Free Republic

Apparently, not all Hispanics have Harry Reid's permission to "come out of the shadows". From The Atlantic: Reid's Hispanic Pitch The Las Vegas Review Journal reports today on Harry Reid courting Hispanics in his re-election race, and the state's 24% Hispanic population (as of 2007; it's possibly grown since then) could certainly be a critical voting bloc for him. His opponent, Sharron Angle, is an outspoken supporter of Arizona's SB 1070 and has proposed making English the official language of Nevada; Reid supports giving illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, but the Democratic Senate has failed to move on immigration...

The Border: Polls show Democrats have decisively lost the debate over granting amnesty to illegals. But has that stopped them? Hardly. Using the federal bureaucracy as their agent, they plan to do it anyway. This is what happens when big government becomes so powerful that those who run it feel they can do whatever they want — no matter what the Constitution allows or the people prefer. Americans strongly oppose amnesty for those here illegally. Democrats have been frightened away from trying to pass an amnesty bill because they're terrified of the political consequences. But as the Associated Press reports,...

What if instead of granting amnesty in one fell swoop, we did so incrementally, say, to 20 percent of illegals a year for the next five years? That would still have the same ill effects, you say? OK, how about one million illegals a year until the job is done? I can hear it now: "Whoa, Duke, all you're proposing is to trade a knife through the heart for a death by a thousand cuts. A bad idea implemented more slowly is still a bad idea. And illegal means illegal." But wait -- if Congress passed an amnesty plan, it...

Axelrod: no prez tougher on border than Obama The outcry over illegal immigration in border states notwithstanding, President Barack Obama has taken as strict an approach to the issue as any other president, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod insisted Sunday. "No administration has been tougher on enforcement," Axelrod said on "Fox News Sunday." "We have more manpower there than ever before--more equipment drones, helicopters, airplanes. We're doing this in a smart, more efficient way and we're produing better results." Host Chris Wallace then said "there were some facts and figures that contradict what" Axelrod said. However, when interviewing Sen....

City police said a downtown college student of Arabic decent whose 8-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son were left home alone Friday told officers he didn't know he couldn't do that.

With immigration reform attracting negligible Republican interest and seemingly going nowhere, President Obama laid out the case for action and what it would look like in a major speech at American University this morning. In doing so, Obama employed a familiar formula: identifying what the extreme left wants to do (straight-up amnesty), identifying what the extreme right wants to do (round up every illegal and kick them out), and then placing his vision for immigration reform squarely in the middle.

A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has found that California has the least-educated labor force of any state in the United States, and this may be due to the high levels of immigration in recent decades. According to the study, 9 percent of California’s population was comprised of immigrants in 1970, but by 2008 it was 27 percent. Forty years ago, the state had the 7th most educated workforce of all U.S. states in terms of the share of workers who had completed high school, but by 2008 it ranked 50th. The researchers now estimate that...

The flow of immigrants to Minnesota is quietly reaching record highs amid signs of what could prove to be a profound and lasting shift in their continents of origin. For the first time ever, African nations are supplying more than half the state's legal immigrants. Four countries from that continent now stand atop the list. Arrivals are doubling and quadrupling from countries such as Kenya and Liberia even as numbers are tapering off, for a variety of reasons, from past immigrant taproots such as India, Thailand and Russia, federal data show.

Continuing federal immigration raids in Orange County threaten to hamper an effort by the Census Bureau to reach traditionally undercounted immigrant and minority populations. Though the Census Bureau is legally bound not to disclose the information it collects, it is viewed with suspicion among immigrant communities that associate most federal officials with immigration enforcement. U.S. law mandates that the census count both the legal and illegal immigrant population. Working with local community and faith-based groups, the Census Bureau has hired local outreach officers to market the census to their own communities in the native languages. That effort appears to have...

The Right Scoop picks up this unusually concrete statement from the Obama administration on their response to Arizona’s new immigration-enforcement law. Up to now, the White House, including Barack Obama himself, has remained noncommittal about taking legal action against Arizona while continuing to criticize the bill publicly. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton removes the ambiguity and declares that the Justice Department will sue over the bill in an interview with an Ecuador media outlet:

Mexican senator calls for US to vote Democratic El Universal (Mexico City) 5/20/10 Speaking from the US while part of President Calderon’s entourage, the president of the Mexican senate, Carlos Navarrete Ruiz, called on the Hispanic community to deliver a triumphant victory to the Democratic party in order to assist the White House in negotiating an immigration reform. The senator of the left-leaning PRD party said, “I have no problem expressing that, as I see the circumstances in the US Congress, it would be useful and would serve Mexico if the migrants give a victory to the Democrats to increase...

The ACLU, MALDEF, SEIU, UFCW, NAACP, and other groups today filed a lawsuit seeking to block Arizona's new immigration law. You can get a PDF with the complaint here and links with my past coverage of the groups involved is at the Read More link below. Needless to say, this could tie the law up for a long time, so it's important to take effective action. If you'd like to do something about this: 1. Find legal scholars to weigh in on the complaint and find holes in their claims. 2. Point out to *those groups' current or potential supporters*...

we boomers have a lot to be worried about because most of us plan to retire in a few years and Social Security and Medicare are on the way to going bust. I should know because I used to be a trustee of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Those of you who are younger than we early boomers have even more to be worried about because if those funds go bust they won’t be there when you’re ready to retire. It’s already starting to happen. This year Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it receives...

Supporters of an amnesty for illegal aliens are desperately scrounging for another Republican backer in addition to liberal Republican Lindsay Graham. With Republicans holding 41 seats in the Senate, plus several working class Democrats who will vote against an amnesty, another Republican backer is needed to make the amnesty appear ‘bipartisan.’ Even Graham appears to be reluctant to be the lone Republican supporter of the bill. "I urge the President to write a bill and see if he can get another Republican, see if he can convince the 16 Democrats who voted no the last time," he said during a...

James G. Gimpel is a professor of government at the University of Maryland, College Park. He can be reached at jgimpel@gvpt.umd.edu. This Backgrounder examines the political implications of large-scale immigration. Between 1980 and 2008, 25.2 million people were granted permanent residency (green cards) by the United States. A comparison of voting patterns in presidential elections across counties over the last three decades shows that large-scale immigration has caused a steady drop in presidential Republican vote shares throughout the country. Once politically marginal counties are now safely Democratic due to the propensity of immigrants, especially Latinos, to identify and vote Democratic....

On Sunday March 21st thousands of illegal alien supporters and open borders advocates met in Washington DC to demand the Obama Administration keep its promise of amnesty for illegal aliens. At the same time, there was another March on America. A March of drug thugs and illegal aliens… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m05D4o5XEAo

Frustrated by the lack of progress on immigration reform, area Latino Democrats are forming a new group to pressure the Obama Administration to take action on the issue. Latino Democratic politicians and community activists who voted for President Barack Obama say he has failed to fulfill a campaign pledge to overhaul immigration laws. "It's way overdue," said Gil Navarro, a member of the San Bernardino County board of education. "That was one of the promises the President gave us and we want to hold him accountable like any other public official." Navarro is creating a Latino Democratic Caucus of the...

We are in the ugly situation of being governed by Marxist socialists because of a few groups of voters who turned their back on American freedoms for their own benefit by voting for Obama. Hispanics were one such group. The media constantly touts Hispanics as “conservatives” and thus people real conservatives should kowtow to for fear they would stop supporting Republicans. Those of us that watch politics know calling Hispanics “conservatives” is a lie. Texas GOP Governor Rick Perry has been on the frontline of dealing with these “conservative” Hispanics and his sorry record should serve as a reminder of...

On March 21st, we will march on Washington, DC to demand immigration reform. Our vision of reform includes immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens working shoulder to shoulder to achieve better wages, working conditions, and labor protections. People from all across America will lend their voice in the fight for reform. We will come together as one voice on the National Mall for a strong America – for families, for workers, for businesses, and for security. Join thousands from across the country in the March For America in DC on March 21st, and demand Congress act NOW to pass immigration reform...

How has the growth of the immigrant population changed the political partisan leanings of the places where immigrants have settled? The answer to this question is of considerable interest to academic specialists, journalists, interest groups, and political parties engaged in the immigration policy debate. If the impact of mass immigration is politically neutral, there is no reason to be concerned that constituencies will change appreciably by the settlement and naturalization of new arrivals. In that case, immigration might have economic and cultural impacts that should be anticipated, but no one need be concerned about political shifts. On the other hand,...