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Serious about Systemic Change: an interview with Marco Amaral

Marco Amaral is a progressive candidate running as an Independent for the position of California Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2022. He is Chicano educator and long-time activist who teaches high school Special Education in a low-income area. Amaral lives and works in a community near the US-Mexico border in San Diego, a largely working-class Mexican community and is currently a Board of Trustees member at the South Bay Union School District. He spoke to Puntorojo about activism, education, politics and his campaign.

The Mexican condition in the US

As of the 2010 census, there were 31,798,258 Mexicans in the U.S., out of a total population of 308,745,538 and out of a total Latino population of 50,477,594. Mexicans make up 10.1% of the total population in this country and 62.9% of Latinos. Most Mexicans live in the Southwest, 46.5% of Latinos are in California and Texas alone, an area that used to be part of Mexico.

Of the 31 million Mexicans in the U.S., 11.7 million were born in Mexico. In 2010, the average median earnings for them was $23,810, lower than the average of $33,130 for foreign born residents in the U.S. The percentage of these Mexicans living in poverty was 29%, higher than the national average of 10% and the national average for foreign born residents, which was 17%. 54% of immigrants from Mexico had less than a high school education, which is more than the national average of 9% and the national average for all foreign born of 27%. The percentage of Mexicans immigrants without a high school diploma was higher than for immigrants from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, South America, and Central America.

Of these Mexican immigrants, 4.9 million were undocumented in 2017, a drop from 6.9 million ten years earlier. The significant numbers of immigrants deported under Obama is in large part responsible for this decrease in numbers of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. Over half (53%) of these immigrants live in California and Texas, with 10% living in Los Angeles County alone.

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