to influence politics at the presidential level, where Asian Americans because of their numbers have the least decisive impact."
    Counters Woo, who is now an independent: "You play the hand you are dealt with."
    "To have one minority ignored by the political establishment is not healthy."


7/16/04 New York Times:  Texas Community in Grip of a Kind of Road Rage,"
    Beaumont, Tex., July 14 - It is merely a four-mile stretch of asphalt on this East Texas city's outskirts, dotted with some ranch-style houses, a few decaying trailer homes and a shuttered gun shop, in the distance the rice fields that brought a small group of Japanese settlers here a century ago.
    But the name of the country lane, Jap Road , has long angered many Japanese-Americans. Equally outraged are numerous people who live on Jap Road , which has 100 or so residences; they view criticism of their address as meddling in their affairs.
    "I hear 'Jap' cars and 'Jap' bikes all the time," Buddy Derouen, 69, a retired petrochemical worker who lives on the road, in the community of Fannett, said in a recent letter published in The Beaumont Enterprise. "Why not Jap Road ?"
    The competing positions are set to clash in a meeting on Monday at the Jefferson County Courthouse. Leading the county commissioners' agenda is a discussion of whether they should change the name.
    Advancing the issue this far has been a victory of sorts for Sandra Nakata Tanamachi, whose family settled in Beaumont after immigrating from Japan in the early 1900's. Before moving away to Lake Jackson , south of Houston , Ms. Tanamachi, an elementary-school teacher, lobbied more than a decade ago to have the road's name changed. She was unsuccessful.
    Last December, however, she allied herself with Thomas Kuwahara, a helicopter pilot from Lafayette , La. , who was stunned to come across the road a few years ago while driving to San Antonio to visit a relative. They filed a complaint with two federal agencies - the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development - trying to keep Jefferson County from getting federal money unless the road's name was changed.
    "We Japanese are often ignored, but we're still individuals with feelings," Ms. Tanamachi said in an interview, speaking with a thick Texas twang. "I felt I could not stand in front of my students and talk about values like dignity and respect and not fight this thing."
    Scott Newar, the lawyer representing Ms. Tanamachi and Mr. Kuwahara, said HUD had told them that it did not directly finance any housing programs in the county, a circumstance effectively limiting its actions. The Department of Transportation has asked Texas state authorities to examine the complaint, Mr. Newar said.
    Civil rights organizations, meanwhile, including the Japanese American Citizens League, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Anti-Defamation League, have voiced support for changing the name.
    Considerable outside involvement has come in recent weeks from the Japanese American Veterans Association. Drawing attention to the sacrifices its members made in World War II, the group will be using the meeting in Beaumont to discuss the role of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated Japanese-American unit whose exploits included rescuing soldiers of the Texas 36th Division, national guardsmen who were trapped by German forces in the mountains of eastern France in 1944.
    "Jap Road should not be a part of the United States landscape,'' said Kelly Kuwayama, 86, a member of the 442nd who said he planned to travel from Washington to Beaumont to speak at the meeting. "And Texas is certainly part of the United States , or at least it was the last time I checked."
    The thought of outsiders' descending on Beaumont makes many here bristle. More than 100 residents of Jap Road and supporters of their effort to maintain its name gathered at an open-air bar on Wednesday evening to drink beer, eat barbecue and ponder how to thwart their opponents.
    "We're not here to bash the Japanese," Wayne Wright, a retired petrochemical worker who is spearheading a movement to preserve the name, said in an interview before the meeting. "How can I be considered a bigot and a racist when I got a Puerto Rican son-in-law?"
    Mr. Wright's wife, Polly, said she believed the name was originally intended to honor the memory of Yasuo Mayumi, a Japanese farmer who, according to local lore, settled in the area in 1905 before returning to Japan in the 1920's.
    "If we change the name, we're conceding to the idea that it was meant the wrong way - and it wasn't," said Ms. Wright, pointing to wood on her floor that she said had come from Mr. Mayumi's house nearby. "We're proud of the name of our road."
    Beaumont still has a small Japanese community, numbering fewer than 50, but none were present on Wednesday night at the gathering in opposition to changing the name. Some opponents said they had Japanese friends who were also against changing it, but none of the people whose names they provided responded to requests to speak about the issue.
    "I might be in the same boat if I were them,'' Terry Shima of Gaithersburg, Md., vice president of the Japanese American Veterans Association and former member of the 442nd, said of those maintaining silence. "It's completely understandable. It is very Japanese, especially in a place where you're far outnumbered, to bite your tongue and not make waves. That is part of why we feel this is so important."
    L. J. Bergeron, a retired pipe fitter and former gun shop owner who lives on Jap Road , did not bite his tongue when asked about the name.
    "If it's offensive to someone, they should either move or stay away from here," said Mr. Bergeron, 62, leaning on the Harley-Davidson parked in front of his home.
    A change might focus attention on another stretch of road nearby. The town of Vidor , in neighboring Orange County , has a road called Jap Lane . Carl K. Thibodeaux, who as the county judge is chief among the county commissioners, said officials had no plans to change the name because the residents of Jap Lane were not inclined to do so.
    Ms. Tanamachi, the retired schoolteacher who brought the issue to the fore again here in Beaumont , plans a return Monday for the courthouse meeting. She said she owed it to her uncle, Saburo Tanamachi, who was raised in Beaumont and died in World War II fighting with the 442nd.
    If the commissioners vote in favor of a change - if not Monday, then perhaps later - possible alternatives include Japanese Road or Mayumi Road .
    "Anything but Jap will do," Ms. Tanamachi said.

7/16/04: Info from Bill Wong of http://www.sunfiregroup.com/
    7/19/04 Public Hearing, Jefferson County (Beaumont) Texas Commissioners, To Discuss Jap Road
    People living in the Labelle-Fannett area will soon get a chance to voice their opinions about changing the name of a road that has been in place for about 100 years. Jap Road will be the focus of a public hearing later this month.
    Earl Callahan/Lives On Jap Road: "Every single person signed it."
    Earl Callahan comes from a family of rice farmers who settled in Fannett. He's lived on Jap Road for most of his life.
Earl Callahan/Lives On Jap Road: "I remember Jap Road when it was a dirt road."
    Today about 130 people live along the road. Each registered voter has signed a petition objecting to changing Jap Road 's name.
    Earl Callahan/Lives On Jap Road: "It's like taking something from you when you've been with it all your life."
    This group of Japanese Americans and civil rights activists is from outside of Jefferson County . These people say the word 'Jap' is derogatory, and they want the county to change the name.
    Earl Callahan/Lives On Jap Road: "We don't call Japanese Americans 'Japs.' The road is just a piece of asphalt three miles long."
    Sally MacDonald/KFDM Reporter: "Controversy surrounding Jap Road has surfaced before.  Ten years ago, Commissioner Mark Domingue suggested changing the name to Japanese Farm Road . But a group of Japanese Americans
didn't like that either, and today the name Jap Road is still here."
    The road was named after a Japanese rice farmer who settled here in the early 1900s. He named this piece of land "Jap Farm."
    Mark Domingue/Pct. 2 Commissioner: "All the reports I've had are that Mr. Mayumi was very proud to introduce himself as the Jap from Jap Road ."
    Domingue is not against changing the road's name if it would satisfy both sides.
    Mark Domingue/Pct. 2 Commissioner: "I would love for people of the Labelle-Fannett area to get behind the name Japanese Farm Road ."
    Earl Callahan and more than a hundred other people don't want to have to change their address after so many years.
    Earl Callahan/Lives On Jap Road: "I'm proud to be American."
    That heritage includes living on Jap Road , a place Callahan has always been proud to call home.
    County Commissioners will decide whether to take action on the issue
after the public hearing July 19th.

Jimmie P. Cokinos,
Commissioner, Precinct No. 1
Jefferson County Courthouse
1149 Pearl Street
Beaumont, TX 77701
Phone: (409) 835-8442
pct1@co.jefferson.tx.us
(lost primary, new Commissioner will assume office in Jan. 2005)

Mark L. Domingue
Jefferson County Pct. 2 Service Center
7759 Viterbo Road, Suite #1
Beaumont , TX 77705
Phone: (409) 727-2173
FAX: (409) 722-1916
pct2@co.jefferson.tx.us
(election in 2006)

Carl R. Griffith, Jr.
County Judge
Jefferson County Courthouse
1149 Pearl Street
Beaumont , TX 77704-4025
(409) 835-8466
Port Arthur : (409) 727-2191 x8466
fax: (409) 839-2311
cgriffith@co.jefferson.tx.us
(election in 2006)

Waymon D. Hallmark,
Commissioner, Precinct No. 3
Jefferson County Sub-Courthouse
525 Lakeshore Drive
Port Arthur, TX 77640
Phone: (409) 983-8300
whallmark@co.jefferson.tx.us
(won primary, no opponent in Nov., will return in Jan. 2005)

Everette "Bo" Alfred
Commissioner, Precinct No. 4
Jefferson County Courthouse
1149 Pearl Street
Beaumont , TX 77701
(409) 835-8443
EALFRED@CO.JEFFERSON.TX.US
(election in 2006)

7/16/04 Wall Street Journal, p. A12: "Editorial: Give Us Your Nerds,"
    If Emma Lazarus were composing her Lady Liberty sonnet today, she might consider that line. But who would have guessed in 1883 that immigrants and their children would be so vital to America 's technological prowess more than 100 years later?
    So much of today's contentious immigration debate focuses on those arriving from Latin America to work in agriculture or take low-level service jobs that Americans tend to spurn. But a new study by Stuart Anderson of the National Foundation for American Policy reminds us that the contributions of skilled foreign-born professionals and their offspring are no less important to the U.S. Without them the country would be hard pressed to maintain its world-wide advantage in such fields as math and science.
    The report, titled "The Multiplier Effect," will be released on Monday and available at www.nfap.net. Here are some highlights:

 More than half of the engineers with Ph.D.s working in the U.S. , and 45% of the nation's computer science doctorates, are foreign-born.
 
 Children of immigrants comprise 65% of the 2004 U.S. Math Olympiad's top scorers (13 of 20) and 46% of the U.S. Physics Team (11 of 24).
 
 At this year's Intel Science Talent Search, which recognizes the nation's top math and science students, 60% of the finalists and seven of the top 10 award winners were immigrants or their children. Last year, three of the top four awardees were foreign-born.

    Traditionally, these rigorous competitions have served as a font for the next generation of scientists and mathematicians. More than 95% of Intel Science Talent Search winners pursue science as a career, and 70% go on to earn an advanced degree. But the high rate of success among foreigners is even more extraordinary when you consider the tiny segment of the population that generates it.
    While the whiz kids and their parents hail from nations as far-flung as India , Romania , China , Vietnam , Israel , Turkey and Russia , many are here on a very limited number of H-1b visas that are reserved for immigrants with technical skills. These visas are given out to fewer than 100,000 foreigners each year, which is less than .04% of the 293 million individuals who live in the U.S.
    Anyone who saw "Spellbound," the captivating documentary about the annual National Spelling Bee, knows that math and science aren't the only subjects in which immigrants excel. And policy makers will surely continue to explore why it is that American students aren't competing better in these areas.
    At the same time these findings help illustrate that our economy benefits substantially from immigration, in particular from H-1b visa recipients and their children. Any policy that would depress the influx or close off our borders altogether is not in America 's long-term interest, especially in a world where economic growth and competitiveness will depend above all on human capital.
    If we had listened to the anti-immigration crowd over the past 20 years, says Mr. Anderson in an interview, "we would have wiped out two-thirds of the top future scientist and mathematicians in the United States because we would have barred their parents from ever entering America ."