Just a reminder

Beginning on New Year's Day, Arizona's ban on ethnic studies goes into effect.

Hedging

Think Progress has a post up today entitled, "After making ‘American English’ the official language of Texas, GOP recruits Latinos in Spanish." Here's the video featured as part of Texas' new Youtube campaign, "Soy Tejano Republicano(a)."

Now, there are three interesting things about this video. First, judging from the cast of the video, the number of Tejano Republicans is very, very small. Couldn't they have hired actors? One of the featured speakers is clearly not a native Spanish speaker. Given that the point of this video is to attract a wider Hispanic base, one would think that the creators would have preferred to show the breadth of Tejano Republicans by featuring -- well, Tejano Republicans.

The second thing that struck me about this was the way in which these Tejano Republicans talk about "America." As Spanish speakers know, "America" refers to the Americas generally, not to the United States, which is Los Estados Unidos. "Americans" are "Estado Unidenses," not "Americanos." In other words, when you say "Americanos" in Spanish, you may very well be speaking about Mexicans or North Americans genreally. And so it somewhat interesting to note that at least one of the Tejano Republicans featured here (about 20 seconds in) talks about "American" opportunity:

"Soy Republicana porque creo en la oportunidad equitativa para todos los Americanos."

In other words, this is hedging: Republicans stand for equal economic opportunity for all "Americans," but American here means something broader than United States citizens. The sentence could have read "Soy Republicana porque creo en la oportunidad equitativa para todos los Estado Unidenses," but it does not. And why? Because in order to cast itself as pro-Hispanic, the Republican party has to do some serious backbends.

It aint kosher

Disheartening news from Democracy Now!:

Hundreds Protest Iowa Immigration Raid

In Waterloo, Iowa, hundreds of people marched on Sunday to protest last week’s immigration raid at the Agriprocessers kosher meatpacking plant. Immigration agents detained nearly 400 immigrant workers in what has been described as the largest single immigration raid in US history. The raid resulted in more than ten percent of the town of Postville, Iowa being locked up. On the day after the raid, half of the school system’s 600 students were absent, including 90 percent of Latino children, because their parents were arrested or in hiding. Many of the workers have been held at a fairgrounds usually used for exhibiting cattle. No charges have been filed against the owners of the meatpacking plant, Agriprocessors.

More on the raid here, which points out that under the Bush administration, legal action has rarely been taken against corporations that employ illegal immigrants, though, obviously, the undocumented must be held to account.

Thinking Outside the Box

A. Mitchel Fraas passes along a link from the Washington Post which suggests, once again, that Robots spoon-feeding the elderly is the solution to all our problems. (Either that, or the xenophobic fear of immigrants is fueling a boom in Japanese science fiction.)

Demographic Crisis, Robotic Cure?

TOKYO -- With a surfeit of the old and a shortage of the young, Japan is on course for a population collapse unlike any in human history.

What ails this prosperous nation could be treated with babies and immigrants. Yet many young women here do not want children, and the Japanese will not tolerate a lot of immigrants. So government and industry are marching into the depopulated future with the help of robots -- some with wheels, some with legs, some that you can wear like an overcoat with muscles.