Elections
South Carolina Senator in Search of Solutions
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Chairman of the Immigration, Refugee and Border Security Subcommittee, has tapped Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to help garner GOP support for a comprehensive immigration bill this year. While not always voting in favor of common sense solutions to our broken immigration system, Senator Graham has shown himself to be at least one Republican leader who understands the importance of our nation’s changing demographic—especially in his home state of South Carolina—on future electoral races. Read More
Anti-Immigrant Minutemen Join White-Supremacist Militias on the Radical Right
Anti-immigrant groups like the “Minutemen” vigilantes are not only proliferating, but are rapidly beginning to resemble the white-supremacist and anti-government militias that have populated the netherworld of the Radical Right since the early 1990s. Adding insult to injury, the farcical conspiracy theories that circulate among both extreme nativist groups and right-wing militias are now being mainstreamed by commentators on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. Although the various strains of far-right extremism have by no means coalesced into a single movement, the ideological lines that once distinguished them have begun to blur. Read More
President Obama Says “Yes We STILL Can” with Comprehensive Immigration Reform
Last Friday, President Obama spoke to a group of Hispanic reporters at the White House and again reaffirmed his commitment to passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill sometime in early 2010, with a draft to be ready as soon as the end of this year. “We have convened a meeting of all the relevant stakeholders,” the President said, “and Secretary Napolitano is working with the group to start creating the framework for a comprehensive immigration reform.” One of the things standing in the way of his immigration efforts, the President Obama joked, are members of the Republican Party who still believe he is an illegal immigrant. Sad, but true. Read More
Republicans on the Road to Demographic Self-Destruction
A slew of data from the 2008 election, released late last month by the U.S. Census Bureau, underscores—yet again—that Latinos constitute the fastest growing share of the electorate in the United States. Yet many Republican politicians seem to be going out of their way to alienate Latino voters. In an effort to appeal to the “base” of ultra-conservative whites needed to win Republican primaries, many in the GOP are trampling upon the Latinos they very well might need to win general elections. As the political theater surrounding the Sotomayor nomination illustrates well, a growing number of Republicans are trying their hardest to swim against the demographic tide. It is unlikely that they’ll be able to keep their heads above water for very long. Read More
The High Cost of Inaction on Immigration Reform
This week the National Institute on Money in State Politics released a study on funding spent supporting and opposing immigration-related ballot measures. Immigration Measures: Support on Both Sides of the Fence examined 2008 ballot initiatives in Oregon and Arizona and found that money raised by both sides of the issue totaled more than $17.5 million. Read More
Rise in Latino and Asian Voters Marks Significant Change in Political Landscape
Today, the U.S. Census Bureau published new data, Voting and Registration in the Election of 2008, which tracks demographic characteristics of the 131 million U.S. citizens who reported that they voted in the 2008 presidential election. The Census Bureau’s new data set shows a significant increase of about 5 million voters from the 2004 presidential election—including 2 million more Latino voters and 600,000 more Asian voters. Relative to the presidential election of 2004, the voting rates for blacks, Asians, and Latinos each increased by about 4 percentage points. The voting rate for non-Latino whites decreased by 1 percentage point. Read More
PASS ID Act Not An Immigration Solution
Introduced by Sen. Akaka (D-HI) last week with 5 co-sponsors, the “Providing for Additional Security in States’ Identification Act” (PASS ID) (S. 1261) would give states a breather from the costs and restrictions imposed by the REAL ID Act, which became law in 2005 without Congressional hearings and as part of must-pass war funding bill. The PASS ID Act, however, would do little for immigrant access to licenses and nothing for a common sense approach to immigration reform. PASS ID would repeal the REAL ID Act, which numerous states have vociferously opposed as a burdensome, unfunded mandate and akin to creation of a national ID system. Currently, 23 states have passed laws and resolutions opposing the REAL ID Act, including Arizona whose former governor, Janet Napolitano, is now the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But PASS ID—like REAL ID—sets national standards for driver’s licenses. Driver’s licenses won’t be accepted for federal purposes if they don’t meet the national standards. Read More
Department of Homeland Security Suspends “Widow Penalty”
Photo by Kratka Photography. This week, the Obama administration took another step toward restoring fairness and humaneness to the immigration system. On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that she would grant a two-year reprieve to immigrants who were married to U.S. citizens but did not complete the permanent residency process because their American spouses died during the application process. Under U.S. law, a foreign-born spouse of a U.S. citizen is eligible for permanent residency, but must complete a two-year conditional residency period first. In cases where the U.S. citizen spouse died during the conditional residency status, the application for permanent residency was effectively revoked leaving the foreign spouses without legal immigration status and vulnerable to deportation. DHS’s decision also protects children of widowed immigrants from deportation for a two-year period. Read More
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Adds More Flash to His Pan
Anti-immigrant media glutton, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, doesn’t stay out of the headlines for very long. In March, the menacing Sheriff Arpaio, known for transforming Arizona’s Maricopa County Police Department into an immigration-enforcement agency, made headlines when he became the focus of a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation for “allegations of discriminatory practices based on a person’s national origin and unconstitutional searches and seizures.” The federal investigation, a result of racial profiling allegations, only makes this latest headline all the more ironic—Sheriff Arpaio now says the Department of Justice is not playing fair in its investigation. Read More
A New Study Reinforces Growing Influence of Second Generation Latinos
A new study by the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that only 7% of all Latino children are undocumented immigrants. Pew also found that a growing share of the children with unauthorized immigrant parents—4 million or 73%—were born in this country and are U.S. Read More
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