Immigrants and the GOP - Wall Street Journal

"The immigration platform will go before the full Republican National Convention next week. And before approving it, the GOP would be wise to consider the demographic data that the Census Bureau released earlier this month. A party that thinks it can win elections by alienating Latinos is going to be in the minority for a very long time.

Many on the political right have tried to turn illegal immigration into a wedge issue. And while it hasn't produced victories at the polls, this strategy has succeeded in alienating many among the country's fastest-growing voting bloc. By 2020, Hispanics are projected to be 20% of the electorate, up from 9% today.

Restrictionists are also deluding themselves if they think sealing the border can reverse these demographic trends. Illegal border crossings peaked in 2000 under President Clinton. They're down by half under Mr. Bush. According to Census data, Hispanic population growth is no longer being driven by immigration, legal or illegal. Since 2000, it's been driven by the higher birth rates among Latino women already here.

Perceived animosity toward Latinos can also spill into other ethnic voting blocs. In the 1990s, Republican support in California for Proposition 187, a ballot initiative that denied illegal immigrants access to social services, not only hurt the party with the Hispanic electorate. It also led to a drop in GOP support among the state's Chinese and Koreans voters."

Click here for the full WSJ article

Get to Know an Immigrant

The NPR/Kaiser/Kennedy School Immigration Survey found that the more contact a native born American had with immigrants, the more positively they viewed immigration.

This isn't surprising, congressional districts with high populations of undocumented immigrants tend to favor more rationale immigration policies. You would think the more "overrun " with immigrants a district is the more likely the citizens of the district would vote for a immigration restrictionist but the opposite is true. They love their immigrants.

Click here for a link regarding Tom Tancredo's district, what a shocker there are very few immigrants. For those of you who don't know, Tom Tancredo is the self appointed #1 anti-immigration crusader in congress.

Thanks to the American Humanity Blog for pointing out that Volunteermatch.org has a feature that allows you to search for volunteer opportunities specifically regarding Immigrants and Refugees. Go out, befriend an immigrant while helping your community at the same time.

Why is Tom Tancredo So Scared of People He's Never Met?

Here are the demographics of Tom Tancredo's district
87.7% White
1.9% Black
2.6% Asian
5.8% Hispanic
0.4% Native American
0.1% other

Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans are underrepresented in your district. The majority of these are probalby U.S. citizens, a tiny number are probably documented immigrants, and a small handful at most are undocumented immigrants. So why has he devoted his career to a problem that does not affect his district in the least?

What are you outraged about Tom?

EDIT: Tom is retiring and this is his last term in congress. Don't let the door hit you on the way out Tommy.

LPGA's New English Only Rule

From the Immigration Prof Blog

You probably have heard about the LPGA's new English only rule for professional women golfers. In "English-only rule in LPGA goes against the grain," Mark Herrmann writes that "It is hard to say which ideal gets trampled more by the LPGA’s new speak-English-or-you’re-out policy, the spirit of golf or the spirit of America. Either way, the women’s professional golf tour has turned a no-win situation into a big loss. . . . The gist is this: The LPGA, worried about losing interest among fans and sponsors, said it will suspend players who can’t pass an English oral exam after two years on tour. This appears aimed directly at South Koreans, who represent 45 of the 121 international players on the tour and who - British Women’s Open champion Ji-Yai Shin and U.S. Women’s Open champion Inbee Park, to name two - are dominating." This gives new meaning to the concept of "discrimination by proxy," which historically understands english only laws as a way to target and punish national origin minorities and immigrants. Is language regulation being used by the LPGA to target the most successful women golfers (who just happen to be Asian)?

WTF?? This is insulting on so many levels. First on the assumption that Americans won't be fans of Korean golfers just because they're Korean and second that golfing is a sport for strictly English speaking people. As a golfer I'm disgusted by the LPGA.

Dangerous Hate - Part 2

The anti-immigration "activist" from the Dangerous Hate Post (below this post) who was caught illegally stockpiling weapons and making threats was finally released after several months in jail I'm still looking into finding out what he was finally convicted of what he was managed to wiggle his way out of.

However, the Watchman from ALIPAC.net was able to find this record of arrest from several years ago for the same individual..

"Arrested were Randy Dees a 52 year old Rodeo resident for 245 PC, assault with a deadly weapon and David Parsons a 30 year old Fairfield resident for 245 PC assault with a deadly weapon, 273 (a) PC, child endangerment and 288 (a)(1) PC lewd act on a child."

To think in anti-immigration circles, this guy is a hero. I've never been more disgusted.

Dangerous Hate

A while back I heard of an anti-immigration "activist" from the hate group Save Our State being arrested for domestic terrorism. I was shocked, not because I was surprised it came to this but because an arrest was actually made. It is not uncommon to see people encouraging others to take arms and start shooting "illegals". Beyond the homicidal intentions surrounding these statements, I'm still confounded as to how they know if someone is undocumented or not.

Well one of them was arrested on domestic terrorism charges late last year and is currently in jail. He still has not had his day in court yet so I'm going to hold off putting up his name until then. However ALIPAC.net put up a link to an anti-immigration blog that highlights how despite arrests being made, the anti-immigration community still does not see why threatening violence is a serious matter, especially on a population that cannot seek help from the authorities. This case however seems to involve specific threats to the ACLU. The blogger writes

"I don’t want to thwart Randy’s legal defense in any way so I’m not going to repeat what it is he is alleged to have written on the message board. But I will tell you that it wasn’t anything more serious than we have all read on the Internet many times before. Some of you may have written something similar. You could be sitting in jail right now too."

To those of you who don't frequent many anti-immigration sites, the people who visit those tend to believe the only to deal with immigrants is through violence and a "war". I used to dismiss these people as lunatics but in the last few years they are now the majority on a lot of these sites.

To be continued.............

Son of Undoucumented Immigrants Wins Gold

BEIJING — The American flag landed on the scorer’s table, launched by a family member with exceptional aim. Henry Cejudo grabbed it from his coach and draped it around his body. He stood there for the longest time, fighting back tears, the son of illegal immigrants wrapped in stars and stripes.

Click here for the full story

Check out my Olympics tag

Justice Served?

I'm sure everyone had heard that The Justice Department won't press charges against Justice Department officials who violated U.S. laws. The picture on the left is of one Monica Goodling, one of the main culprits. If you haven't already heard, here is a summary of the charges.

Internal department watchdogs have issued two audits concluding that several former officials broke civil laws by vetting interns, young lawyers and immigration judges on their conservative credentials and loyalty to President George W. Bush. The posts are meant to be non-political.

Now, read this

"The American Civil Liberties Union obtained a government "manual" distributed to defense lawyers assigned to represent immigrant workers arrested and prosecuted in last May's Postville, Iowa meatpacking raids. The document – posted on the ACLU Web site today – contains prepackaged scripts for plea and sentencing hearings as well as documents providing for guilty pleas and waivers of rights that were used to push the more than 300 Postville workers through mass criminal proceedings as quickly as possible".

These are DEFENSE attorneys.




A federal Judge had this to say about immigration cases that come up before him

"It's often hard to get a good night's sleep when you feel the lawyering in a case has not been good."

You have to wonder when we became a country where corrupt government officials got off without a scratch yet desperate and poor laborers are denied basic rights.

Nebraskans are considering an immigration policy

There has been a lot of anti immigrant movements this year and it appears that Nebraska is considering an immigration policy. Nebraska officials are carefully considering the new policy, and hope that it could set a standard for other states.

There are not a lot of details on this issue, so I would highly recommend everyone to call and e-mail the senators from Nebraska and oppose any type of immigration bill, because I'm most certain it won't be a friendly one.

You can find their contact info here:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=NE

Full Story (Not Much):
http://www.nebraska.tv/Global/story.asp?S=8821104