August 9, 2007: The Denver Channel: Fire Crew Bosses Who Don't Speak English Lost Jobs
With 24 major wildfires burning across the southwestern United States, fire officials need every firefighter they can get. They've done that in Oregon, but it's created another problem. Officials are now having to lay off some of the bosses who manage those firefighting crews because the bosses are not bilingual. Many of the newer hires in Oregon only speak Spanish. "What we do know is 85 percent of the crew makeup is of Hispanic descent," said Jim Walker, with the Oregon Department of Forestry.
The state said all bosses must speak the same language of their crew on the fire lines for safety reasons. They want to make sure that the leader of the crews can quickly communicate during an emergencey if the fire turns or if there is another problem on the fire lines. "Our main concern is that they are safe, and they are in a safe environment, and a lot of that deals with communication," Walker said. Because of the state's language requirement, Jaime Pickering can no longer work as a crew boss and supervise 20 firefighters. He can only manage a squad of four firefighters. "If you have one Spanish guy on the crew, as an English crew boss, you can no longer be a crew boss. You have to step back to a squad boss, which is a demotion," Pickering said.August 7, 2007: VOA News "US Immigration Authorities Step up Deportations of Illegal Immigrants"
The rise in deportations is welcomed by Mike Jarbeck. He heads a Florida chapter of the Minuteman Project, an activist group that opposes illegal immigration. "I want to see every last illegal alien rounded up, identified and sent home.
U.S. government statistics show that of the 150,000 illegal immigrants removed between October 2006 and June 2007, around 90,000 had no criminal record. Again Mike Jarbeck of the Minuteman Project.
"In America, we are a country of laws. And the problem with this is, if we don't enforce the law then what do we have? We have a double standard. We have a whole group of people who are set above the law who the law doesn't apply to. That's unconstitutional. Our constitution does not allow for that."
July 28, 2007: El Paso Times "National Guard Troops Leaving, Border Patrol Agents to Fill In", Bob "Chromedome" Wright interviewed:
Activists who had lobbied for a military presence on the border and hoped the two-year term would become permanent, were disappointed by the partial pullout.
"That's yet another broken promise by this government. The commitment was for two years," said Bob Wright, a former member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps who now started his own group, the Patriots' Border Alliance, based in Deming, N.M. "The little bit of effort they put into it worked. It was certainly a start to have our border protected. Just their presence is a deterrent. Pulling them out is irresponsible. Border security is the single most important issue this country faces."
Apprehensions in the El Paso sector have gone down 42 percent in the past year, from 105,095 from Oct. 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, to 61,387 at the same time this year, Border Patrol officials said.
Despite concerns by immigrants' advocates that soldiers would be trigger-happy on the border, there has not been any incident involving the guard in the El Paso sector. Near Laredo, a three guard members on border duty allegedly ran an immigrant smuggling operation before being arrested earlier this summer.