Hispanics to Press New President on Immigration, No Matter the Victor (from Diverse Issues in Higher Education)

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Hispanics to Press New President on Immigration, No Matter the Victor

by Karen Branch-Brioso
Oct 30, 2008, 06:11
By Karen Branch-Brioso
If Hispanic voters turn out in the numbers predicted in next Tuesday’s presidential election, the winner may be pressured into tackling the politically prickly issue of immigration reform in his first year in office whether he wants to or not, an immigrant advocate predicted Wednesday.

“Many of us are predicting the impact of the Latino vote will be unprecedented,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, which is pushing for federally sponsored immigration reform for an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

The numbers in which they turnout on Election Day “will show that Latinos generally and Latino immigrants, specifically, as well as other immigrant communities, want respect, not to be demonized and will demand reform. I suspect that we may even see a spirited legislative battle beginning in the fall of 2009,” Sharry said.

Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain have both backed comprehensive immigration reform and say they will address the issue within the first year of their presidencies.

Both candidates have also supported the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (also known as the DREAM Act), which would allow many undocumented high school students who have lived in the United States since childhood a path to legal permanent residency. The legislation, which is limited to students who want to go to college or serve in the U.S. military upon graduation, hasn’t gained traction in Congress.

On the same day Sharry and other immigration advocates laid out projections and predictions during a telephone conference Wednesday afternoon, a New York Times story said that political rifts over immigration as well as more pressing issues — the economy and the Iraq war — are making a first-year approach to immigration unlikely.

“While The New York Times story today suggests it’s not going to be a 100-day issue, I suspect it will be more like a 101-day issue early in the first term,” Sharry said.

He pointed to a number of reports and projections on the Hispanic vote: the National Association of Latino Elected Officials estimates that 9.2 million Hispanics will cast their ballots in Tuesday’s election, compared to 7.6 million in 2004.

He noted that record numbers of naturalization applications — 1.4 million last year — have boosted the number of immigrants eligible to vote this year.

Cecilia Muñoz, Senior Vice President of the Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza, said that if Congress and the new president fail to push for comprehensive immigration reform then the issue of millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States will continue to crop up in less desirable forms.

“If you look at the domestic policy debates that have gone through the Congress, there’s been some kind of immigration battle on every single one of them,” Muñoz said, citing recent legislation on housing, education, the foreclosure crisis, the economic stimulus package and the reauthorization of the State Child Health Insurance Program — all of which included a debate to deny benefits to undocumented immigrants.

“It’s going to become a fuel for what is usually a pretty ugly and not particularly constructive debate … As long as the immigration issue is hanging out there, it’s going to infiltrate the public policy debate — and not in a particularly constructive way.”

Email the editor: editor@diverseeducation.com

Hold Your Heads Up (from NY Times)

Herbert really makes me think about the "values" conversations within the presidential elections. This also reminds me of the point Barack Obama made his book Audacity of Hope. He talks a lot about a failed ideology on the Right side of the aisle. Herbert just seems to hit this point home on various issues below. The tale on the education policy side has yet to be formally told but our struggling schools tell us everyday. -Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
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NY Times
September 9, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Hold Your Heads Up
By BOB HERBERT
Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal?
Troglodytes on the right are no respecters of reality. They say the most absurd things and hardly anyone calls them on it. Evolution? Don’t you believe it. Global warming? A figment of the liberal imagination.
Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.
So there was Hillary Clinton, of all people, sponsoring legislation to ban flag-burning; and Barack Obama, who once opposed the death penalty, morphing into someone who not only supports it, but supports it in cases that don’t even involve a homicide.
Anyway, the Republicans were back at it last week at their convention. Mitt Romney wasn’t content to insist that he personally knows that “liberals don’t have a clue.” He complained loudly that the federal government right now is too liberal.
“We need change, all right,” he said. “Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington.”
Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.
There would be absolutely no chance that a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin could make a credible run for the highest offices in the land. Conservatives would never have allowed it.
Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud.
The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression.
“In the procedural motions that preceded final passage,” wrote historian Jean Edward Smith in his biography, “FDR,” “House Republicans voted almost unanimously against Social Security. But when the final up-or-down vote came on April 19 [1935], fewer than half were prepared to go on record against.”
Liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Medicare and Medicaid. Quick, how many of you (or your loved ones) are benefiting mightily from these programs, even as we speak. The idea that Republicans are proud of Ronald Reagan, who saw Medicare as “the advance wave of socialism,” while Democrats are ashamed of Lyndon Johnson, whose legislative genius made this wonderful, life-saving concept real, is insane.
When Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law in the presence of Harry Truman in 1965, he said: “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.”
Reagan, on the other hand, according to Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, “predicted that Medicare would compel Americans to spend their ‘sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.’ ”
Scary.
Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today’s young people. Liberals (including liberal Republicans, who have since been mostly drummed out of the party) ended legalized racial segregation and gender discrimination.
Humiliation imposed by custom and enforced by government had been the order of the day for blacks and women before men and women of good will and liberal persuasion stepped up their long (and not yet ended) campaign to change things. Liberals gave this country Head Start and legal services and the food stamp program. They fought for cleaner air (there was a time when you could barely see Los Angeles) and cleaner water (there were rivers in America that actually caught fire).
Liberals. Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier.
It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned.
Self-hatred is a terrible thing. Just ask that arch-conservative Clarence Thomas.
Liberals need to get over it.

A unifying election? (from Orlando Sentinel)

This opportunity can possibly be a model for the nation. -Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
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orlandosentinel.com/community/news/ucf/orl-blackhisp0808sep08,0,1788184.story
OrlandoSentinel.com
Campaign 2008
A unifying election?
Jeff Kunerth and Victor Manuel Ramos
Sentinel Staff Writers
September 8, 2008

If Barack Obama wants to win Central Florida and carry the state in November, he'll need the votes of Hispanics, who constitute 14 percent of the region's registered voters.For that to happen, Obama must prove himself as the candidate who can transcend the everyday differences that separate blacks and Hispanics.In Central Florida, the two minority groups have many issues in common -- discrimination, health care, public education -- but diverge when it comes to language, jobs and immigration.To many blacks, such as 61-year-old Lamont Flournoy Sr., it comes down to a competition for jobs. Many businesses that once hired blacks now prefer Hispanics because they will perform the same work for less money, he said.Other blacks pick up on racism from Hispanics who come from countries where discrimination against blacks is as bad, or worse, as in the United States, said University of Central Florida history Professor Vibert White. And even though blacks and Hispanics both experience prejudice from whites, some blacks say they perceive Hispanics as receiving better treatment because of their skin color,"Hispanics see themselves as being white," said Chodry Andre, 31, a barber, who is black. "They go through some of what we go through, but not all of what we go through."Hispanics contend that whatever differences they have with blacks, race is not the main issue. The bulk of Central Florida's Hispanic population has Caribbean roots, originating from racially mixed places such as Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, where a significant portion of the population is of African descent.Power shiftMore of a problem than racism is a lack of familiarity between the two groups, a lack of common history and a shifting balance of power."Remember that African-Americans had been the largest minority in the United States for all of the country's history," said Ada V. Garc�a, a Hispanic events organizer. "But they have seen that we are growing rapidly and that we are taking their place."In Orlando, there have been several attempts to create coalitions between blacks and Hispanics. In 2001, after Hispanics surpassed blacks as the largest minority in Florida, the Orange branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People talked about recruiting Hispanics into the civil-rights organization. It never happened."I don't think there's been a great effort on the part of the African-American and Latino communities to join efforts," said Gerald Bell, former president of the Orange branch of the NAACP.Several years ago, there were efforts to form an alliance between the state conference of the NAACP in Orlando and Latino Leadership, a Hispanic-advocacy group. But nothing came of it."It wasn't way up on the list of priorities," said Beverlye Colson Neal, executive director of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP.Since then, the two communities have drifted further apart, said Latino Leadership President Marytza Sanz."Latinos and blacks coming together, I don't see that happening," Sanz said.The division between the black and Hispanic communities became apparent in 2006 when, in one of the largest protest marches in Orlando's history, more than 20,000 Hispanics showed up in support of immigration reform. Although black leadership endorsed the march, black residents watched from the sidelines."The reason many blacks didn't join them is that before that, they [Hispanics] had ignored them," White said.Lack of bad bloodIgnoring each other largely defines the history of relations between blacks and Hispanics in Orlando. The city has not experienced the clashes between the two minorities found in other cities. They haven't engaged in the bitter political battles between black and Hispanic candidates in Miami, Los Angeles and Houston. They haven't experienced the residential turf wars -- Hispanics moving into historically black neighborhoods -- found in other cities.And that lack of bad blood might benefit Obama when Central Florida Hispanics go the polls in November."It is still possible that Mr. Obama is going to transcend the divisions that separate Latino and black Americans," White said. "He is a special type of African-American. He is looked upon as a benign individual who understands class, culture, heritage and race among various groups."Arthur Watson, a 62-year-old Frito-Lay worker, thinks the economic hard times will win Obama the Hispanic vote. "The economy applies to people everywhere, no matter what the race. If you are a working person, the economy has you by the throat."And there's another reason Hispanics will vote for Obama over John McCain, Watson contends: "Hispanics will vote for him out of party loyalty. They are loyal people."In Obama's favor, Hispanics in Central Florida are predominantly Democratic. Of the 194,000 Hispanic registered voters in Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake and Volusia counties, 42 percent are Democrats; 20 percent, Republican.Just as recent national polls have reflected, many Central Florida Hispanics are overcoming their initial skepticism to support Obama."For Latinos, he is a person of color who is talking about our issues, and it's important to put our support behind him without necessarily letting go of our concerns," said Evelyn Luciano-Carter, a consultant on diversity issues who is Puerto Rican and married to an African-American man.For her husband, Mel Carter, a United Parcel Service account executive, Obama represents a chance to unite. "I think there is an opportunity to bridge these two cultures together."

Jeff Kunerth can be reached at jkunerth@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5392. Victor Manuel Ramos can be reached at vramos@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-6186.

Study on Hispanic issues to be released during DNC

Since all children, regardless of immigration status, have access to a free, public education in the U.S., the dropout issue mentioned in the article below is a reminder of the urgency facing the Latina/o community. A recent report by the Pew Hispanic Forum showed that Latina/o children make up 20% of all public school children and will surpass 50% by 2050. I also learned elsewhere that 50,000 Latinas/os turn 18 years-old each month. Thus, voting, other forms of political participation, access to health care, etc., can be studied in the context of the 50% dropout rate facing Latinas/os. In other words, how is a focus on dropout a signal towards other challenges facing the Latina/o community? -Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
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Study on Hispanic issues to be released during DNC
The Associated Press
Monday, August 25th 2008, 11:18 AM
DENVER — Groups hoping to bring attention to immigration, health care, education and other issues of importance to Hispanics are releasing a document calling on the next president to create a committee on those topics.
While the document doesn't offer groundbreaking information on the U.S.' fastest growing minority — education is a key issue because Hispanics have a high dropout rates, a high percentage lack health care, and immigration status is a big concern — its creators say it's still one of the most comprehensive recent studies on the issues.
The report, commissioned by Azteca America, a Spanish-language TV network, and Fundacion Azteca America, will be presented to the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain in September.
Luis J. Echarte, chairman of the boards of Azteca America and Fundacion Azteca, said the network and foundation commissioned the study because "the issue of immigration is very important, but it's not the only issue that concerns the Latino community."
Echarte said research shows the high school dropout rate among Hispanics is more than twice that of black students and more than three times greater than for white students.
One reason, he said, is that some students who are in the country illegally are afraid they will be caught and deported, while others have to work to support their families.
One solution would be to create a more bilingual and culturally relevant education system for Hispanics, meaning more Hispanic teachers who can be role models for students, Echarte said.
On health care, the document found that about six of 10 Hispanic families in the U.S. don't have health insurance, sometimes because they are in the country illegally.
The study's other major issue is political participation. Researchers found that although Hispanics make up about 15 percent of the U.S. population, about 9 percent of eligible Hispanic voters are registered to vote and only 6.5 percent do vote.
"So all these demonstrations that you see don't have a political impact," Echarte said.
Echarte said Azteca is trying to increase many Hispanics' political awareness. He noted that some Hispanics don't bother to become US citizens after obtaining permanent residency status, thinking their status work is done and doubting that their vote would count anyway.
Others are unaware they can have dual citizenship and don't have to rescind citizenship from their native country if they became naturalized in the U.S.
"Latinos have so much to offer and so much potential, but they keep facing these consistent barriers," said Maria del Carmen Salazar, an assistant professor at the University of Denver Morgridge College of Education and one of the study's authors.
Salazar and faculty at DU's Center for Community Engagement and Scholarship used information from the U.S. Census and national research documents by the Pew Hispanic Center and other institutions to compile the report.
Research topics were selected by the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute, the National Council of La Raza, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials and other groups.
Titled "The State of Latinos 2008: Defining an Agenda for the Future," the document calls for the creation a presidential advisory commission to propose solutions to the most pressing issues affecting Hispanics in the U.S.