Southeast Texans weigh in on immigration reform
BEAUMONT - by Jessica Crawford President Obama #39;s executive order on immigration reform drew opinions before it was even announced. Antonio Zarate, the owner ...
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Southeast Texans weigh in on immigration reform - Video
After a midterm election in which declining Hispanic turnout cost Democrats dearly in close races, causing some leaders to question whether President Barack Obama made a mistake in delaying his immigration order, the party is devising far-reaching plans to reverse the slide in 2016.
The efforts, according to party operatives, include a multimillion-dollar fundraising drive to boost Democrats in congressional districts with large Hispanic populations. With the incoming Republican-controlled Congress unlikely to support a comprehensive immigration package, Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill are forming a new Immigration Strike Team to go on a messaging offensive on the issue.
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And last month, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made a surprise choice to head the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: New Mexico Rep. Ben Ray Lujn, a little-known third-term lawmaker who promises to make Hispanic voter engagement a top priority of the campaign arm.
The moves follow an election that saw Hispanics the nations fastest growing voting bloc, and a group that helped power Obamas reelection stay home. According to exit polling, Hispanics made up just 8 percent of the 2014 electorate, down from 10 percent in 2012. And of those who did vote, fewer of them supported the presidents party. Hispanics broke for Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 28 percent, down from 44 percent in 2012.
(Also on POLITICO: Klayman's immigration arguments get skeptical hearing)
You had the perfect storm: a lack of enthusiasm, a lack of movement on immigration reform and a lack of capital investment to turn people out, said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who specializes in Hispanic voter targeting. I think everyone is reevaluating what went wrong to make sure it doesnt happen again.
Much of the internal Democratic finger-pointing surrounded the question of whether Obama should have signed his executive action on immigration before the midterms rather than after with an eye toward activating Hispanics for the midterms. While House Democrats ensconced in safe blue districts supported a pre-election move, their Senate colleagues, many of whom were locked in tough contests in red states, pressed him not to. Obamas popularity among Hispanics has been on the rise since the executive action: A Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Telemundo survey released last week showed 57 percent of Hispanics approving of the president, up from 47 percent in September, just prior to the midterms.
It was really bad timing for some senators who approached the president and asked him to put off taking executive action on immigration, said California Rep. Tony Crdenas, the incoming chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucuss political action committee. Talking to Latinos, a lot of them were very bothered, a lot of them were very perplexed and confused.
Now Crdenas is gearing up to play a central role in the Democratic comeback with Hispanics. The Los Angeles-area lawmaker recently sent his Democratic colleagues a memo announcing his intention to raise $2 million, double the amount the caucus spent on behalf of candidates in 2014. Crdenas also said he wants to elect two or three additional Hispanic Democrats to the House in 2016, and over the next decade to double their number to 50.
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The immigration strike team
In an essay posted on his website, Paul Graham, the co-founder and former head of YCombinator, loudly called for an increase in skilled immigration. Writing with an intensity that is unusual in his writing, Graham argued that The US has less than 5% of the worlds population. Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of great programmers are born outside the US.
His concern is that anti-immigration forces have thwarted reforms to our immigration system, risking Americas competitiveness in attracting the most brilliant engineers to Silicon Valley. The problem is particularly acute today, he notes, since startups face a severe talent crunch that could be ameliorated with a more open immigration policy. If we refuse to adapt, the US could be seriously fucked, Graham writes colorfully.
But Graham largely avoids what many tech workers think when hearing about immigration reform: we could be seriously fucked. Indeed, Grahams essay never once uses the words wage or income.
Even worse, his focus on exceptional programmers belies the real issue at the heart of immigration reform: it isnt about the top performing 1% of workers, which of course every country and policymaker in the world wants to attract. It is the broader effect that immigration has on wages for the other 99% that causes such controversy around these policies.
What is missing from the immigration debate in Silicon Valley is trust, and it certainly isnt the engineers that have abused it. We know that tech companies have worked really hard to keep wages from rising the past decade. Google, Apple, and a multitude of other large tech companies systematically worked together to stop workers from negotiating higher salaries by restricting recruitment practices and preventing workers from enjoying free movement of their labor.
Such tactics have made engineers far more cynical about the motives of tech companies, which is intensified by the incessant talk of talent shortages in the industry.
Graham, like hundreds of other immigration advocates before him in the tech industry, argues that there is a broad talent crunch in Silicon Valley, and immigration policy is one of the critical friction points stopping the expansion of high-flying startups. This widely-reported hiring challenge turned immigration into the marquee political issue for Silicon Valley and led to the creation of one of the most well-funded political action committees in the region, FWD.us.
Yet, we know that many of Americas best engineers are never even given the chance to work in our industry, left behind by the meritocracy. Women are massively underrepresented in engineering jobs in the region, as are people older than 39. Graham might argue that America only represents 5% of the engineers worldwide, but it seems we have already thrown away more than 75% of them at home.
That hasnt stopped fear of a labor squeeze from having a strong effect on Capitol Hill, where there remains broad support for easing immigration rules for knowledge workers. Changes demanded by Silicon Valley companies are generally supported on Capitol Hill, particularly in light of the other immigration challenges faced by legislators such as procedures on handling undocumented workers. As The Hill wrote in the last push for immigration reform, it is likely Congress will again want to use high skilled immigration as a sweetener in comprehensive immigration reform efforts to bolster the support of business minded moderates in both parties.
But for all of that popularity, funding, and support, high-tech immigration policy has completely stagnated, as it has for years. During a round of negotiations for immigration reform in 2007, high-tech issues got almost no final traction in Congress, despite that broad support. As reported at the time by the New York Times, E. John Krumholtz, director of federal affairs at Microsoft, said the bill was worse than the status quo, and the status quo is a disaster.
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On Immigration, Engineers Simply Dont Trust VCs
Can Immigration Reform Include Secure Boarders, Path to Citizenship? `This Week` Roundtable
Paul Krugman, Carly Fiorina, Matthew Dowd, Jorge Ramos, and Rep. Lou Barletta.
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Can Immigration Reform Include Secure Boarders, Path to Citizenship? `This Week` Roundtable - Video
Independent insurance agents who serve the Hispanic community may be in store for a busy year.
Immigration reform is on next years horizon, and in California a landmark law enabling undocumented individuals to obtain legitimate drivers licenses is set to be in force in 2015.
This all makes the timing ripe for a resurgence of the Latin American Agents Association, according to the founder of the Bell Gardens, Calif.-based group comprised of agents and brokers who provide insurance services to the Hispanic community and other minorities.
Evidently its also a good time to create a new organization: The Latin American Immigration Association, designed to enable insurance agents and tax preparers to put themselves in position to charge for immigration assistance services.
LAAA Founder and CEO Andre Urena
This latest endeavor is also the brainchild of LAAA Founder and CEO Andre Urena, who founded Confie Seguros, which was later branded Freeway Insurance.
Its Urenas plan with this new association to take willing tax preparers and insurance agents and make them immigration specialists.
Following President Obamas announcement to offer millions of undocumented immigrants a reprieve frombeing deported, Urena and LAAA members began to get the wheels rolling. The association has already obtained 1.6 million emails for tax preparers, and another 1.6 million emails for agents nationwide, and it has begun to build a nationwide infrastructure.
Urena was working to establish the infrastructure to make this happen at a demonstration agency in Downey, Calif. while he explained. In his scenario, an insurance agency or tax preparer with a brick-and-mortar shop in a largely Hispanic community will be a natural stop for undocumented people with questions about what will likely be an involved citizenship process.
As it stands any immigration reform that transpires will likely yield millions of individuals trying to navigate paperwork on their own, and there will be plenty of people scrupulous and unscrupulous to capitalize on that demand.
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Immigration Reform, Drivers Licenses Opportunity for Latino Agents