Elections
What Does Scott Brown’s Victory Mean for Immigration Reform?
The election of Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown in Massachusetts provides an interesting twist in 2010 electoral politics. While some may argue that this loss is essentially a referendum on the current Administration and its agenda, the less dramatic but more likely conclusion is that the results were more about the candidates themselves. Democratic candidate Martha Coakley’s well-documented gaffes in the media made for entertaining fodder during a news cycle dominated by depressing news from Haiti. Her loss, while bad news for the Democrats in Congress who prefer having a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, does not necessarily derail the President’s agenda. To make wholesale assumptions that Republican Senator-Elect Scott Brown is going to automatically derail all of the President’s upcoming initiatives is not only pre-mature but impossible to determine. Read More
Public Opinion Polls and the Future of Immigration Reform
For those of us who live and breathe immigration reform, it’s hard to remember that immigration isn’t everyone’s top priority. Not surprisingly, public opinion polls and headlines constantly remind us that health care and the economy consistently top the concerns of the general public. Even among Latino voters, a new study shows that health care is the most pressing issue. But this is neither a big surprise nor should it lead to the conclusion that immigration isn’t important. Polls are snapshots, taking the picture of the public psyche on a given day, at a given time, in the context of a range of political concerns. Read More
New Census Data Reveals America’s Immigrant Roots
With CNN due to premiere its Latinos in America special on October 21st and 22nd, and National Hispanic Heritage Month having just drawn to a close, it is well worth considering the extent to which the immigrant experience is part of daily life in the United States for both Latinos and non-Latinos. As the IPC details in a new Fact Check, American Roots in the Immigrant Experience, data released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau illustrates both the breadth and depth of America’s immigrant roots. Read More
Immigration Reform: Congress’s Perennial Pothole
At a gathering in Washington this week, long-time immigration reform advocate Congressman Luis Gutierrez announced that he would soon introduce a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the House. This marker bill is likely to have something for everyone in it, combining the DREAM Act, family reunification, a legalization program, and even smart-enforcement components. He gave the self-imposed deadline of October 13 for the framework to be ready and it couldn’t come sooner. The lack of immigration reform continues to plague the administration at every turn, and plays a role in every major legislative battle the administration has fought since the inauguration. It came up in the stimulus bill and is now making a command appearance in the health care reform debate. Read More
Birthright Citizenship: Myths, Facts and Why It Matters
The issue of birthright citizenship, although not traditionally a sexy topic, is not without controversy. In the 2008 election, for example, the legitimacy of both parties’ candidates was called into question—Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain, was born on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone and Democratic candidate, President Barack Obama, was born to a U.S. citizen mother and an immigrant father in Hawaii in 1961. Normally, the issue of birthright citizenship doesn’t get much attention. However, immigration restrictionists and select politicians often use the issue to rally extremists and distract from the important issues surrounding reforming our broken immigration system. Today, in light the upcoming federal holiday, Citizenship Day, the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) released a new report, Made in America: Myths and Facts about Birthright Citizenship, which challenges the myths so often heard about birthright citizenship. Read More
Will Florida’s New Republican Senator Focus on Immigration Reform?
Immigration advocates around the country let out a heartfelt sigh when Florida Republican Senator, Mel Martinez, announced his resignation earlier this month. Senator Martinez, whose term was set to expire January 3, 2011, is Cuban-born and a long-time immigration supporter. Florida Republican Governor Charlie Crist, who plans to run for the Senate seat himself, appointed George LeMieux, his closest political advisor to fill the seat—a choice met with heavy criticism from Democrats. While no one is quite sure how George LeMieux will fare on issues critical to Florida voters (since LeMieux has never held public office before), one thing is sure: GOPers would do well to keep immigration reform at the top of the priority list considering that Latinos comprised roughly one-in-seven of the swing-state’s voters in the 2008 presidential election. Read More
Plugging into the Millennial Generation
Today, the Center for American Progress released a new publication, The Coming End of the Culture Wars, which explains that the conservative white working-class population is waning while the younger “millennial” generation, who is much more liberal on social issues including immigration reform, is expanding. The report states: Millennials—the generation with birth years 1978 to 2000—support gay marriage, take race and gender equality as givens, are tolerant of religious and family diversity, have an open and positive attitude toward immigration, and generally display little interest in fighting over the divisive social issues of the past. Read More
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
