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  1. #1
    Senior Member Scubayons's Avatar
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    And you wonder why the Education system if Failing

    Another lawsuit for Spanish speaking student


    By Carmen Cardinal



    Chuck Chionuma (center) filed a suit on behalf os another student whose rights were allegedly violated bye her school

    A second federal lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., over alleged abuses of civil rights of a Hispanic student who spoke Spanish in school.
    This time the lawsuit is against the KCK School District.
    Attorney Chuck Chionuma, who filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year against the Turner School District for suspending a student for speaking Spanish, has filed the suit on behalf of Maria C. Rios whose daughter, Tanairi Rios, is15.

    The lawsuit alleges that the principal at Sumner Academy, Mary Viveros, failed to stop racial harassment by other students against Rios. It also alleges that the principal told the girl not to speak Spanish on school grounds during an incident that occurred in the 2003-04 school year when Rios was an eighth grade student.
    The lawsuit names all the members of the school board, KCK Superintendent Jill Shackelford and Sumner principal Mary Viveros.
    Carroll Macke, a spokesperson for the district, denied the allegations in an interview with another publication. Macke said there were no consequences imposed on Rios for speaking Spanish.

    The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in monetary damages and asks the court to stop the district from continuing the alleged practices.
    Chionuma said the practice of not allowing students to speak the language of their parents is widespread in school districts. He said the Rubio story, which has been picked up by the wire services internationally, is teaching Hispanics and others that not allowing them to speak their primary languages is a violation of their civil rights. Many who are realizing that are calling his office for help.
    It also gives school districts and others the opportunity to learn what is acceptable conduct and what is not.
    The district has 90 days to respond to the lawsuit. Chionuma is still waiting for a response from the Turner School District in Rubio’s case.

    http://www.dosmundos.com/editions%20Vol ... u-Ceng.htm
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    You can not be loyal to two nations, without being unfaithful to one. Scubayons 02/07/06

  2. #2
    Senior Member Virginiamama's Avatar
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    When uninsured aliens are hurt, who pays?

    By Alan Bavley







    http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (KRT) A car wreck in November put Caesar Sacaries-Barrios, 23, in a coma. He has been recuperating at Alpine North nursing home. Sacaries-Barrios, who is an undocumented immigrant, has no health insurance.

    Sacaries-Barrios is lucky to be alive - and to still be in the United States.

    The restaurant worker is an undocumented immigrant originally from Guatemala. He barely remembers the wreck that left him in a coma at North Kansas City Hospital.

    He knows nothing about the estimated $250,000 the hospital has spent to keep him alive.

    He's still unaware that the hospital - faced with the possibility of rapidly mounting bills - tried to fly him to his home country in a specially equipped plane while he was comatose.

    "That shows you just how expensive this guy's care is," said Chuck Chionuma, a Kansas City lawyer who has been fighting a legal battle to keep Sacaries-Barrios in the United States. "They were willing to foot that bill just to get him back to Guatemala."

    Shipping a patient home may be an extreme measure. But it's a sign of the frustration at many hospitals across the country as they care for growing numbers of poor, undocumented immigrants.

    The immigrants often work at low-paying jobs that do not provide health insurance. They often do not qualify for government health programs, such as Medicaid, or are too fearful to apply.

    Christina Vasquez Case, director of Alianzas, a University of Missouri-Kansas City initiative that works with the Hispanic community, said she understood how unpaid medical bills could frustrate communities but said the American labor market had a role in creating the situation.

    Undocumented workers "get here, and within 36 hours of being here, the people who want to work, can work," Case said. "That is the reality of it."

    When undocumented immigrants show up at emergency rooms in critical condition, hospitals are ethically and legally bound to treat them.

    "It does seem to be a problem of growing dimensions," said Carla Luggiero, who handles immigration concerns for the American Hospital Association. "At some point, our nation is going to have to grapple with the issue."

    Officials at North Kansas City Hospital declined repeated requests to discuss its care of Sacaries-Barrios but issued this statement: "We are glad that Mr. Barrios is recovering from his injuries, and we wish him well as he continues to progress during his recovery. At this time, we feel it's best not to provide any further comment."

    The cost of caring for undocumented immigrants is impossible to calculate nationally because hospitals rarely track patients' immigration status.

    But when the Florida Hospital Association polled its member hospitals in 2002, it received 700 reports of uninsured non-citizens who ran up bills totaling more than $40 million for childbirth, brain tumors, heart surgery and other care.

    In counties that border Mexico, hospitals and ambulance services estimated that they spent more than $200 million in 2000 caring for undocumented immigrants who were uninsured.

    The problem is reaching deep into the heartland as well.

    Luggiero said she regularly gets calls from states with growing immigrant populations, such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois, North and South Carolina and Kansas.

    Immigrants have been streaming into southwest Kansas for years, attracted by jobs in the region's meatpacking plants.

    In Dodge City, Kansas, 30 percent to 40 percent of patients arriving at the emergency room of the Western Plains Medical Complex are undocumented immigrants, said Brian Roland, the hospital's business office director.

    "Most of them are uninsured," he said. "We do have some folks who do what they can to pay, but a large majority does not."

    Truman Medical Center estimates it spends at least $500,000 a year providing dialysis for eight kidney patients, all undocumented or resident immigrants who do not qualify for public programs such as Medicaid.

    Because the patients are uninsured, the hospital has been unable to find any outpatient dialysis clinics willing to care for them.

    Rather than force the patients to wait until they are critically ill to receive dialysis at the emergency room, the hospital schedules them for visits three times a week.

    "Several of the patients are young adults with families - young children they're responsible for who are U.S. citizens. How do you say no to them?" said Suzanne Meyer, Truman's director of social work.

    Although Medicaid has provisions to pay for the emergency care of some immigrants, eligibility is just as limited as it is for other patients, said Anne Dunkelberg of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a Texas-based advocacy group for people with low or moderate incomes.

    "You have to look like a (regular) Medicaid recipient in every way except for your immigration status," she said.

    When Congress approved a new Medicare drug benefit in 2003, it included $1 billion that will be paid out over the next four years for emergency care to undocumented patients.

    Dunkelberg said that the program would pay only pennies on the dollar.

    "It would be a little marginal bonus to hospitals," she said.

    Most of the money will go to states with large numbers of immigrants, such as California and Texas. Kansas is scheduled to receive $1.1 million this year. Missouri would get $525,000. Sacaries-Barrios' care would absorb almost half that amount.

    Sacaries-Barrios is recuperating at the nursing home. His lawyers say the hospital is paying his bills.

    Through an interpreter, Sacaries-Barrios said he came to the United States about two years ago from Mexico. He worked as a restaurant cook and dishwasher, sending money back to his family.

    The night of Nov. 17, Sacaries-Barrios was riding in a car with a friend. He remembers the car turning over, and he remembers feeling blood.

    According to court documents, doctors diagnosed Sacaries-Barrios as comatose and suffering head injuries and a ruptured spleen. They placed him on a ventilator to assist his breathing and fed him through a tube.

    When the hospital transferred Sacaries-Barrios to Alpine North on Dec. 23, his condition had stabilized, but he was in a persistent vegetative state, incapable of conscious thought or behavior.

    A month later, a hospital physician said that his condition had not changed and that his long-term prognosis was poor, court records said.

    As the hospital worked to identify Sacaries-Barrios and look for family members, word of his case reached Spanish-language radio station La Super X, 1250 AM.

    Rosa Quintana, an account executive with La Super X, said hospital officials told her they intended to send Sacaries-Barrios to Guatemala.

    Although Guatemala has public hospitals open to the poor, they do not provide the same care as U.S. hospitals, said Gustavo Lopez, the Guatemalan consul general in Chicago, who is familiar with Sacaries-Barrios' situation.

    "He wouldn't have the same assistance," Lopez said. "That's the plain truth."

    Quintana contacted Chionuma, who is an immigrant from Nigeria. He agreed to represent Sacaries-Barrios free of charge.

    Chionuma said he met with hospital officials Jan. 26 and pleaded with them to let Sacaries-Barrios stay in the United States. Hospital officials told him they were going ahead with their plan, he said.

    Chionuma began legal proceedings in Clay County Circuit Court to prevent North Kansas City Hospital from moving Sacaries-Barrios. By mid-February, the hospital sent word to Chionuma through its attorneys that it had no intention of returning Sacaries-Barrios to Guatemala.

    The federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires hospitals to screen, treat and stabilize anyone who arrives at an emergency room, regardless of income or immigration status.

    "It sounds to me that (North Kansas City) hospital at least met its stabilization requirements (with Sacaries-Barrios)," said Steve Hitov of the National Health Law Program in Washington.

    "The real question now is: Where does he go? You can't discharge a person into the same danger or worse danger than they were in before."

    In 2003 a Florida hospital flew a patient home to Guatemala after he had run up bills of more than $1 million. The man had come out of a coma but was severely brain damaged. A court later ruled that the hospital did not have a good plan for his continued care and should not have discharged him.

    It is exceedingly rare for hospitals to avoid giving legally required care to undocumented patients, said Gabrielle Lessard of the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles.

    "I think health-care providers try to do the right thing for patients," she said.

    Many undocumented immigrants still stay away from hospitals or fail to apply for government programs because they are afraid their immigration status will be reported, Lessard said.

    "These are people who try not to use health services," she said. "They only go to the hospital if there's no alternative."

    Sacaries-Barrios is making a remarkable recovery. By early February, he appeared to be regaining consciousness. By the end of the month he was out of bed and talking. He's thinking of returning home.

    "The man is coming back to life," Chionuma said.
    Equal rights for all, special privileges for none. Thomas Jefferson

  3. #3
    over40's Avatar
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    Yet another discouraging item. We all pay for this... and it's got to stop. If they weren't here it wouldn't have happened.

    How much of our resources go to support/deal with illegals? It's crazy.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by over40
    Yet another discouraging item. We all pay for this... and it's got to stop. If they weren't here it wouldn't have happened.

    How much of our resources go to support/deal with illegals? It's crazy.
    Yes, sir. we American tax payers pay for the whole trip.
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  5. #5
    Senior Member reptile09's Avatar
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    Try getting medical care without insurance in Mexico. If you are in need of emergency, life saving medical care in Mexico and are not a Mexican National, they demand you pay up front, in cash, in full before any treatment is administered. Yet when an illegal has a stubbed toe in the U.S. and is not given immediate specialty care, a dozen pro-illegal alien advocacy groups and of course, the Mexican Consulate have an apoplectic fit.

    Here in san Diego, when I go to my doctor's office, which shares a waiting room with a County of San Diego free health clinic, every person in there is a pregnant Mexican woman, with anywhere from 4-14 small children in tow, of course none speaking a word of English. All the signs in the office are Spanish on top and then down below in small print in English. When you go out into the parking lot of this place, what do you see? Cars with MEXICO LICENSE PLATES, that's right, not only do we pay for the uninsured illegal aliens living in the U.S. to get free medical care, but people cross the border from Mexico daily to come get free medical care, mostly for pre-post natal/birth delivery care. And of course being as these babies are born on U.S. soil, they automatically get U.S. citizenship and qualify for all kinds of social services at American taxpayer expense. In fact, I think San Diego has got to be the number 2 or 3 county for delivery of 'anchor babies' in America, and many of these are flat out Mexican Nationals.
    [b][i][size=117]"Leave like beaten rats. You old white people. It is your duty to die. Through love of having children, we are going to take over.â€

  6. #6

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    Here in san Diego, when I go to my doctor's office, which shares a waiting room with a County of San Diego free health clinic, every person in there is a pregnant Mexican woman, with anywhere from 4-14 small children in tow, of course none speaking a word of English. All the signs in the office are Spanish on top and then down below in small print in English. When you go out into the parking lot of this place, what do you see? Cars with MEXICO LICENSE PLATES, that's right, not only do we pay for the uninsured illegal aliens living in the U.S. to get free medical care, but people cross the border from Mexico daily to come get free medical care, mostly for pre-post natal/birth delivery care. And of course being as these babies are born on U.S. soil, they automatically get U.S. citizenship and qualify for all kinds of social services at American taxpayer expense. In fact, I think San Diego has got to be the number 2 or 3 county for delivery of 'anchor babies' in America, and many of these are flat out Mexican Nationals.
    Reptile, you have my sincerest sympathy for having to live in San Diego, Northern Mexico. A beautiful city is being sold down the river, like much of the rest of our country, including my state of North Carofornia.

    I wish you well.
    When we gonna wake up?

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