NEWS  BYTES

Officials in Marshall County, Iowa, have begun receiving hate mail following the passage of a resolution making English the official language of the county. Last month the county supervisors passed the resolution, which many condemned as racist.

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A teenage boy arrested for the violent beating of two Mexican immigrants has admitted to attacking them because they were Mexican. According to his confession, he left his home in New York City early one morning and drove to Farmingville, a town on Long Island, with the goal of finding a Mexican to beat. The young man, Ryan Wagner, has numerous tattoos symbolic of hate groups, including swastikas. He is being held without bail following his arraignment on two counts of aggravated harassment and two counts of attempted murder. Police are still looking for another suspect. In his confession Wagner said that the other man was the leader and that he was only doing as he was told. If convicted, Wagner faces up to 50 years in prison.

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The director of the INS Central Region, Mark Reed, announced his retirement this week. Reed has been with the INS for 26 years, has been the director of the Central Region since 1998. His retirement will be effective in January.

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Mexican nationals in prison in California are being given the opportunity to take Spanish classes while in prison. The program is the result of an agreement between the California Department of Corrections and the Mexican government. The Mexican government is covering the costs of textbooks and teaching, and the Department of Corrections is providing space for the classes. It is hoped that the program will help the 19,000 Mexican nationals in California prisons to become literate in their native language so that their integration into Mexican society will be easier. While California already offers literacy classes to foreign inmates, these classes are in English, and as difficult as it is for someone to learn English, it is even harder if the person is not literate in their native language.

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This week we learned that yet another federal agency will not be providing attestations for the new physician national interest waiver law. The Appalachian Regional Commission, which will sponsor a waiver of the two-year home residency requirement, says that it will not provide the attestation because it is a state-federal partnership and any request for the attestation should come from the state, which is authorized to provide the attestation itself.

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