07/25/11 Minutes before the President took to the podium, NCLR president Janet Murguia reminded him of his “unfinished business,” pointing out that practically every person sitting in the audience has been affected by America’s broken immigration system. More than that, the Latino community has also been devastated by the record number of deportations, noting one particular [...]
Read More »

07/25/11 Today, President Obama is scheduled to speak at NCLR's annual conference in Washington, DC. Three years ago, when President Obama was still candidate Obama, he spoke at the same conference in San Diego, saying: "I think it's time for a president who won't walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform just because it becomes politically unpopular."
Read More »

07/24/11 On Monday, President Barack Obama will make a luncheon speech at the National Conference of La Raza's (NCLR) annual conference in Washington, DC. While most of the political class is mesmerized by the debt ceiling negotiations, millions of Latinos will be focused on what the President says – or doesn't say – about immigration reform.
Read More »

07/22/11 Amid increased non-criminal deportations, harsher enforcement measures, and a move designed by the GOP to take some of his prosecutorial discretion powers away via the HALT act, President Obama is slotted to address the Hispanic community — a group of voters vital to his reelection campaign — at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) [...]
Read More »

07/21/11 Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) has really thin skin. He just can't help himself and has to respond to any article that mentions him and/or immigration policy. These are not baseless allegations. Even well-known news columnist, Ruben Navarrette, called him out on it, writing that Lamar Smith "creates his own reality on immigration." Navarrette didn't have to wait long before Rep. Smith had drafted and published a response in the Ventura County Star.
Read More »

07/21/11 People are reacting to Alabama's anti-immigrant bill, even though most parts of it won't take effect until September 1st. Undocumented immigrants are fleeing the state, and it's kind of very similar to what has already happened in Georgia.
Read More »

07/20/11 The Senate sponsor of the legislation that would strip President Obama of prosecutorial discretion (the HALT Act) is none other than the Senator with the most direct and personal knowledge of discretion: David Vitter.
Read More »

07/20/11 Alabama, which is 2.8 percent Latino, has a race problem again. Dark people are on the verge of taking over and like George Wallace and Bull Connor before them, today's politicos in Alabama aren't having it. "Anything short of shooting them," one politician has said from Alabama. From another: "Empty the clip and do what has to be done."
Read More »

07/18/11 Following a major USA Today story analyzing crime in U.S. cities along the border with Mexico, Governor Jan Brewer (R-AZ) and Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and John McCain (R-AZ) would do well to heed the famous advice of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."
Read More »

07/14/11 Breaking news: a Republican has said something crazy. It must be Wednesday. Today, we're bringing you news from Alabama, where sitting U.S. Congressman Morris "Mo" Brooks (R-AL) is under fire for comments made to an Alabama television station, WHNT: "As your congressman on the House floor, I will do anything short of shooting [immigrants]."
Read More »

07/13/11 Once thought to have been the GOP's solution to its Latino problem, Marco Rubio's move to the right on immigration (from his previous stance of saying as little as possible on the issue) is a dubious strategy, to say the least, to curry favor with Latino voters. This is especially true as immigration remains the most important issue to the majority of them (particularly to those from his own state), ahead of jobs and the economy
Read More »

07/07/11 Andy Mathe is fighting the fight of his life. He could literally be deported at any moment. Andy's father is a Rwandan refugee. Four years ago in Rwanda, Andy's family started receiving death threats. Someone even tried to kidnap Andy's younger sister. Soon after, Andy's father brought the family to America to find safety, but now immigration officials in Georgia want to send Andy back.
Read More »

07/06/11 Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) continues to insist that his forced E-Verify legislation would be a good thing for the U.S. economy and U.S. job seekers. However, Smith's fellow conservatives and leading libertarians disagree.
Read More »

06/30/11 Last week, just hours before Mandeep and her mother were scheduled to be deported to India, we learned that immigration officials changed their minds and canceled the deportation. At the last minute, she was given a one year stay of deportation. This was no doubt thank to the thousands of supporters who took action to keep her at home in California.
Read More »

06/28/11 This morning's Senate DREAM Act hearing featured Ola Kaso, a DREAM Act student with a 4.4 GPA from Detroit, Michigan. Though she was brought to the United States when she was just four years old, just last month she found herself fighting deportation to a country she barely knows.
Read More »

06/24/11 Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is promoting his E-Verify program as a "jobs" bill that will ease unemployed Americans' woes. It's telling that the first GOP "jobs plan" introduced this year would send unemployed manufacturing workers in Ohio or Michigan to the fields to pick fruit and vegetables. It's best described as a 21st Century Grapes of Wrath.
Read More »

06/21/11 For years now, immigrants have been blamed for things like homegrown terrorism via "terror babies," global warming, the health care crisis, the demise of Wall Street, and spreading leprosy and bird flu (among other diseases). Arizona Senator John McCain (R), one-time immigrant champion, is adding another to our growing list. Now the one-time GOP Presidential hopeful is blaming immigrants for starting forest fires
Read More »

06/20/11 The Smith-Grassley push to make the ineffective and burdensome E-Verify program mandatory nationwide continues to generate significant opposition from a broad range of observers, from the editorial board of La Opinion, the largest Spanish-language daily in the U.S., to the Service Employees International Union, to respected columnist Andres Oppenheimer. Interestingly, the Smith plan is also garnering strong opposition from the extreme right of the GOP.
Read More »

06/16/11 The Online team at America's Voice is blogging live from the conference in Minneapolis. Check back here for updates throughout the day!
Read More »

06/15/11 Today House Republicans, led by Reps. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), and Steve King (R-IA), unveiled the top bill on their anti-immigration agenda: a plan to make all employers in America use the deeply flawed E-Verify program to check the immigration status of their workers.
Read More »

06/13/11 As the Republican race for the party's presidential nomination begins and the 2012 cycle kicks off in earnest, the GOP's stance on immigration and its related (in)ability to compete for Latino voters will be major storylines.
Read More »

06/13/11 Arguing that he is only looking to keep communities safer and combat undocumented immigration, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is pushing through two problematic bills with serious ramifications for due process of the law and for workers, including citizens and permanent residents.
Read More »

06/10/11 Alabama Governor Robert Bentley (R) signed into law a new "papers, please" immigration bill that is a new low point for state-based immigration policy, an unfortunate reminder of Alabama and the South's tortured racial history, and another wake-up call to Washington to fix the broken immigration system.
Read More »

06/10/11 Massachusetts State Representative Ryan Fattman thinks that if you're an undocumented victim of a crime, you better be afraid to come forward – even if you're an undocumented victim of rape.
Read More »

06/07/11 As if Arizona, with its SB 1070 law that cost $750 million and turned the state into a pariah wasn't enough. As if Georgia, with a new immigration law that criminalized all individuals who harbored or transported undocumented immigrants wasn't enough. As if Indiana's not one, but two new anti-immigration laws weren't enough.
Read More »

06/06/11 There has been a letter from 22 senators, a legal memo written by the American Immigration Counsel, and a network of immigration advocates all revealing that Obama's hands aren't tied on immigration.
Read More »

06/02/11 A short but compelling lesson in history: Leading up to the 2010 elections, polling showed immigration to be the second most important concern of Latinos (after the economy). Still Alex Sink, a 2010 Florida candidate for Governor, and her gubernatorial campaign made a strategic decision to deemphasize immigration and the Latino vote.
Read More »