DeeDee Garcia Blase: Undocumented Teen Commits Suicide, Consequences of Failed DREAM Act Continue

May the suicide of Joaquin Luna not go in vain.

DREAM Act student, Joaquin Luna, recently took his life in Texas. At 18 years old, he had aspirations of becoming an engineer. He was one of ours. He took his life because he felt as an undocumented immigrant he had nowhere to go. He relied and was hoping for the passage of the DREAM Act in December 2010 that could have been passed with only a handful more Senate votes. I knew there would be dire consequences to the failure of the December 2010 DREAM Act vote, but it is getting tougher and tougher to swallow news like this when we hear of children who feel they have no other option. It's heart wrenching. Just think, if the DREAM Act would have passed last December, we would not have to witness this precious life go to waste, and I'm told Joaquin is not the first.

Learning of this story struck a nerve with me. Joaquin Luna committed suicide and wrote notes and letters regarding his status as an undocumented immigrant. Since when do we as a society punish children for the sins of their father and mother? I believe Americans are by and large compassionate. We are the ones who give the most during crisis situations, or when horrendous natural disasters in other parts of the world occur. How did we get to this place (here in our own soil) that we can't provide a way for kids who know nothing else but being an American? Many of these children were brought here when they were infants and toddlers.

Many of us were heartbroken in December 2010 when we saw several youth praying with white knuckled hands hoping for that DREAM Act miracle. These kids and our youth don't want a free handout. They want to contribute their special talents and hard work to our society.

Learning about Joaquin broke my heart. He felt he had nowhere to go and he didn't know what to do. As an immigration activist, I recalled to memory a special DREAM Act activist who received her engineering degree at Arizona State University. She was unable to apply for a job due to her undocumented status and one day she asked me for advice on what to do. All I knew how to do was to tell her what was in my heart, and I told her to hang in there and continue the fight for the DREAM Act. I gave her my word that I would be there for her anytime she needed, and I told her I was certain something was bound to break. I told her justice for the hardworking and good people will prevail. I believe that.

As I think about an official statement in the continued plea to fix the broken immigration system, more sorrow sweeps over me. My heart feels like it is frozen in between beats. Earlier this summer I met with Brenda Rosa-Garcia who was a former day school teacher of the Mesa Public School in Arizona. She told me stories where young elementary-aged school children (who are related to undocumented relatives) would tell her of their worries of getting arrested and deported by the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio. These children believed Arpaio would come in the night, take them away from their families and ship them off. The infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- the man I have personally witnessed gloat and joke about the mysterious Mexican immigrant deaths in his prisons at an Arizona GOP meeting. .

We have seen hate crimes towards Latinos increase due to the untruths of anti-immigrant politicians that have spread like wild fire. In fact, bloodshed has already occurred in Arizona when a man killed another over the broken immigration system and issue. In fact before the killing occurred, the victim was called a wetback which is a derogatory term still being used by American politicians today. Brisenia Flores, a young and innocent little girl was killed while in fetal position in front of her mother by the minutemen and border vigilantes.

Now we are seeing undocumented youth who are turning 18 who feel they have reached a dead end, and where the United States and pledging allegiance to the flag is mostly what they know because they were brought here at a very young age. Where is the outlet at as pressure continues to build? How much more bloodshed do we need to see before the system is fixed? Everyone knows it is broken, but nobody on the Hill seems to have the courage to fix it.

Looking back at history we can find a common denominator of those who ruled under the iron fist: The lack of compassion. We see it in people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, former Senator Russell Pearce, former Congressmen Tom Tancredo and JD Hayworth. We see it in Senator Ben Nelson, Rep. Lamar Smith, 2012 GOP Candidates Mitt Romney and Herman Cain. Democratic and Republican lobbyists lobby merely for H-1 Visas when we have DREAM Act graduates with engineering degrees under our very noses. It has been said corporate leaders are tired of the bureaucracy when it comes to bringing in talent from other parts of the world, yet these same special interest groups do nothing in support of the DREAM Act graduates who have earned their own engineering degrees in our own country.

Immigration advocates are not looking for handouts, nor amnesty. We are asking for a solution that can only benefit the United States. My people have tremendous faith and are hard workers.

Joaquin's mother in the below television interview cries out and tells other kids to remain in strong. Imagine that -- in the midst of mourning her own son's death, she worries for other children who may be contemplating the same thing and encourages them to have faith and hope. You can see the love and compassion that is filled with remorse on her face as she shed her tears.

To worry and care about others in the midst of experiencing your own personal hell is a trait that is hard to find in today's cynical world. And we want to kick that out of our society?

Without hope and faith, there is no love and future.

?

Follow DeeDee Garcia Blase on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thetequilaparty

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deedee-garcia-blase/undocumented-teen-commits_b_1115172.html

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Shadow looms over China's Internet lending market (Reuters)

SUZHOU, China (Reuters) ? One of the worst cash crunches in decades is hitting Chinese companies, but for Pan Zhengqiang, borrowing money recently has been as smooth as the well-oiled machines at his widget factory in the farmlands surrounding Suzhou.

In China, bank loans are mostly off limits to small businesses. Many entrepreneurs have long relied on funding from friends and family, but that source is drying up, too.

Instead, a boom in online sites that link up private lenders and borrowers, also known as peer-to-peer or P2P lending sites, have brought Pan and his wife Huang Yanhong a new stable stream of financing.

"Sometimes we have a sudden, short-term need for funding. We might get a new big order, or a client may delay a payment," said Huang, who like her husband is a former factory worker.

The couple have 60,000 yuan ($9,375) in outstanding loans from PaiPaiDai (www.ppdai.com), one of China's best known online lending sites.

They pay about 22 percent in annual interest -- more than triple China's benchmark lending rate of 6.56 percent -- and can get the funds in as fast as three days.

"Without PaiPaiDai, we'd have huge difficulty."

Small firms, which account for 75 percent of the urban job sin China, have borne the brunt of credit curbs as banks have preferred to lend to big, state-backed enterprises, forcing them to turn to high-interest informal loan markets and raising the risk of a credit collapse.

PaiPaiDai has more than 120 million yuan in outstanding loans to 10,000 borrowers, most of them tiny businesses like Pan and Huang's. The limit on lending is 200,000 yuan, and the average loan size is 9,000 yuan.

LUCRATIVE RETURNS FOR LENDERS

Borrowers need to upload a range of personal information, including a scan of their ID card and their household registration book, which contains all the details of the person's family, birth place, family home and education.

If the borrower is late in paying, the information, starting from the mobile phone number, is gradually released to the lender.

Less than 1 percent of its loans have gone bad, said co-founder Hu Honghui.

For people like PaiPaiDai lender Zhou Yongxin, who has lent out more than 400,000 yuan, these sites are a welcome investment channel. Stamps and coins, which he also invests in, are tricky to sell and he's been burned by the stock market.

Zhou has made about 20 percent on his investments through the site this year, with about 1 percent of loans going bad.

The lending business is risky as there is no collateral. When loans turn sour, lenders some times resort to posting information on the Internet and hounding borrowers to repay.

WARNING OF ABUSES

While online financing fills a crucial need in China, lack of regulation is leading to abuses. There are no statistics for the size of the P2P industry, but Hu of PaiPaiDai has counted more than 30 online P2P loan sites that have sprung up.

That is against a backdrop of micro-credit loans more than doubling in a year to 287.5 billion yuan by the end of June, according to data from the central bank.

Some firms guarantee principal and interest to lure money from Chinese lenders fed up with negative real interest rates on their savings deposits. Others essentially pool money into a fund, rather than offering the relatively transparent, one-to-one online matches of borrowers and lenders.

"It happens quite often that one person will borrow money from several online lending sites and then the risk is huge," PaiPaiDai lender Zhou said.

"So we hope the government will come out with some regulations for the industry."

In August, the China Banking Regulatory Commission issued a warning about P2P lending. It said some P2P lending firms have evolved into illegal financing firms, taking deposits and making loans.

The CBRC declined to answer questions on the issue.

"I think the information disclosure is very bad. Even the P2P company and the investor, they don't know whether the borrower is trustworthy or credible," said Gary Liu, deputy director at CEIBS Lujiazui International Finance Research Center, a Shanghai-based think tank.

"They don't have enough information to control the risk."

The CBRC warning alarmed some foreign venture capital investors, who had been interested in the vast potential of China's consumer finance market. A year ago, new regulations for online payment systems, the Chinese versions of PayPal, forced out some foreign investors who had taken stakes in that sector.

But foreign firms are keeping their eye on the opportunities. U.S. P2P lending site Prosper Marketplace Inc. hopes a recent $7 million investment from China-focused investment firm IDG Capital Partners will help it get to China, according to CEO Chris Larsen.

IDG also invested in CreditEase, China's largest P2P lender. Larsen said he expects a period of regulatory adjustments will eventually help the industry in China.

CreditEase does not see any regulatory threats to its business or its big foreign investors, which also include U.S. venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. KPCB did not reply to questions about its investment in CreditEase.

"We foresee more and more regulatory scrutiny. I think for a healthy industry, it's about self discipline," said CreditEase CEO Tang Ning.

Tang has built up a P2P lending business with more than 1 billion yuan in outstanding loans to over 70,000 Chinese, including farmers, students and entrepreneurs. The company has 8,000 team members screening applicants in over 50 cities across China.

Unlike PaiPaiDai, the CreditEase website does not allow new lenders or borrowers to meet directly. For Tang, how the two parties are paired up is less important than making sure both sides are real.

"How a loan is made is not legally regulated. A bank or an individual can make a credit or a collateral loan. No problem," he said.

(Additional reporting by Lucy Hornby in Beijing; Editing by Lucy Hornby and Jacqueline Wong)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111125/wr_nm/us_china_lending

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