Elections
Candidate for RNC Chair Chip Saltsman Stirs Controversy with “Star Spanglish Banner”
At a time when the GOP should be warming up to key Latino and immigrant voting blocs, Chip Saltsman-candidate for the next chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC)-chose to ring in the New Year with a song called "The Star Spanglish Banner." Saltsman, who is also known as the former head of the Tennessee Republican Party who managed the Mike Huckabee campaign, included the song on his controversial holiday CD that he sent to RNC members as a Christmas gift. The story-which NDN's Melissa Merz officially broke-exposes yet another example of the xenophobic and bigoted rhetoric put forth by reckless public figures that has fueled rising hate crimes and violence against Latinos. Today's Huffington Post's head-lining article, "Star Spanglish Banner: RNC Candidate Chip Saltsman Causes Immigration Stir," described the song as: Read More
CIS Ignores the Facts: Immigration Important Concern for Latino Voters
The Center for Immigration Studies tries to snatch anti-immigrant victory from the jaws of electoral defeat in a new report about Latino voters in the 2008 election. According to the report, the widespread perception among Latinos that the Republican Party is hostile to immigrants played no appreciable role in their decision about whether to vote Democratic or Republican last November. Read More
Gov. Paterson Stuns Immigrant Community With Gillibrand Senate Pick
The State of New York has, throughout its history, been both a haven and a hotbed for immigrants and diversity. That's why New York State Governor David Paterson's decision to pick Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton as U.S. Senator raises deep concern among immigrants and advocates in the state and across the country. Read More
Push Still Strong for Immigration Reform in Early Obama Administration
Today, Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office on his first full day in the White House as President of the United States and met with economic advisors to start "making early progress on the change he promised." In the spirit of both economic recovery and social change, immigration should be addressed in President Obama's early conversations. Latinos are demanding it ought to, experts and advocates are confident it will. Read More
Napolitano Brings New Day to the Department of Homeland Security
Although many questions were left unanswered at the confirmation hearing of Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano this week, make no mistake that she has always been a vocal supporter of comprehensive immigration reform. She has made countless numbers of statements in support of smart, sensible and thorough solutions to our broken immigration system. Watch the speech she made in June of 2007 at the National Press Club. Read More
Presidential Leaders Want Comprehensive Immigration Reform on Front Burner
President Bush counted immigration reform as one of his major regrets this week when cautioning the GOP not to be perceived as so "anti-somebody." While Bush's promise of comprehensive immigration reform took a back seat to the Iraq War back in 2001, current headlines suggest Obama's immigration reform campaign pledge is similarly taking a backseat to our economic woes. But in a step toward more immediate immigration reform, President-Elect Barack Obama met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon yesterday for lunch at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C., to discuss, among other things, comprehensive immigration reform as a priority. Read More
Bush Regrets Not Pushing for Immigration Reform
This week, in an interview with Cal Thomas of the Washington Times, George W. Bush admitted that he regretted concentrating so much on Social Security and not pushing for immigration reform after his '04 reelection: Q: And biggest do-over? Knowing everything you know now, what would you have done over again? THE PRESIDENT: I probably, in retrospect, should have pushed immigration reform right after the ´04 election and not Social Security reform. Read More
The GOP’s New Year Resolution on Immigration
By any measurement the GOP lost more than an election this year. Many Republican candidates who incorporated immigrant-bashing and nativism into their platforms lost sight of the kind of country the U.S. has become and, in doing so, caused the GOP to experience a defeat the likes of which they have not seen in years. The Arizona Republic laid out the GOP's challenge ahead: For only the second time since 1979, they control neither the White House nor a chamber of Congress...More troubling for the GOP: They have been pushed back to a regional base in the South and in the depopulating plains. Congressional losses in 2008 all but wiped out Republican House representation in the Northeast. Republican presidential candidates have not been competitive in the Pacific Rim of California, Oregon and Washington for two decades. Once-staunchly GOP Virginia and Indiana went to Obama. Read More
2,000 Approved Naturalization Applicants Blocked from Voting
Red tape and a tightfisted judge blocked nearly 2,000 people who should've been able to vote this past Election Day from receiving their naturalization oath in time to register for November's general election. Lawful permanent residents with approved naturalization applications must take the oath of allegiance to become a U.S. citizen. According to a new government report and immigration analysts, federal judges in some parts of the U.S. may be refusing USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) requests for oath ceremonies and delaying the swearing-in of new citizens. Some USCIS district offices administer naturalization oaths themselves. But in a few districts-including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit-only federal district courts have power to so and are then reimbursed by USCIS for all oath ceremonies they perform. Los Angeles itself received $2.4 million for the 169,799 oaths it administered in 2008. According to the Washington Post, the ombudsman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Michael Dougherty, stated: Read More
Immigration Remains Top-Tier Issue for New Administration
Gebe Martinez wrote in this week's Politico that "in presidential transition offices, immigration is cited as a top-tier issue that Obama will have to tackle early in his administration." While everyone knows the economy is the first order of business, even Michael Chertoff would agree that something needs to be done about immigration especially after it was revealed that undocumented workers were tidying up his suburban Maryland home. Chertoff would find himself in Conservative company. Leading Republicans have begun to publicly criticize the GOP's handling of the immigration issue following the Party's historic losses in November and the Republicans are rethinking their Hispanic strategy. Read More
