Demographic Disparities Among Latinos

Throughout this first chapter of Latino Americans the key points in my opinion were the following. Starting with the origin story of the Americas, the book mentions there might not be a definitive starting point because there “500 nations in North America before a European ship ever dropped anchor off the Eastern Seaboard” (Suarez 3). The book from this point on chronologically starts narrating, first about 55 years before Protestant refugees from Mayflower ever stepped on American soil, a Spanish sailor Pedro Menendez de Aviles forced French protestants from their Florida coast settlement to then stablish St. Augustine. From this point the book continues to tell the stories of Juan de Oñate, from witnessing the founding of Santa Fe, the oldest capital of North America, to exploring more than half a dozen of American states, he is one of the most fundamental conquistadors who is the least

Currently within the United States one of the fastest growing minority population (Schwartz & Scott, 2012) is the Latinos. In 2010 Census Bureau Brief ( Ennis, Rois-Vargas, & Albert, 2011) it stated how an estimated 15 million Latino individuals were living within the United States, which is approximately about 16% of the entire U.S. population. There is one big problem with addressing the Latino population, and that is the family patterns are either misrepresented or not properly understood, due to the label of Hispanic and Latinos being placed together. These two groups may share the same spoken language of Spanish and have similar cultural ancestry but the diversity among Hispanic and Latinos (Schwartz & Scott, 2012) make generalizations about their lifestyles difficult. The term Hispanic came to be used in the 1970’s by government officials (cdc.gov, 2011) in trying to provide a diverse label on this population that had connections to speaking Spanish and the Spanish culture. Latino became more of a termed to be used when distinguishing between Mexican (Hispanics) and Latinos who descendants from Latin America such as Cuba and Puerto Rico.

The following discussion and statements are done so such that they incorporate the ideas and struggles of the Latino races regarding certain subjects down upon chapter 3 “Latinos in the united states” and chapter 4 “borders, immigration and citizenship”. This discussion is about the oppression that people Latinos and Native Americans and other ethnic groups have gone through. Some points in the discussion are oppression towards Mexican American and Native Americans, how they were treated and the impact they had.

Hispanics are the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority group, estimated to be 54 million living in the United States of America. (Office of Minority Health and Health Equity). They work very hard to make both ends meet and also to stay in good health. They are relatively as a source of cheap labor in the American labor market This paper will dwell more on the Hispanic current Health status, how health promotion is described by the group and what health disparities exists for this group.

Latinos and Hispanics have a long history here in the United States of America. The term “Hispanic” is most often used by the government, which is what will be used through the rest of this document. Hispanics are the fastest growing group in the United States and their numbers will continue to increase as years go by. Mexicans are the largest subgroup of Hispanics making up 66% of the population while the other 34% includes Central and South Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Hispanic origins. California, Texas, and Florida have the highest populations of Hispanics. In regards to health insurance, Hispanics have the highest rates of uninsured in the United States.

Thesis Statement: While Hispanic/Latino graduation rates continue on an upward trend, they are still the second highest dropout rates amongst all minorities influenced by a lack of bilingual education programs, low participation in early childhood education programs and a lack of respect for the Hispanic/Latino culture are leading contributing factors to their continued high dropout rate.

Employment challenges and economic disparities amongst Hispanics in the United States has been an ongoing battle, social policies along with institutions continue to perpetuate poverty among Latinos’ and African Americans. According to Liu (2011), Labor market segmentation by race/ethnicity, gender, and national origin has been recognized as a prominent feature of urban labor markets in immigrant gateway cities across the United States. A direct example of this would be when Cubans’ immigrated to Miami in the 1960’s, at first, they were welcomed by the Americans with open arms until they realized they could be in competition for employment as the Cubans were not leaving to go back home. This created many issues especially when it came to welfare,

An all-consuming fear and uncertainty continues to spread among Latino communities nationwide, after hundreds of immigrants continue to get arrested during ICE raids across the U.S. Fear continues to grow among the Latino community in Morristown, N.J., as President Trump has made it clear that he would stick with his deportation force plan. According to the last Census, Hispanics make 34.1% of the population in Morristown, N.J., and it’s estimated that one-third of the 34.1% are illegal immigrants. Amid chaos and outcry, Morristown’s mayor, police chief, community faith leaders, among other city leaders gathered with community members on Feb. 25 in Morristown, N.J. at Millburn Town Hall to discuss the new immigration law and the potential challenges

In an approach to health promotion and the prevention of diseases that affect the Hispanic community disproportionately we can look at prevention in 3 levels, primary, secondary and tertiary. Primary prevention would be preventing a disease or injury before it occurs. This could be done with the use of education and legislation on safety and health practices. Secondary prevention would be reducing the impact of the disease or injury that has occurred. This could be accomplished by early detection and health screenings. Lastly the tertiary prevention would be used to alleviate the impact of ongoing illness or an injury that has lasting effects. This would be accomplished by helping to manage chronic and complex diseases/conditions and permanent disabilities. This would help improve quality of life and life expectancy. One condition, while not a leading cause of death, but on the rise in the Hispanic community is the high incidence of HIV. The incidence rate is 3 time higher for Hispanics than white Americans. In 2013 the HIV rate in Hispanics counted as 23% of all new infections. Hispanic males were 85% of these new infections. ("CDC," 2015)

The research report A call to action on behalf of Latino and Latina youth in the U.S. justice system, focuses on the Latinos community residing in the United States and Latin America. Primarily, the research focuses on Latino/a youths in the criminal justice system. Furthermore, the research report discusses Latino communities are getting differential treatment than other racial and ethnic communities from the United States criminal justice system. The research report has many case studies and story of incidences of Latino/a youths facing racial and ethnic disparities. Some of the examples of disparate treatment of police and criminal justice system provided by the report are police stop, arrest, detention, a waiver to adult criminal court, and sentencing. The justice system has used their discretion to treat Latino youth differently than others. In this reflection paper, I will connect few important issues discussed in the report such as negative stereotyping of Latinos communities and its impact, differential treatment of the Latino community from the police and justice system with the course materials covered in the semester.

Undocumented immigrants in the United States are denied and limited to health care access due to their legal status. However, recent arrived immigrants are healthier than the general U.S. population. According to the National Longitudinal Mortality Study (1979-1989), “Singh and Siahpush (2001) found that all-cause mortality was significantly lower among immigrants than among the U.S. born (18% lower for men and 13% lower for women), after adjusting for age, race/ethnicity, marital status, urban/rural residence, education, occupation, and family income (Acevedo-Garcia & Bates, 2008). While policy and Health Care Acts are denying and limiting health insurance to undocumented immigrants and wanting them out of the country, that may not be an appropriate strategy to promote health insurance in Latino communities since recent arriving immigrants are healthier than the general U.S. population. Some studies suggest that, “Latino and immigrants have more positive health behaviors, particularly related to substance abuse, than their non-Latino and U.S. born counterparts. For example, compared to non-Latino whites, Latinos are less likely to consume cigarettes or alcohol, independent of SES (Abraido-Lanza, Chao, & Florez, 2005)(Acevedo-Garcia & Bates, 2008). However, after several years of acculturating into the majority culture, Latinos/as are becoming accustomed to unhealthy habits that American citizens are familiar with. Researchers have taken in consideration the Latino Health

Latino’s are non-affluent people with better health than the most affluent people, which was a question to America, thence the “Latino Paradox” was established in 1960. The Paradox shows that the U.S has very high levels of depression, and new Immigrants has very low levels of depression. The theory of the Latino Paradox was Mexican families stick together under hard circumstances, conditions and helped each other solve their problems (reason being they have such good health).

The physical and mental ramifications of racial discrimination have been the subjects of scholarly inquiry. Health disparities between different racial groups have been well established in the literature (Williams, 2003). Specifically, scholars have examined the disparate death rates between African Americans and White Americans (Kung, Hoyert, Xu & Murphy, 2008), racial differences in blood pressure (Williams & Neighbors, 2001), and racial differences in cardiovascular disease (Wyatt et al., 2003). Furthermore, researchers have investigated the role of everyday discrimination on self-rated physical health among Latina/os (Molina, Alegria, & Mahalingam, 2013). To address the issue, the authors examined data collected from the National Latina/o

The statistics on Latinos falls in the same gap as those who are African American. How is it that we share the same value of statistics and categorized as minorities?

The increase in ethnic minorities’ immigrants has transformed the demographics of the United States in recent decades. The 2010 U.S. Census Bureau reports that almost 37.3 % of our population (approximately 308.7 million) is made up of ethnic minorities (e.g. Latino/as, African Americans, Asians, and American Indian/ Alaska Native). When compared to other ethnic groups, Latinos/as have showed an increase of about 43 % in the last 10 years; becoming one of the fastest growing populations in the United States (Census Bureau, 2010). However, it is important to note that this percentage of increase is not accounting for the Latinos/as that are undocumented; leaving us to question the actual number of Latino/a immigrants in the U.S. Now public health providers and policy makers are acknowledging the importance of investigating the issues Latinos/as may face.