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Beautiful Bakersfield…Beautiful Bakersfield College

Mary Jo Pasek and the Beautiful Bakersfield Award

Each year, our friends at the Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce celebrate excellence in the community through the Beautiful Bakersfield awards. Nominees from across the community are accepted in various categories — all from their efforts to enhance and promote the quality of life in our community.

Two of Bakersfield College’s own were honored with Beautiful Bakersfield awards!

Humanitarian – Group Award

Mary Jo Pasek, Community Relations and Events Manager at Bakersfield College was among the happy recipients of the Humanitarian – Group award, which was presented to the Rotary Club of Bakersfield Breakfast. The group was recognized for work in three areas: Habitat roofing (35 roofs), SEAL Project to provide important positive influence to a group of forgotten kids and above all for the five years Breakfast Rotary has raised all of the money in the community to place wreaths on the Bakersfield National Cemetery as part of Wreaths Across America. Mary Jo founded this project five years ago, and with the help of Congressman McCarthy’s office in Bakersfield, was able to have our National Cemetery put on the register so her Rotary could handle this important event.

Humanitarian – Individual Award

Bakersfield College’s retired history professor Jack Brigham was honored with the Humanitarian – Individual award. Jack has dedicated himself to developing students in governance and constitutional principles through the “We the People” program and has given $20,000 in scholarships to needy and deserving students. Jack also founded the Center for Kern Political Education (CKPE) which is housed within the Bakersfield College Foundation. Ed Borgens, faculty member in the Political Science department is a member of the Board of Directors of the CKPE.

Congratulations to our amazing winners from Bakersfield College!

Talking Immigration Reform at Chamber Quarterly Breakfast. Sep 30, 2013

Good Morning Bakersfield Discussion Panel

GBCC CEO Cynthia Pollard, me, Dick Castner, US Chamber of Commerce

I was invited by the Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce CEO Cynthia Pollard to be part of a panel discussion on immigration reform in the United States. This event, held over an early-morning breakfast at the Doubletree Hotel, brought together four panelists to discuss issues in Immigration Reform.

The panel was moderated by Cynthia, and included myself, representing education, Lynne Ashbeck from the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California, Dick Castner from the US Chamber of Commerce, and Rocio Saenz from the Service Employees International Union.

Bakersfield College faculty members Charles Kim and Corney Rodriguez were in the crowd today for the discussion on Immigration Reform.

I was pleased to see many friendly faces in the crowd, including Bakersfield mayor Harvey Hall, and two members of the Bakersfield College Foundation board of directors: Ken Byrum and Rick Kreiser.

Thank you Bakersfield Chamber for bring these great educational opportunities to us.

I will summarize my remarks soon in a blog post but for now will leave you with some data snippets

1. Immigrants, broadly speaking, can be clustered into three categories: Naturalized Immigrants; Documented Non-citizen immigrants, and undocumented immigrants. The 2009-2011 Data Profile for California shows that our of the 37.6 Million total population, 73% (27.2M) are US-Born and 27% (10.3 M) are Immigrants. Out of the Immigrant population 12% (4.7M) are naturalized; 8% (3.0M) documented but non-citizen; 7% (2.7 M) are undocumented.

2. The May 2013 Pastor and Marcelli study shows that the citizen immigrant fairs better that the US-born using the economic indicators of 150% above the poverty level (80% compared to 77%) or home ownership (64% compared to 59%). See graph below.