‘Qué Pasa’ in Immigration: Administration Defends Border Bill; Anti-Immigrant Bills in FL, UT

America's Voice Blog

Posted 08/16/10 at 10:31am

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was out in front over the weekend as the Administration defended a newly-passed $600 million bill for border security, while Tea Party activists promised not to "stop yelling" about the need for even more money. Elsewhere in the Spanish-language press, Arizona's harsh new anti-immigration law is causing immigrants to leave the state for other Western states including Utah--where a state legislator has just introduced a similar bill. Another draconian anti-immigrant bill proposed in Florida is splitting that state's Republican party.

Administration defends border bill...El Financiero (Mexico) reprints a Notimex article in which Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano defends the law just passed by Congress allocating $600 million for the border. Secretary Napolitano told Univisión that “We’re not just trying to throw money at the border to solve this problem,” according to the article. La Opinión (Los Angeles) reports that due to the new law, signed on Friday by President Obama, and other recently-implemented measures, Secretary Napolitano predicted that there will be a spike in deportations.

...but Tea Partiers remain unsatisfied. Meanwhile, the AP reports on a demonstration held by members of the “Tea Party” movement at a remote spot on the Arizona-Mexico border to express support for Arizona law SB 1070. According to the news agency, “attendees urged members of Congress and President Barack Obama to provide more funding to increase border security. ‘We’re going to make them do it, because if they don’t do it we won’t stop yelling about it,’ said former state senator Pam Gorman, one of 10 Republicans competing for an open seat in northern Phoenix. Gorman carried a gun in a holster strapped over her shoulder.”

Of course, people actually living on the border may feel differently: Impre.com reprints a New America Media article on a recent poll of people living in border areas conducted by The Raben Group, Inc., for the Border Network for Human Rights. The poll, covered in much of the Spanish-language press last week, found that over 87% of those surveyed feel safe.

More states proposing Arizona-style bills...Three Cuban-American Republican congressmen have criticized the new immigration bill proposed by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a candidate in the Republican primary for governor of the state, EFE reports. The bill would turn failure to carry identification documents into a state crime.

EFE also reports that a Republican state legislator in Utah has introduced a bill similar to SB 1070, over the protests of Hispanic groups. The bill comes in the wake of the release earlier this summer of a list of supposed undocumented immigrants; a group of state employees has been accused of compiling the list.

...as immigrants flee Arizona. Immigrants are moving out of Arizona and into Utah, New Mexico and Washington state, according to the AP. The agency reports that its analysis “found that in these states the number of immigrants requesting identification documents has increased, a trend experts attribute to severe anti-immigrant policies in Arizona and other states.”

In other news... La Opinión writes that the “Todos a Votar” campaign, conducted by the SEIU and including a caravan through various California cities, aims to mobilize 2 million Latino voters in the state to come out to the polls in November; Télam reports that the White House calls the idea to change the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution to deny birthright citizen to the children of undocumented immigrants “just wrong.”

America's Voice has started a new series, “‘Qué Pasa’ in Immigration,” to bring Spanish-language coverage of immigration and politics to a wider audience. Look for daily roundups (in English) of some of the best Spanish-language news.

The latest Spanish-language reporting and analysis on immigration can now be found at AmericasVoiceEspanol.com. Check it out!