el paso independent school district

maybe not the most exciting topic, but relevant cuz it's the largest employer in the city. the kids gotta learn right? it was formed around 1883 and is currently the seventh largest district in the whole state. they're also in charge of teaching the army kids at fort bliss. it's run by a board of trustees, 7 of them, and one superintendent. his name is lorenzo garcia. it's got more than 63, ooo students on 92 campuses. it covers 253 square miles and operates on 403 million per year. most importantly, they employ more than 9,000 peeps.

mas immigration...

here's a bit more on u.s. immigration. again, the hopes is to bring it back around to the el paso situation in the future, but the foundation must be laid. from 1991-2000, we let in more immigrants than any decade before. 10 million ish. by comparison, the second most was 8 million from 1900-1910. we more or less let in one million per year. the number we let in has been steadily on the rise for the last 75 years or so. apparently, about 1.5 million illegal immigrants come in per year, joining the 12 to 20 million that are already here. of all the immigrants from 2000-2005, 58% were from latin america. more people are coming in from mexico than anywhere else.........i know that's a lot of numbers, but here's what you need to know. we give citizenship to 1 million peeps per year.

immigration

here's some general immigration info...perhaps we'll bring it to bear on el paso in the future. in 2008, just over one million people were naturalized, or granted citizenship in the states. most of these came from mexico, indian, and the philippines. the u.s. accepts more legal immigrants than anyone in the world. in 2006 there were 37.5 million here. that's significant given there's only 304 million total. that's roughly 12.3 percent of our peeps. many cities now forbid police to ask about people's immigration status. the pic is of the el paso-juarez border fence.

raymond telles

ray was the first mexican-american mayor of a major u.s. city, el paso. he was elected in 1957. he was an accountant and then served in the army. jfk appointed him as ambassador to costa rica.

white sands missile range...

on the note of fort bliss...let's talk about white sands, which is just north of it. white sands missile range in the largest military installation in the nation. nasa does some stuff there. it's 3,200 square miles. and it really consists of perfectly white sand.

fort bliss

let's just go w some basic facts. it's an army post in new mexico and texas. it's 1700 square miles makes it the second largest army installation behind white sands missile range, which is just down the road. it's also got the second largest maneuver area for practicing, and also the largest continuous virtually unrestricted airspace. from 2008 to 2011, the air defense artillery will be heading out of fort bliss, and 'old ironsides,' or the u.s. first armored division will be moving in. they were based in germany, but not any more. they were also the first army folks to fight in ww2. the a.d.a. is going to fort sill in lawton, ok. that leaves fort bliss as mainly an armored post now.

living it up in the twenties...

the teens were crazy for el paso, with war locally and globally.  the twenties were a lot calmer, and lots of refugees found refuge in el paso.  enthusiasm was up and the population grew to 102,000.  the volstead act didn't hurt either.  it outlawed liquor on a national scale.  so...where we going to find a drink?  how bout juarez?  good idea.  juarez said bring it on, and now they from a little adobe town to a mexican vegas.  90 years later and my high school friends are still doing the same thing.