RALEIGH, NC (By Kristin Collins, Raleigh News and Observer) November 27, 2007 — The debate over immigration often dwells on keeping undocumented immigrants from slipping into the country. But when it comes to Hispanic youths who are already here, an opposite concern arises — too many are slipping away.

Hispanic youths — some born here, some who entered the country undocumented but are growing up here — are at increasing risk of drifting into self-destructive and criminal behavior as they try to find their place in U.S. culture, according to those who have studied trends among Hispanic immigrants.

In North Carolina, a host of indicators show that many immigrant teens are not succeeding:

• Dropout rates for Hispanic students are higher than for any other group in the state. In the 2005-06 school year, nearly 9 percent of Hispanic high school students dropped out, compared with less than 4.5 percent of white students.

• More than half of North Carolina's Hispanic girls are expected to be pregnant before their 20th birthdays.

• A recent study of nearly 300 Hispanic immigrant teens in North Carolina, done by the UNC Chapel Hill School of Social Work, sketched a picture of a population with emotional scars, uneducated parents and the pervasive feeling that they are not accepted by Americans.

More than 40 percent said they had faced ethnic discrimination, most frequently by their classmates.

Sixty-five percent of the teens agreed that "Americans generally feel superior to foreigners." Only 5 percent said they received any counseling.

A national survey by New York University professor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, tracked immigrant teens for five years. At the end, half were doing worse in school than when the study began.

350-001 as well as 350-029 are fairly easy if you choose to attempt 640-822 and 642-426 before them. In this way, you will not have to study much for 642-453 or 70-536 either. This is also a prerequisite for cisco certification.

Gang-prevention efforts

Juana Martinez, 17, a senior at Wake Forest-Rolesville High School, is president of the club Latinos Constructing a Better Future, formed as part of a gang- prevention effort.At a recent meeting, she said, several boys talked about taunts from classmates.

"They said that some people have told them, `Hey, go back to Mexico,' " Martinez said. "And some of them aren't even from Mexico. They were born here."

Martinez said she has watched many of her Hispanic classmates drift into trouble: girls getting pregnant, boys wearing gang colors and forming segregated groups, others dropping out to take low-wage jobs.

Some Hispanic boys at her school, she said, feel that a grade point average higher than 2.5 is "too smart."

For many Hispanic students, problems stem from family circumstances. Their parents are often desperately poor and uneducated, and they come to the United States ill-equipped to deal with the pressure their children will face. Many work long hours and understand little of what goes on inside their children's schools.

Martinez, who moved to North Carolina from Mexico when she was 9, says her mother doesn't speak English. Her mother was never able to help with homework and felt uncomfortable visiting her schools.

Now Martinez spends two afternoons a week working with Hispanic students at Wake Forest Elementary School, hoping to give them the support she never had. For one boy who didn't know his letters, she wrote out their sounds in Spanish, hoping his mother would work with him.

"He came back and said his mom told him she's sorry, but she didn't have time because she had to work," Martinez said.

Gangs growing fast

The price of ignoring the problems of immigrant Hispanic youth is that some become a problem for society at large.

A 2005 study showed that Hispanic gangs were the fastest-growing segment of North Carolina's mounting gang problem, accounting for a quarter of the state's nearly 400 gangs. Many carry the names of notorious groups such as the Latin Kings or MS-13 that originated in California, Mexico and elsewhere.

Many of North Carolina's gang members are homegrown — youths who felt isolated by language barriers or poverty, who were bullied and scorned by classmates, and who looked to a gang for acceptance.

Much of North Carolina's gang activity can be traced to children and teens running in disorganized packs and claiming false ties to notorious international gangs, gang experts say.

A big myth about gangs "is that they are migrating across the country," said Buddy Howell of the National Youth Gang Center, a U.S. Justice Department program. "Whenever you study an area with a gang problem, you find that most all of the gang members grew up there."

Like the waves of immigrants before them — Eastern Europeans, Italians, Irish — Hispanic youths are banding together in the face of a foreign environment, according to researchers, educators and social workers. As anger rises over a wave of Hispanic immigration, some say they fear that more Hispanic children will become alienated and turn to gangs.

Robbery arrest

In the Triangle, the recent arrest of Nelson Rafael Hernandez put a face on the Hispanic gang problem. Hernandez, the oldest of four teens, accused of robbing a Raleigh man and trying to rob a Durham woman, sneered and flashed gang signals as he stood in a Durham courtroom earlier this month.

One of the teens police said was with Hernandez, a 16-year-old, was killed when, police said, he waved a gun at an officer outside a public library.

The mother of one suspect, another 16-year-old who lives in Durham, said that he had been expelled from school and that she was unable to stop him from running with the wrong crowd.

She didn't know whether he had any true ties to the Latin Kings, the Chicago-based Hispanic gang that investigators say the teens were involved in.

Mike Figueras, who runs a gang prevention program for El Pueblo, a statewide Hispanic advocacy group, said children whose needs aren't met at home or at school are prime candidates for joining gangs.

They submit to beatings from fellow gang members, a common initiation ritual, and allow gang leaders to dictate their lives. He said most do it not for money, but for a feeling of belonging.

"It's so important to the kids that they're willing to do anything," he said. "We're looking at 11-year-olds joining gangs."

Reaching out to help

Schools and advocates have started programs to help immigrant children. Schools around the state offer English as a Second Language programs, and they employ Spanish-speaking outreach workers.

El Pueblo has started Hispanic clubs and leads anti-gang classes at schools across Wake County.

But William Lassiter, manager of the state's Center for the Prevention of School Violence, said that it's often difficult for educators to overcome all the obstacles facing Hispanic students. Some are four or five years behind and illiterate in their native language. Often, parents offer no information to help teachers, he said.

And if they join gangs, he said, educators often write them off.