11/30/12 House Democrats elected their leadership yesterday – and one of our strongest allies in Congress, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), will chair the House Democratic Caucus. Via Adriana Maestas from Politics365: On Thursday morning, Congressman Xavier Becerra, who has served in the House of Representatives since 1993, was elected to Chair the House Democratic Caucus. This positions [...]
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11/30/12 In the first vote on an immigration bill since this month’s election, the Republican-controlled House rehashed an old policy and passed a version of a bill that already failed earlier this year, 245-139.  Twenty-seven Democrats joined Republicans in supporting the legislation. The STEM Jobs Act, sponsored by anti-immigrant Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), would increase visas [...]
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11/30/12 Could some in the non-extremist wing of the GOP be slowly starting to “get it” on immigration?  Yesterday, the Huffington Post reported that the state of Nevada—led by Republican Governor Brian Sandoval—is the latest to confirm that it will allow DREAMers recognized by President Obama’s deferred action (DACA) program to apply for driver’s licenses.  From the Elise Foley: Receiving [...]
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11/30/12 Hasn’t Rep. Steve King (R-IA) gotten the memo yet? While Republicans of all stripes are busy agreeing that the GOP must start doing better with the Latino vote and immigration reform, anti-immigrant Rep. King is—as Sen. Lindsey Graham would say—digging the hole deeper.  King went on talk radio this week to claim that GOP efforts [...]
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11/30/12 Some Republicans get it.  Because of the party’s historic losses among Latino voters in the 2012 elections they are calling for the GOP to adopt a new brand image on immigration.  Some still don’t get it.  These Republicans seem to hope that they can do something that looks like immigration reform and address their demographic and political problems. For example, [...]
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11/29/12 As the legislative debate around immigration percolates, the issue of what constitutes real reform is at the heart of the discussion. According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice Education Fund: Real immigration reform means putting 11 million undocumented immigrants on the road to full citizenship.  We will continue to fight for it until [...]
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11/29/12 Two days ago, retiring GOP Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) and Jon Kyl (AZ) held a press conference to announce their new Achieve Act, a watered-down version of the DREAM Act which would confer legal status but no guarantee of citizenship.  When reporters asked Sen. Kyl to address that flaw, he waved it off as [...]
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11/29/12 More than a year after Alabama began implementing state anti-immigrant law HB 56—which was supposed to be a jobs bill–Alabama now has the worst economy in the American Southeast.  The state has endured a year of civil rights groups and supporters comparing the state’s present to its famously ugly racial past, and federal courts no [...]
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11/28/12 Earlier this week, we told the GOP that the same cast of characters + the same mistakes on immigration = the same ending when it comes to the Latino vote.  That is, it was an encouraging sign when Republicans–after losing this year’s presidential contest by more than a 3-1 margin among Latino voters–began talking about [...]
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11/28/12 Today, leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, joined by Senator Robert Menendez, held a press conference to announce their own nine principles of immigration reform. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), the Chair of the CHC’s Immigration Task Force, asked for “one simple thing” in immigration reform—fairness—during their event, entitled “One Nation: Principles on Immigration Reform and Our Commitment [...]
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11/28/12 Yesterday, outgoing Republican Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) and Jon Kyl (AZ) held a press conference to announce the Achieve Act, a scaled-down version of the DREAM Act which offers legal status to young undocumented immigrants but not necessarily citizenship. The Achieve Act would cover DREAMers who are currently younger than 28 (or younger than 32 [...]
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11/28/12 For a Republican Party in need of a new brand image on immigration and a big change with Latino voters, their initial legislative efforts are not measuring up to the depths of their challenges. Yesterday, retiring Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) introduced the ACHIEVE Act, a more restrictive alternative to the [...]
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11/28/12 Cross-posted at Latino Decisions, Latino Vote Matters, and Daily Kos: The results of the 2012 election have awakened the Republican Party to their impending demographic disaster. Substantial growth in the size and power of the Latino vote—and an overwhelming tilt in that vote against their nominee—paints a bleak future for Republican electability. Coupled with startling [...]
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11/27/12 After the election this month—when President Obama won the Latino vote by a 75-23% margin, conservatives of all stripes have been coming out of the woodwork to admit that the loss of the Latino vote doomed Republicans this year, and that the GOP must do better with this demographic or else face irrelevance. The latest [...]
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11/27/12 Editor’s Note: We’ve updated our House and Senate Races to Watch reports! Please check them out here: House Races Post-Election Scorecard Senate Races Post-Election Scorecard In the lead up to November 6th, America’s Voice tracked a range of competitive House and Senate races where Latino, Asian, and naturalized citizen voters could prove decisive.  A new post-election scorecard from America’s Voice documents [...]
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11/27/12 At Crooks and Liars yesterday, our friend David Neiwert eviscerated columnist Ruben Navarratte’s latest column for trying to rewrite the history and politics of immigration. Dave, who follows the issue very closely, is having none of it. You have to read the whole thing to fully appreciate Dave’s work, but here’s how it begins: Ruben Navarrette, [...]
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11/27/12 Sheriff Joe Arpaio is one of the worst anti-immigrant extremists our movement has ever had to contend with — and you and other activists on our side have officially voted him Turkey of the Year! With his history of racial profiling and corruption, we all probably have worse names for Sheriff Joe Arpaio –but in [...]
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11/26/12 Immediately following the 2012 elections, Republican leaders began to talk openly about the stark choice they face as a party: appeal to a diversifying America, or risk extinction as a national party.  Evidently, the House GOP missed the memo.  After an election in which immigration hard liners helped define and defeat Mitt Romney, immigration hard [...]
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11/26/12 When Rahm Emanuel served in Congress, he was also the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He was not particularly helpful when it came to immigration reform–in fact, he was often hostile. Here’s what then-Congressman Emanuel said about the issue back in October of 2007: For the American people, and therefore all of us, [...]
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11/21/12 This Thanksgiving, there’s a lot to be thankful for – family, food, and the growing movement for citizenship that we are all a part of. But while Thanksgiving means giving thanks, it also means turkey. That’s why we’re holding a contest to elect one lucky anti-immigrant extremist as our “Turkey of the Year!” We’ll announce [...]
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11/21/12 Last weekend, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)  criticized Mitt Romney’s post-election “gift” comments and offered advice to the Republican Party regarding its lurch to the right on immigration policy and its thumping by Latino voters: “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.  He [Romney] keeps digging.” Added Senator Graham, “The Hispanic community, 71 percent voted for [...]
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11/20/12 Sixty DREAMers from Kansas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Arizona joined with local leaders from Sunflower Community Action and a coalition of activists today in Topeka to ask Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to end his lawsuit against President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and to resign from office. As Sulma Arias, [...]
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11/20/12 Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) has long been a leading anti-immigrant Member of Congress.  Rep. Bilbray currently chairs the extremist House Immigration Reform Caucus and is a former lobbyist for the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as a hate group.  Yet after California redrew its congressional districts last year to reflect continued demographic change, [...]
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11/20/12 Two weeks ago, our movement won a big victory in Maryland, where the passage of Question 4 protected DREAMers’ affordable access to higher education in the state.  Yesterday, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts took the fight another step forward when he announced that Massachusetts DREAMers will now be able to pay the same tuition rate [...]
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11/20/12 Earlier this year the immigration reform community won a huge victory when President Obama announced a deferred action policy to stop the deportations of DREAMers. But now the program is under attack from anti-immigrant extremist Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, who has filed a lawsuit to stop it. We can’t let extremist politicians like [...]
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11/19/12 During the fall, we wrote several times about the race between the race between Republican incumbent Rep. Mary Bono Mack (CA) and Democrat Raul Ruiz. America’s Voice included this match-up in our spotlight of fifteen competitive House races important to Latino and Asian voters — and all those who care about common-sense immigration reform. Ruiz won. Today, [...]
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11/19/12 Top Republican and conservative leaders, from House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor to FOX News personality Sean Hannity and columnist Charles Krauthammer, have spent the last few weeks lamenting their party’s dramatic losses with Latino voters in the recent election.  Chief among their reflections, and the reflections of political observers of all [...]
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