Archive | Politics
It's being reported that the Tea Party Movement has created a new political organization, Ensuring Liberty Corporation, whose mission will be to endorse, support and elect conservative candidates. The announcement came with an official platform that could help define what the multi-faceted tea party movement stands for and expects from the candidates it supports. The group's leaders plan to support candidates who stand for a set of "First Principles." Those principles are: fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, less government, states' rights and national security. Well, the Tea Party people aren't the only ones to have created a list of "principles." The National Latino Congreso (NLC), which held their fourth international gathering last week in El Paso, came up with a list of endorsements and plans of actions they feel are necessary to help progress issues important to the Latino community. [...more]
During his Jan. 27 State of the Union address to the Congress, after 6,300 words and an hour of listing numerous important policy objectives, President Barack Obama uttered the one word millions of Hispanics across the country were waiting to hear: immigration. However, when he did so, two other words key to his Hispanic audience were starkly absent: “comprehensive” and “reform.” In total, the President used 37 carefully selected words on immigration reform. “We should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system – to secure our borders and enforce our laws, and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation,” he said, avoiding any direct reference to plight of 12 million U.S. residents living in limbo. [...more]
Remember what I said about Obama missing an opportunity when he failed to link immigration reform to the economy? According to unemployment numbers that I spotted gracias to the National Institute for Latino Policy, despite some pundits saying that the economy is slowly rebounding, Latino unemployment in the U.S. remains disproportionately high. It’s being reported that last month overall unemployment dropped to 9.7 percent from 10 percent, not a whole lot really but the tiny drop looks more significant compared to the rise in Latino unemployment. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Latino households in January was an estimated 12.6 percent, compared to 8.7 percent for non-Latino Whites. [...more]
In the ongoing debate on immigration, there is broad agreement among academic economists that it has a small but positive impact on the wages of native-born workers overall: although new immigrant workers add to the labor supply, they also consume goods and services, which creates more jobs. The real debate among researchers is whether a large influx of a specific type of worker (say, workers with a particular level of education or training) has the potential to have a negative impact on the wages of existing workers of that same type. [...more]
Latino groups are pressing U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to withhold possibly millions in funding to Boston schools until the district complies with federal and state laws for programs aimed at students with limited English skills. Several local and national Latino groups sent a letter to Duncan this week faulting Boston for a lack of services. They want Duncan to without "Race to the Top" funds until the district complies. A state review two years ago revealed that Boston was potentially running afoul of civil rights laws by failing to provide services. [...more]
Someday, probably some five decades or so from now, these stories of people being harassed because of language are going to be funny. We’re going to look back on our current era and wonder how we could ever have been so backward as to see a threat from people who are capable of speaking the Spanish language. They will be sad, pathetic little stories that we chuckle at because of how far we come. I HAVE EVERY bit of confidence that the outcome I have stated will come about. Someday. [...more]
Decapitated bodies dumped on the streets, drug-war shootings and regular attacks on police have obscured a significant fact: A falling homicide rate means people in Mexico are less likely to die violently now than they were more than a decade ago. It also means tourists as well as locals may be safer than many believe. Mexico City's homicide rate today is about on par with Los Angeles and is less than a third of that for Washington, D.C. Yet many Americans are leery of visiting Mexico at all. Drug violence and the swine flu outbreak contributed to a 12.5 percent decline in air travel to Mexico by U.S. citizens in 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, a blow to Mexico's third-largest source of foreign income. [...more]
For months, the leaders of Tancitaro had held firm against the drug lords battling for control of this central Mexican town. Then one morning, after months of threats and violence from the traffickers, they finally surrendered. Before dawn, gunmen kidnapped the elderly fathers of the town administrator and the secretary of the City Council. Within hours, both officials resigned along with the mayor, the entire seven-member City Council, two department heads, the police chief and all 60 police officers. Tancitaro had fallen to the enemy. Across Mexico, the continuing ability of traffickers to topple governments like Tancitaro's, intimidate police and keep drug shipments flowing is raising doubts about the Mexican government's 3-year-old, U.S.-backed war on the drug cartels. [...more]
In his State of the Union speech, President Obama committed his Administration to pass comprehensive immigration reform. There are those who claim that this year immigration reform is a diversion from the priority task of fixing the economy -- and also politically impossible to achieve. In fact, comprehensive immigration reform is critical for America's long term economic success and is one of the few political initiatives that could receive genuine bipartisan support in the current Congress. The immigration system is broken -- and it costs the American economy billions in lost productivity, wasted resources, underdeveloped human capital, depressed wages, and uncollected tax revenue. [...more]
The way things are shaping up, March 21 is going to be a key date this year for those people who want legitimate reform of the nation’s immigration laws. Various activist groups from across the nation are planning on showing up in Washington on that date (a Sunday) for a rally on Capitol Hill to make it known once again that this is an issue that cannot seriously be put off any longer. THEY ALSO WANT to give the image to political people who fear the Election Day retribution of the conservative-leaning Tea Party protesters that Latinos and others interested in action on immigration can put together an Election Day penalty of our own.
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I have no idea what 2050 will actually be like, but I'm imagining it will be fantastic beyond my wildest dreams By then Hispanics will be about a quarter of the population. Add the 15 percent of the population that blacks are projected to be, plus the children of today's estimated 3 million mixed-race couples, and there surely will be so many "minority" journalists, columnists and lawyers, engineers, scientists and sports stars that no one will care what I think anymore because I'll be just another face in the multi-hued crowd. [...more]
The White House’s budget request for the Department of Homeland Security for Fiscal Year 2011 contains more funds to strengthen frontier monitoring with barriers, police and weapons, while immigration reform continues to be absent from the budgetary agenda. Adding the discretionary and obligatory spending, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano requested a total of $56.3 billion, an increase of 2 percent from last year. Her objective, as she explained on Monday, is to have the resources necessary to protect the United States from any threat but, at a time of large deficits, to do that with “efficiency and fiscal discipline.” But a glance at some of the main components of the budget request reflects an emphasis on the continuity of police measures against illegal immigration and the effort to fight narco-violence along the southern border. [...more]
IN HIS STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS, President Obama speaks but “Thirty Eight Words” on Immigration Reform and judging from more than one source in the blogosphere, they weren’t extremely inspiring. Others were happy to hear immigration reform mentioned at all in the SOTU. But combined with the inaction so far on immigration reform, many activists and organizations are feeling daunted. [...more]
There are numerous reasons why it would be wise for Washington to address the nation's failed immigration policies sooner rather than later and finally fix a system that no one on either end of the political spectrum believes is either functioning properly or serving the best interests of the people . Even though studies show that reforming immigration would be a boost to the economy at a time when it could surely use one, and human rights issues make reforming the system a moral imperative, many still believe that it's an issue too politically hot to handle. [...more]
Immigration authorities worked closely with a marine oil-rig company in Mississippi to discourage protests by temporary guest workers from India over their job conditions, including advising managers to send some workers back to India, according to new testimony in a federal lawsuit against the company, Signal International. The cooperation between the company and federal immigration agents is recounted in sworn depositions by Signal managers who were involved when tensions in its shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., erupted into a public clash in March 2007. [...more]
Last week, I wrote a commentary about being left unimpressed, unmotivated and uninterested in setting up any neighborhood watch parties to watch the President's State of the Union address. It's not that I'm on the GOP bandwagon to derail Obama at any cost, it's just that I'm not sure what the point is anymore in rallying my friends, neighbors or readers to heighten the pitch for someone who has so much on his plate that he thinks leaking the fact that he would be "talking" about immigration reform in his State of the Union address would suffice for actually addressing the issue with any real substance. [...more]
As President Obama vows to refocus Democrats' attention on jobs and the economy, advocates for overhauling the nation's immigration laws say they are still gearing up for a battle in the Senate in coming weeks, despite fading hopes for victory. Washington's drawn-out health-care debate badly damaged prospects for an immigration bill this winter. It ate up weeks of the Senate's time, sapped progressive lawmakers' energy and, most recently, stoked a populist backlash that cost Democrats the seat of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), the chamber's most prominent champion of liberal health-care and immigration policies. [...more]
I just read this, in my opinion, fabulous piece in the New Yorker on Obama by Junot Diaz. Here’s an excerpt: All year I’ve been waiting for Obama to flex his narrative muscles, to tell the story of his presidency, of his Administration, to tell the story of where our country is going and why we should help deliver it there. A coherent, accessible, compelling story—one that is narrow enough to be held in our minds and hearts and that nevertheless is roomy enough for us, the audience, to weave our own predilections, dreams, fears, experiences into its fabric. It should necessarily be a story eight years in duration, a story that no matter what our personal politics are will excite us enough to go out and reëlect the teller just so we can be there for the story’s end. But from where I sit our President has not even told a bad story; he, in my opinion, has told no story at all. [...more]
When President Barack Obama swept into the White House with the help of record numbers of minority voters, many hoped the enthusiasm would keep minorities involved and flexing their political muscle in future elections. So far, not so much. On the eve of Illinois' first statewide election since Obama's victory and the nation's first primary of the year, there is little evidence that black or Hispanic voters are deeply engaged. Even the prospect of losing the seat that has given the U.S. Senate its only black members over the past 20 years -- Obama's old post -- hasn't caught the attention of many black voters. The campaign of Cheryle Jackson, the only black candidate in the race, hasn't caught fire. Minority candidates in other races also report a lack of enthusiasm. [...more]
I’m not about to start mocking celebrity actors (not too much, at least) who choose to use their riches to educate themselves about their ethnic backgrounds. There is a part of me that wishes I could speak the Spanish language better than the stumbling, bumbling mess I tend to turn la lingua into. But there is something about the recent actions of Jessica Alba that make me wonder how seriously we should take any such talk about trying to find ourselves. ALBA, WHOSE CINEMATIC roles tend to accentuate her physically fit and firm figure, gave an interview recently to Siempre Mujer (Always Woman) magazine, which wrote about her being one of the rising Latina actors even though in the past she has gone to some lengths to downplay the fact that she has Mexican ethnicity mixed into her family tree. [...more]
