Spitzer Formally Ditches License Proposal

According to the NYT, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer will announce today that he is dropping his plan to offer driver’s license to anyone with a foreign passport:

“’You have perhaps seen me struggle with it because I thought we had a principled decision, and it’s not necessarily easy to back away from trying to move a debate forward,” he said. “But he came to believe the proposal would ultimately be blocked, he said, either by legal challenges, a vote by the Legislature to deny financing for the Department of Motor Vehicles or a refusal by upstate county clerks to carry it out.

“’I am not willing to fight to the bitter end on something that will not ultimately be implemented,” the governor said, “and we also have an enormous agenda on other issues of great importance to New York State that was being stymied by the constant and almost singular focus on this issue.”

Veteran’s Day

The San Francisco Chronicle today carries an article entitled “Veterans Day is a time for forgotten Latinos to be recognized.” Two paragraphs stick out:

“Carrillo wanted to become a pilot, so despite the skepticism of his examiners, he applied for the Air Corps cadet program. He passed the physical and aptitude tests but he lacked the required college degree, so he wrote on his application that he was a graduate of the College of Hard Knox. By the time military officials noticed, Carrillo was being inducted, a trained bomber pilot they couldn’t afford to lose. (“It was the best college in the world,” he told them unapologetically.)”

…

“Another serviceman, Armando Flores, had roots in Texas dating back to the 1700s. One winter day after enlisting, he was standing around on a frigid Army base with his hands in his pockets when an officer barked that American soldiers stand at attention, not with their hands in their pockets. What struck Flores was not the dressing-down, he recounted in his oral history, but the fact that, after years of being called a spic, a greaser and a wetback, for the first time in his life, he had been called an American.“

Update

Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Dennis O. Freytes sent me an op ed he wrote for the Orlando Sentinel:
“Let us also remember, however, the service to our nation by Hispanic-Americans, particularly the often-forgotten U.S. 65th Infantry Regiment from Puerto Rico, the only all-Hispanic unit in the history of the U.S. Army.”

…”Even before this regiment, Hispanics participated in most every major U.S. military conflict. From the American Revolution — when volunteers from Puerto Rico, Cuba and Mexico fought the British in 1779 under the command of Gen. Bernardo de Galvez to the present-day world war on terrorism, Hispanics have served bravely.”

Q & A with Kenneth C. Burt

Christina Hoag, La Política’s Los Angeles correspondent, recently interviewed Kenneth C. Burt, author of The Search for a Civic Voice: California Latino Politics. The bulk of the interview is included in this week’s newsletter but here are a couple of questions and answers that we couldn’t squeeze onto the PDF:

Q: What lessons, if any, do Latinos have to learn to advance politically?

A: A steady increase in the number of Latino voters should lead to an ever-larger number of Latino and Latino-friendly elected officials. The lesson from history is that voter registration and voting is not automatic. From 1947 to 1960, CSO systematically signed up more than 400,000 Latinos to vote, and ran get-out-the-vote drives. There is not a comparable statewide organization today. Voter registration is more episodic.

The other lesson from history is the centrality of coalition politics. In heavily Latino areas, candidates form competing coalitions. In recent Democratic legislative primaries, we have seen bitter contests between labor and business-backed Latino candidates. For example, Núñez won his first election with the backing of the AFL-CIO, beating a candidate funded by the Chamber of Commerce.

In multicultural districts, the biggest breakthroughs came through coalition politics. I mentioned Villaraigosa’s mayoral campaign, but the same was true for Edward Roybal. He was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1949, and to Congress in 1962. Latinos were not the majority in either election.

What is interesting is that the Roybal and Villaraigosa coalitions are so similar. For Roybal it was Latinos, Jews, progressives, labor, African Americans, and Asians. In 1949, the pastor at St. Mary’s, Monsignor O’Dwyer, endorsed, and he helped deliver the Irish vote as well as to help animate the Latino turnout.

Q: You worked on “The Search for a Civic Voice” for 20 years. Why did you decide to write the book?

A: I realized that a lot of the stories of the political pioneers had never been told. I also realized that I had a unique vantage point as an academic engaged in practical politics. Previously I worked for former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and I currently work to help elect politicians on behalf of the California Federation of Teachers. It’s also about family ties, which are so important in the Latino community.

As a young man I worked for the United Farm Workers, and was eager to learn how the UFW grew out of CSO, which in turn was shaped by the union movement and the World War II veterans. While at UC Berkeley, I attended the 1980 Democratic Convention as a Ted Kennedy supporter along with Dolores Huerta.

At Berkeley I also met, and later married, a Latina whose father had helped organize the GI Forum in California in the 1950s. The first assemblymen, congressman, and the first judge in LA were all WWII veterans who were part of this network.

After grad school at Harvard, I also interviewed President Kennedy’s Latino liaison, the architect of Viva Kennedy. He told me that no one else had approached him about his role in the historic election, or how he had helped facilitate the appointment of the first Latinos to high-ranking positions in the federal government.

So, I just found myself having a lot of information that I believed would be of interest to others. The result is The Search for a Civic Voice.

Weekend News Update

A quick round-up of the most important news between Friday and Sunday.

- Representative Joe Baca went “toe-to-toe” with the much taller House Majority Leader Representative Steny Hoyer on Friday. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair is peeved that even senior Democrats are caving into GOP ‘make-votes’ designed for no purpose other than campaign advertising.

- Spitzer, for all intents and purposes, gave up on his driver’s license plan.

- The Austin American-Statesman has an exceptional and extensive package looking at the differences between longtime Mexican American residents and recent Mexican immigrants.

- The Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post and the St. Petersburg Times together sponsored a poll that shows Giuliani enjoys huge support among Florida’s Hispanic Republicans – 70 percent.

Reaction to Ruben Navarrette’s Column

Full Disclosure: Ruben Navarrette Jr. declined an invitation to write op eds for La Política while Professor Rubén Rumbaut has accepted our offer. Neither decision influenced this post.

Nationally syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. today publishes a piece about the wildfires that forced him and many other San Diego residents to flee their homes. In the op ed, written and sent out to clients earlier this week Navarrette said:

“Unfortunately, there were those who took advantage of San Diego’s generosity. After police announced on Wednesday that they would be going through the stadium to check driver’s licenses and make sure everyone there was truly an evacuee, several hundred people headed for the exits.

“Then there were the six illegal immigrants who – in a despicable act – are suspected of trying to steal truckloads of relief supplies from the stadium. The scoundrels wound up being arrested by Border Patrol agents, who were there to help local enforcement with evacuations and crowd control – and not to enforce immigration law. “

University of California at Irvine Professor Rubén Rumbaut received an advance copy of the column and sent the following email to the columnist (the copy below reflects a few minor edits by the Professor to eliminate some personal details. Please also note that both Navarrette´s original article and Rumbaut´s response were written before the early reports of the immigrants having stolen relief supplies were discredited.):

“Estimado Ruben,

“I read your column, “America’s most flammable region,” with more than my usual interest. “Take it from a refugee:” your description of your own evacuation process was as poignant as your descriptions of the larger context of the events were eloquent and enlightening. It is hard to believe that in a seeming nanosecond “the largest evacuation of U.S. civilians since the Civil War” could take place right in our own front yard. But I’m glad to know you’re well and back home and not skipping a beat in your writing.

“San Diego is the closest thing to home I’ve known in the U.S. I have family there (including my stepdaughter), many friends and colleagues, and many memories. Here at UC Irvine many of my students missed classes because they had to go down to San Diego to help parents and family evacuate, or were themselves evacuated. We have our own big fire in Irvine (the Santiago fire, set by an arsonist), not yet controlled, but the flames have not gotten closer than 10 miles from our home, so it’s been mostly smoke and ashes we’ve had to contend with, not the brunt of the catastrophe that has befallen San Diego (yet again, a mere 4 years after the last one). Your line that “It turns out that America’s Finest City is also America’s most flammable” is memorable. New scars and all, though, I’m with you on your last line: it’s a fine city.

“But… if you’ll permit me a constructively critical observation: I’m not with you when, at the end of your piece and without anything else to balance the point, you picked on those ‘six illegal immigrants who — in a despicable act — are suspected of trying to steal from the stadium. The scoundrels wound up being arrested by Border Patrol agents, who were there to help local enforcement with evacuations and crowd control — and not to enforce immigration law.’

“I don’t know what in fact happened — but I know that, at a time when xenophobia and the immiseration and scapegoating of Mexicans/Latinos in particular are again at historic highs across the country, your words just add fuel to another “most flammable” of circumstances.

“Whatever you may have intended, readers of your column will take away a message (and almost predictably extrapolate a syllogism) of generalized bigotry: “ALL illegal immigrants steal despicably, ALL (or most) illegal immigrants are Mexicans/Latinos, therefore Mexicans/Latinos are despicable thieving scoundrels.” What’s more, “San Diego’s generosity” must therefore have come only from NON-illegals, and hence probably from NON-Mexicans/Latinos. In this morality tale that came out of nowhere, even the uniformed Border Patrol was there just to help people out, not to conduct warrantless raids in Qualcomm’s parking lot; those six scoundrels forced them to morph back into enforcers.

“But here in Orange County, and in San Bernardino County, the fires were criminally set, with evil intent: not by immigrants (legal or illegal), but by native-born arsonists — one of whom was shot to death by police as he tried to escape in a truck, another was arrested after a motorcycle chase to Hesperia, others are being sought… Now that is truly “despicable,” and it has zero to do with immigrants of whatever status. Yet not a word about that in your column.

“As to generosity: My wife listens daily to Spanish radio from Los Angeles, especially the Show de Piolín por la Mañana, a top-ranked show in the region, hosted by disk jockey Eduardo “Piolín” Sotelo, a Jalisco-born radio personality (who I believe regularized his own immigration status along the way): they organized a huge caravan (including a 48-foot truck) filled with donations generously given by the Spanish-language audience, including legal and illegal immigrants: see http://www.univision.com/content/content.jhtml?cid=1328843#p . They drove all the way to Qualcomm to distribute their gifts, and two bands came along to provide entertainment and fellowship. From Santa Ana in Orange County, Mexican restaurants organized donation drives and they brought tons of food to Qualcomm, prepared by immigrants, legal and illegal. That’s generosity too.

“There is good and bad in all of us. But singling out “six illegal immigrants” for special opprobrium without further comment by a leading and respected journalist is the sort of visceral slip that, by feeding into the anti-immigrant animus of the Zeitgeist, can help make America’s Finest City into America’s most flammable, in a way I know you did not intend.

“I hope you know that I wouldn’t take the time to offer these observations if I did not respect your work, and your words, immensely.

“Que vayas por la sombrita, como decíamos en Cuba,

tu amigo tocayo,

Rubén”

Rubén G. Rumbaut
Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine
http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4999

Daniel Imperato for President

“I am the alternate presidential candidate for 2008. I call on the Spanish American people and the Americas to join together to support me, Daniel Imperato. My mission is to create a better world, a better society and a stronger Americas. I need your support for President. Please visit Imperato2008.com”

New Latino Comedy Project Video

The Latino Comedy Project continues to release a string of videos on YouTube poking fun both at Latinos and those who would rather there weren´t quite so many of us in the United States. Here´s their latest offering:

I laughed very hard at that last line – “No, you can’t take me there. I don’t even speak Spanish.”

List of Cuban American Members of Congress

Folks keep coming in through search engines apparently looking to find a list of Cuban American members of Congress. Well, here it is

Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart

Representative Mario Diaz-Balart

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

Representative Albio Sires

Senator Bob Menendez

English-language Quotations from Obama’s Interview with La Opinión

As I wrote earlier today, Senator Barack Obama was interviewed by La Opinión. You can hear the interview, which is in English (click where it says “Entrevista completa en inglés” or read the Spanish-language translation). However, I couldn’t find a transcript of the interview either at the campaign’s website or its Spanish-language section (which is marred by poor Spanish-language grammar). So here goes some transcribed excerpts of the interview with La Opinión:

On Immigration

“We have to fight against this us versus them mentality. “

“The history of this country has always been waves of immigrants come and people treat the newcomers as if somehow they were here all along forgetting they themselves are part of an immigrant past. And I think the next president has to lead on this issue and try to draw a better attitude among our people.”

“Number one, it is not illegitimate in a modern nation-state to have some control over your borders. Mexico is probably tougher on migrants from Central America than America … The second thing is that I do think that part of the reason why you are seeing this anti-immigrant sentiment right now is that there is a lot of economic anxiety among American workers because George Bush´s policies have been very good for corporate profits but have not been good for ordinary workers so their wages have stagnated. Because of globalization you see jobs move overseas. It used to be they moved to Mexico now they are going to China. So people feel as if maybe their futures are insecure so they look for someone to blame. And part of what we have to do is not only remind people that we are a nation of immigrants. But, we also have to make sure that the American worker feels that somebody is fighting for them, for health care, for a decent wage because I think if they feel that way, then they are less likely to engage in some of these sort of ugly sentiments that we´ve been seeing.”

“I also think the Republican party has really used this in a political way that I think is unfortunate.

[Senator and former RNC co-Chair Mel Martínez] who actually is a decent guy. He’s a decent person. Obviously, he has a different political philosophy than I do. He was increasingly uncomfortable being the head of a party that is trying to use the immigration issue to scare people.”

“I think [immigration raids are] all for show and it doesn’t solve the problem. We have twelve million people who are undocumented in this country. The notion that we are going to solve that fifty people at a time is dishonest. So, I have been very clear about what my policy will be. We will strengthen the Border Patrol because as I said I think a nation-state has the right to control its borders. We will work on an employment verification system that is not discriminatory but that actually holds employers responsible. I am less interested in arresting workers who are just trying to make a living for their families. You do have employers who are exploiting workers. And I want to provide a pathway to citizenship for those who are here. I also want to reform the legal immigration system because the backlog is so serious that is actually putting more pressure and pushing more people into the underground.”

On Relations With Latin America

Number one, I think that it is important for us to figure out how do we structure trade with Latin America in a way that is good for workers on both sides of the border and not just corporations and that means making sure that all the trade agreements that we have are abiding by International Labor Organization standards and basic environmental and worker safety standards. I think that if you look at Nafta, as an example, that has provided some benefits to economic growth on both sides of the border but Mexican farmers, for example, have taken a pretty bad hit. And alot of the immigrant pressure has to do with displaced workers in the agricultural sector in Mexico.

On Black-Latino Relations

“Look, there is a long history in this country of pitting groups that are dispossessed against each other. When African Americans and Latinos typically make progress it is because they join ranks. … African American civil rights helped to empower Latinos. Cesar Chavez’s movement helped to remind people of basic issues of justice and equity. That is how we are going to make progress. In order for us to continue that cooperation, we have got to have leadership on both sides that is willing to fight for all people not just some people. “

Read here about his weekend in Los Angeles.

 

obama
immigration

Daily Newspapers en español

La Opinión reports that Citizenship and Immigrations Services is taking between twelve and fifteen weeks to simply confirm that an application has been received or a check has been cashed. The naturalization process takes between six and nine months, according to the article. 859,000 people have filed for their citizenship papers through July of this year versus 777,000 for the same period the year before. The figures for 2007 are 71% higher than for the same period in 2006. Anyone who starts the naturalization process now will not have their citizenship in time for California’s primary in February. La Opinión cites an estimate of 4 million Hispanics who are legal residents that are eligible for US citizenship.

As expected, the House of Representatives was unable to override President Bush´s veto of SCHIP. La Opinión cites a figure of 2.2 million Hispanic children not covered by health insurance.

As expected, the House of Representatives was unable to override President Bush’s veto of SCHIP. La Opinion cites a figure of 2.25 million Hispanic children are not covered by health insurance.

Folks,

I am on the road today and through Sunday so posting will be sketchy.

Luis