02/14/13 Ugly story in The Hill today about a confrontation between Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and a DREAMer from California, Jessica Bravo: A conservative congressman got into a heated exchange over immigration last week with one of his constituents who is living in the country illegally. Two very different accounts have emerged from the Feb. 6 meeting [...]
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12/17/12 The retirement of Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA) is finally nigh, bringing good cheer this season to immigration advocates everywhere.  Gallegly, a member of Congress since the 80s, has long been a nativist crusader and one of the anti-immigrant “Three Amigos” on the House Immigration Subcommittee. His hometown paper, the Ventura County Star, wrote profile piece [...]
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12/13/12 You have to love a press release that includes a line like this: UC Berkeley is leading the nation in assisting its students who are undocumented. It’s especially great to read when it’s true. There’s a lot happening at the University of California-Berkeley — including $1,000,000 gift for DREAMers scholarships, thanks to the Evelyn and Walter [...]
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12/11/12 After being vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown in California’s last legislative session, the reintroduced TRUST Act is gaining new life after state attorney general Kamala Harris recently announced that local and state police agencies are no longer obligated to follow the federal program known as Secure Communities.  As conservative columnist Ruben Navarrette wrote this week: Now [...]
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12/03/12 Former California Governor Pete Wilson created the path to Latino power in his state when he aggressively pursued Proposition 187 back in 1984. He dug a deep hole for the GOP — and they’ve only continued to dig it deeper since then. This year, Wilson was a co-chair of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. When it [...]
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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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10/29/12 It looks like Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R) of California’s 36th District is in trouble—this morning, Daily Kos has downgraded her tight Congressional race against Democrat Raul Ruiz from “Lean Republican” to “Tossup.”  As David Nir at Daily Kos wrote: Indeed, Bono Mack’s relationships with minority communities in her district seem to be a real [...]
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10/26/12 After Arizona passed the viciously anti-immigrant law SB 1070, raising questions about whether the state was legalizing racial profiling, Congressman Brian Bilbray (R-CA) jumped into the fray by claiming that police officers wouldn’t have to resort to race in order to identify undocumented immigrants.  ”They will look at the kind of dress you wear,” he said [...]
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10/23/12 Between Otto Reich’s comments that Latino voters are not supporting Mitt Romney because they “are not well-informed” and Rep. Mary Bono Mack’s comments to the Desert Sun today, Republicans are coming up with more and more excuses for the fact that they’re not doing better with Latino voters.  In Mack’s case, she’s not even trying. [...]
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10/05/12 It was just last weekend that California Governor Jerry Brown disappointed immigrant communities and activists in his state and across the nation by vetoing the TRUST Act, a bill that would have kept immigrants out of federal detention and protected from deportation if they did not have an outstanding criminal record. Now the city of [...]
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10/02/12 Over the weekend, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the TRUST Act, a bill designed to prioritize the deportations of the worst-of-the-worst criminal immigrants, while protecting immigrant families and communities. In the postmortem fallout, check out this scathing editorial from La Opinión: Governor Jerry Brown’s veto of the TRUST Act means political considerations triumphed over protecting [...]
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10/01/12 California Governor Jerry Brown had the chance this week to make California the anti-Arizona, a place where immigrants could count on and work with local police to fight crime. Instead, he chose to keep California on a path where tens of thousands of immigrants are deported each year for minor offenses like driving without a [...]
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09/28/12 A diverse array of voices are making the case for the TRUST Act – a sensible immigration compromise passed by the California legislature that would re-focus state immigration enforcement towards individuals convicted or charged with serious crimes.  Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop Emeritus of Los Angeles, writes an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times calling on [...]
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09/27/12 Time is running out in California for the TRUST Act.  California’s Governor, Jerry Brown, only has until THIS weekend to sign the bill, and we’re asking everyone to call (916) 445-2841 to ask Gov. Brown to sign the bill TODAY. Lawrence Downes in the New York Times today explains the significance of the TRUST Act: [...]
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09/18/12 California Governor Jerry Brown has until the end of the month to decide if he’s going to sign the TRUST Act into law, and his decision to sign the bill or veto it will tell us a lot about whose side he is on. California’s bill would be the largest effort yet to restore the trust [...]
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08/27/12 On Friday, the California State Assembly voted to pass the Trust Act in a 48-26 vote. Briefly, the Trust Act is the opposite of anti-immigrant legislation that is currently plaguing the country, and is a clear alternative to the Secure Communities enforcement program (which costs taxpayers in the state upto $65 million/year, according to a [...]
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08/08/12 Juana Reyes was arrested last month for selling tamales without a permit in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Now she’s facing deportation back to Mexico, even though she’s been in the country for 20 years and she’s the sole provider for her two US citizen kids. Sounds like something that would happen in Sheriff Joe’s Arizona, [...]
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07/13/12 The drumbeat of criticism about the Obama Administration’s so-called “Secure Communities” program continues, as more cities and states push back against its dragnet approach and insist on local control over police priorities.  As we’ve noted before, the ramifications of S-Comm are often eerily similar to the ramifications of Arizona’s SB 1070.  It allows police wide [...]
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07/12/12 Cross-Posted at California Progress Report Years ago, California tried to take the punitive and xenophobic approach to immigration with Prop 187 — a 1994 ballot initiative whose stated goal was to keep undocumented immigrants from receiving public benefits, but would have essentially turned California into a police state for immigrants. Fortunately, Proposition 187 was invalidated [...]
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07/09/12 The TRUST Act is a bill currently moving through California state legislature that is the “anti-Arizona.” According to the San Jose Mercury News, it’s the “first-in-the-nation measure that would limit local law enforcers’ compliance with federal immigration rules requiring them to report to immigration authorities all arrested people suspected as illegal immigrants.” Last week, it [...]
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07/06/12 Yesterday, California took a key step in positioning itself as the “anti-Arizona” on immigration enforcement, with the state Senate passing a bill that would restore common sense to states’ approach on immigration. Ironically, California was the first state to embrace an extremist approach to immigration with the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994. Fortunately, the [...]
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07/05/12 Major progress in the California State Senate this afternoon. We got the good news via twitter from National Day Labor Organizing Network’s (NDLON) Chris Newman: TRUSTACTpassed out of the California Senate — Chris Newman (@newman_chris) July 5, 2012 This bill is basically the antithesis of Arizona’s SB 1070. It’s designed to ensure that the federal “Secure Communities” [...]
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06/22/12 At America’s Voice Education Fund, we have been strong critics of Secure Communities, the Obama Administration’s signature immigration enforcement program. We’ve noted that it’s difficult to distinguish the difference between Arizona’s draconian SB 1070 and the Obama administration’s tactics under Secure Communities. That’s how bad it is. The Secure Communities program is now active in 97 % [...]
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05/30/12 Tonight, Meg Whitman, who lost the 2010 California gubernatorial race, is hosting a major fundraiser for presumed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, according to the San Francisco Chronicle: The former Massachusetts governor’s fundraiser is co-chaired by billionaire Meg Whitman, his former employee at Bain Capital and the 2010 Republican candidate for California governor who promised to produce [...]
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03/27/12 California's GOP primary isn't until June 5, but frontrunner Mitt Romney is spending part of this week in California fundraising, which means that the DREAMers bird-dogging him have big plans in California too.
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03/22/12 The Romney campaign made another gaffe yesterday when advisor Eric Fehrnstrom compared his boss to an "Etch-a-Sketch" and revealed the campaign's strategy to "hit a reset button for the fall campaign."
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03/22/12 The Romney campaign made another gaffe yesterday when advisor Eric Fehrnstrom compared his boss to an "Etch-a-Sketch" and revealed the campaign's strategy to "hit a reset button for the fall campaign."
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