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Labor Secretary’s announcement leads to speculation

Mario Solis-Marich — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:14:49 +0000

Yesterday’s resignation announcement by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis surprised D.C. insiders including some say the President himself. Unlike many staged resignations , common in the rough and tumble of D.C.’s political culture , Solis’s departure was neither planned, requested, or expected operatives close to the Secretary shared on condition of anonymity.

Solis has been a steadfast and outspoken advocate for the rights of working men and women during what most economists would agree has been the most difficult economic period in the history of the United States. Solis is seen as one of the Presidents best surrogates to the Latino community and one of the most energetic members of his Cabinet. Notably Solis had recently shared with friends that she wanted to remain in her cabinet post. The decision by the Labor Secretary has insiders openly speculating and collectively scratching their heads.

Solis had come to the Cabinet after having supported Obama’s then rival Hillary Clinton for the presidency. Obama’s appointment of Solis was seen as an olive branch to Clinton’s Latino supporters and drew praise for his ability to dispense with the usual practice of using cabinet positions as spoils to only key campaign supporters. In fact the appointment of Clinton and Solis to State and Labor seats respectively was key to Obama’s “team of rivals” style of governance.

Solis’s departure leaves only one Hispanic in the President’s Cabinet, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and drops the number of women as well. President Obama has already been under fire for the lack of women in key cabinet positions and Solis’s departure only exacerbates the pressure on him. The lack of Cabinet Latinos is sure to be criticized soon as well due to the Solis departure.

The Labor Secretary’s announcement created an enthusiastic buzz in Los Angeles California. Solis hails from Los Angeles County where a coveted seat on the County Board of Supervisors is soon to become vacant. A single L.A. County board seat is seen as more powerful than most State governorship’s due to the municipality’s enormous size and the wide-ranging portfolios that each of only five supervisors carries. Should Secretary Solis decide to run for Supervisor she would immediately become a front-runner and be positioned to raise the enormous amount of campaign funds necessary to reach the millions of requisite voters. Wednesday’s L.A. news media was almost giddy about her return in sharp contrast to beltway pundits who seemed unable to find a solid answer regarding her resignation.

Details of the Solis resignation will surely emerge as the days wear on. The only matter clear at this time about the Solis announcement is that the Secretary has many political options open to her and that Obama must pull out his BlackBerry to find a replacement for a critical seat during a difficult period.

Same-sex marriage support has grown among Latinos, survey finds

crosspost — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:43:41 +0000

More than half of the nation’s Latinos are in favor of same-sex marriage, according to a survey released on Thursday, dispelling a long-standing notion that their religious beliefs offered a safe path to Republicans looking to stake a claim in the community through shared social values.

Just six years ago, 56 percent of Latinos were against same-sex marriage. Today, their rate of approval stands at 52 percent over all and slightly higher — 54 percent — among Latino Catholics, the survey by the Pew Research Center found.

Latino evangelicals, on the other hand, remain strongly opposed to same-sex marriage, affirming their conservative credentials in a demographic group whose politics and positions, liberal and conservative, have become more in line with Americans over all. Partisanship among Latinos continued to be lopsided: 70 percent identified themselves as Democrats or leaning toward the Democratic Party. (The survey found 51 percent of the electorate over all identified as Democrat or leaning Democrat.)

After debate, Romney campaign launches immigration ad (Video)

crosspost — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:34:54 +0000

The debate was a chance to see the candidates go toe to toe on the issues, including their different views on immigration and how to address undocumented immigrants in this country.
Today, the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee launched a new ad entitled “Solutions to Immigration.” In the ad, the Romney campaign shows past video of President Obama saying he would pass immigration reform in his first term, followed by a video in which the President says he did not promise he would get everything done.

The Romney campaign then says the Republican candidate’s immigration plan is to focus on ‘family reunification’, ‘work visas’, and ‘permanent solutions for undocumented youth.’ The ad says Governor Romney and the Republicans will fight for bipartisan immigration reform that unifies families.

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.

Is using the term ‘illegal’ a generational thing?

crosspost — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 17:00:58 +0000

Two of the biggest names in print journalism, The New York Times and the Associated Press, continue to use the term “illegal immigrant,” despite the controversy over the phrase. And this is in a time when editors at many of the nation’s top twenty college newspapers, as rated by the Princeton Review, say the term is outdated and inaccurate, and have banned it from their own papers.

Last week, NPR’s Maria Hinojosa implied there may be a lack of Hispanic input in the the closed-door meetings at companies which have decided to preserve the term “illegal immigrant.” Turns out, less than four percent of full-time journalists at The New York Times’ are Hispanic (even though New York City is almost 29 percent Hispanic) and at least one of the few Latino journalists on staff publicly expressed his disapproval of the Times’ usage of the term.

However, Mark Herring, the editor-in-chief of the North Carolina State University’s newspaper, The Technician, suggested that it may also be a generational gap that has led to the continued use of the term by legacy media. It makes sense. After all, American college campuses have a history of accepting minority rights — gay, women’s, African American — before the rest of the country catches on.

“I think that a lot of college students understand the nuances of the term in a way some [other] adults don’t,” said Herring. Because the Latino population skews young (one in five children under the age of 18 is Hispanic), he said, many more white college students have Latino peers than those in their parents’ generation. In fact, Latino college enrollment reached a record high this year, with Hispanics representing 16.5 percent of all college students between the ages 18 and 24, according to Pew Hispanic Center. This year, Herring launched a bilingual section of The Technician called “Bienvenidos” to include the growing Latino student population at his school.

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.

Poll: Latinos see poor GOP minority outreach

crosspost — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:55:03 +0000

A new CNN/ORC International poll released Friday finds Latino voters don’t think the Republican Party has done a good job reaching out to minorities and the Democratic Party cares more about people like them, agree with them on important issues and can improve economic conditions.

Friday’s release shows that only 33% of likely Latino voters think the GOP has done a good job reaching out to minorities compared to the 77% who think Democrats have done a good job.

The poll also indicates 69% of likely Latino voters believe the Democratic Party cares more about people like them while only 24% say the GOP cares more than the Democrats do.

The survey – taken entirely before Wednesday’s first presidential debate in Denver – also shows 62% of Latinos think the Democratic Party can help to improve economic conditions. Only 32% think the Republican Party can better fix the economy.

Friday’s survey comes after a CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday showed President Barack Obama retaining a significant lead over rival Mitt Romney in the key voting demographic–70% to Romney’s 26%–matching the level of support he received from Latinos in 2008.

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.

Why the nation’s future is riding on Latino students’ success

crosspost — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:30:03 +0000

Everywhere you look this election season, campaigns are wooing the Hispanic vote. Rising stars such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro played prominent roles at this summer’s national political conventions. Both presidential candidates gave extended interviews to Univision in recent weeks, and both have made frequent visits to swing states such as Florida, Colorado and Nevada ― states with large Latino populations.

The reason for this political push is obvious: The rapid growth of the Latino population has made this group a highly coveted voting bloc. A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies concludes that Latino voters represent nearly 9 percent of the 2012 voting electorate, up 1.5 percentage points since 2008. That’s a lot of political clout — enough to determine the election’s outcome, some experts say.

But let’s not be shortsighted. The fact is, the election isn’t merely about the political clout of Latinos. As the largest and fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population, Hispanics represent this nation’s very future. And right now, we’re simply not doing enough to secure that future … because too few Latinos are getting the education they need to succeed.

Latinos represent the latest in a long line of immigrant groups, from Irish and Italians in the late 19th and early 20th century to the more recent waves of immigrants from Asia, who are making their mark on American society. The majority are native born, and the talent that they bring to the American workforce is wide — from accomplished professionals who are doctors, lawyers and engineers to service workers and laborers, and everything in between.

Yet as a group, far too few Latinos are educated to meet the nation’s burgeoning needs for talent. According to the 2010 Census, just 19 percent of Latinos between 25 and 64 years old had at least a two-year college degree. For whites, the figure is 43 percent. That gap is shockingly huge.

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%).