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At least this is what we were taught to believe—that the Constitution assures central authority through preemption, that is, through federal law’s power to trump state statutes. Posted By Regina Cantu at 04:47 PM Sunday’s state elections went ahead without any mejor incidents as the PRI took over three states and maintained its seat in at least six others. Posted By Regina Cantu at 11:06 PM Mexican President Felipe Calderon is in Washington, D.C. for a two-day visit where he and President Obama will tackle issues such as violence along the U.S.-Mexican border and strengthening trade relations. This morning, after a bilateral meeting, the Presidents held a joint press briefing on illegal immigration, drug trafficking and border security.
Obama used the press conference to reiterate his support for comprehensive immigration reform, and once again praised the Senate’s outline. He also criticized the Arizona law and noted that the Administration is taking a very close look at SB 1070. AP article pointed out the efforts taken by both Presidents to present an image of unity at today’s event: Sprinkling in bit of Spanish, Obama went to great lengths to greet Calderon, who is fighting an escalating, bloody battle against drug cartels in his country and facing pressure to get results on immigration reform. Around the White House grounds, Mexican and U.S. flags flew together, while cheering school children and military in their finest dress uniforms gathered on the South Lawn to embrace the pageantry.
"I say to you and to the Mexican people: Let us stand together," Obama said Wednesday morning. Tonight, the White House will host a State Dinner for President Calderon and his wife. The article also looked deeper into the factors that cause migration in the first place, and offered a solution: "...it seems all the more urgent that both sides do more to promote ways to keep Mexican workers in Mexico, like expanding microcredit programs. Those have proven a boon for small entrepreneurs in impoverished rural states like Oaxaca that are a major source of illegal migrants." We couldn’t agree more. In fact, that why the MATT Foundation is addressing this very issue with micro-loans and other initiatives that go beyond immigration reform. Posted By Cristina Noriega at 10:02 AM For those who haven't seen it yet, here's John McCain's new campaign ad:
When I saw it, my jaw literally dropped. But now that McCain is fighting to keep the Republican nomination in his home state of Arizona, his message has switched to a strict 10-point border security plan. His web site, CompleteTheDangedFence.com, pounds the message over and over, with no mention of the other components that would complete the big picture. It appears McCain may have lost all interest in supporting comprehensive legislation... Sosa hasn’t done any political work since he created Spanish-language ads for John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid. That effort, like many of his recent experiences with the Republican Party, ended in frustration. Sosa produced 12 commercials for McCain, but campaign officials declined to use any of them.
“The people at the top kept changing, and we had to re-convince new people of the importance of the Latino vote. They were too distracted with other things,” Sosa said. “When it was time to run the ads, they were very hesitant, primarily because I was a ‘Bushie.’ I had worked with Bush, and they didn’t want the Bush team.” Sosa publicly broke with his GOP compatriots in 2005 after the U.S. House passed a Republican-backed bill that would have made illegal immigration a felony. The bill, which failed to make it through the Senate, stirred national protests. In a piece he contributed to the 2009 anthology “Latinos and the Nation’s Future,” edited by Cisneros, Sosa openly fretted that the House’s immigration legislation had “almost obliterated” years of GOP gains. Sosa attributes at least part of the GOP’s failures in the 2006 and 2008 elections to the antipathy the immigration legislation stirred. In response, he co-founded Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together, a San Antonio-based group dedicated to comprehensive immigration reform. He left the organization in 2008 to work for McCain, but continues to support its mission. Sosa will continue to be a Republican "until the day I die", but he isn't afraid to speak out when he feels the party is shooting itself in the foot. As the article continued: Last year, Sosa warned his fellow Republicans that they “would be idiots” for opposing the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic ever selected for the court. Despite these and similar warnings from Hispanic Republicans, 31 of 40 GOP senators — including Texans John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison — voted against Sotomayor. Sosa called that vote “one more nail in the Republican image coffin,” and he suggests that the new Arizona law could shut that coffin tight.
Will Republican's heed Sosa's warnings before it's too late? Can they really afford to lose the support of the growing Latino population? Leave a comment and let us know what you think! Posted By Cristina Noriega at 03:25 PM Last night Michelle Obama arived in Mexico as part of her first solo foreign trip as first lady. In this video she shares her hopes and plans for her visit and focuses on the strong ties between our two countries, calling the trip "an opportunity for our countries to highlight those shared vaues":
Obama met President Felipe Calderon’s wife, Margarita Zavala, at the presidential residence on Wednesday morning, where she was expected to plug a message of improving education for the poor. "Mexico is really a natural first step for me," Obama said on her plane on Tuesday night. "The relationships that our countries have with one another are so deep and broad. So many U.S. citizens trace their roots back to Mexico," she said in a video recorded by the White House. The first ladies, both lawyers with young children, will visit Mexico’s anthropology museum and meet with women leaders, but had no plans to publicly discuss Mexico’s raging drug war, which is fueled by U.S. demand for illegal narcotics. I congratulate the first lady for choosing Mexico for her first international solo trip and for understanding how connected out two countries really are. Posted By Cristina Noriega at 09:00 AM Ezra Klein wrote an interesting article for the Washington Post. Even though he thinks immigration reform isn’t going to happen in 2010, he does a good job explaining the underlying political climate. Some key points: Harry Reid is in charge of the Senate, and he says he’s got 56 votes, and it’s gonna happen. "We need a handful of Republicans," he told an immigration rally in Las Vegas...
"Beltway Republicans are very, very concerned about losing Latino voters, and so they try to be careful on the issue...But grass-roots conservatives tend to be very, very opposed to immigration reform."
"So what do Republican politicians do when their base goes into anti-immigration overdrive but their consultants beg them to tread carefully? It looks like Harry Reid, for one, would like to find out." Posted By Cristina Noriega at 08:37 AM
It's no April Fool's joke. Today is the nation’s 23rd official Census Day, a reminder that if you haven’t yet filled out your form please take a minute to do so now. A couple days ago President Obama filled out his Census form too. According to Politics Daily: Not only has the president been counted, but he included his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, who lives with the First Family at the White House. (The form asks, "How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment or mobile home on April 1, 2010?" Census Director Robert Groves blogged about the importance of the Census, explaining:
Like the President, millions of you have already completed your form and mailed it back. You got the message that doing so is important and saves taxpayers the cost of sending out a trained census taker to interview you in person... Now you can follow your community’s progress in returning census forms. A new interactive map provides daily updates of the percentage of returned census forms. We encourage you to check the map frequently over the coming weeks to see how your community is doing compared to 2000, and also see how others across the country are faring. While you’re visiting our Web site, explore its other features, such as an interactive form that explains the purpose and history of each question, assistance guides in 59 languages, and a page that describes the origins of the census in the Constitution. As for those of you who haven’t yet filled out your form, you still have a couple of weeks left. It’s not too late to do what many of your neighbors have already done. So do your part to make the 2010 Census a success -- fill out your form and mail it back. Read more about the importance of filling out your Census form and mailing it back in our newsletter. Posted By Cristina Noriega at 08:48 AM In the midst of fears of another undercount in the 2010 Census, Hispanic groups are pushing hard to get people to respond. According to an article in the Express News:
Hispanics are the fastest-growing ethnic group both nationally and in Texas, but the greater the census undercount, the greater their loss of political representation from school boards and City Hall to Congress, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund... The Census Bureau itself has been aggressively campaigning for an accurate count, unveiling a multi-million dollar media campaign to get the message out. As a resident of Alpine, Texas I have heard several ads on the radio in both Spanish and English, and see the effort even more clearly when I visit my hometown of San Antonio.
But another problem may lie in the questions themselves. Specifically, the one that calls for respondents to identify their race. According to an article in TIME:
Many, if not most, Hispanics in the U.S. think of their ethnicity (also known as Latino) not just in cultural terms but in a racial context as well. It’s why more than 40% of Hispanics, when asked on the Census form in 2000 to register white or black as their race, wrote in "Other" — and they represented 95% of all the 15.3 million people in the U.S. who did so...
I myself have always been confused by this simple question. When I received my Census form, I was inclined to choose "Other". But after having read about what the Bureau is trying to do, I finally decided to check off "White" and then felt a lingering sense of weirdness for doing so.
I know I am not alone.
How can we make our Census questionnaire more accommodating to Hispanics and other minorities? I agree with the author Tim Padgett’s recommendation:
All of this should prod the Census Bureau to simplify things for future counts. The Hispanic-origins and race sections should be combined into one, less confusing section that asks folks what ethnic and/or racial group they belong to: white, black, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander or Hispanic. It should (as it already does for some groups on the form) provide space for designating subgroups — like Arabs, for example. (Many Jamaican- and Bahamian-Americans also feel the Census should list their Caribbean origins as a black subgroup.) And it should make clear that respondents can check more than one group. With the array of challenges facing the Census, please do your part. Mail back your form, be counted and be the difference.
Posted By Cristina Noriega at 09:17 AM Yesterday, a friend and co-worker forwarded me an article in the New York Times, written by Indiana senator Evan Bayh, and posed the question "This article is... a reflection of our government today ... or is it?" Challenges of historic import threaten America’s future. Action on the deficit, economy, energy, health care and much more is imperative, yet our legislative institutions fail to act. Congress must be reformed.
There are many causes for the dysfunction: strident partisanship, unyielding ideology, a corrosive system of campaign financing, gerrymandering of House districts, endless filibusters, holds on executive appointees in the Senate, dwindling social interaction between senators of opposing parties and a caucus system that promotes party unity at the expense of bipartisan consensus. It is this lack of social interaction, the refusal to socialize or be friends with members of the opposite party, that Bayh says is the core of the problem. But it didn’t always used to be this way, he explains: When I was a boy, members of Congress from both parties, along with their families, would routinely visit our home for dinner or the holidays. This type of social interaction hardly ever happens today and we are the poorer for it. It is much harder to demonize someone when you know his family or have visited his home. Today, members routinely campaign against each other, raise donations against each other and force votes on trivial amendments written solely to provide fodder for the next negative attack ad. It’s difficult to work with members actively plotting your demise.
I, like many Americans, have been feeling this partisan divide for a while now, and have been sensing that things were slowly getting worse. But to hear to verbalized so eloquently by an active member of the Senate makes it that much more real. Something has got to change, no doubt. But in the midst of enormous challenges comes hope. This morning the Senate voted 70-28 to pass a $15 billion jobs package, giving Senate Democrats their first legislative victory of the year. And guess what? Thirteen Republicans got behind the bill too. According the The Hill, "Final passage of the bill was made possible by the support of Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.) and four other Republicans who voted Monday to cut off a GOP filibuster." Wow. Posted By Cristina Noriega at 10:36 AM On February 11, Latino leaders gathered at the Texas State Capitol to promote the 2010 Census and encourage an accurate count. According to News 8 Austin: "If we have a good count, we can get four congressmen. Every congressman means millions, hundreds of millions of dollars for each of those projects - roads, highways, schools," said Texas Rep. Aaron Pena (pictured above). "If we get a bad count, we’re going to end up with three and all that money that would have been appropriated for Texas is going to go to New York or California of somewhere else. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has sent a letter to Governor Rick Perry requesting the formation of a complete count committee for the state." Rep. Peña, later blogged "The message I send to the citizens of Texas is that together we can have a successful 2010 Census and ensure that our voice is heard and that our people our counted." MALDEF, in collaboration with grassroots leaders and organizations inluding MATT, has formed the Texas Latino Complete Count Committee in order to reach the hardest to count communities. MATT is proud to be a part of this important initiative. MALDEF has launched an extensive campaign to encourage Latinos to participate in the Census, called ¡Cuéntate…Porque Tú Vales! “Because You Count, Get Counted!” They also issued a press release asking Texas Governor Rick Perry to step up and form a statewide complete count committee: Most governors and states have recognized the importance of this once-in-a-decade opportunity to ensure that their constituents are counted. As a result, the U.S. Census Bureau reports at least 36 states have formed statewide complete count committees to help with the Census. Sadly, the Texas Governor has neither endorsed the U.S. Census, nor convened a Texas Complete Count Committee to create a plan for counting every Texan despite requests by legislators, the Census Bureau, and advocacy organizations including MALDEF.
It is imperative that Texas have a statewide strategy for an accurate and complete count. Texas has the second highest hard-to-count areas in the country. The populations in these areas include children and residents who are low-income, lack a high school diploma, are limited English proficient, live in multi-family homes, receive public assistance, and/or are highly mobile. The 2000 Census left an estimated 373,567 people in Texas uncounted. As a result, Texas missed out on approximately $2,913 in federal funds per person – a total loss of over $1 billion over the last decade. This decade, due to population growth, Texas is expected to gain three or four congressional seats in the next apportionment. The difference of one Congressional seat for Texas affects our ability to represent our interests at a national level. In addition, with an accurate Census count, Texas will gain a greater share of the over $400 billion distributed annually to communities across the count ry for programs such as school construction, early childhood programs, services to the elderly, job training programs and roads. These are funds that Texas desperately needs to ensure its economic stability.
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