-- by Simmi Aujla, Businessweek:

Lawmakers voted down a bill Monday that would have required employers to screen workers using a federal background check system amid concerns it would add another burden to business owners.

The Senate State Affairs Committee defeated the measure on 7-2 vote. The bill was aimed at stemming the flow of illegal immigrants into the state, and would have put employers who accepted false identification at risk of losing their business licenses.

-- by Jennifer Medina, The New York Times:

For the fifth year in a row, New York City students’ on-time graduation rates have increased, showing small but steady gains, rising to 59 percent last year from 46.5 for the class of 2005, according to figures that state and city education officials released on Tuesday.

In 2008, 56.4 percent of the city’s students graduated within four years...

-- by James Wagner, The Contra Costa Times (CA):

For years, America's most popular sport, professional football, has sought to spread into more Latino households.

At the same time, a local billionaire, Ed Roski Jr., has been hoping to end Los Angeles' NFL curse by buying and moving an existing team here.

So is heavily Latino Los Angeles County an ideal place for this expansion?

-- by Howard Blume, The Los Angeles Times:

The federal government has singled out the Los Angeles Unified School District for its first major investigation under a reinvigorated Office for Civil Rights, officials said Tuesday.

The focus of the probe, by an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, will be whether the nation's second-largest district provides adequate services to students learning English.

-- by Spencer Hsu and N.C. Aizenman, The Washington Post:

Months after reporting that the number of illegal immigrants removed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement increased 47 percent during President Obama's first year in office, the Department of Homeland Security on Monday corrected the record, saying the actual increase in those deported and "voluntary departures" was 5 percent.

-- by Michael Lind, Salon.com:

President Obama has signaled support for putting immigration reform back on the agenda of Congress between now and the midterm elections in November. Whether Democrats on Capitol Hill want to take on such a contentious issue in the aftermath of the healthcare debate remains to be seen. What is needed is not another rush to produce ill-considered legislation on an artificial deadline, but the emergence of a consensus on the principles of sound immigration reform.

-- by Mary Brophy Marcus, USA Today:

As deaths from heart disease and many types of cancers have dipped, living longer is putting more people at risk for Alzheimer's disease, the brain-wasting condition that a new report shows African-Americans and Hispanics are particularly vulnerable to as they grow older.

 

-- by Michele Elam, for The Huffington Post:

The federal government is taking a road trip, dubbed the 2010 Census Portrait of America Road Tour, to try to convince "hard-to-count audiences" to participate in this year's dicennial Census. One of those particularly hard-to-count groups are those who identify as racially mixed. Many will choose to take advantage of the "mark one or more races" (MOOM) option made first available on the 2000 Census. Race scholars have been hotly debating the significance of this paradigm shift, asking: just what are the Civil Rights consequences of the Census option of "mark one or more races"?

-- by Laura Meckler, The Wall Street Journal:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.