Coffee Party USA is for connecting all communities, and that means including those communities that are marginalized and targeted. But more importantly, America's economic and entitlement problems do have a solution: Immigration Reform, for a larger, more productive workforce.
Republican men seem to find themselves in a colossal mess with female voters about once a week these days. So cue a group of female senators—Democratic and Republican—who went to the Senate floor Thursday to register their disbelief that serious opposition exists among, yes Republican men, to updating the Violence Against Women Act, the 1994 bill that provides money for emergency shelters, counseling, rape crisis centers, and legal services for victims of sexual assault, domestic violence and stalking.
“It’s hard to believe we are having a conversation in 2012 about protecting women from violence, but we are,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat.
Seven years ago, the bill passed the House 415 to 4 and then cruised through the Senate unanimously. Last month, a new version of the bill passed the Judiciary Committee, but only after all eight Republicans on the panel, all men, voted against it.
“I was stunned by the vote,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who sits on the committee. “Never before had there been any controversy in all of this time about this bill.”
The vote also stunned women’s groups, used to seeing the bill sail through Congress, and Democratic operatives, who have watched with delight as national Republicans have pushed bills to limit insurance coverage for women’s contraception, local Republicans have passed laws forcing women to undergo an invasive ultrasound before having an abortion, and Republican favorite Rush Limbaugh called a Georgetown law student a slut and a prostitute after she testified to Congress about access to contraception.
With Republican senators opposing a bill designed to protect women from abuse and stalking, Democratic leaders smell blood in the water and are pushing for a vote on the legislation as early as next week.
Although the bill has 58 co-sponsors, including all 17 women—Democrats and Republicans—in the Senate, it is two votes short of a 60-vote margin that would guarantee passage.
[MORE — warning: includes offensive term for undocumented immigrants]
“Republicans have done a mystifying job of either ignoring or offending Hispanic voters,” said Mark McKinnon, a strategist who worked for former President
George W. Bush: “And the consequences for the general election are likely to be significant and perhaps determinative to the outcome.”
This comes after other top GOP officials whose job is to win elections, such as NRSC chair John Cornyn, have privately warned the Romney campaign that his embrace of extreme positions on immigration risks becoming a drag on GOP Senate and House candidates.
Republican officials have begun to push back publicly on the narrative that the GOP has a major Latino problem. They told the New York Times in a big piece today that Republicans would be able to seize on economic suffering among Latinos to make inroads among them, offset any problems being created by the primary’s harsh immigration rhetoric, and loosen traditional cultural bonds between Latinos and the Democratic Party.
But if anything, what’s really revealing is how weak and insubstantial this pushback is. Republicans who talked to the Times present no significant evidence that Latinos are inclined to agree with Republican ideas about the economy. Indeed, a recent Univision/ABC poll found that 55 percent of Latinos agree with Dems that the best way to grow the economy is to invest in federal projects to stimulate the economy. Only 31 percent agree with the GOP agument that lowering taxes is the way to go. Less than a quarter of Latinos trust Republicans to make the right decisions to improve the economy; 61 percent pick Obama and Dems. [MORE]
It’s no secret that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach spends a lot of his time not doing his job, and now the people of Kansas are doing something about it. In February, the coalition KanVote filed a Kansas Open Records Request (KORA) to obtain Kobach’s schedules, calendars, timesheets, etc.—all to document how the purported public servant spends his time. When informed of the KORA, Kobach complacently repliedthat KanVote “isn’t going to find anything particularly interesting.”And why was he so confident? Probably because he omitted all of the “interesting” stuff.
In a press conference held today, KanVote revealed that Kobach made little or no mention of his other career: writing and defending anti-immigrant legislation through the nativist Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI). This wouldn’t be such a contradiction if he did this in his “spare time,” like he claims; however, most days that he was known to be working on immigration legislation outside of Kansas—including out-of-state court proceedings—were listed as other tasks on his calendar.
In one particularly odious example, KanVote revealed that, on October 4th, 2011, Kobach’s calendar states that he was to be at home with his wife prior to the induced delivery of their child. In actuality, he was in New Orleans, testifying on behalf of the anti-immigrant ordinance he wrote for Farmers Branch, Texas.
Moreover, KanVote claims that more than six weeks of time are missing from the calendar, i.e., Kobach skipped about a month and a half of work. Combined with his time at IRLI and his excessive media appearances, Kobach doesn’t seem to be doing much that his public office demands of him. [MORE]
9500 Liberty documents the first time in U.S. history that an Arizona-style immigration law was actually implemented—and the surprising grassroots opposition that led to its repeal.
Racial tension and threats of violence erupt when Prince William County, Virginia adopts a law requiring the police to question people who appear to be undocumented immigrants. Supporters of the law ride a wave of hysteria to an election victory. But many reconsider when the local economy feels the impact of a sudden exodus of workers, consumers, and business owners. Despite fears of reprisal, a group of concerned citizens launches a “virtual resistance” using social media, setting up a final showdown with the law’s ferocious advocates.
Republicans had high hopes of eroding President Barack Obama’s dominance among Hispanic voters in 2012 — so great was Latino frustration with Obama’s tough deportation policy and his failure to fulfill the promesa of immigration reform.
Instead, with eight months to go before Election Day, Obama is on pace to match the 76 percent support he got from Latino voters in 2008 — and the GOP may be undoing a decade of work to attract Hispanics, thanks to its election-year rhetorical sprint to the right on immigration, a charge led by front-runner Mitt Romney. [MORE]
On March 8, Texas gave LGBTQ and immigrationrights advocates one of the biggest case victories in the state. According to the Houston Chronicle, Costa Rican undocumented immigrant David Gonzales was spared by a judge from deportation due to his marriage to a male U.S. citizen. The court decision was an especially large victory due to the fact that same-sex marriage is not legal in the state of Texas.
According to the Chronicle, Gonzales left Costa Rica in 2000 on a U.S. tourist visa to escape an abusive relationship. While here, Gonzales met his now-husband Mario Ramirez in 2006, and the couple was married in Los Angeles in 2008. The couple has recently begun discussions about adopting children. [MORE]
Hyundai's corporate headquarters may be in Seoul, but the company has enormous influence over Alabama politicians. Alabama's elected officials have been more than willing to open the state's coffers to Hyundai -- twice. So, Hyundai, which markets heavily to the Latino community, has close ties to the leaders who implemented H.B. 56. And, it's pretty clear there's a tight relationship, which started in 2002:
"The cost of tempting Hyundai Motor Co. to bring its first U.S. manufacturing plant to Alabama didn't come cheap — more than $234 million of public incentives.
That includes money for job training, highway improvements, land purchases and tax credits, Finance Director Henry Mabry announced Thursday.
"The incentive cost for each of the anticipated 2,000 jobs created is about $117,317 — less than what was paid to lure the Mercedes-Benz plant to Vance but more than Honda demanded for its factory in Lincoln.
“'We didn't provide any incentives we didn't have to,' Mr. Mabry said. 'This is a good investment for Alabama.'
"Hyundai announced Monday it would build the $1 billion plant south of Montgomery. It is expected to produce 300,000 vehicles a year by 2005." [MORE]
There is one area, besides copper mining and home foreclosures, where Arizona is a national leader. It’s at the front of a movement by states and local governments to seize control of immigration from the federal government. In 2010 it passed a law, S.B. 1070, that made the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants its official policy with a grab bag of enforcement schemes that turned federal immigration infractions into state crimes. Among other things, the law required immigration checks by local police, required immigrants to carry papers with them, and made it illegal for the undocumented to live or look for work in the state, or for people to knowingly hire, harbor or transport them. [MORE]
Earlier this week, we wrote about the Silicon Valley "Tech Titans" who are frustrated with the pace of immigration reform and started supporting DREAMers through E4FC.org. Today, there's another major player from the business world weighing in on the lack of progress on the immigration issue. This time it's Howard Buffett talking about the problems facing agriculture because of immigration gridlock.
Howard, the son of Warren Buffett, is a farmer himself.
“There are commentators that immediately … go to amnesty. Nobody’s talking about amnesty,” Buffett said. “But if you inject amnesty into the discussion, all of a sudden it polarizes the debate. It separates people and people take positions on it and the emotion goes up.”
Meanwhile, he said, farms have gone out of business because they haven’t been able to get enough labor or get labor quickly enough to keep crops from rotting.
“That’s an emotional issue. That’s your livelihood. That’s everything you have invested,” Buffett said. “That’s your family. That’s your legacy.”
Buffett said the Labor Department wrongly believes that with unemployment still high workers shouldn’t be brought into the country. American workers aren’t going to take back-breaking farming jobs, especially if they are already living off welfare, he said.
“If there’s one thing that everyone ought to understand, and everyone in this room will understand it, is Americans will not do this job,” Buffett said.
What Buffett describes is playing out in Alabama because of the state's draconian anti-immigrant law HB 56. Crops are literally rotting in the fields. [MORE]
Annabel Park sat down with former Washington Post film critic Desson Thomson for a conversation about the award-winning documentary feature film, "9500 Liberty."
Two weeks ago, Time magazine devoted their cover to proclaiming that Latinos would decide the next President of the United States. With the growth of our population and our presence in key swing states such as Florida and our massive presence in huge electoral states such as California, this should come as no surprise.
As the herd thins on who will be the GOP candidate, none of the remaining leaders is willing to change the right-wing lock step on anti-immigrant policies. The GOP is making a strategic gamble that immigration will not be a decisive factor in the Latino vote and in many ways they are correct.
“It’s the economy stupid,” was President Clinton’s famous mantra that lead him and his party to take back the White House after 12 years of Republican control. For those of us on the ground, we know he was right then and he is right now. To the vast majority of eligible voting Latinos, the economy will take center stage. Come November we will be looking to see if once again we can put our trust in the Obama that promised us “Hope” four years ago, or if we want to give the GOP another chance. That will be the key issue that voters have to decide. Democrats will have to remind the country of an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq and the evil of trickle-down economics, while Republicans will simply say “are you better off today than you were four years ago, but never mind what our last guy did.”
One mistake I have seen Democrats make time after time is to underestimate the GOP. I expect 2012 will be a closer election than most Dems now believe looking at the GOP front-runners. People are angry at the state of the economy and if the GOP can effectively blame Obama, they could win. This however brings us back to immigration and the Latino vote. Most Latino Republicans I know (and side note here I have some great Latino GOP friends) don’t see immigration as a decisive issue. They vote Republican out of personal economic or social interest. They are the first ones to say – and I agree with them – that if you look at the key social and economic issues the GOP stands for, most Latinos are conservative. But, when the issue of immigration comes to the table and – more importantly – the precise question of what to do with the 11 million undocumented around us, they have trouble excusing their party. Other than saying: “Well, what has Obama done on immigration?” And again they would be right. [MORE]
This article talks about immagration from Latinos in the U.S and how having them in our country would affect who our president is. It would affect the presidency because these legal immagrants can vote. If the canidate running for president supports having them in our country then they will more than likely vote for that canidate. These immagrants take up a large ammount of the countrys population and so they will take up a large percentage of the votes.
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
