DNC: Courting the Latino Vote
New America Media, Commentary/Analysis, Q&A with Odette Keeley, Posted: Aug 29, 2008
Editor’s Note: Judith Martinez with Atlanta Latino, a bilingual newspaper in Georgia, was one of eleven ethnic media journalists New America Media sponsored to attend the DNC in Denver. She talked about the Obama campaign courting the Latino vote, with NAM’s Odette Keeley. This is a transcription.
What surprised you at the DNC?
This is the first convention that I have attended in my journalistic career and one of the things that struck me, was that even though I was looking for stories about immigration, it just came up everywhere I went. For example I went to the Latino American Policy Forum, which was supposed to be focused on business, and the first thing that was said was that Obama's policy was immigration reform.
The whole presentation was on how important it was for Obama policy officials to strengthen relationships with Latin America, always focusing on respect and putting value on the labor of Latin Americans who are coming to this country and how important it is for Obama's campaign and his policies to better relationships and to invest in Latin America.
That was surprising because I thought they were going to speak on trade and foreign investments and everything to do with business. But, it turns out they were focusing on the human aspects of immigration.
What did the Obama campaign say about immigration?
The head of the Latino Voter Registration Campaign kept saying it is the priority issue in the agenda and Obama will resolve the immigration issue in the first year, if he becomes president. Other politicians didn't want to touch the subject. The Obama campaign was very vocal that the Latino vote matters to Obama and he will invest heavily in making it happen and getting Latino's out to vote and vote for him.
What did you learn about Obama’s foreign policy?
One is to double the Peace Corp. volunteers in countries such as central America and South America and Mexico. They believe that Peace Corp. volunteers could also work as advisors to small businesses and create small loans so Latin America can start to promote entrepreneurship in a small community.
Another concern is to create relationships and open dialogues with countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia and mainly with Hugo Chavez. That was one of the questions raised to the officials of the Obama campaign. In the present administration Bush has ignored this giant of Latin America Hugo Chavez and according to the Obama campaign officials they will try to open a dialogue with him and with other countries in Latin America that are going to the left.
Was there a fresh perspective about the Latino vote that you picked up at the convention?
Absolutely. At the National Association of Latino Elected Officials seminar they released some data that really struck me. They expect that 9.2 millions Latinos are going to go out and cast their vote. According to one study there are three priority issues that are important to the Latino community. I thought that immigration was number one, but it’s not. The number one issue for Latino's is [the] economy. Number two issue is the war in Iraq, most Latinos are pro-ending the war, and the third, is immigration.
Some Latinos think that immigration is being used as an issue to divide Latinos, to think that legal Latinos are Republicans and undocumented Latinos are Democrats. Another trend is that 50,000 Latinos turn to voting age, per month. So the marches of ‘96, when their motto was 'Today we march-Tomorrow we vote', that is expected in November. Those people that went out to march are now of voting age and will go out and - hopefully - vote for the best candidate. We know that about 62% or more of Latinos are going to vote for Obama.
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User Comments
CarlosnLA on Sep 01, 2008 at 10:04:15 said:
Mary J...Sorry to inform you that they're alredy in my house (US) and I have BEEN providing them with free room board education and healthcare for DECADES now ! You nor nobody else is going to tell me how to spend MY DOLLARS....
Native American, on Sep 01, 2008 at 06:09:16 said:
Daniel Griswold: Immigration law should reflect our dynamic labor market
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, April 27, 2008
Daniel Griswold is director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. His writings on immigration can be found at www.freetrade.org; e-mail him at dgriswold@cato.org.
Among its many virtues, America is a nation where laws are generally reasonable, respected and impartially enforced. A glaring exception is immigration.
Today an estimated 12 million people live in the U.S. without authorization, 1.6 million in Texas alone, and that number grows every year. Many Americans understandably want the rule of law restored to a system where law-breaking has become the norm.
The fundamental choice before us is whether we redouble our efforts to enforce existing immigration law, whatever the cost, or whether we change the law to match the reality of a dynamic society and labor market.
Low-skilled immigrants cross the Mexican border illegally or overstay their visas for a simple reason: There are jobs waiting here for them to fill, especially in Texas and other, faster growing states. Each year our economy creates hundreds of thousands of net new jobs – in such sectors as retail, cleaning, food preparation, construction and tourism – that require only short-term, on-the-job training.
At the same time, the supply of Americans who have traditionally filled many of those jobs – those without a high school diploma – continues to shrink. Their numbers have declined by 4.6 million in the past decade, as the typical American worker becomes older and better educated.
Yet our system offers no legal channel for anywhere near a sufficient number of peaceful, hardworking immigrants to legally enter the United States even temporarily to fill this growing gap. The predictable result is illegal immigration
In response, we can spend billions more to beef up border patrols. We can erect hundreds of miles of ugly fence slicing through private property along the Rio Grande. We can raid more discount stores and chicken-processing plants from coast to coast. We can require all Americans to carry a national ID card and seek approval from a government computer before starting a new job.
Or we can change our immigration law to more closely conform to how millions of normal people actually live.
Crossing an international border to support your family and pursue dreams of a better life is not an inherently criminal act like rape or robbery. If it were, then most of us descend from criminals. As the people of Texas know well, the large majority of illegal immigrants are not bad people. They are people who value family, faith and hard work trying to live within a bad system.
When large numbers of otherwise decent people routinely violate a law, the law itself is probably the problem. To argue that illegal immigration is bad merely because it is illegal avoids the threshold question of whether we should prohibit this kind of immigration in the first place.
We've faced this choice on immigration before. In the early 1950s, federal agents were making a million arrests a year along the Mexican border. In response, Congress ramped up enforcement, but it also dramatically increased the number of visas available through the Bracero guest worker program. As a result, apprehensions at the border dropped 95 percent. By changing the law, we transformed an illegal inflow of workers into a legal flow.
For those workers already in the United States illegally, we can avoid "amnesty" and still offer a pathway out of the underground economy. Newly legalized workers can be assessed fines and back taxes and serve probation befitting the misdemeanor they've committed. They can be required to take their place at the back of the line should they eventually apply for permanent residency.
The fatal flaw of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was not that it offered legal status to workers already here but that it made no provision for future workers to enter legally.
Immigration is not the only area of American life where a misguided law has collided with reality. In the 1920s and '30s, Prohibition turned millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans into lawbreakers and spawned an underworld of moon-shining, boot-legging and related criminal activity. (Sound familiar?) We eventually made the right choice to tax and regulate alcohol rather than prohibit it.
In the 19th century, America's frontier was settled largely by illegal squatters. In his influential book on property rights, The Mystery of Capital, economist Hernando de Soto describes how these so-called extralegals began to farm, mine and otherwise improve land to which they did not have strict legal title. After failed attempts by the authorities to destroy their cabins and evict them, federal and state officials finally recognized reality, changed the laws, declared amnesty and issued legal documents conferring title to the land the settlers had improved.
As Mr. de Soto wisely concluded: "The law must be compatible with how people actually arrange their lives." That must be a guiding principle when Congress returns to the important task of fixing our immigration laws.
Daniel Griswold is director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington. His writings on immigration can be found at www.freetrade.org; e-mail him at dgriswold@cato.org.
Native American, on Sep 01, 2008 at 06:00:00 said:
Hey Mr NUMBERS USA. GET OUT OF MY COUNTRY.Go back to where you and your forefathers came from, YOU HUMAN HATER.
You were not invited to my country.
WHAT DON'T YOU GET THAT "YOU" ARE THE ILLEGAL IN MY COUNTRY??
MaryJ on Aug 30, 2008 at 11:29:59 said:
Carlos in LA: Tell us where you live. We'll send them all to your house, with instructions that you'll provide them with free room, board, education and healthcare insurance!
CarlosnLA on Aug 29, 2008 at 21:54:14 said:
TO ALL UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS OF THE WORLD !!!!!WELCOME !!!....Not ALL U. S. citizens are HATERS !
Brittanicus on Aug 29, 2008 at 16:58:25 said:
THE PEOPLE need to know how Governor Sarah Pain of Alaska, the potential VP of John McCain stands on the illegal immigration plague? Is she a panderer to the Hispanic Caucuses and open border International globalists?
-->Before the new President even thinks of contemplating any form of guest worker program. He had better realize that their will not be a 'Path to Citizenship' in the package deal. It will be a straight working visa and return home afterwards. If any person wants to apply for legal residents, they had better understand that they must return home first. There must not be any short cuts, because thousands of bona fide immigrants wait patiently for years to enter America.
What do you think as caused the massive budget meltdown and escalating unemployment in California?
Let's face it confronting the huge budget deficit, brought upon the people of California from 'Sanctuary city' policies and allowing illegal aliens access to state, county and city welfare programs has caused a major disaster. Now Arnold and the state morons must look for other means to extract taxes and dollar bills from property owners to keep overcrowded schools running , the free health care (illegal alien) system and make room in the also overburdened prisons.
The assembly is overrun with Latino radicals who reserve the right, to allow the influx of as many illegal third world country cheap labor force that can spirit into the border states. Arnold seems to have lost his way, or been intimidated by the Democratic-Liberal-Socialist makeup in Sacramento's assembly.
Get rid of the open-borders criminals, including the Governors, Mayors , city Administrators and all those who out to appease the illegal immigrant advocates.
80 percent of the American population are NOT easily going to be swayed, by either Obama, McCain to give the 13 to 20 million illegal aliens any kind of Amnesty.? By any name they want to call it? It has to be voted by house, Senate, and THE PEOPLE and that will have major hurdles, if not impossible?
Everybody who doesn't have the right papers, know they are intentionally breaking the law. Their is no malice by the agents; just a duty to the American people and those who came here legally.
The 'Rule of Law" must be observed by every person in the United States. LAUREL, Miss, a manufacturing plant where 600 illegal aliens were arrested this week, shows the abnormality of the problem? The federal agents declined how many agents were involved in the raid, but said they acted on a tip provided by a union worker.
You cannot tell me for one minute, that the CEO, Directors on mahogany row didn't know about the illegal workers? Ice has a Tipline: 1-866-DHS-2ICE for intelligence to locate illegal aliens, or predatory businesses that employ them. If we can only pass the Federal SAVE ACT (H.R.4088) that Democrats are trying to keep away from the public eye.
Its funding will build a massive force of interior ICE agents, including 20.000 border patrol enforcement to root out the culprits. The E-verify data base that is 90.5 percent effective. NUMBERSUSA, CAPSWEB