Ancianos maltratados

Ancianos maltratados
OSCAR J. FRANCO
Según Wiston Churchill, ''llegar a viejo no es tan malo, cuando se considera la otra alternativa''. Es decir, envejecemos porque estamos vivos. Los años dorados están llenos de recuerdos, alegrías, compartir con los seres queridos y disfrutar del merecido descanso que da la jubilación. Sin embargo, la realidad de la vida impone limitantes físicas y en ocasiones mentales.
El National Center for Elder Abuse (NAEC) reporta que el abuso y maltrato de los ancianos es un problema nacional. Se estima que anualmente hay entre 1.5 a 1.84 millones de ciudadanos de la tercera edad víctimas de esta situación. El NAEC enfatiza que un número igual o mayor de casos no son denunciados.
Quienes abusan y maltratan a las personas de la tercera edad se aprovechan de sus condiciones de minusvalía o incapacidad. Las agencias que manejan la materia estiman como el abuso más común la negligencia de los familiares en lo que respecta a cuidar y preservar la salud y bienestar general de los ancianos. El segundo renglón son los maltratos emocionales y sicológicos, seguidos por la violencia física, explotación financiera y el abandono.
Según estudios del Departamento de Justicia y el NAEC, el 68% de los perpetradores son los hijos adultos de los ancianos y sus cuidadores, ya sea en sus propios hogares o en asilos. Les siguen los cónyuges, luego los nietos, así como familiares más o menos distantes. Por último, están los amigos, conocidos y hasta extraños, quienes premeditadamente se aprovechan, especialmente desde el punto de vista financiero.
De acuerdo con el National Committee for Prevention of Elder Abuse, en los casos de abusos por parte de familiares frecuentemente los victimarios se sienten con derecho a actuar de esa manera, como compensación por la ''obligación'' de cuidar al anciano.
La idea de que los ciudadanos de la tercera edad sean el blanco de abusos y maltratos ya es conmovedora, pero que la mayoría de las personas que cometen esta actitud irracional sean quienes les deben amor, agradecimiento, lealtad y hasta la vida es muy doloroso.
Sin embargo, es una realidad y como tal debemos afrontarla e informarnos para prevenir, evitar y denunciar esta terrible situación.
Detectar el problema es muy importante, existen numerosas señales y condiciones que son observables sin mucho esfuerzo. Cada caso tiene su propia sintomatología. La organización Helpguide menciona algunas señales para diferentes tipos de abuso.
• La negligencia se manifiesta al no cumplir con la obligación de cuidar a los ancianos y es activa (intencional) o pasiva (no intencional). Esta última puede ser por desconocimiento de las necesidades de la persona, o por dejarse llevar por su insistencia de que está bien, no necesita nada y se puede cuidar por sí misma. A menudo, los familiares se aprovechan de esa situación para excusar la evasión de la responsabilidad. Enfermedades recurrentes o crónicas, pérdida de peso, mala higiene y apariencia descuidada pueden ser evidencias de negligencia por parte de los responsables.
• El abuso físico se produce fácilmente pues la fragilidad corporal de los ancianos los hace muy proclives a traumatismos. Dejar de administrar, o hacerlo incorrectamente, las medicinas, tratamientos y terapias son considerados abusos físicos.
• Gritar, intimidar, humillar, ridiculizar, ignorar, aislar, amenazar son considerados abuso emocional en cualquier edad.
• El abuso financiero es muy común y sumamente grave pues cercena a la gente mayor de sus ahorros e ingresos por pensiones, jubilaciones y seguros, dividendos, etc. Son frecuentes el robo de efectivo y el uso indebido de cheques, tarjetas de crédito y bienes personales. En muchas ocasiones, la excusa de que fue un regalo es alegada por el abusador, quien se aprovecha de la escasa capacidad de la persona o la chantajea sentimentalmente para recibir dádivas.
• Los ancianos son bombardeados por los medios de comunicación y por algunos comerciales de televisión y telemarketing telefónico para obtener datos de las tarjetas de crédito, número de seguro social, dirección, lo necesario para estafarlos.
• Concursos, pirámides monetarias, premios, donaciones a entidades fraudulentas, entre muchas otras componendas, están concebidos para abusar financieramente de nuestros abuelos y abuelas.
• El último abuso a tratar, por lo repugnante, es el abuso sexual. No vamos a entrar en detalles, pero alertamos de su existencia. La violación es obviamente un delito sexual, pero existen otras conductas perniciosas y condenables legalmente.
Aparte del amor y la gratitud que les debemos a nuestros ''viejos'', tenemos la obligación de protegerlos. No basta con llamar por teléfono una o mil veces al mes. El contacto personal es crucial para verificar el estado físico y las condiciones en que viven. Visitar, conversar, escuchar con atención las quejas, ya que no siempre son achaques ni majaderías de la edad. Es importante conocer quiénes son los vecinos y los integrantes del círculo de amistades e inclusive relaciones sentimentales. El Departamento de Salud reporta un incremento alarmante de enfermedades venéreas en personas de la tercera edad. Recordemos que los avances médicos sobreponen incapacidades físicas y sexuales, comunes en esa etapa de la vida.
Intercambiar ideas, alertar de los riesgos, preguntar con respeto sobre las finanzas, necesidades físicas y mentales, son algunas de las cosas que podemos hacer para cuidar no sólo a nuestros abuelos y abuelas, sino a vecinos y amigos en la última etapa de su vida.

Comentario de un participante

Santiago Chiva de Agustín dijo...
Hola. La inmigración tiene una cara humana; me ha gustado la movilización que -por encima de ideologías y creencias religiosas- han hecho en el Reino Unido el grupo “Strangers into Citizens”. Austen Ivereigh, su principal promotor ha explicado en Granada el pasado fin de semana cómo han logrado que los tres principales candidatos para la alcaldía de Londres de las municipales que se celebran –el conservador, el laborista y el liberal- apoyaran su propuesta, que la Cámara de los Comunes la haya discutido y que el partido liberal la haya hecho suya. Su planteamiento no es solidaridad ingenua sino puro pragmatismo británico: sacar del limbo legal en que se encuentran cientos de miles de personas que nunca podrán ser repatriadas por el inmenso coste que supondría. No es una tarea popular: la objeción que se le pone -el posible efecto llamada de una medida como ésta- es seria. Sin embargo la propuesta humanitaria es compatible con la fortaleza del Estado en el control de fronteras y contra la delincuencia. Un ejemplo de movilización ciudadana desinteresada del que los españoles podemos aprender mucho

La experiencia de inmigrar en USA: La Frustacion de los Indocumentados

La experiencia de inmigrar en USA: La Frustacion de los Indocumentados

Charla en el American Community Center

The Americas Community Centery American Intercontinental Universityinvitan a las Charlas de Productividad

Este Jueves 25 de Septiembre a las 6:30 p.m.

"COMO SOLUCIONAR PACÍFICAMENTE SUS CONFLICTOS PERSONALES"Sr. Oscar j. franco
Las disputas son parte de nuestro diario acontecer, afectan nuestras relaciones a todo nivel y muy especialmente en el plano personal.Los conflictos están considerados como cargados de negatividad , dividiendo a familias, hermanos, amigos, socios, etc., desgastando a las personas y destruyendo las relaciones.El objetivo de la charla es abordar la parte positiva del conflicto, como elemento que puede sertransformado, de acuerdo a la actitud con la cual se le enfrente. Analizaremos, el ciclo de escalada del conflicto y a quienes afecta, así como la comunicación como elemento primordial de resolución.Compartiremos las herramientas básicas de mediación de divorcio sin abogado y conciliación.

OSCAR J. FRANCO Abogado venezolano. Mediador y Árbitro certificado por la Corte Suprema de la Florida.Es mediador de los tribunales del condado de Broward, desde el 2000. Tiene una vasta experiencia como mediador de conflictos comerciales y de familia.Se especializa en mediar casos en los cuales la interculturalidad de las partes complica la resolución del conflicto.
Fecha: Este Jueves 25 de Septiembre
Lugar: American Intercontinental University2250 N Commerce Parkway Weston, Fl. 33326 Hora: 6:30 p.m.Salon: 335ENTRADA Y PARQUEADERO GRATIS !!!Para mas informacion comuníquese al: (954)607 3239

Los estudiantes que asistan y colaboren en la charla, se les otorgan 4 Horas Comunitarias.
The Americas Community Center Inc.2813 Executive Park Drive Weston, Florida 33331

Immigration Study: 'Second Generation' Has Edge

Immigration Study: 'Second Generation' Has Edge
by Margot Adler

NPR
Weekend Edition Sunday, August 24, 2008 · In much of the debate over immigration, there is an underlying question: Are today's immigrants assimilating into the mainstream as easily as past generations?
The answer, at least in New York City, is an unqualified "yes," according to the results of a 10-year study involving more than 3,000 young men and women, most of them in their 20s.
John Mollenkopf, a professor at City University of New York and an author of the study, says that if you look at the children of immigrants, "the kids are doing well compared to their parents and also doing well compared to the native-born comparison groups."
The "second generation" project looked at five groups — Russians, Dominicans, South Americans, Chinese and West Indians — and compared them with U.S.-born whites, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans. Researchers found that most in the second generation were fluent in English and working in the mainstream economy. When they looked at economic and educational achievement, they found that West Indians were doing better, in general, than African-Americans; Dominicans were doing better than Puerto Ricans; and the Chinese and the Russians were doing as well as or better than native-born whites.
Because this is New York City and most study participants are the children of people who came to the United States 20 to 30 years ago, their parents either entered legally or found it relatively easy to obtain legal status even if they came illegally.
Legal immigration is more difficult today, and researchers note that this may well change the rate of assimilation. But for these five groups, "what we really find is a very rapid assimilation and becoming American," says Mary Waters of Harvard University, another author of the study, titled Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age, and recently published as a book.
Inheriting the City also uncovered cultural differences that may give the children of some immigrant groups certain advantages. Many members of this second generation interviewed for this story said their parents had pushed them to succeed academically. This is a common theme in immigrant families, even a stereotype.
Enia Titova, who came from Russia when she was 12, attended Stuyvesant, an elite New York public high school. "In a lot of Russian families, if you don't have a graduate degree, it is frowned upon," she says. "When you get a 96, parents want to know where the other four points went — that's the question, I think, in a lot of immigrant households."
But the researchers also found something unexpected: Some groups, such as Chinese immigrants, knew how to work the system more effectively than others.
"We interviewed one young woman whose mother worked in a garment factory and had very little education," Waters says. "She said her mother didn't even know what Stuyvesant was, but she knew from the other moms in the garment factory — I need to get my kid into this school."
Ling Wu Kong, who came from China when he was 2 and now attends law school, says Waters is correct. "Every time there is a student who maxes out on the SAT, their picture is prominently placed on the front page in the Chinese newspapers," he says. "They give you a pretty good idea of what to expect, so even for people whose parents don't speak English, they are able to navigate the system."
It's a little different for other groups.
Waters says researchers also met Dominican kids who had gotten into Stuyvesant, but whose parents didn't let them go to the school because they would have to take a subway and go across bad neighborhoods to get there.
Cristina Carpio's parents came from Ecuador. Now a medical student, Carpio says she went to Stuyvesant only after persuading her mother to let her go. "During the orientation week, my sister took me to Stuyvesant to ease my mother's fears," she says, adding that her sister told her mother, "Look, she knows how to take the subway, she knows how to do it on her own, she has to go to that school. There is no other way."
The study, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, found that the children of immigrants in New York City had another big advantage: Many of them continue to live at home with their parents.
Carpio says that when she becomes an intern next year, "I will be moving back home because I can save money on the rent and pay for my loans." And Ling feels it wouldn't be right if he didn't go home. "There is this ideal in the Chinese community, when everyone lives together. I'm living at home now," he says, laughing.

Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in USA

Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States
by Jacob L. Vigdor
Executive Summary
This report introduces a quantitative index that measures the degree of similarity between native- and foreign-born adults in the United States. It is the ability to distinguish the latter group from the former that we mean when we use the term “assimilation.” The Index of Immigrant Assimilation relies on Census Bureau data available in some form since 1900 and as current as the year before last. The index reveals great diversity in the experiences of individual immigrant groups, which differ from each other almost as much as they differ from the native-born. They vary significantly in the extent to which their earnings have increased, their rate of learning the English language, and progress toward citizenship. Mexican immigrants, the largest group and the focus of most current immigration policy debates, have assimilated slowly, but their experience is not representative of the entire immigrant population.
Collective assimilation rates are lower than they were a century ago, although no lower than they have been in recent decades. And this is true despite the fact that recent immigrants have arrived less assimilated than their predecessors and in very large numbers. In addition to country of origin, the Index categorizes groups on the basis of date of arrival, age, and place of residence. Some groups have done far better or worse than the Index as a whole; Assimilation also varies considerably across metropolitan areas.
Here are some of the Index's significant findings:
The degree of similarity between the native- and foreign-born, although low by historical standards, has held steady since 1990. Assimilation declined during the 1980s, remained stable through the 1990s, and has actually increased slightly over the past few years.
Beyond presenting a snapshot of the degree of similarity between the native- and foreign-born, the assimilation index can be used to track the progress of immigrants who arrived in the United States at a common point in time. This simple extension shows that the relative stability of immigrant assimilation since 1990 masks two important and countervailing trends.
Newly arrived immigrants of the early 21st century have assimilation index values lower than the newly arrived immigrants of the early 20th century. Growth in the immigrant population usually lowers the assimilation index because newly arrived immigrants drag down the average for the group as a whole. This phenomenon can be seen between 1900 and 1920 and again in the 1980s. The stability of the assimilation index since 1990 is therefore remarkable in light of the rapid growth of the immigrant population, which doubled between 1990 and 2006.
Immigrants of the past quarter-century have assimilated more rapidly than their counterparts of a century ago, even though they are more distinct from the native population upon arrival. The increase in the rate of assimilation among recently arrived immigrants explains why the overall index has remained stable, even though the immigrant population has grown rapidly.
Yet the current level of assimilation remains lower than it was at any point during the early 20th century wave of immigration.
The assimilation index can be decomposed along several other dimensions. The overall, or composite, index is based on a series of economic, cultural, and civic factors. These sets of factors can be examined in isolation to produce three component indices. The economic index compares the labor force, educational attainment, and home ownership patterns of the foreign- and native-born. The cultural index focuses on English-speaking ability, marriage, and childbearing patterns. The civic index examines naturalization rates and compares the military service patterns of the foreign- and native-born. Separate analysis of these three dimensions of assimilation reveals that they do not increase in lockstep as immigrants spend more time in the United States.
Economic and civic assimilation often occurs without significant cultural assimilation. It is common for immigrant cohorts to naturalize and enjoy integration into the economic mainstream without posting many gains along cultural dimensions.
Immigrants who arrived in the United States after 1995 are culturally assimilating more rapidly than their predecessors. The increased rate of overall assimilation shown by cohorts of recent arrivals can be traced in part to this pattern of relatively rapid cultural assimilation.
The assimilation index can be computed for individual country-of-origin groups, or for sets of immigrants who live in a particular city or region. Disaggregation by country of origin reveals important differences in the experiences of immigrants born in different parts of the world.
Immigrants from developed countries are not necessarily more assimilated. Immigrants born in Korea, which the World Bank classifies as a high-income country, have a collective assimilation index value lower than that of immigrants from Cuba or the Philippines, which are classified as low-income countries. Several factors can explain this pattern, among them the fact that immigrants from developed countries do not necessarily become naturalized citizens more rapidly than those from the developing world. The United States often attracts immigrants who belonged to the economic elite of their origin country.
Immigrants from Vietnam, Cuba, and the Philippines enjoy some of the highest rates of assimilation. However, these groups assimilate more rapidly in some respects than others. For example, they are far more assimilated economically than they are culturally. Curiously, all of the countries mentioned have experienced U.S. military occupation.
Mexican immigrants experience very low rates of economic and civic assimilation. Immigrants born in Mexico, particularly those living and working in the United States illegally, lie at the heart of many current debates over immigration policy. The assimilation index shows that immigrants from Mexico are very distinct from the native-born upon arrival and assimilate slowly over time. The slow rates of economic and civic assimilation set Mexicans apart from other immigrants, and may reflect the fact that the large numbers of Mexican immigrants residing in the United States illegally have few opportunities to advance themselves along these dimensions.
Mexican immigrants experience relatively normal rates of cultural assimilation. Recent cohorts of Mexican immigrants have increased their rate of cultural assimilation just as immigrants born in other nations have done.
A specialized version of the assimilation index can be computed for foreign-born adolescents and young adults who came to the United States as young children and received their formal education exclusively in this country. This version of the assimilation index also reveals interesting patterns.
The foreign-born children of immigrants continue to bear a strong resemblance to their native-born counterparts. Although many members of this group are not naturalized citizens, they are difficult to distinguish from the native-born along other dimensions.
Immigrant children born in Mexico are more distinct than immigrant children born in other foreign nations. This distinction is most obvious in terms of comparative naturalization rates, but extends to other dimensions as well. Mexican adolescents are imprisoned at rates approximately 80 percent greater than immigrant adolescents generally.
Naturalization rates among the foreign-born children of immigrants have been increasing. In this respect, the behavior of foreign-born, domestically educated immigrants resembles that of their parents educated abroad.
Disaggregation by metropolitan area reveals widely varying rates of assimilation, due largely to the different combinations of immigrant groups that reside in each and the different characteristics of those groups.
Polyethnic New York City, which still attracts large numbers of European immigrants, has the second-highest assimilation index value among the metropolitan areas defined.
San Diego, despite its proximity to the Mexican border, has the highest.
The methodology used to compute the assimilation index is outlined in the report and reviewed extensively in a more technical appendix. The method has been designed to take advantage of more than a century’s worth of historical data on the status of immigrants in the United States, made available to the public by the United States Census Bureau, and to provide the opportunity for annual updates.
The assimilation index points to marks of success, to encouraging recent trends, and also to areas of concern. Within these areas of concern, the index provides some insight into the nature of the problem and the universe of appropriate potential policy responses. It is important to note, however, that this report neither proposes nor endorses any policy responses. Its sole purpose is to present information in a manner useful to concerned citizens and policymakers who hope to make informed decisions regarding the proper course of action.
About the Author
Jacob Vigdor is Associate Professor of Public Policy Studies and Economics at Duke University, where he has taught since 1999, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He received a B.S. in Policy Analysis from Cornell University in 1994 and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1999.

Feria de la salud. Celebrando la herencia hipana

Acompanen a la organizacion Mujeres Latinas Impulsando a Mujeres Latinas, a celebrar el mes de la Hispanidad en una Feria de Salud Latina, a celebrarse el sabado 4 de octubre 2008, (10 am a 2pm) en el Broward Health Weston, Florida, 2300 N. Commerce Parkway, Weston, FL 333326.
Brindaran informacion sobre las distintas alternativas para lograr una mejor calidad de vida.
Es un evento gratuito, donde podran realizar examenes y prueba de salud, como presion arterial, colesterol, diabetes, optica y enfermedad de alzheimer.
Descuentos en examenes de mamografia y densidad osea.
Informacion sobre productos y servicios en la Florida.