Pop singer Shakira was given an appointment in the Obama Administration Wednesday.

¿Qué? What?

At first I thought this was a Hispanic Heritage Month joke. But seriously the Colombian-born singer was appointed to serve on the president's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, according a White House press release.

I first wondered what makes the pop singer qualified to serve on an educational commission. Her bio gives some details.

In 1995, Shakira founded the Barefoot Foundation, which operates schools and educational projects in Colombia, South Africa and Haiti that feed and educate around 6,000 children.

In 2003, she became a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund.

In 2008, Shakira served as the Honorary Chair of the Global Campaign for Education’s Global Action Week.

Clearly in addition to making Grammy-winning music she has donated her time to educational issues.

Now there are others with more experience in government and the educational system than Shakira. Many of those experts also are on the commission.

If Shakira can be a spokeswoman or a role model for Latino students and encourage them to stay in school, that is positive.

The high school drop out rate for Hispanics in the United States is around 18 percent. Just under 20 percent of Latinos in the United States have a college degree compared with 41 percent of the general population.

With statistics like that Shakira can help spread the word about the importance of earning a high school diploma or a college degree.

Source  Teresa Puente

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Posted in Barefoot Foundation , Global Campaign for Education’s Global Action Week , Goodwill Ambassador , latin education commission , Obama administration , President Barack Obama , shakira

Recession's Biggest Losers Are Latinos

Blame the housing market. The real estate collapse in 2005 lead to a dramatic decline in Latino wealth to according a Pew Research Center study on wealth in America released Tuesday.

In fact, Pew found that Latinos accounted for the largest single decline in wealth of any racial or ethnic group during the U.S. recession.

According to the study:

Two-thirds of Hispanics' median net worth in 2005 came from home equity. When the housing market collapsed, so did Latino wealth. Median home equity for Hispanics fell by 51 percent in the period of the survey.

Second, Hispanics were more likely to live and buy homes in states such as California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, which were on the forefront of the real estate bubble, enjoying early gains in home values.

The pursuit of the American dream through the purchase of a new home has now proven to be a major factor into the largest wealth gap between white and minority Americans in over 25 years.

"What's pushing the wealth of whites is the rebound in the stock market and corporate savings, while younger Hispanics and African-Americans who bought homes in the last decade — because that was the American dream — are seeing big declines," said Timothy Smeeding, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who specializes in income inequality.

According to the Pew study, the housing boom of the early to mid-2000s boosted the wealth of Hispanics in particular, who were disproportionately employed in the thriving construction industry.

But those gains quickly shriveled in the housing bust. After reaching a median wealth of $18,359 in 2005, the wealth of Hispanics — who derived nearly two-thirds of their net worth from home equity — declined by 66 percent by 2009.

Among blacks, who now have the highest unemployment rate at 16.2 percent, their household wealth fell 53 percent from $12,124 to $5,677.

In contrast, the median household wealth of whites dipped a modest 16 percent from $134,992 to $113,149, cushioned in part by a stock market recovery that began in mid-2009.

"The findings are a reminder — if one was needed — of what a large share of blacks and Hispanics live on the economic margins," said Paul Taylor, director of Pew Social & Demographic Trends.

"When the economy tanked, they're the groups that took the heaviest blows."

The latest data come as President Barack Obama and congressional leaders try to reach a deal to avoid a U.S. default on its financial obligations after Aug. 2.

Democrats and Republicans have been wrangling over proposals that could cut trillions of dollars from programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

They are divided over whether to bring in new tax revenue, such as by closing corporate tax loopholes or increasing taxes for the wealthy.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Posted in hispanic market , latin , Latin America , latino , latino recessions , Pew Research Center , President Barack Obama

In El Salvador, Obama Faces Issues of Immigration and Drug War

The sensitive domestic issues of immigration and drug violence assume center stage as President Barack Obama travels to El Salvador on Tuesday.

The president pivots Tuesday from stops in Brazil and Chile for El Salvador, where he will meet with President Mauricio Funes. Washington is growing increasingly concerned about rising crime south of the U.S. border, and El Salvador is hardly immune. It has seen murder rates rise amid an influx of drugs and displaced traffickers from crackdowns in Colombia and Mexico.

El Salvador also has one of Central America's highest rates of emigration, especially to the United States. About 2.8 million Salvadoran immigrants living in the United States sent home $3.5 billion last year, so laws that crack down on immigrants can significantly affect the Salvadoran economy.

Obama can offer little to fix El Salvador's devastating crime and fragile economy. Fiscal pressures have limited the amount of money the federal government can provide as part of its drug-fighting efforts, and congressional politics have made it difficult to restart talks about overhauling the nation's immigration laws.

Before leaving Chile, Obama will have one more face-to-face session with President Sebastian Piñera.

In a broad-ranging speech that spelled out his policy in Latin America, Obama called on the region's rising economies to take more responsibility and play a larger role both in the region and around the globe.

He also described U.S. initiatives in Latin America to help curb the proliferation of drugs. Congress approved $1.8 billion for the so-called Merida Initiative to fight drugs in Mexico. After complaints that Central America was shortchanged, Congress created a separate Central America Regional Security Initiative with a total of $248 million so far. Central American leaders say that has not been enough.

Obama also prodded the region to fight poverty, lauding countries that have pushed more of their population into the middle class.

"We'll never break the grip of the cartels and the gangs unless we also address the social and economic forces that fuel criminality," he said Monday.

Funes, who despite being elected with support from former Marxist guerillas has charted a moderate course in El Salvador, agrees with Obama that all countries in the region need to contribute to a solution.

Some Central American leaders have expressed annoyance that Obama chose to meet with Funes instead of a broader group of Central American leaders. But Latin America policy experts said it was important for Obama to endorse Funes' pragmatic approach despite the leftist inclinations of his party.

Funes said he would raise the issue of security with Obama in regional terms. "Security cannot be seen as exclusively an issue in El Salvador, or Guatemala or Nicaragua," he said recently. "Central American countries all suffer from the same problem."

Obama conceded Monday that the United States also bears a burden when it comes to gun trafficking.

"Every gun or gunrunner that we take off the streets is one less threat to the families and communities of the Americas," he said.

But Obama, in calling for a new discussion on guns, recently declined to endorse the very gun control measures he had supported in the past.

Source: Associated Press

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Posted in drug trafficking , El Salvador , hispanic market , immigration , Latin America , latino , President Barack Obama , President Mauricio Funes , President Sebastian Piñera