Annotations for People: Rios-elena V

The plan does not at all address the border healthcare as a major issue. The strategies should not just be from our country, but should be bi-national.

This healthcare system of ours is badly broken and it is time to fix it.

Nothing short of a social revolution is how some describe President Clinton's attempt to reform the nation's health system and provide comprehensive health coverage for all Americans.

If you lose your job or you switch jobs, you're covered. If you leave your job to start a small business, you're covered.

As many as a third of you as Latinos now lack health coverage. Perhaps no group stands to benefit more from an extension of health insurance, but members of the Hispanic Medical Association, a coalition of 25 Latino health groups say they have several concerns about the administration's health plan. Among these, what happens to community health clinics and to the public health if there is no coverage for the undocumented. Association president, Dr. Elena Rios.

Very few Latinos have been involved with the policymaking process and we think that we can add more of our own insight if we can be involved at every level, but we think that once the new health system happens, in whatever form, that Latino representation be mandated.

Latino health advocates also want to see a health system that is culturally and linguistically accessible to the country's 24 million Latinos. Mexican president Carlos Salina de Gortari paid a visit to the US recently to promote the embattled North American Free Trade Agreement. In California, Salina said free trade is the key to stopping illegal immigration from Mexico. Isabella Legria reports

In a speech before corporate VIPs from 65 countries meeting in San Francisco, Salina said Mexico needs to invest in itself if it is to curb the flight of Mexicans to the US in search of work.

I will also emphasize that we want trade and not aid. It is trade that will provides us with the opportunities to invest more, to produce more, to create more job opportunities in Mexico.

Salinas went on to say that undocumented Mexican immigrants are wrongly accused of relying on government support at the expense of US taxpayers who see them as a burden, not a resource.

Mexicans who come to the US looking for jobs in this country take risks, are very courageous and very talented people. That is why we want them in Mexico.

Earlier this month, California governor Pete Wilson wrote to the Mexican president saying that NAFTA was endangered by a perception that Mexico was not making efforts to curb the illegal immigration of Mexicans to the US. Wilson has proposed denying healthcare and access to public education to the undocumented in California. For Latino USA, I'm Isabella Lagria in San Francisco.