09/05/12 Today, our Executive Director, Frank Sharry, joins Ron Brownstein from National Journal, Jake Tapper from ABC News, and Maria Elana Salinas from Univision on a panel at the Democratic National Convention entitled “The Democratic Party in Tomorrow’s America: The Hispanic Surge and the New Landscape of American Politics.” The panel “examines how growth in the [...]
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09/04/12 Ahead of this week’s Democratic National Convention, a series of contrasts are on display regarding immigration policy and politics: Democratic and Republican Party Platforms on Immigration:  On immigration, the RNC’s official platform unveiled last week is a Kris Kobach-driven grab-bag of hardline anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.  The RNC platform is filled with references to “illegal aliens,” linking undocumented [...]
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09/03/12 On Tuesday night, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro will be the first Latino to give the keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. He has been major Latino surrogate for Obama. And, Castro is from the same part of Texas as House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith. There couldn’t be a more stark contrast on immigration than the [...]
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08/28/12 Another day, another group of prominent voices criticizing Mitt Romney and the Republican Party’s hardline drift on immigration, and the Party’s subsequent hemorrhaging of Latino support.  As the following excerpts make clear, the consensus of an increasing number of observers is that Republican Party’s immigration strategy is not only bad policy, but bad politics. Here’s [...]
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08/27/12 Apparent by its party platform, the reins of the Republican Party’s immigration policy are in the hands of hardliners, led by anti-immigrant legal architect Kris Kobach. Ahead of this week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, some prominent Republican politicians, Party strategists, and conservative observers spoke out against the GOP’s hardline drift on immigration, recognizing the [...]
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08/23/12 Editor’s Note: This article is an English translation from the original Spanish article, published on Univision.com, by Jorge Ramos. You can read it, en español, here. Since Ronald Reagan, any Republican candidate that gets less than a third of the Latino vote will lose the election. Dear Republicans: You will lose the Hispanic vote in [...]
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08/20/12 Some news coming out of the 11th circuit court today regarding the Alabama and Georgia anti-immigrant laws – According to Ben Winograd at Immigration Impact: In a series of decisions issued Monday afternoon, a federal appeals court in Atlanta struck down major portions of controversial immigration laws passed by Alabama and Georgia—including a provision requiring [...]
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08/17/12 The beginning of deferred action made for quite an historic day yesterday, with tens of thousands of DREAMers lining up from Chicago to El Paso to Los Angeles waiting to receive assistance on their applications.  Yet in the midst of a nationwide celebration and day of victory, there remained the anti-immigrant extremists from the peanut [...]
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08/16/12 As DREAMers lined up to attend events around the country yesterday to learn more about the deferred action process and get help filling out their applications, America’s Voice decided to honor the day by sharing with our list of advocates the true meaning of the day — straight from the DREAMers themselves. With help from [...]
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08/13/12 All through the weekend, the Spanish-language media response to Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s running mate as been strong and consistent: Ryan is out of step with Latinos on both the economy and immigration, and this choice means Romney has essentially given up on the Latino vote. Paul Ryan has a poor track record when it [...]
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08/13/12 Cross Posted at Latino Decisions and Latino Vote Matters: New analysis of state voter registration counts by Latino Decisions reveals strong growth in Latino registered voters across the 50 states.  In July, Ruy Teixeira and William Frey first analyzed the May 2012 Census data, and found that steady increases in the Latino citizen voting age population (CVAP) could [...]
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08/13/12 The news that Mitt Romney has selected Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his running mate reinforces the Republican immigration status quo and is not going to help repair Romney’s low standing among Latino voters.  The following is a statement from Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice, reacting to the Ryan VP selection: Paul Ryan [...]
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08/10/12 While Team Romney hits Obama with a Nevada ad that highlights the administration’s deportation record, Obama hit the campaign trail in Colorado yesterday, slamming the GOP presidential hopeful on his immigration plan. According to CBS News: “Romney believes in self-deportation” and the Arizona immigration law, Mr. Obama told the crowd in Pueblo, Colo., Thursday. However, [...]
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08/10/12 This morning, New Orleans Immigration Judge William Wayne Stogner delivered a victory to Joaquin Navarro Hernandez and the Southern 32. Jude Stogner’s decision in favor of Joaquin, a day laborer who has contributed to the reconstruction of New Orleans, also critiqued the evidence created by Border Patrol on which ICE based its case. “I have a high degree [...]
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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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08/07/12 The August 15 start date for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to begin accepting DREAMer requests for deferred action is fast approaching.  While many supporters and advocates are putting all hands on deck in order to help DREAMers fill out their paperwork and avoid scammers, others are still insisting that allowing young immigrants to continue contributing to [...]
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08/06/12 Cross-posted at Latino Decisions and Latino Vote Matters: Florida is rich in electoral votes, party competition, and ethnic diversity, making it one of the most interesting states to watch during presidential elections. Republican Senator Marco Rubio adds yet another compelling element to the state political narrative during this election cycle.  Frequently mentioned as a potential running mate for Governor [...]
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08/03/12 Last week, ICE agents granted a man deported two years ago a rare request:  a 90-day humanitarian parole back into the US so that he could attend a custody hearing for his three US citizen children. Felipe Bautista Montes arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina last Wednesday, 21 months after ICE detained and deported him for [...]
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08/03/12 The following is a statement from Lynn Tramonte, Deputy Director at America’s Voice Education Fund, responding to today’s release of additional Deferred Action guidelines by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): There’s a lot of excitement around this announcement from DHS because the pieces are falling into place.  In less than two weeks, thousands of young immigrants [...]
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08/03/12 Given his long-standing history of buffoonery and anti-immigrant agitating, it should come as no surprise that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) presided over an embarrassing and offensive hearing yesterday in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Yesterday’s House Constitution Subcommittee hearing on King’s English Language Unity Act—a bill to mandate “English-only” government documents and services—featured two members [...]
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08/02/12 Yesterday was Day 6 of the Melendres vs. Arpaio civil lawsuit under way in Phoenix probing into whether Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office are guilty of routinely engaging in racial profiling. A post at Fronteras sums up how the trial has been going so far:  So far the federal judge hearing the case has [...]
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08/02/12 Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) continues to criticize the President’s smart move to protect DREAM-eligible young people from deportation—despite clear similarities between Obama’s action and the bill Rubio has talked about introducing for months.  In an interview with Florida reporters, Rubio said the Obama program will end up binge a “bureaucratic nightmare” and make it more [...]
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08/01/12 Tomorrow’s House Constitution Subcommittee hearing on Rep. Steve King (R-IA)’s English Language Unity Act—a bill that would mandate “English-only” government documents and services—is hardly the first indication that the House GOP is taking its cues on immigration from the anti-immigrant movement’s playbook, but it might be the most brazen. Since returning to power in 2011, [...]
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08/01/12 With his sensational spin on a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) memo, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is proving once again that he believes “immigrant” to be synonymous with “criminal”—and showing why the Republican Party is having such a hard time courting Latino voters and others with immigrant roots. Smith is the leading lawmaker behind the [...]
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08/01/12 As the trial against “America’s Toughest Sheriff”, Maricopa County’s Joe Arpaio, continues,  the bar has been set high to prove that he is guilty of racial profiling, despite “offensive letters, tearful stories and reams of statistics”. From the Associated Press via the Washington Post: Arpaio has repeatedly denied the racial profiling allegations. And experts say [...]
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08/01/12 Yesterday the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) released a treasure trove of data on DREAM Act-eligible youth, including where they come from and where in the US they tend to live.  The report, entitled “Who and Where the DREAMers Are: A Demographic Profile of Immigrants Who Might Benefit from the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action Initiative,” is [...]
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07/30/12 “No papers, no fear.” That is the slogan that is driving (so to speak) a group of undocumented immigrants and allies of different ages from Arizona to cities where there is heated anti-immigrant sentiment. The group is calling out the injustices toward immigrants that have been taking place throughout the country, especially in states where there [...]
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