By Ashley Parker, New York Times

A bipartisan group in the House working on an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws reached a deal in principle Thursday evening, aides said. The group plans to introduce its bill in June.

Details of the compromise were not released, but, much like a bill introduced in the Senate, the House legislation will include a path to legalization for the 11 million undocumented workers already in the country, as well as increased border security measures. The House version, though, is expected to be more conservative in its approach to granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, among a number of central issues.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by Glyn Lowe Photoworks]

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By Sandra Lilley, NBCLatino

A group of Texas Democrats say the state could turn blue sooner than many think, since the voters are already there, and they are mostly Latinos – the issue is no one is paying attention to them.

“The biggest problem is we are not asking them for their vote,” said Dr. Julie Martinez Ortega, vice president of  policy and advocacy for PowerPac, a progressive political action committee.  Ortega conducted a poll of over 2,600 randomly selected Hispanic registered voters.  According to the poll, 57 percent of Latino registered voters said Democrats best represent their views on social issues like same-sex marriage, religion and abortion, and 57 percent say Democrats best represent their views on jobs, economy and immigration.

And though Texas is considered a “red” state, only 23 percent of Latinos said they generally vote Republican, whereas 52 percent said they generally vote Democrat and 16 percent say they vote Independent.

One of the reasons why Republicans are still winning elections by about a million votes is that there are over 3 million Latinos “sitting on the sidelines,” according to Democratic state representative Trey Martinez Fischer and founder of One Texas PAC.   There are over 2 million Latinos in Texas not registered to vote, he says, and another million mostly Hispanic registered voters who are not voting.

Yet one of the poll’s findings was that only 54 percent of Latinos recall being contacted by a campaign in the last presidential election. “When pretty much half of Latinos didn’t even get a piece of mail, we have a problem,” said Martinez Ortega.  She added that while a third of Texas Latinos who voted for Obama also voted for conservative Republican Senator Ted Cruz, about a third of Latinos who voted for Senator Cruz did not know he was a Republican, according to the poll’s findings.  ”Here in Texas we didn’t make a concerted effort to educate Latinos on who Ted Cruz really is,” said Martinez Ortega.

Texas Republican Joshua Treviño takes issue with the Democrats’ contention that more Latino voters would turn Texas blue. “This is the old trope that gets trotted out, that demographic change in the state will go Democrat, and you hear this a lot these days from them,” says Treviño, who was a speechwriter for George W. Bush and is currently vice president of communications at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “While there are partisan tendencies among groups, the fact is that as affluence and social integration occurs, political pluralism increases,” he says.

Treviño adds it is not a “safe assumption” that more Latino voters will translate to increased Democratic numbers and Democratic elected officials, though he does say current Hispanic voter participation does not represent the proportion of Latinos in Texas.

But Texas Democrats say a focus on 6 key counties in the state where the majority of Latinos reside can make a big difference in increased voter registration, turnout – and future Democratic victories.

“Some look at my district and think it should be functioning as a Republican district,” says Senator Wendy Davis, who represents an area that is 29 percent Latino, 19 percent African American and 47.6 percent non-Hispanic white.  ”But we’ve demonstrated that by talking and connecting with these voters – it will happen,” Davis said.  She adds that while many areas have been redistricted as “purely Democrat” or “purely Republican,” the strategy is to take a district approach and apply it statewide – “focus on places where you have the biggest potential gain,” says Davis.

Democrat Martinez Fischer stated he is not concerned whether Texas turns blue in 2016 or 2020 – “the key is not to be fast, but to be right,” he said.

This article was first published in NBCLatino.

Sandra Lilley loves being an active part of our “national conversation”, on everything from politics, education and the economy to the latest books and people in the news. Sandra started out in Telemundo-NY as a general assignment reporter and later News Director. She was also a Dayside Managing Editor at MSNBC and a Planning Editor for the NBC Domestic Desk. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Sandra studied history at Brown University, and currently lives in New Jersey with her family. Sandra hopes our site inspires and informs Latinos as they work toward their family’s “American Dream.”

[Photo by deege@fermentarium.com]

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Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Philip Barbar, Reuters

(Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge refused on Thursday to block Arizona’s Republican governor, who has long clashed with Washington over immigration reform, from denying driver’s licenses to young immigrants granted temporary legal status by the federal government.

Civil rights groups had filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Phoenix in November against Governor Jan Brewer and two state transportation department officials on behalf of five Mexican immigrants who qualify for deferred deportation status under a program pushed by President Barack Obama.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by Gage Skidmore]

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By Dr. Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, NBCLatino

It’s no secret that the Republican Party has a serious problem with immigration.  But in this instance I’m talking about their problem with Latinos migrating out of their own party.  Republicanos are trading in the elephant for the donkey, or at the very least just going without a party vehicle.

This week a high profile Latino Republican, the former head of Hispanic outreach for Florida’s RNC, publicly left the party.  For Pablo Pantoja the straw that broke the camel’s, or in this case the elephant’s, back was the Heritage Foundation’s anti-immigrant report and its co-author’s public defense of Latino’s as a group having low IQ scores.  In his public farewell letter Pantoja references the general harshness of the Republican rhetoric toward immigrants, then points to a specific racist exchange at this year’s Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), and concludes with a rejection of the likes of Dr. Jason Richwine (author of the Heritage study) as a voice for the GOP.  To sum up his rationale, Pantoja simply states that his former party had resorted to “intolerance and hate.”

He’s not the first and he won’t be the last.

Another high profile Republican departure occurred close to two years ago, half way across the country in Arizona.  Dee Dee Garcia Blase had helped establish the Somos Republicans.  A national organization for Latino Republicans based out of Arizona.  But in the wake of Arizona’s S.B. 1070 she also publicly rejected her party.  Though a fiscal and social conservative, she simply could not synthesize the GOP’s anti-immigrant rhetoric into her politics.  So she left the Republican Party and Somos Republicans and became officially “unaffiliated.”  Not too long after her departure the organization itself, Somos Republicans, took a similar route officially abandoning the GOP and became Somos Independents.

The departures of Pantoja and Garcia Blase made the headlines because they were public partisan figures.  However, thousands of other Latinos have taken the same path of migrating out of the GOP.  Their decision is just not public, but rather taken in the privacy of a voting booth.

The out migration is especially stark when we compare the most recent presidential election with George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election.  The 2004 election was the Republican Latino high water mark.  At that time half of Latinos identified as being Democrats, 27 percent Republican, and 24 percent Independent.  Democrats clearly were the preferred party of Latinos, but slightly more than half did not identify as Democrats.  Moreover, in his re-election, Bush received 40 percent of the Latino vote.

Fast forward to President Obama’s re-election.  In 2012 the percentage of Latinos identifying as Democrats jumped to 57 percent and the number of Republicans decreased by half with only 14 percent of Latinos claiming a GOP affiliation.  The group that had the least movement was Independents or those unaffiliated.  In 2012 they rose to 29 percent.    But the biggest shift came in presidential vote choice, with Romney receiving only 27 percent of the Latino vote.

The correlation between the GOP’s Latino communications and outreach strategy is linear.  The harsher and more racially negative the messaging, the fewer Latinos will stand by your label and vote for you.  It’s not a complicated concept.

The Republican National Committee has publicly discussed its intention to not just retain but actively recruit Latinos.  However, mixed messaging will not staunch the out migration.  Being a Latino friendly party will require all segments of the party, not just the moderate ones to put aside harsh rhetoric, or what Pablo Pantoja pointed to as intolerance.  No one wants to stick around where they’re not welcome.

This atricle was first published in NBCLatino.

Dr. Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto is an NBC Latino and MSNBC contributor, Senior Analyst for Latino Decisions and Fellow at the Center for Politics and Governance at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, at Austin.

[Photo by AFH3]

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By Nathan L. Gonzales, NBCLatino

Latinos are growing in population and electoral clout but can’t seem to grow their numbers in the U.S. Senate. And if Republican Gabriel Gomez doesn’t win next month’s special election in Massachusetts, it could be three more years before another Latino is added to the U.S. Senate.

Even though the midterm elections are still almost a year and a half away, the candidate fields are already starting to solidify and, besides Gomez, there don’t appear to be any credible Latino candidates in the most competitive races.

The lack of Hispanic candidates is striking, not just because of the growing Latino population, but because eight Senators have announced their retirement, leaving an open seat for aspiring candidates who don’t want to take on an incumbent. But in each case, both parties are looking to non-Hispanic candidates to run to take each senator’s place.

So why aren’t the parties recruiting Latinos to run?

In the case of a vacancy, party strategists often look to current or former officeholders to run because they can start with name identification, a base of electoral support, and fundraising experience.

But in seven out of the eight states with an open Senate seat in 2014, there is not a single Latino member of Congress or statewide officeholder. In the eighth state, New Jersey, Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D), who is African-American, is the frontrunner to replace Frank Lautenberg, while Rep. Albio Sires (D) has never been a part of the Senate discussion.

In order to run for higher office, there must be more Latinos in lower offices.

Congress or statewide office is not a prerequisite for the Senate. While New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez served in the House of Representatives before getting elected to the Senate, Marco Rubio (R) was speaker of the Florida Legislature previously and Ted Cruz (R – Texas) had never held elected office before winning election to the Senate. They are the only three Latinos in the U.S. Senate.

Another reason for the dearth of Latino Senate candidates could be the lack of opportunity.

Some of the states with the highest Hispanic populations and officeholders, including California, Florida, and Arizona, won’t have a Senate race until 2016. And in Texas, Republican Sen. John Cornyn is up for re-election but is regarded as safe from primary and general election challengers.

So even as immigration reform remains of the most debated topics in Washington, there is very little chance any new Latino voices will be added to the Senate discussion anytime soon.

There is one way to gain Latino senators before 2016: appointments. When senators resign, governors often appoint a replacement. That’s how two African Americans, South Carolina Republican Tim Scott and Massachusetts Democrat Mo Cowan, were added to the Senate this year. Gomez is trying to succeed Cowan.

This article was firat published in NBCLatino.

Nathan Gonzales is deputy editor of The Rothenberg Political Report and Founder of PoliticsinStereo.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NathanLGonzales.

[Photo courtesy The Republican]

The post Why Can’t Latinos Get Elected to the US Senate? appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Buzz Feed

WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham is the first target of a new broadcast ad campaign from an anti-immigration reform group with reported ties to the white nationalist movement.

The minute long radio ad campaign by ProEnglish, comes at a particularly bad time for opponents of comprehensive reform: last week the Heritage Foundation was forced to sack a researcher for his racially tinged comments about Latinos and there are growing questions about the anti-reform movement’s connections to radical population growth groups.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Image screenshot courtesy Pro English]

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By Ted Hesson, ABC News/Univision

An immigration reform bill in the Senate would create goals for border security over the next 10 years, and tie those goals to legalization of undocumented immigrants.

But we can’t say whether the goals are feasible for a few reasons:

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by CBP Photography]

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By Tony Diaz, Latino Rebels

California. Proposition 187. Pete Wilson.
Arizona. HB2811. Jan Brewer.
Texas. HB1938. Giovanni Capriglione.
Texas. SB1128. Dan Patrick.

The Librotraficante Movement is thrilled to announce that America can erase the last two entries from the above list of oppressive laws attacking our culture.

Texas Republican Senator Dan Patrick introduced SB1128, and Texas Republican House of Representative Giovanni Capriglione introduced HB1938 the first day of Spring Break 2013.  They must not have realized that the Librotraficante Movement spends Spring Break defying oppression. Last year we organized the Librotraficante Caravan to Smuggle books banned in Arizona back to Arizona, and this year we defended Ethnic Studies in our own backyard.

We formed a Texas-wide coalition that fought against HB1938 & SB1128, which would have discredited Ethnic Studies at Texas state colleges and universities and effectively eliminate Mexican American, African American, and Women’s Studies programs, among others.  Both bills are now dead.

You can find out more about our work and strategies by visiting the website: www.StopTXHB1938.org. We will leave it up as a testament to this stage of the Civil Rights Movement that we and many others are a part of. Check it out sooner than later before hackers attack it the way the Librotraficante website regularly gets attacked.

In terms of the legacy of the current Civil Rights Movement, I have no doubt that our brothers and sisters in Arizona will be victorious. It will be a powerful example of Poetic Justice in Democracy when the only Latina Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor signs the majority opinion overturning Arizona House Bill 2811 signed into law by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, and used as the legal trigger to prohibit Mexican American Studies in Arizona.

These tactics are straight out of the Arizona Republican Play Book. The Far Right’s Anti-immigrant Movement is well known, and even addressed in the Republican Party’s Growth and Opportunity Report. However, they have not openly discussed, admitted to, or renounced the Far Right Attack on Ethnic Studies. We are providing you with an overview of  some of strategies used to attack Ethnic Studies indirectly. But the end result is the same: the dismantling of Ethnic Studies courses that have stemmed the drop out rate; an attack on Critical Thinking; and a trampling of the intellectual landscape of America.

The Far Right Template for Attacking Ethnic Studies

1. Vague Laws
2. Code Words
3. Micromanaging Classrooms
4. Doughnut Hole Legislation
5. Bogus Reports
6. Deny, Deny, Deny

Vague Laws: Anti-ethnic Studies bill are vague and the target is hidden, and the target is Mexican American Studies. Even as the Arizona Supreme Court condoned AZHB2281, it was pointed out that the law was so vague that it was unconstitutional.

AZHB2281 never even mentions Mexican American Studies.  Of course, once we are out of the way, the other Ethnic Studies shall fall, too. However, we are suffering the brunt of the attack. Once our programs are eliminated, the rules are set to eliminate all other Ethnic Studies and Women Studies, or never implement them. This is also part of an attack on “Critical Thinking” which the Texas 2012 G.O.P. Platform is very honest about.

Code Words: Here are some code words and phrases to look for.  These are direct quotations from the 2012 Texas G.O.P. Platform that appear again and again and again in Anti-Ethnic Studies legislation or justify such bills.

“We favor strengthening our common American identity and loyalty instead of political correctness that nurtures alienation among racial and ethnic groups.”

“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs …”

“We believe the current teaching of a multicultural curriculum is divisive.”

You might be a conservative, but you aren’t an Arizona Republican, are you?

Micromanaging Classrooms: It’s odd that the Republican Party used to advocate smaller government. Anti-ethnic Studies policies strive to legislate the books we can put into students hands. This was the case in Arizona and in Texas.

An editorial against HB1938 and SB1128 by the San Antonio Express News Editorial Board put it best:

The Legislature should leave the content of Texas college courses alone.

Micromanaging education from the peanut gallery is hazardous.

Repeated attempts over the years by some members of the State Board of Education to impose their ideologies into the textbooks being used in Texas classrooms made the state a laughingstock of the nation on more than one occasion.

Doughnut Hole Legislation: One of my opinion piece states the following:

Arizona Republicans fine-tuned this tactic, creating “doughnut hole legislation” to attack ethnic studies.

Teachers are the targets of the attack; rather than attacking them directly, however, laws are enacted to surround them and pressure them into compliance.

Dan Patrick’s SB 1128 is doughnut hole legislation, and the NAS report reveals that professors are, indeed, the target.

The report states: “We looked at the assigned readings for each course and the research interests of the forty-six faculty members who taught them. We also compared faculty members’ research interests with the readings they chose to assign.”

One of the most alarming lines from the report is the following: “We classified faculty members assigning primarily high RCG readings as “high assigners” of RCG materials.” (RCG refers to race, class and gender.)

Bogus Reports: AZHB2811 was created to prohibit courses that promote the overthrow of the government? Who even worries about that? Besides, we already have a Sedition Law that prevents individuals from promoting the overthrow of the government. Why do we need a Sedition Law for academic courses? How do you even put a school course on trial? Oh, I guess you can’t. Thus, the U.S. Supreme Court will throw out that law, even though it might take another 3 to 5 years and half a million to a million dollars.

Just as illogical, TX HB1938 & SB1128 were based on a report written by the National Association of Scholars. The report is titled: ”Recasting History: Are Race, Class & Gender Dominating American History?”

Page 18 of this report slams professors for  talking too much about race, class, and gender when discussing the following American Classics:

• the life story of Jackie Robinson
• the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
• “Women’s Rights Emerges with the Antislavery Movement”
• “César Chávez and La Cause.”

The sense that makes is nonsense.

Deny, Deny, Deny:  To this day, the Far Right G.O.P. Regime denies that books have been banned in Arizona. It will be up to the Supreme Court to convince them of that. Likewise, in Texas, the Republican legislators who proposed HB1938 and SB1128 deny that they wanted to attack Ethnic Studies. I can’t tell you what is in these legislators’ hearts, but I can tell you what was in their bills.  These bills would lead to the demise of Ethnic Studies. We must nip these oppressive laws in the bud. It’s much harder for them to be taken off the books. We are glad we were able to prevent mini-Jan Brewers from sprouting in Texas. But we must remain vigilant.

Here is a link to the Tucson Unified School District denying that they have banned books. However, they do admit that they walked into classrooms during class time and in front of our young, boxed up books by our most beloved authors.

And here is just one quote that is a testament to the Doublespeak that George Orwell warned us about:

“NONE of the above books have been banned by TUSD. Each book has been boxed and stored as part of the process of suspending the classes. The books listed above were cited in the ruling that found the classes out of compliance with state law.”

Now back to Texas and Doublespeak with a drawl.

A few quick facts: No one ever showed us the “Comprehensive American History Course” the bills and the Republican legislators were advocating. However, they would go into effect in just four months if the law were passed.

Also, when asked what brought this issue to his attention, Representative Capriglione did not refer to the NAS report although the author and champions of the bill were sitting behind him and about to testify. However, he did cite Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” Segment as proof that Texas college students did not know enough about U.S. History.

Here is one last quote from the NAS report:

“The kinds of courses that Librotraficante is concerned about will most likely, if the bill is passed, still continue to be offered at Texas public universities as electives. The only change would be that they would not count toward the state U.S. history requirement in general education.”

If discrediting our History is not a big deal, then I suggest that Representative Capriglione’s “Jaywalking Comprehensive History Course” be an elective. We would at least get to see the content of the course, and then we can get a better idea of what is the in the minds, hearts, and imaginations of the Far Right.

HB1938 would have taken U.S. History back to 1938 before Ethnic Studies existed. I’m so proud of everyone who stood up for Critical Thinking, Ethnic Studies, and Intellectual Freedom. We look forward to uniting with you as we continue to educate and fight.

This article was first published in Latino Rebels.

[Photo by NewsTaco]

The post The Libro traficante Oppression Detection Kit appeared first on NewsTaco.

By Roque Planas, Huffington Post Latino Voices

They fought the law, and they won.

The Texas activist organization known as Librotraficante celebrated a victory last week over state lawmakers that wanted to put the squeeze on ethnic studies.

Conservative State Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston) raised a fury among Latino activists and professors with a proposal to exempt ethnic studies and other college classes from counting toward the fulfillment of state history requirements, but gained little support for the effort. With just two weeks to go before the Texas legislative session winds to a close, Senate Bill 1128 has yet to get voted out of the Senate High Education Committee.

“Logistically speaking, it would be very difficult for it to pass at this point,” Logan Spence, a spokesman for Patrick’s office, told The Huffington Post Monday.

Opponents had railed against the bill, likening it to a law in Arizona that was used to shut down a progressive Mexican American Studies class in Tucson.

“This is a warning to all far right legislators in any State of the Union, if you attack our History, our Culture, or our books, we will defy you,” Tony Diaz, one of the leaders behind the Librotraficante movement, said in a statement Thursday. “And we will win.”

Patrick filed SB 1128 in response to a report by the National Association of Scholars, a nonpartisan group that some Latino scholars describe as conservative, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

The NAS study, “Recasting History,” argued that U.S. history courses at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have shifted their focus toward race, gender and class rather than more traditional scholarly interests, like intellectual and military history.

The University of Texas at Austin opposed that interpretation when the bill was filed. In January, the university put out a statement saying the study “raises some important questions, but it also paints a narrowly defined and largely inaccurate picture of the quality, depth and breadth of history teaching and research at The University of Texas at Austin.”

The UT-Austin statement points out that scholars paid little attention to race, class and gender until the 1960s. “Rather than ‘diminish attention to other areas’ as the NAS report suggests, these areas of study have broadened the view on historical events and personalities,” the statement says.

Facing criticism for the bill, Patrick wrote a message on his Facebook in March, saying:

The reason I filed this bill is…

READ FULL STORY HERE

This article was first published in Huffington Post Latino Voices.

[Photo by The Brit_2]

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By Jamelle Bouie, Washington Post

Given the current scandal-mania, it’s no surprise this went under the radar, but in Florida, the GOP’s state director of Hispanic outreach, Pablo Pantoja, has resigned his position, left the Republican Party, and changed his party identification to “Democrat.”

The combination of right-wing rhetoric and figures like Jason Richwine have created theperception of racialized opposition to immigration reform, where attempts to kill the legislation stem from anti-Hispanic bigotry. If the immigration bill fails, it could damage the GOP’s relationship with Hispanic voters even further for another generation. Which means — for Republican supporters — that it has to pass. There’s no other option.

Click HERE or on the picture to read the full story.

[Photo by Truthout.org]

The post GOP’s Problems With Latinos Could Get Much, Much Worse appeared first on NewsTaco.