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ID cards for illegal immigrants in L.A. winning strong support (Video)

crosspost — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:20:11 +0000

A plan to provide official photo identification cards for illegal immigrants in Los Angeles appears to be winning wide support.

A Los Angeles City Council committee Tuesday approved the concept after hearing from a wide array of supporters who said it was a practical way to incorporate into civic life the area’s large undocumented population.

Opposition to the so-called City Services Card is inevitable because it touches on the hot-button issue of illegal immigration, Councilman Ed Reyes said. But in the end “cooler heads will prevail and understand the humanity of the suggestion,” he said.

The committee voted unanimously to begin soliciting proposals from potential vendors who would implement the program, backed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilman Richard Alarcon. That won’t happen, however, until a draft proposal is brought before the full council in about three weeks, officials said.

Although no one opposed to the ID cards spoke at Tuesday’s committee hearing, the Granada Hills North Neighborhood Council sent a letter stating that it had voted against the proposal.

Middle-age Hispanics most likely to skip the vote

crosspost — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:48:40 +0000

More than 17 percent of the people who register to vote never make it to the ballot box, and according to new research, these people tend to be poor or uneducated. Research also suggests, however, that more of these people would vote if officials made it more convenient.

The most basic duty of any candidate is to get supporters to the polls, and researchers at Austin Community College and Texas State University dug into 2008 voter data to better understand the people who register but don’t vote.

“We wanted to show the folks that are (trying to get out the vote) a scientific study of who isn’t voting,” explainedPeck Young, director of the Center for Public Policy and Political Studies, which sponsored the study. “If you just take the people who didn’t vote in 2008, but were registered, they could change the outcome of the state.”

The 2.3 million non-voters in Texas broke down as 34 percent Hispanic, 5 percent African American and 61 percent everyone else. The first surprise of the study was that neither gender nor the length of time someone has been registered influence whether someone made it to the polls.

The statistics also showed that Hispanics remain disproportionately more unlikely to cast a ballot than other groups.

5 things you didn’t know about the U.S. – Mexico relationship

crosspost — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:42:48 +0000

On the sidelines of the first U.S.-Mexico border trade conference held last week in Arizona, a group stared at a map of the United States. The 50 states were colored various shades of blue. The darker the state was, the more it exported to Mexico. As expected, California, Arizona and Texas were dark blue but so were Nebraska, Michigan and Wisconsin. The map showed what many on the border have known for awhile: Mexico is vital to the U.S. economy.

A buzz is developing around the strength of Mexico’s growing middle class and what it could mean for U.S. businesspeople and politicians in the border region. But there is also frustration that when it comes to Mexico, the United States — particularly lawmakers in Washington, D.C. — continue to focus almost exclusively on security, drugs and illegal immigration.

While these issues are real, so is Mexico’s economic success story. Here are five ways it impacts the United States that you probably didn’t know about.

1. Trade with Mexico sustains around six million jobs in the U.S. The Mexican economy is growing around 4 percent this year, more than twice as fast as the U.S. economy. This is why Mexicans are consuming U.S. goods at an increasing rate as they move into the middle class.

Hispanics are less likely to visit doctor

crosspost — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 17:20:33 +0000

Heritage may be universal within the Hispanic community, but it seems health isn’t.

According to two recently published twin studies — one focusing on men and the other on women’s health — there are “significant differences” in the physical and behavioral health of individuals within three major Latino subgroups in the United States: Cuban-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Puerto Rican-Americans.

Florida State University (FSU) researchers analyzed data from the National Latino and Asian-American Study and found that both Puerto Rican-American men and women reported the highest rates of smoking and overall substance abuse — including marijuana, cocaine, and prescription drugs — out of the three subgroups. Puerto Ricans also showed the highest rates of major depression at 13.1 percent for women and 9.7 percent for men.

When assessing chronic conditions within the subgroups, Mexican-American women showed the highest rate of diabetes while Puerto Rican-American women reported the highest percentage of asthma. Cuban-American women, on the other hand, were more likely to report conditions such as hypertension and heart disease.

Chronic conditions afflicting specific subgroups, however, proved to be less varied in men. Puerto Rican-American men had high rates in eight of the 15 physical ailments analyzed in the study, including cardiovascular disease and hypertension (18.1%). Cuban-American men shared a similar rate of hypertension (16.5%) compared to that of Mexican-American men (11.2%).

Rubio promises to present “permanent solution” for undocumented youths

crosspost — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:55:15 +0000

Florida Senator Marco Rubio said Wednesday that in 2013 he will present a bill that will offer a “permanent solution” for undocumented students, now temporarily protected from deportation by the Obama administration’s Deferred Action program.

In an interview with Spanish news agency Efe, the Cuban-American Republican said the program announced by Obama in June looked like an electoral ploy and that presidential candidate Mitt Romney “wants to seek a permanent solution” for the young people known as DREAMers.

Rubio participated in a political meeting before some 200 people Wednesday, prior to the first presidential debate in Denver.

When asked about the changing stances Romney has taken on immigration reform, Rubio emphasized that President Obama has no right to criticize anyone on immigration. “His party controlled Congress for two years,” he said, “and they did absolutely nothing” to approve the DREAM Act – which would legalize undocumented students – or to move toward immigration reform.

Rubio said that when he discussed an alternative to the DREAM Act with Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate, the White House “not only did not cooperate with us but tried to prevent” the effort from moving forward.

Latinos weigh in on debate: Obama, Romney skip important issues

crosspost — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:43:16 +0000

Latinos around the country sat down in debate parties or in the comfort of their own homes to hear the two men who want to be president debate ‘mano a mano’ at the first presidential debate at the University of Denver tonight. The verdict? The debate dragged out on some issues, but did not touch on other issues voters wanted to talk about.

“In terms of content, for the average voter, a lot went over their heads; they spent too much time on specific terms like Dodd-Frank, and did not touch on other issues,” says political scientist Sylvia Manzano, of Latino Decisions.

Marisol Bolaños, who works in the Denver public schools, says she wishes they would have spoken about the DREAM Act. Alvina Vazquez, of the progressive but non-partisan non-profit Strong Colorado, says though the economy is important, so is immigration, which was not talked about.

After the debate, many political analysts said Governor Romney seemed to give the better performance, and Manzano agrees. “I think Romney was certainly stronger, he did have a higher burden, he had to maximize the opportunity, and in that respect there is no question he gave a stronger performance,” Manzano adds.

The economic benefits of passing the DREAM Act

crosspost — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:33:30 +0000

Until now, much of the debate surrounding the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act—a bill to provide a pathway to legal status for eligible young people who were brought here as children and who complete high school and some college or military service—focused on legal, ethical, and logistical concerns. But there are other important benefits of enacting the DREAM Act, most importantly the boost to the economy.

This report takes a close look at this economic perspective. We present an analysis to understand what would happen if the United States were to grant a pathway to legal status to an estimated 2.1 million eligible youth in our country by passing the DREAM Act. Overall, we find that the passage of the DREAM Act would add $329 billion to the U.S. economy and create 1.4 million new jobs by 2030, demonstrating the potential of the proposed law to boost economic growth and improve our nation’s fiscal health.

In making these projections we used American Community Survey data from 2006 to 2010 to calculate the number of eligible unauthorized youth that would qualify for the DREAM Act—creating the largest dataset of unauthorized immigrants to date—and then put the data into a robust model of the likely educational and job attainment potential of eligible DREAMers to estimate their likely future earnings. This model takes into account factors such as educational level, age, sex, race and ethnicity, and constitutes our estimate of the direct economic consequences of the DREAM Act. This is similar to the methodology used by education economist Luis Crouch and many of his colleagues in the field.

Read more at the Center For American Progress

Mitt Romney immigration policy gets spotlight as CNN poll shows voters favor reform

crosspost — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 16:03:00 +0000

On Monday, Romney told the Denver Post that if elected, he would not rescind the two-year deportation relief applications and work permits granted under a new Obama administration program. And he would marshal immigration reform though Congress during his first year in office.

The statement amounts to Romney’s most direct commitment on immigration to date. Young undocumented activists in Colorado said they were heartened by the news. Conservative advocates of strict, even punitive immigration enforcement went silent. The Obama campaign released a series of statements describing Romney’s comments as a last-ditch, nakedly strategic and potentially insincere attempt to appeal to Latino voters without specifying what type of immigration reform he would advance. And by Tuesday night, the Romney campaign team was working hard to spilt the difference. If elected, the campaign told the Boston Globe, Romney would end the Obama program but honor the reprieves and work permits Romney described earlier as “already purchased.” And he would push hard for unspecified legislative reform.

Thirty-four days before the election, both candidates are trying to find the political beat and combination of moves that will make as many voters as possible want to dance. A new CNN poll released late Tuesday points to just how hard — and essential — that work may be for Romney. The Romney campaign did not respond to requests for comment late Tuesday, but the CNN poll offers one of the most plausible, publicly available explanations for Romney’s decision to draw attention this week to his immigration policy.

Mexican superstar band Maná endorses Obama at Las Vegas event

crosspost — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 18:10:07 +0000

From a stage on the crowded athletic field of a Las Vegas high school, President Barack Obama got an important endorsement in Spanish: Superstar Mexican rock band Maná.

The support — and a song set — came where Obama spoke to more than 11,000 people Sunday evening: Desert Pines High School, set in a largely Hispanic neighborhood in a swing state where Hispanic voters stand to sway the election.

“We have the conviction that Obama is the best candidate for all Latinos,” Maná frontman Fher Olvera said in Spanish, pointing to Obama’s plans for health care, education, and the DREAM Act. “Vote for the president who has cared most for Latinos and minorities.”

The event, scheduled a week before online voter registration ends in Nevada and three weeks before early voting begins, came as both parties have been investing heavily in the region’s Spanish-language TV and radio airtime.

Maná is known for pushing civic participation from the stage, and has worked closely with the nonpartisan Voto Latino organization in recent months to hold on-site voter registration during their concerts. In a press conference after the show, the band characterized their efforts less as political activism than a humanitarian effort for immigrants.

Economy: Latino population shifts

crosspost — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:55:24 +0000

Fourteen cities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties — including Riverside — have made the Pew Research Center list as cities where Latinos are the majority population, Inland economist John Husing said Thursday.

That demographic has put the region — made up of 4.2 million people — in the No. 4 spot in the nation of metropolitan areas with the largest Hispanic population. The Latino population in the two-county area is more than 2 million, or 47.9 percent.

The Anglo population now stands at 38.9 percent, Husing said at a Latino Leadership and Policy Institute workshop in San Bernardino. That is down from 51 percent in 2000, he said.

What does this population swing in the 27,000-square-mile region that is expected to grow to 5.8 million people by 2035 mean for the region?

“If you’re in business or in education, get ready for it,” said Paul Granillo, chief executive of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership. “We’re starting the conversation to help people in business and in the nonprofit world understand the economy of Riverside and San Bernardino counties has a significant Latino demographic.”