Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/368872
ByElliotSpagat TheAssociatedPress TIJUANA, MEXICO Henry Monterroso is a foreigner in his own country. Raised in California from the age of 5, he was deported to Mexico in 2011 and found himself in a land he barely knew. But the 34-year-old Ti- juana native feels right at home as soon as gets to work at Call Center Ser- vices International, where workers are greeted in Eng- lish. Monterroso supervises five employees amid rows of small cubicles who spend eight hours a day dialing numbers across the United States to collect on credit card bills and other debts. He is among thousands of deported Mexicans who are finding refuge in call centers in Tijuana and other border cities. In per- fect English — some hardly speak Spanish — they con- verse with American con- sumers who buy gadgets, have questions about war- rantees or complain about overdue deliveries. At Monterroso's office in one of Tijuana's tallest buildings, managers bring meals from Taco Bell in nearby San Diego to re- ward employees because the fast-food chain has no outlets in Mexico. Work- ers are off for the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving but labor on Mexican hol- idays. "The end of your shift comes at 6 and you get hit by reality out there: You're not in the U.S.," Monterroso said above the din of buzz- ing phones. "While you're here, you still get a sense that you're back home, which I like very much." Many workers spent nearly all their lives in the U.S. and still have family there, which is a major sell- ing point for Mexico over English-language industry leaders like India and the Philippines. They can chat comfortably about the U.S. housing market and Su- per Bowl contenders. They know slang. Still, the sudden change is a shock. Monterroso's weekly pay of less than $300 is a humbling drop from the $2,400 he made in San Diego real estate at the peak of the U.S. hous- ing boom in the mid-2000s. And back in Mexico, the deportees are often ostra- cized for off-kilter Spanish or seen as outsiders. "It can't get any worse for them," said Jorge Oros, co-founder and chief oper- ating officer of Call Cen- ter Services International. "They were deported from a country where they were for so many years and now they're stuck here in a country where they've never been before. When you're offering them a job and an opportunity, they become the most loyal em- ployees you can have." By the end of the year, Mexico's outsourced call centers will have more than 85,000 workstations, which may be staffed two or three shifts a day, while there are nearly 490,000 in India and 250,000 in the Philip- pines, according to Frost & Sullivan. The industry con- sultant estimates Mexico will surpass 110,000 work- stations in 2020, fueled partly by a large pool of bi- lingual workers and prox- imity to the U.S. Baja California state, which includes Tijuana, has about 35 call centers that employ nearly 10,000 people. An estimated 45 percent are deportees, said Oros, who leads a lo- cal industry group. Callers typically start below $150 a week, more than twice what they would likely make on a graveyard shift in one of the city's assem- bly plants. The industry has pros- pered in Mexican bor- der cities as deportations spiked under U.S. President Barack Obama. The Mexi- can government says there were 332,865 deportations from the U.S. last year and more than 1.8 million the previous four years. At Call Center Services International, job appli- cants read English to voice- recognition software that flags anyone with a strong accent. The company con- ducted orientation for new hires in Spanish when it was founded but soon dis- covered that employees had an easier time following in English. Firstkontact Center, where about 200 of nearly 500 employees were de- ported, opened a second building this year in an in- dustrial area to more than double its capacity. More than 100 people in a ware- house-like room sell trans- missions and brakes for U.S. Auto Parts Network Inc. "How ya doin' today?" one worker says to a cus- tomer in Crescent, Okla- homa, who wants suspen- sion plugs for a 1986 Jag- uar. "Not too good on gas, right?" IMMIGRATION Thedeportedfindnewlifeatcallcenters ALEXCOSSIO—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS A man stands in the middle of the Firstkontact Center, a call center in the northern border city of Tijuana, Mexico, on Aug. 13. By Joan Lowy The Associated Press WASHINGTON Model air- craft hobbyists, research universities and commer- cial drone interests filed lawsuits Friday challenging a government directive that they say imposes tough new limits on the use of model aircraft and broadens the agency's ban on commer- cial drone flights. The three lawsuits asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Colum- bia to review the validity of the directive, which the Federal Aviation Adminis- tration issued in June. The agency said the directive is an attempt to clarify what is a model aircraft and the limitations on their opera- tion. The FAA has been work- ing on regulations that would permit commercial drone flights in U.S. skies for more than 10 years, but the agency is still at least months and possibly years away from issuing final rules to permit flights by small drones. Regulations for flights by larger drones are even farther away. Part of the agency's chal- lenge is to distinguish be- tween planes flown by hob- byists and those used for commercial applications, a distinction that's become harder to draw as the tech- nology for model planes has grown more sophisticated. A law passed by Congress in 2012 directed the FAA to issue regulations per- mitting commercial drone flights by the fall of 2015, but prohibited the agency from imposing new regula- tions on model aircraft. The FAA directive is a backdoor imposition of new regulations on model air- craft hobbyists and com- mercial drone operators without going through re- quired federal procedures for creating new regula- tions, said Brendan Schul- man, a New York attorney representing the groups that filed the lawsuits. Fed- eral procedures require an opportunity for public com- ment on proposed regula- tions and an analysis of the potential costs of the regu- lations vs. the benefits. "People who have been using these technologies for years in different ways are concerned that they are suddenly prohibited from doing so without hav- ing their voices heard, and without regard to the detri- mental impact on the com- mercial drone industry," he said. FLIGHT Lawsuits challenge FAA drone, model aircra rules ERIC GAY — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A test drone is launched by catapult as a trail plane follows on a ranch near Sarita, Texas, on Jan. 15. By Barbara Ortutay The Associated Press NEW YORK What if Mi- chael Brown's last mo- ments had been recorded? The fatal police shoot- ing of the unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, is prompting calls for more officers to wear so-called body cam- eras, simple, lapel-mounted gadgets that capture video footage of law enforce- ment's interactions with the public. Proponents say the devices add a new level of accountability to police work. "This is a technology that has a very real poten- tial to serve as a check and balance on police power," says Jay Stanley, senior pol- icy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. The case supporters make is simple: Cops and criminal suspects alike are less likely to misbehave if they know they're being re- corded. And there's some evidence supporting it. In a recent Cambridge Uni- versity study, the police department in Rialto, Cal- ifornia — a city of about 100,000— saw an 89 per- cent decline in the number of complaints against offi- cers in a yearlong trial us- ing the cameras. The number of times the police used force against suspects also declined. Af- ter the trial, the cameras became mandatory for the department's roughly 100 officers. Rialto isn't unique. Across the U.S. and in Eng- land, Australia, Brazil and elsewhere, a growing num- ber of departments are im- plementing the cameras, in addition to — or instead of — the dashboard-mounted cameras that are already widely used in police cars. Some one in six U.S. police departments now use body cameras in some form, ac- cording to ACLU attorney Scott Greenwood. A recent petition submit- ted to the White House web- sitecallsonPresidentBarack Obama to create a bill that would require all police offi- cers at the state, county and local levels to wear cameras. The plea has more than 142,000 signatures. White House officials say every petition that crosses the 100,000 signature threshold is reviewed and will receive a response. The administration could use the petition to weigh in on the broader issue of police accountability and trans- parency. In the meantime, the Los Angeles Police Depart- ment is testing the cameras and the New York City Po- lice Department said this month that the department is exploring the feasibility of using the devices. The city's public advocate, Le- titia James, has called for the cameras as a check on police misconduct follow- ing the death of a black man placed in a chokehold by a white police officer last month in Staten Island. Cameras come with com- plications, however. It's un- clear whether a police body camera would have altered the situation. A bystander recorded Eric Garner shouting "I can't breathe!" as police officer Daniel Pantaleo placed him in a chokehold. Garner later died. The city medical ex- aminer ruled the death a homicide and the Staten Is- land District Attorney said this week that the case is going to a grand jury. Although body cam- eras provide a record that courts and police can use to reconstruct events, there's no guarantee the footage will provide easy answers. There are privacy concerns for all those being recorded, whether it's the police officers, crime sus- pects, victims or innocent bystanders. There are also legal and procedural ques- tions: Who gets access to the recordings? And what happens when an officer's device mysteriously mal- functions or gets turned off at an inopportune mo- ment? Experts including the ACLU's Stanley caution that with the gadgets must also come with well- thought-out policies, in- cluding guidelines that spell out how long record- ings are kept and what to do in situations where foot- age goes missing. "We live in a time when most people's reaction to any problem is 'clearly, if we have an app or some sort of a digital device, that will solve the problem,'" says Neil Richards, profes- sor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. The body cameras cur- rently used in police work vary. They include devices that can be worn as glasses, including Google Glass, the company's $1,500 In- ternet-connected eyewear. But more common are the small, rectangular lapel cameras that attach to an officer's uniform and re- cord audio and video with the touch of a button. TECHNOLOGY Ferguson fallout: A call for police 'body cams' DAMIAN DOVARGANES — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A Los Angeles police officer wears an on-body camera during a demonstration for media in Los Angeles on Jan. 15. By Jonathan J. Cooper The Associated Press SALEM, ORE. The state of Oregon filed a lawsuit Fri- day against Oracle Corp. and several of its execu- tives over the technology company's role in creating the troubled website for the state's online health insur- ance exchange. The lawsuit, filed in Marion County Circuit Court in Salem, seeks more than $200 million in dam- ages and alleges that Or- acle officials made false statements, breached con- tracts and engaged in "a pattern of racketeering activity." Oracle was the larg- est technology contractor working on Oregon's health insurance enrollment web- site, known as Cover Ore- gon. The public website was never launched, forc- ing the state to hire hun- dreds of workers to pro- cess paper applications by hand. The website's failure became a political problem to Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber, who is running for re-election. "Today's lawsuit clearly explains how egregiously Oracle has disserved Ore- gonians and our state agen- cies," Attorney General El- len Rosenblum, a Demo- crat, said in a statement. INSURANCE EXCHANGE Oregon sues Oracle over failed health care website Make sure your business is part of the official promotional Program for Red Bluff's annual "party of the year." Especially if your business is Pouring, preparing or serving PROMOTE YOUR PARICIPATION! 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