Interfaith Prayer Vigil for Compassionate Immigration Reform on 8/26/13
Pray for immigration reform on National Day of Prayer for 2014. Today pray that the U.S. will act to reunite families and heal immigrant communities! The Fas...
By: keddrick semina
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Interfaith Prayer Vigil for Compassionate Immigration Reform on 8/26/13 - Video
After the Florida House on Friday gave final approval to a bill granting in-state tuition to the children of some immigrants in the country illegally, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush used the occasion to criticize Washington lawmakers including members of his own party for inaction on immigration reform.
Florida succeeded in doing what the federal government has failed to do take real steps to address our nation's serious immigration challenges, Bush said in a statement after the final vote.
Bushs comments were in keeping with his outspokenness on immigration as he mulls a 2016 presidential run testing his ability to win over the conservative elements of his party who dominate the early state primary and caucus contests.
Similar legislation has faltered in the Florida Legislature for years. So Bush joined other leaders in making a push to advance the Republican-sponsored bill when it became hung up due to opposition by some Senate leaders.
The bill had strong bipartisan support including from Gov. Rick Scott and his Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist. And it has been cited by some Republican leaders nationally as a bright spot for the GOP as they try to make inroads with Latino voters, who favored President Obama over Mitt Romney 71% to 27% in the 2012 election.
Once Scott signs the measure into law, Florida students will be able to pay in-state tuition rates regardless of their immigration status, as long as they have attended a Florida high school for three years and enroll within two years of graduation. They will now simply have to provide their high school transcript, rather than proof of a parents residency, a requirement which had been impossible for some families in the country illegally.
In his statement, Bush said the change was "the right thing to do and would help Florida capitalize on its talent, making our future workforce more globally competitive than ever.
Though the U.S. Senate passed a sweeping immigration reform bill last year, the legislation has stalled in the U.S. House because of resistance from some lawmakers. The White House has kept the pressure on, and Speaker John A. Boehner recently drew heat for mocking fellow lawmakers who have complained that the politics of the immigration overhaul were too hard.
If Bush decides to run for president in 2016, his advocacy for immigration reform and his tone on the issue could become one of his biggest hurdles with conservative Republican voters. In his book published last year, Immigration Wars, Bush advocated for a path to permanent legal resident status for the millions of immigrants in this country illegally but not citizenship. Democrats pounced, noting that the former Florida governor had in previous interviews expressed himself open to a path to citizenship.
During a March 2013 interview with CNN after the book was published, Bush suggested his position was flexible: I have supported both both a path to legalization or a path to citizenship with the underlying principle being that there should be no incentive for people to come illegally at the expense of coming legally, he said. Today, basically, the only path to come to this country, other than family reunification, is to come illegally.
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Jeb Bush raps federal lawmakers for inaction on immigration
By Angelo Falcn
Although immigration reform has emerged as the top civil rights issue for Latinos, is it consistent with the goals and ideology of what we might call the traditional Latino civil rights movement? Recently I have been involved in quite a number of discussions about the impact of the immigration issue on the overall Latino civil rights agenda. Although immigration reform affects about 15 percent of the total Latino population, as a public policy issue it now occupies almost all the Latino policy agenda, sucking up, as one colleague recently put it, all the oxygen on Latino issues. Since the 2006 mass immigration protests, immigration reform began to seriously dominate the Latino policy and political agendas in the United States. At that point it became clear that there was a divergence in interest in the issue as the mainstream Mexican-American and other Latino advocacy organizations seemed so out of touch with the more grassroots Mexican and other immigrant advocacy groups, which could be summarized by the tension at that point between the Raul Yzaguirres of NCLR and the Nativo Lopezs of Hermandad. However, due to a number of factors, the immigration issue after this period became mainstreamed or, as some might see it, co-opted, by mainstream groups.
The integration of masses of Latinos through immigration reform became an increasingly irresistible source of potential power for a number of important players. The Democratic Party had been losing the White House and needed new voters. The labor unions were losing members in droves and desperately needed a new source of rank and filers.
Spanish-language media and its corporate clients needed to cultivate this potentially new source of consumer power.
The political right needed scapegoats to fuel their nativist politics as the public began to tire of the culture wars. The traditional Latino civil rights organizations needed to overcome the countrys racial fatigue with a new product.
Foundations, as always, went with the latest social fad.
In less than a decade, the Latino civil rights agenda became transformed in fundamental ways. The focus became the 8 million or so Latinos who were undocumented, while the issues facing the other more than 50 million who are U.S. citizens faded into the background in the public discourse. Traditional civil rights issues like affirmative action, employment and housing discrimination, bilingual education, voting rights, poverty, etc. were still being pursued, but they now seemed a bit dated and not as urgent as they once were. In opinion polls, immigration replaced race and discrimination as subjects. Racial issues receded back to the Black and White binary as immigration now stood as the surrogate of Latino and Hispanic.
Politically, the immigration issue is presented as the silver bullet to the heart of the Latino vote. The President is threatened by its withdrawal if he doesnt use his executive powers more aggressively, and the Republicans are threatened with extinction if they dont address it comprehensively. Comprehensive immigration reform dominates the topics discussed on Univision and Telemundo as the Jorges and Joses emerge as major national spokespersons on this issue. The fact that immigration never seems to emerge as the only or even most important issue prioritized by Latinos in poll after poll doesnt seem to matter; how other issues will influence the Latino vote is not really seriously being discussed.
The traditional Latino civil rights agenda contained many oppositional elements to it, challenging many aspects of American society. Although not universally supported by Latinos, there was a strong anti-assimilationist tendency that generated support for bilingual education, Mexican-American and Puerto Rican studies, as well as anti-imperialist and anti-war movements. On the other hand, the immigration reform movement is almost totally assimilationist by definition, the ultimate goal of most being the attainment of U.S. citizenship. Does this represent a conflict or is it simply an inevitable evolution? How does it impact on the ideology and style of todays Latino agenda? What is the ultimate significance of the historic shift from Brown Berets and Young Lords to the todays Dreamers?
How does this focus on immigration as the single most important issue facing the Latino community help or distort the Latino agenda? Do Latino activists and leaders need to reassess immigrations place on their communitys agenda vis--vis other issues? Are these concerns about the role that immigration reform is playing in relation to more traditional Latino civil rights issues warranted? Is it even appropriate to raise such questions at such a sensitive time for comprehensive immigration reform in the Congress? Ill try to think about these questions for another week or so for what will eventually be part two of this commentary. In the meantime, let me know what you think.
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Immigration Reform and the Latino Civil Rights Movement: Are They Now in Conflict?
Conservative activists have launched an election-year effort to get Republicans to sign a pledge that renounces President Obama's immigration reform movement.
Critics of the Senate-passed immigration bill are copying a tactic that has proved wildly successful in battling tax increases.
It is modeled on the concept that anti-tax activist Grover Norquist made famous with the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.
Laura Ingraham, a popular conservative radio host, is squarely behind the effort, which is sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform Congressional Task Force.She is tracking which members of Congress and candidates sign the pledge.
In Mississippi, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who is challenging Sen. Thad Cochran in the Republican primary, this week announced his support for the pledge during an appearance on Ingrahams show.
I did sign it and I believe in it, he told her. I think its time for us to focus on the America worker for a change. That should be our focus.
What weve seen over the last many years is wage stagnation, weve seen growth in welfare programs, weve even seen shrinking workforce participation, he added.
The pledge requires that signatories promise to oppose any form of work authorization for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in United States. It binds them to oppose legislation that would increase the number of legal immigrants allowed in the country and reject proposals to increase the number of guest workers.
New York Assemblywoman Claudia Tenney, who is challenging Rep. Richard Hanna in the Republican primary in New Yorks 22nd Congressional District, has signed it. So have three Republicans running in the primary to replace retiring Rep. Spencer Bachus (R) in Alabamas 6th District.
Cochran told The Hill Thursday that he would have to read the immigration pledge carefully before making a decision.
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Right fights back on immigration
Jorge Bonilla Discusses Marco Rubio and Immigration Reform on NewsmaxTV
Republican congressional candidate Jorge Bonilla appeared on NewsmaxTV to discuss immigration reform, saying that while he didn #39;t support Rubio #39;s immigration...
By: Jorge Bonilla
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Jorge Bonilla Discusses Marco Rubio and Immigration Reform on NewsmaxTV - Video