Via Andrea Nill at the Wonk Room, the latest spokesperson for immigration reform is none other than Hollywood icon and conservative activist Chuck Norris! Turns out Norris “has the solution” on the issue, in his words, which includes a pathway to earned citizenship for law-abiding immigrants without documents.

Nill reports:

This weekend, in an interview with Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera, action star and conservative activist Chuck Norris pointed out that most undocumented immigrants are “good and law abiding” and even proposed a three-step plan for providing them with a path to legalization. Norris went as far to suggest that friend and political idol, Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AK), might support his proposal:

Watch Chuck lay it down:

Here’s part of the transcript, from the Wonk Room:

NORRIS: A lot of my [KickStart] students parents were or are illegal immigrants. But they’re making a living here and they’re law-abiding citizens. And my solution to it is give them a work-permit for two years, and for two years — if they maintain their law-abiding status — then give them a permanent worker permit. And in three years after that, let them apply for their US citizenship.

Here are some other important facts about Chuck Norris to keep in mind, when considering Chuck’s endorsement of earned legalization for undocumented immigrants:

• When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

• Chuck Norris doesn’t read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

• There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

Specific policy details of Chuck’s legalization program aside, it’s great to hear him standing up for immigration reform that includes earned citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Now let’s hope Chuck’s reason-based immigration approach gets through to the more divisive members of the GOP.

Today conservative columnist Ruben Navarrette has a pretty simple message for Congress: it’s time to get out those calendars and set a date for immigration reform legislation.

He also goes one step further and suggests that immigration reform advocates send calendars to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who stated earlier this year that he would have an immigration bill drafted by Labor Day.

Navarrette argues:

There’s a good chance that the Schumer bill is written and languishing in his desk drawer. After all, the senator had a very clear road map of where he wanted to go. In June, during a speech in Washington, Schumer laid out seven principles that he said would guide the legislation. Yet, five months later, no bill has been unveiled.

Hence, I think immigration reform activists should flood Schumer’s office with thousands of 2009 calendars, each one with a red circle around Labor Day.

Long Island Wins has launched a blogging campaign in memory of Marcelo Lucero, a 37 year old Ecuadorian immigrant who had been living in the United States for the past 16 years, murdered by a group of teenagers approximately one year ago. The campaign, which includes a petition for comprehensive immigration reform in Lucero’s honor, will culminate on Saturday with a candlelight vigil in his memory.

On the night of November 8, 2008, seven boys decided to go “beaner hopping” – the determined act of looking for and attacking Latinos – in Patchogue, NY. They chanced upon two victims – stealing one man’s hat earlier in the evening, and then later, stabbed Marcelo Lucero. According to the Associated Press:

Lucero, 37, was walking with a friend near the Patchogue train station at about midnight when they were confronted by the teenagers tooling around town allegedly looking for targets, a somewhat routine avocation for them, according to prosecutors.

His friend ran away, but prosecutors say the teens surrounded Lucero, who tried desperately to fight back, smacking one of his assailants with his belt.

A: Billions upon billions, if some Republicans get their way.

Fortunately, they didn’t get their way on the Census yesterday.

The Vitter-Bennett census amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill became a moot point yesterday afternoon when the Senate ended debate on the bill in a nail-biting procedural vote of 60 to 39, which comes as a relief to advocates who worked non-stop, through hubs like DontWreckTheCensus.org, to help sink the unconstitutional, impractical, and expensive measure.  

Senators Vitter (R-LA) and Bennett (R-UT) were adamant that the 2010 Census ask about the citizenship and immigration status of respondents, a change which would have cost the government millions of dollars. All Republican Senators voted to keep debate going, save Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who was absent for the vote.

If the latest antics of Senators Vitter and Bennett are any indication, no cost is too high when it comes to stoking the immigration issue for an unquenchable hard-line base.  Their threat to derail our nation’s decennial census had been panned by nearly every census expert and would have cost billions of taxpayer dollars.  Senate Democrats deserve credit for standing up to the extreme wing of the Republican party that continues to bring up immigration as a wedge strategy in debate after debate– like a bad broken record. 

When people talk in the abstract about undocumented immigrants – or, as some call them disdainfully, “illegals” – they don’t think about the fact that these “invisible people” are in fact present every minute of every day. The food we bring to our mouths has been picked or processed by their hands. They serve or cook our meals in restaurants, take care of our children, clean the offices where we work, or own businesses we patronize. They are our neighbors, friends, relatives…the list goes on.

Only in the world of Sheriff Joe Arpaio can you tell if someone is undocumented just by looking at him. The reality is that we’re all mixed together. I don’t like it when we talk about immigration reform “bringing people out of the shadows” because it makes them seem like criminals. They’re not in the shadows, they’re in plain sight–even though some people don’t want to see them or recognize their existence, and even though they have to live plagued by uncertainty from one day to the next.

Over and over again, we’ve been told that immigration reform is coming, and it’s beginning to seem like crying wolf. But our job now is to maintain the pressure on Washington to do something.

Check out the rest of the introduction–and the first entry in the series, “With Law Enforcement on Our Side”–at MaribelHastings.com.

Before Tuesday’s special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional district, we reported that the nativist extremist Minuteman PAC had predicted third-party Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman was “positioned to win a landslide victory.”

The Minutemen — and the rest of the right-wing fringe groups that endorsed Hoffman over moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava — grew even more confident about their chances when Scozzafava dropped out of the race the weekend before the election.

As usual, however, immigration restrictionists turned out to be out of touch with reality. Not only was the election not a “landslide,” but Hoffman’s opponent, Bill Owens, beat Hoffman 49% to 45%. Owens is the first Democrat to hold the seat in over a century — a sign of just how badly the right wing has alienated mainstream Americans.

Immigration wasn’t a major issue in the campaign, but that didn’t stop the Minutemen from using it to try to scare up support for Hoffman. Unsurprisingly, the PAC’s claim that Hoffman was the “only candidate for Congress opposed to amnesty and government handouts for illegal aliens” failed to turn out voters — Hoffman did worse than expected even in the parts of the district considered his “base.”