What comes first, immigration reform or Election Day?

We’re about to wrap up the year with the outcome of the major political issue (health care reform) remaining uncertain.

But if a Los Angeles Times report this week is correct, it won’t take us anywhere near as long to figure out the fate of what will be 2010’s major political issue in Congress.

THAT ISSUE IS immigration reform, which already has had one bill introduced and has another one being crafted by the guy who likely will wind up being the issue’s major sponsor – Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

The Times reported that officials allied with President Barack Obama already are trying to make the backroom political maneuvers that would enable a serious discussion to begin on this issue. That could result in some serious action on a bill being made during the spring months.

That could be key to this issue, since the Times managed to dig up several political pundits who claim that some sort of agreement will have to be reached during the spring on what will eventually wind up in an immigration reform bill – or else the issue is likely to get bogged down by political people who would rather not be bothered with the issue during an election cycle.

If that is true, it means this issue won’t turn out to be anything like health care reform – where there was constant compromise by Democrats so eager to pass something, anything that could be labeled a reform bill that some liberal elements think that the end result is pointless.

THAT IS NOT as likely to happen with immigration reform because this is one issue where people are not going to want to compromise much of anything.

There are those people who think that “reform” of immigration laws constitutes nothing more than building barricades along the border and stepping up the process of deportations, while others are convinced that reform involves anything that thwarts the people who support such ideas.

In fact, the tough part of this issue might very well be overcoming an attitude expressed to the Times by a Democratic-leaning pollster who said that many people are more interested in, “vindicating their position” than they are in resolving the flaws that exist in our nation’s immigration laws – which make it virtually impossible for some people to ever have a serious shot at getting the all-crucial visa that allows them to live openly in the United States.

Maintaining the status quo, where we have millions of people living a shadowy existence in this country, which makes them vulnerable to the scams of society (whose perpetrators are the true criminals of this issue, not the people without papers living in the United States).

THE TIMES REPORT caught my attention because it indicated that some activity already is taking place, even though the people who are inclined to wish the issue would just go away are focusing their attention exclusively on the fact that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said she will insist that the Senate deal with this issue before any of her House caucus members are forced to take a stance.

Someone realizes that the issue’s time has come (it really came during the years of George W. Bush, but the Republican-led Congress back then was more than willing to ignore the real problem and focus on the nativist rants that all-too-often dominate the issue’s debate).

It’s not that I think Obama and his staff has some sort of inate comprehension of the growing Latino population, which takes this particular issue personally regardless of whether the individuals are U.S.-born, with visa or without.

Perhaps it’s just that he realizes he got elected in part with a strong voter turnout from Latinos, and that our support could easily go elsewhere for future elections – whether for him in 2012 or for people he needs as political allies in 2010, 2012 or (maybe) 2014.

ONE OTHER ASPECT of the Times report caught my attention – the viewpoint of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who once tried working with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., on an immigration reform bill and claimed he should have been the presidential candidate of choice last year for Latinos because of it.

McCain says he still thinks there is a need for reform, but he’s not willing to back an Obama-favored measure.

Which means he doesn’t want Obama to go into the history books as getting credit for immigration reform; he’d rather see the issue postponed for a future year so that someone else could receive the praise.

If that’s his attitude, then that alone is evidence that Latinos got it right when we cast two-thirds of our votes against him and for Obama.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Will political people be able to come to a quick agreeement on what constitutes (http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-immigration30-2009dec30,0,229013,full.story) reform on the issue of immigration?

Kraft’s “Miss Universe” ad a tad cheesy

I have never been one of these overly cynical people who thinks the public at-large is stupid, but I do believe there are many people who unquestioningly believe what they are told because they have lazy tendencies.

Checking out facts takes time.

IT IS BECAUSE of that basic trend of human nature that I wonder about the “genius” who came up with the new advertising campaign being used by Kraft Foods in the United States on Spanish-language television.

It is meant to be a “clever” gag to promote the idea that Kraft-brand slices of American cheese are made from “real” ingredients, rather than phony substitutes. But I’m still bothered by what I could see as confusion, and also the fact that the Univision television network is willing to play along with the ad.

I guess their top priority is the money they are being paid by Kraft to participate in the stunt. Which ultimately is what this whole thing is – a cheap stunt.

Now for those of you who are wondering when I’m going to get to the point, my outrage was inspired by a story published in the Advertising Age trade journal. It appears that Univision included a “news” story that said the reigning Miss Universe, Stefania Fernandez of Venezuela, was planning to give up her “title.”

THE STORY INCLUDED explanations that Fernandez’ boyfriend was jealous of Miss Universe owner Donald Trump (how wealthy do you have to be to “own” a beauty pageant?), and also included a “quote” from Venezuela officials who were lackadaisical about the move on the grounds that Venezuela has had more than its share of international pageant winners throughout the years.

Then, as is the trend for many news organizations trying to show they’re “hip” and “with it” (yeah, those are the terms their management would likely use), viewers were directed to a website for more information.

It was at that website that people learned the story was fake. The website was put together by Kraft, and it informs people they should be cautious about what news they take seriously, and what food products they consume.

After all, their site says, Kraft cheese slices are made from real milk, rather than oil and water as they claim some other companies use.

NOW I HAVE long accepted the notion that Spanish-language television in this country operated under different standards than English-language stations, even when it comes to news programming (anybody who doubts this should check out the outfits worn by weather forecasters on English stations versus Spanish stations).

I’m not saying that Spanish language broadcasting in this country is somehow reckless. It is more flashy – although I’m sure there are some regular Telemundo or Univision viewers who would argue that it is the English-language stations that are more dull.

But this advertisement passing for a news story just strikes me as something that has the potential to backfire so badly, particularly if someone is lazy enough to get worked up over Miss Universe’s fate (supposedly, she’s being replaced by Miss Dominican Republic) without bothering to check out a fact or two.

And I’m not particularly swayed by the explanation that the “news” story aired Monday, which is the Dia de los Santos Inocentes, where it is traditional for pranks to take place in many Latin American nations.

THERE ARE SOME things that ought to be “off-limits” if a broadcast station wants its programming to be taken seriously. I’m not swayed by any amount of money the network may have received for including this stunt in its newscast (and I don’t want to hear that ridiculous word “advertorial.” It’s absurd).

In fact, I couldn’t help but notice the portion of Advertising Age’s report that indicated many people used Univsion’s website to post their own comments debating whether or not Miss Dominican Republic was worthy of representing the universe when it came to beauty.

So much for the idea that the network says they included a disclaimer in the story. Some people just didn’t think they had the time to check out what was really happening in the world. Perhaps they were too busy eating prepackaged cheese slices from companies that use cheaper ingredients to produce a lower-cost product.

Which means they’re not only lazy, they’re cheap as well.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: I’d like to say I’m boycotting Kraft cheese in protest over this advertising campaign, but I (http://adage.com/hispanic/article?article_id=141227) honestly cannot remember when the last time was that I ate prepackaged singles. Personally, I’d rather spend more time pondering the benefits (http://www.missuniverse.com/members/profile/41818) of Miss Venezuela.

Catholic church taking lead on immigration reform

I have always seen the debate over health care reform to be a warmup act for the ugliness that will occur when immigration reform is considered by Congress.

Which is why I found it encouraging to learn recently of how elements of the Catholic church in this country are already taking steps to try to encourage people to think of the issue rationally – instead of letting the xenophobes dominate their thought process.

THE U.S. CONFERENCE of Catholic Bishops is preparing for a “postcard campaign” in which Catholics will be urged to send their elected representatives in the Senate and House of Representatives some sort of message letting them know they should not vote knee-jerk against immigration reform.

It is with that campaign in mind that some groups are planning forums in coming weeks to educate people about the issue, in hopes they will take the postcard campaign seriously.

There also will be mentions of the campaign in the fact that the church is considering next week (the first full week of 2010) to be National Migration Week, during which they will attempt to portray the issue of immigration reform as one of mere fairness to all mankind.

Specifically, they’re going to be touting the need for a broad-based legalization process for all people who want to live in the United States, without regard to their nationality. It also will be portrayed as a way of permitting families to remain together or to be reunified (whichever is the case).

OF COURSE, TO make a concession to some of the more conservative elements, they’re also throwing in talk of a guest-worker program by which people could come from other countries for a few years, work in the U.S., and not have to go through the immigration process, if they intend to return “home” some day.

The conservatives like that because they think it encourages newcomers to think of the day they will leave, rather than consider themselves a part of the United States. But if it means that we can start thinking of the people who are already here as filling a legitimate niche (rather than being criminal by their very existence, as the nativists like to think), then perhaps it is a part of the overall solution.

If it sounds like I think there are parts of the Catholic rhetoric that we’re going to hear in coming months are good while others are not so good, you’d be correct.

But then again, that was the attitude the Catholic church itself took toward the health care debate, where it was argued that the basic concept of reforming the way health care was paid for to make it more accessible to all was a good concept totally in line with the church’s teachings.

BUT THE CATHOLIC church also encouraged those political people who were bent on including restrictions that would limit a woman’s ability to abort a pregnancy. I can recall Cardinal Francis George of the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese saying that “no one” would be totally pleased with the church’s position, even though it was meant to protect the access of health care to protect life.

If anything, it meant that Catholic church officials were trying to put the actual issue of health care access over the partisan political issues of winning future elections based off what actions were taken now.

It sounds like they’re also trying to do the same with immigration reform.

For this is an issue that too many people want to avoid because of its future electoral ramifications. They want to believe the rhetoric that comes from the nativists that doing anything that can be perceived as favoring “the foreigners” will bite them back at the polling place on Election Day.

OF COURSE, THAT attitude ignores the fact that the Latino portion of the electorate is growing in size and influence and has the potential to bite back at political people who come off as too xenophobic.

It’s not that many of us are directly affected. But we do realize that many of the people who get so worked up about this issue can’t tell the difference between an immigrant and an alien, or a Latino from someone who is from Latin America.

So there is the degree to which we realize that the immigrant issue is a reflection upon us as well, and we will be inclined to vote against those political people whose actions are interpreted as slurs upon us.

It also is encouraging to learn that the Catholic church in this country is trying to see this issue as one beyond politics. There is a degree to which the church can gain some respect from people because of this very attitude.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Catholic Diocese for Rochester, N.Y., could be typical of activity taking place among (http://www.catholiccourier.com/tmp1.cfm?nid=78&articleid=111907) Catholics across the United States when it comes to the immigration reform issue.

Cities giving us the view of our future

I know there are those people who want to view the metropolises of the United States (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and such) as a part of this country’s past. We’ve moved beyond the kinds of people attracted to urban life and it is the suburbs and exurbs that are the future.

Yet I can’t help but think that such a view is short-sighted. The ethnically diverse population of these metropolitan areas make me think that we’re seeing now what will be the norm across the country.

I KNOW MY hometown of Chicago is already close to having the Latino population that the Census Bureau geeks like to guess will be the nation’s overall Latino population come 2050 (which is the year it is guessed that white people will become the “minority” of this country).

Then, there is New York, where reports issued recently confirmed that the most recent elections in the nation’s largest city were the first in which non-white people cast a majority of the votes.

That fact is going to cause a lot of the so-called rules of electoral politics to be trashed. It is going to cause significant changes in the types of officials who get elected, and that is a good thing.

Because the current set-up produces too many people who want to cling to the old ways in manners that reek of desperation. One ought to read much of the commentary being published these days by people who want to believe that immigration reform pending in Congress is a doomed deal.

I’LL AGREE THAT it will be a difficult fight politically because there are government officials who will think it their duty to their constituents to reject anything, no matter how much better off the nation as a whole would be with serious reform of the laws that govern the way in which people from other parts of the world can come to live in the United States.

Because the time will come, in some places sooner than others, where using cheap, nasty (and occasionally racist) rhetoric will be seen as a political negative – the way to ensure that potential voters will think you are a half-wit, instead of a serious public official who can do “the people’s business.”

In the November 2008 elections, exit polls indicate that 46 percent of the New York voters identified themselves as “white.” That is a larger figure than any single group – 23 percent black, 21 percent Latino and 7 percent Asian were the others

This is going to be the trend elsewhere in the United States, as one of the realities of the growing Latino population in this country is that “we” are moving everywhere – not just ethnic ghettoes in urban neighborhoods where white people don’t want to live any longer.

AND AS THESE numbers increase, the percentages of people to whom immigration is not a personal issue will increase. We’re going to become more and more natural born.

That is why I think it ridiculous that some political people seriously think this immigration issue can be ignored. Because all it is going to do is reinforce the perception among potential Latino voters that some people (mostly Republican, but some Democrats too) are openly hostile to our presence for whatever ridiculous reasons they may try to offer to justify their prejudices.

In fact, for some political pundits, the shock of New York’s 2008 voter turnout was that 21 percent Latino voter figure – there weren’t any Latino candidates seeking major office in the city and too many political pundits had believed we were a fickle bunch who were only interested in voting for people who looked just like ourselves.

Actually, since Latinos can be of just about any racial background, these political pundits were believing we would only vote for people who fit some Anglo image of what constitutes a Latino.

THE BOTTOM LINE is that our continued growth already seen in the major urban areas is going to be reflected nationally, and the day will come sooner rather than later when a place without Latinos is going to be one that is cut off from the culture of our country.

The sooner that some people get with the program and accept this fact, rather than fight it, the better off our nation will be.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: New York is showing us the national ethnic breakdown of the future, whether we as a people (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/nyregion/26vote.html) want to accept it or not.

The growing Latino population is going to exert more significance in coming years, which is why officials (http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/dec/27/latino-community-grows-its-political-clout-must-ma/) should stop thinking of the Latino vote as something that can be dismissed.

BORDER CULTURE: Is it about drugs, or guns?

Too many people want to believe that Ciudad Juarez is the prototype of Mexico, with the level of violence related to narcotics reaching such high levels that Mexico’s army has taken over police duties in the border city located across from El Paso, Texas. Crossing the U.S./Mexico border isn't anywhere near as simple as it was back in 1912. Photograph provided by Library of Congress Collection.

Which is why I couldn’t help but notice a pair of pieces published Friday (although one was really a notice saying that something of subustance will appear on Saturday) about the situation these days.

FOR THE RECORD, the number is 2,560. That is the total of people who were killed in or near Ciudad Juarez during the pasrt year. That is a murder total that even the largest cities in the United States would have trouble achieving.

But the New York Times published an account of the extremes to which people go to smuggle drug-related cash from the United States into Mexico. Some of the tactics by which people try to get their financial gains onto the other side of the border sound almost like the stereotypes of what people will do to try to smuggle people from one nation to the other in the opposite direction.

The implication of the report is that it’s all about the money.

People are willing to endure the harsh conditions and extreme attempts to crack down on narcotics because so much of it still slips through, and the money involved can stretch into the millions. It becomes worth the risk financially for those who have little other means of supporting themselves in any style in life.

YET THE EL Paso Times newspaper is coming up with its own report, including an interview with Ciudad Juarez Mayor (or should I say, el Alcalde) Jose Reyes Ferriz.

He says the violent conditions are all about firearms, particularly the flow headed south along with the cash from the United States into Mexico.

I guess he doesn’t remember the outcry that cropped up in this country last year when Hillary R. Clinton made comments implying that the United States had some moral obligation to bring firearms under control if they wanted the long-range goal of a reduction in the flow of narcotics headed north from Mexico.

Because Reyes Ferriz wants the United States to consider tougher gun laws, even though I can already hear the rants of the Anglo Texans and their brethren on this issue who will claim it their “constitutional right” to have that firearm in their hands.

AS THOUGH THEY think they personally are going to start shooting drug dealers who come within their sight.

What caught my attention about these reports is that they truly do have to be read together, along with many other accounts, to get the true picture of what life is like these days in that region that technically separates the United States from Mexico, but has such strong influences of both countries that it truly shows how much our nations have in common.

It’s not a cash problem. It’s not a gun problem. It’s not even a drug problem.

It is all of the above (be honest, much of that drug “demand” comes from the U.S., with our nation’s citizens paying out their cash for drugs that came up from Latin America).

IF IT MEANS that I think this is a problem that we’re going to have to work together to address, then you’d be correct. If it means that I think we have to start thinking of the southwest as a binational region – rather than a place where concrete barriers can be erected with any sense – you’d also be correct.

It is a problem confronting both of our nations. Anyone who thinks that the solution involves pointing a finger at the other country and saying, “It’s your fault” is just being a fool.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Border Patrol officials between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez aren’t only looking for narcotics (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/world/americas/26laredo.html?_r=1&hp), they also want to find the cash resulting from such transactions.

Ciudad Juarez’ mayor (http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_14068523) is going to become an “enemigo”of the National Rifle Association.

¡Feliz Navidad!

I’m giving it a rest for the day. After all, it is a holiday and I think people ought to find better things to do with their time today than gaze at the computer screen looking for trivial information and video snippets.

So log off whatever electronic device you’re using to read this, and enjoy the real world for a bit.

FOR THOSE OF you who are heartbroken about my desire to take a rest today (and I would really hope there are few of you who fall into that category), I will resume the commentary and analysis on Saturday.

And if you absolutely have to read something, here (http://kingsvillerecord.our-hometown.com/news/2009-12-23/Editorial/Christmas_is_2_languages_.html) is a column out of a Texas newspaper that gave me a chuckle.

Perhaps you will enjoy it as well.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I always get a kick out of hearing the late Celia Cruz, particularly this time of year with her take (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgW8bEkxyec) on “Jingle Bells."

Pinatas aren't just for birthdays, as evidenced in this century-old image of a Mexican christmas celebration. Photograph provided by Library of Congress Collection.

Want some tamales? So do I

I can remember as a kid going to Grandma’s house on Christmas Eve, where among the gift exchanges and meeting up with all the cousins (my mother was one of eight siblings), the highlight of the evening may very well have been the holiday meal of tamales made fresh and in the home.

Not that it was Grandma who did the work. While some guys like to take over the preparation of food when it comes to working the grill during the summer months, for my family it was my grandfather who took over the tamale preparations – ensuring that dozens of the cornmeal dough stuffed with meat or sugary paste or whatnot were on hand to feed all of his kids, their spouses and his grandchildren.

WHICH IS WHY these days I often joke with my mother about how I yearn for a plate full of my mother’s “home-made” tamales. That is a joke because my grandfather never did pass along his “secret” to making the dish.

My mother claims not to know how to make them, and also says that at her age she’s too old to start learning now.

In fact, I don’t think any of my aunts and uncles know how to make a proper tamale.

Some of them go without, while others resort to what my brother and I do. We kick in for the cost of a few dozen tamales that we order from a Mexican restaurant that understands Mexican cuisine extends beyond “taquitos’ and “burritos” – which too many Anglos want to write off as “wraps.”

ICK!

Now one must understand that the making of a decent tamale is not an easy process. There’s something about preparation of the dough that takes a certain knack that can only be learned through extensive practice.

If one doesn’t get it quite right, the end result will be inedible. It also is a time-consuming practice, which is why in some families I have heard of Christmas “traditions” where everybody is expected to help with the tamale preparation.

Or else they’d be like my grandfather, spending an entire day slaving away in the kitchen. But that was his choice.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, I remember the other side of my family, and one time my other grandmother trying to teach her son (my father) how to do tamales. His came out all pasty, and my father claims he can’t remember any of what she tried to teach him just before she passed away 17 years ago.

Nonetheless, if it were possible for us to be able to talk to one of our lost loved ones (my grandfather passed away just over 31 years ago, after having worked the bulk of his adult life in a steel mill in Chicago’s South Deering neighborhood), my grandfather, Michael Vargas, might very well be the person I’d most want to speak to.

Aside from the fact I’d want to know more details about his own immigration to the United States – he was born near Guadalajara, and I can remember him telling me when I was a child of the struggles he went through to build a life for himself while also becoming a U.S. citizen and how important those naturalization papers were to him – at this time of the year I’d want to ask him for a clue about how to do the tamales.

It seems a shame that this “skill” has been lost to my brother and myself.

FOR WHILE WE, along with our mother, likely will have the tamales we special-ordered earlier this month as a holiday meal on Friday and they actually will be quite edible, they just won’t be the same as if they had just come freshly cooked from my grandparents’ kitchen just like when I was a kid.

I will have to take some comfort, I suppose, in the irony that we purchased tamales from a Mexican restaurant located about one city block from the now-shuttered steel mill where my grandfather worked for so many years.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: I’m not the only person of Mexican-American ethnicity who takes a particular interest in tamales (http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/2008/12/tamales-for-breakfast-meant-it-was.html) at this time of the year.

I may have to resort (http://www.sonofthesouth.net/tamales/Tamale_Recipe.htm) to these directions in the future.

Latinos taking an interest in health care reform debate

A Supreme Court appointment and passage of a reform measure for how health care services are paid for in this country could wind up being the two major accomplishments by President Barack Obama for Latinos – even if the health care issue likely will spill over into Obama’s second year in office.

I say that because health care reform has become an issue of significant interest to the growing Latino population, and not just because some of the rhetoric used by Obama’s opponents to trash health care reform mirrors the criticisms that will be used when immigration reform comes before the Congress (hopefully in 2010).

A LOT OF it comes down to the fact that a disporportionate share of the uninsured in this country (roughly 30 percent of the 47 million without health insurance are also Latino) are among our ethnic brethren. It becomes all too easy for us to personally know someone who is not insured, and to realize the lack of insurance is not some sort of character deficiency on their part.

So if it happens that on Thursday the Senate actually (finally) takes an “up” or “down” vote on the issue (bringing to an end all the political procedural maneuvers used by Republicans to delay the issue, similar to the way Southern Democrats used to engage in political gamesmanship to delay what turned out to be the inevitable – the Civil Rights Act.

For those who hate that comparison, I’d say it is appropriate because both “issues” ultimately were something that was in the good of the public at large, even if their opponents preferred to think of their “minority” stance as the only moral one.

There will be those Latinos watching to see what happen in the final moments of the bill in the Senate. At least they’ll be watching in between doing some last-minute Christmas shopping and trying to make sure enough tamales have been prepared for the holiday meal.

A NEW SURVEY of Latinos shows health care reform has become the second-most important issue (ranking just behind the Economy & Jobs, which is tied in to having health care since losing a job often means losing the health insurance benefits that came along with it).

Seriously, among those Latinos registered to vote, 17 percent said health care reform was the most important public policy issue being considered today (compared to 35 percent for the economy).

When it comes to Latinos who actually bothered to cast ballots in the 2008 presidential election (the one in which about two-thirds of us backed Obama over Republican John McCain).

By the way, that partisanship level shows in terms of what Latinos think of the health care reform debate. The study compiled by Garcia Research and Santiago ROI found that 85 percent of Latinos support the Obama vision, while only 12 percent oppose it.

THE REMAINDER OF us are too clueless to know exactly what to think of it.

But with only 3 percent too clueless, that’s miniscule to the number of undecideds that usually turn up in polls on issues.

“Health care reform is of major concern to Latinos who voted in the last presidential election and regardless of party affiliation, they want to see health care reform passed,” said Carlos Santiago, president of the marketing firm that helped put this latest survey together.

For what it’s worth, the study found that th 12 percent of Latinos who oppose health care reform proposals now being considered are most likely to be from the southeastern U.S., or those Latinos who are non-Mexican-American.

TO MY MINDSET, that sounds like they’re saying the Cuban exile population of Florida, which has been so hard-core Republican for years that I would hardly expect them to start now in supporting much of anything put forth by a Democratic president.

So what happens should the Senate give its approval (likely by a 60-40 partisan vote, similar to the vote for Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court)?

We get the conference committee that takes the version of the bill approved earlier this year by the House of Representatives and tries to reconcile their differences.

Then, we’ll get another round of votes in both chambers of Congress before Obama gets his final chance to stage a bill-signing ceremony and claim that he took “historic” action to reform health coverage in this country.

“HISTORIC” MIGHT BE too strong a word, since some serious compromising had to be done to get a bill to this point. But there will be Latinos who realize that this is a significant step forward, and will be willing to give Obama a bit of praise for this maneuver.

Now let’s hope he doesn’t blow the goodwill he’s developing among Latinos with the way he handles immigration reform in the coming year.

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It’s cute that Facebook thinks more Latinos are using it

I am likely one of the roughly 9 percent of people who live in this country, have a Facebook account and who happen to be Latino.

A new research study released last week attempted to compute the racial breakdown of the people who use Facebook, and their conclusion is that the service isn’t quite as Anglo-oriented as it used to be.

INSOFAR AS LATINOS are concerned, we used to comprise about 3.5 percent of Facebook users back in 2006. But we have tripled, which is odd since the survey also claims that the overall percentage of Latinos who use the Internet hasn’t increased by anywhere near as much.

What should we think of this? Probably not much.

The problem as I see it is that the researchers went solely by surnames. They went to the list of most popular surnames put together by the Census Bureau, then made a guess as to what “race” someone was.

Of course, that same Census Bureau is the entity that says Latinos (officially known as Hispanics) are not a race and in fact can be of any race.

SO HOW MUCH do you want to guess that many of the people were classified racially inaccurately.

I expect it particularly with the Latino segment of the U.S. population because the reality of much of our racial and ethnic breakdowns don’t go along with the preconceptions that have developed in this country (which basically amount to “white” people and “other” people – mostly black).

Now I’m presuming I was classified as “Latino” because the group also went so far as to give a cursory review to a person’s personal information. Somehow, I expect that indicating Celia Cruz and Tito Puente to be musical performers I enjoy listening to gave me away.

Or perhaps it was indicating that I publish a pair of weblogs (including this site) that often comment on so-called “Latino” issues.

IF THAT WASN’T enough, then maybe being “fans” of Facebook groups such as ”Friends of America Libre” (an interesting novel by written Raul Ramos-Sanchez), “el jumpingbean” and” I’m MEXICAN (even if you think I look white, arabic, jewish, etc.,” may have finally done the trick.

Of course, maybe they took a look at the fact I’m also a member of the Facebook group “I know what a horseshoe is, Do You?” and figured I was just a trashy idiot with no concept of quality edibles.

What can I say, I lived in the Illinois capital city for a seven-year period, although I will only confess to eating one of those incredibly cholesterol-laden sandwiches once in my life.

If I’m going to consume something that has the potential to take down my health, I’m going to make it something truly edible such as a plate of tamales, particularly since we’re now approaching the Christmas holiday.

TO GET BACK to my point, I find this study of Facebook readership to be all too trivial because it tries to make an educated guess, but puts more emphasis on the “guess” part than the “educated” aspect.

There are elements of my “profile” that might fit some researcher’s idea of what a Latino is about, but others that wouldn’t (personally, I often get mistaken for Italian or Greek, and once had someone tell me seriously they thought I was Polish).

Not that I want to be any of these “other” things. I’m me, and quite comfortable with that.

There’s also one other aspect to this study that I find discouraging – and in a sense, it is that more Latinos are finding their way to Facebook to waste their time away.

PERSONALLY, I ONLY use the site to promote my commentary and analysis on this weblog and its sister site, the Chicago Argus (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com). I don’t get into that “Mafia Wars” game or any of those silly quizzes about what five sports franchises do you detest the most.

In fact, the ONLY time I ever took one of those quizzes was the time they asked “What Chicago street best suits your personality.”

I’m “Avenue O,” which any knowledgable Chicagoan knows is one of the streets at the far southeast corner of the city, which also makes it totally suitable to someone who publishes “The South Chicagoan” and whose view of the world is influenced by that namesake neighborhood where I was born.

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Will Latinos care about “political” concerns?

The Dallas Morning News published an analysis Sunday of the immigration reform measure introduced last week by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., that effectively promoted the bill as dead.

“It has no hope of going anywhere.” That was the newspaper’s flat-out assessment.

THE MORNING NEWS also reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is privately reassuring her caucus that there won’t be any floor debate (nothing that could be quoted and force government officials to go on the record on the issue) unless the Senate were to act first.

Now that analysis has a bottom line that doesn’t vary at all from what I indicated last week. This bill by Gutierrez is not the measure that will be used to address the issue of immigration reform, should the issue be taken up by Congress during 2010.

I still think that the main point of Gutierrez’ measure is to let political colleagues know that the issue must be addressed, and that continued waiting has the potential for a political backlash by Latino voters just as severe as the backlash many political people fear from the nativist voters who are a significant segment of the Republican Party’s base these days.

It will be the plan that will be compared to whatever Congress does wind up aproving, so we can see just how close to worthy the eventual plan is. Something that makes too many compromises will be seen by Latinos as deficient.

WHERE I DISAGREE with the Morning News (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/DN-texwatch_20nat.ART.State.Edition1.4c38587.html) is in the tone of their analysis that Latinos may just have to accept the fact that political concessions will force them to wait until whenever officials feel like getting around to the issue.

It attempts to portray as out of whack the assessment of Latino members of Congress that this issue’s time has come how (it actually came many years ago and Congress is running ridiculously behind on addressing the issue, but that is the subject for another day’s commentary).

But while some people are too eager to defend the actions of Congressmen who these days are pushing for changes in the health care reform measure now pending to benefit the interests of their constituents back home, somehow it is deemed less than worthy that these Latino congressmen would see this immigration issue in the same way – since it impacts the way in which the growing Latino population in this country is perceived.

“We have a plan that has the potential of truly helping to better this country and its people,” Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, told the Morning News. Actually, he’s correct. The confusion caused by current immigration policies does threaten to hold us back as a nation.

A CLARIFIED IMMIGRATION policy that was based on the realities of life (rather than someone’s xenophobic ideological concerns about who should be allowed to live in the United States) would be an improvement.

Actually, the Morning News did do one helpful thing in their analysis – they pointed out some of the differences between what Gutierrez wants and some of the attempts at immigration reform back in the days when Republican Party officials controlled Congress.

The “fine” that people without a valid visa would have to pay would be smaller (past fines seemed to be more intent on breaking people financially so they wouldn’t be able to afford to remain), the newcomers would not be required to return to their home countries and try to re-enter (which was never trusted by Latinos who perceived that it might just be demagoguic rhetoric to get them to leave and refuse to readmit, and there isn’t a guest-worker program.

While in the past I have written commentary in support of the guest-worker concept, it was always with the belief that it was merely the first step, whereas too many of the political people who like to say “guest worker” merely view it as the extent to which reform goes.

WHICH MEANS THEY view immigration reform as being an excuse to get a few more years of cheap labor out of non-citizens before we eventually deport them anyway.

If it means that Gutierrez and his supporters are looking at the big picture beyond guest-worker programs, then they ought to be praised.

So Gutierrez has given us the “ideal,” while Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is likely to give us the bill that will actually be used to create some sort of law that passes for reform of the nation’s immigration laws.

Schumer has said he is likely to introduce his measure sometime in early 2010, although he’s reportedly waiting to see how the health care reform issue is resolved.

IN ONE SENSE, that is a smart move. There already have been overtones of immigration issues coming up during the health care debate, and the partisan rhetoric that awaits the nation will make the hostilities of this year’s healthcare reforn look downright pleasant by comparison.

There’s also talk that Schumer is more concerned with giving the people who eagerly voted to erect barricades along the U.S./Mexico border some sort of concession, although I’d argue there isn’t any concession that could please those people – other than to refuse to consider the issue altogether.

That is an alternative that is downright unacceptable. The sooner political people accept that fact, the better off we as a nation will be.

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When does God backfire?

Did the National Association of Latino Elected Officials commit blasphemy recently with their latest advertising campaign to encourage Latinos to take the Census Bureau's population count seriously, or is there really some guy out there these days named Jesus who's that worked up over the Census?

Or could it just be that some people are taking this trivial advertisement a tad too seriously. This site's sister weblog, the Chicago Argus (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/) cited this recent incident on Monday as one of a pair where people may have gone too far with religious "imagery."

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Regardless of race, some people behave badly

A pair of incidents taking place in recent weeks has the potential to be used by some to try to denigrate Latinos as somehow being unworthy of existing in this country.

I say that because I literally noticed one of those reader comments attached to a story about one of the incidents saying that this amounts to “another reason to build a border wall.”

WHAT I’M REFERRING to is a concept that is not new; the idea that somehow the Latino population has its own racial baggage (which isn’t exactly inaccurate) and is now harassing black people.

One such incident was recently reported by the Sanford (N.C.) Herald newspaper. Occurring earlier this month, a black man and woman say they were verbally harassed when they went into a Latino market. They claim the store owner, who is Dominican, was so abusive that they felt compelled to take their complaint to the police.

That store owner now faces misdemeanor charges of ethnic intimidation and communicating a threat – both misdemeanors in this case. The store owner, whom the couple says threatened to “kill them” if they didn’t get out of his store, will have to appear in court on Dec. 29, according to the newspaper, which also reported that a warrant said the store owner said that all black people steal.

Now I don’t know any of the people involved in this case. But I find it completely believable that a small store owner would get overly suspicious and perhaps act irrational if he thought he was being provoked by the couple.

NOW WHO KNOWS what, if anything, they did that provoked him. This might just very well be a boorish person who owns this particular market.

But then just this week, I read of another incident, this one in the Chicago suburb of Northlake, Ill., where the company that manufactures such beverages as Dr. Pepper and Snapple maintains a warehouse.

Several black employees claim they are routinely subjected to insuilts such as “donkey” and “monkey” by their supervisors, many of whom happen to be Latino.

Hence, seven current or former employees at the warehouse have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Chicago, claiming it took company officials nearly two years before they even tried to do anything to intervene, even though company officials told the Chicago Tribune newspaper they would fire anyone who truly engaged in such harassing activity.

THE WORKERS’ LAWSUIT seeks damages of $1 million. Apiece!

Another part of their “story” that caught my attention related to the work rules under which these employees operated, which is important because these workers get paid in part through a formula based on the number of pallets of beverages they load onto trucks.

These black workers are claiming that rules were less strictly enforced by Latino supervisors for Latino workers, which enabled them to have higher figures to report – which translated into more money for the Latino workers.

This is another incident where I don’t have personal knowledge of what happened. Although for purposes of this commentary, I’m going to make the assumption that the black workers aren’t completely lying and that there truly are some of my ethnic brethren who probably need a lesson or two in proper behavior on the job.

THIS KIND OF tension isn’t new, and it is sad that some Latino newcomers to this country think that part of the process of assimilation to the United States is to pick up on the prejudices of other people already here.

That kind of mentality isn’t even unique to Latin American newcomers to the United States. The late newspaper columnist Mike Royko, who once wrote a biography of former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, included one chapter about the Chicago of the past to show how it shaped the elder Daley’s way of thinking.

At one point, he wrote:

“With their tote bags, the immigrants brought along all their old prejudices, and immediately picked up some new ones. An Irishman who came here hating only the Englishmen and Irish protestants soon hated Poles, Italians and blacks. A Pole who was free arrived hating only Jews and Russians, but soon learned to hate the Irish, the Italians and the blacks.”

NONETHELESS, I’M NOT trying to excuse the behavior of my ethnic brethren, although I’m sure if I were confronted by these specific individuals they would all have “excuses” to try to justify what they are alleged to have done.

If anything, my problem with such incidents is that they feed into the mentality of the nativist elements who are determined to view the growing Latino population as a “problem” that must be dealt with.

We ought to be focusing our attention on those people who are trying to use their knowledge of the establishment and its rules to put up roadblocks to our continued growth and assimilation into this country.

For getting involved in stupid squabbles such as these two incidents ultimately does nothing more than give a few xenophobes some material with which to try to bolster their own stupid prejudices.

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Matricula gains some legitimacy

On the surface, it sounds laughable.

The matricula consular, that picture identification card issued by the Mexican government to their citizens living abroad, can now be used as a fully-legitimate piece of identification when doing business in pawn shops in California.

BUT THEN I think of all the nativist types who typically get themselves worked up into a lather at the thought of the matricula, since they prefer to think of it as an easily counterfeited card that is worth nothing.

So the fact that someone in a business where proper identification is absolutely essential sees the value of the matricula makes me have to see a political victory. It’s small, a baby step, so to speak. But it is a step in the direction toward realizing that the growing Latino population (of which almost two-thirds is of Mexican ethnic origin) is only a problem if we insist on making it one.

And the people who usually are most insistant on wanting to make Latinos into “the problem” are the ones who have their own racial hangups – which ought to be enough of a reason to disqualify their thoughts on the issue.

The California Legislature this year approved a new law – one approved by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that will take effect Jan. 1.

UNDER THE NEW law, people doing business at pawn shops can include the matricula as a form of identification, if they can pair it up with a passport, or some driver’s license or state identification card issued by any U.S. state or Canada.

On a purely humorous level, I find it funny to think there might be some Mexican citizen who acquired a Canadian driver’s license and is now using it to operate an automobile in California.

But it is encouraging to learn that not everybody engages in the usual stupid rhetoric used by the nativists when it comes to the matricula – which is a card that the Mexican government will issue to any of its citizens.

Which is why I have never understood the vehement opposition to it. Anyone carrying such a card would be admitting up front they are not a citizen of the United States.

INSOFAR AS THE arguments about the matricula being easily counterfeited, I have covered enough driver’s license scams as a reporter-type person to know that counterfeiters are capable of copying driver’s licenses from all across the United States.

The occasions where I have had a person show me their copy of a matricula, they have contained some of the same features that are used by various states to try to make their licenses and identification cards more difficult to duplicate.

Which means the argument usually comes down to a visceral dislike of having to recognize anything issued by the Mexican goverrnment. Which when one comes right down to it is a pretty stupid reason for objecting.

It’s also why I find that little bit of encouragement that one form of business is willing to accept the card as being legitimate.

NOW I PERSONALLY have never used a pawn shop (or one of those check-cashing places that charges people exhorbitant interest rates to provide advance cash). But I can appreciate there are those in our society to whom such places serve a purpose in their lives – particularly at times when cash gets tight and an emergency expense comes up.

Officials with the Collateral Loan and Secondhand Dealers Association of California said that the change in law will mean they will no longer have to turn away people who came to them to do business who were relying on the matricula as their primary form of identification.

Association President Diane Taylor said in a prepared statement, “Now that pawn shops can accept the matricula consular as a valid form of identification, we believe many of those who could not get financial help will now be able to.”

Which means this ultimately comes down to money.

SOMEONE SEES THE fact that there is a growing number of people relying on the matricula to try to prove their identity, and that accepting the picture identification card means they make more money.

I have always supported business interests that treat Latinos as being “green” (as in the color of our money), just like everybody else.

While this particular instance applies specifically to Mexican citizens living in the United States (which is a small part of the overall Latino population – even many Mexican-Americans these days are U.S.-born), it is one that has potential to build up some good will among Latinos in general.

This is the baby step, one that could lead to other forms of business learning to accept the alternate form of identification. Which ultimately means learning to accept the people behind the identification cards as being human and with the same needs as everybody else in our society.

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Immigration will impact population

The Census Bureau is altering its projections for the U.S. population by the year 2050 in large part because of the immigration rate.

The changes aren’t drastic. They don’t really change the long-term picture of a nation that is less Anglo than the nativist elements of our society would prefer.

IN FACT, THE Latino segment of the population is going to be a significant chunk of the overall United States, no matter what happens.

Now the official line peddled by the Census Bureau is that instead of white people becoming less than the majority in the year 2042, that will now not happen until 2050. For the big picture, it doesn’t matter when it happens, because it is going to happen.

But the part of the Census Bureau’s altered projections that most caught my attention was the part related to how varied immigration rates have the potential to change this projection.

High immigration has the potential to make “white” people a minority sooner than expected – by 2040, while the only way that whites maintain a “majority” in 2050 is if political officials impose a “zero immigration” model.

OF COURSE, EVEN under that mode, the Census Bureau concedes that 21 percent of people in this country will be Latinos. It’s all those native-born, combined with Puerto Ricans who are U.S. citizens by birth. Those people who think that imposing strict immigration laws will erase the Latino “problem” are going to have to accept the fact that the “Spanish” (so to speak) have become a significant part of what this country is all about.

But nobody seriously expects that “zero immigration” mode to take effect in the United States, which is why officials still see Latinos comprising nearly one-third of the overall population by 2050 (it’s not far from one-sixth right now).

So that is the long-term impact of whether or not Congress decides to take on the bills that Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., and his political cohorts will push for throughout the upcoming year.

It will be interesting to see how the delay caused in the Senate by the apparent failure of health care reform to get approved before the Christmas holiday, since even the most sympathetic political officials have said that immigration reform has to wait until health care reform is achieved.

NOT THAT THE people who are most interested in immigration reform are going to be all that sympathetic. After all, there are those people who consider immigration reform to be more important than health care, and who think that Democrats currently in charge in the federal government ought to be willing to use their influence and authority to get a serious immigration reform proposal approved.

But back to the Census Bureau, which projects that by the half-way point of the 21st Century, about 28 percent of the 399 milllion people living in the United States will be those with their ethnic origins lying either in a Latin American nation or in Spain.

But there is one aspect of this future Latino “growth” that I always wonder about because it seems to be an issue that defies a simplistic answer.

What about those people of the future who wind up being an ethnic combination that includes some Latino nationality? Do we segregate them off into the Latino category, put them in with the “white” people or accept the fact that the real U.S. population of the future is going to be a mixture that will defy easy category.

THIS POINT GOT reinforced to me recently when, in my work for a daily newspaper in the Chicago suburbs, I wrote a fluff holiday feature about a St. Lucia festival at a Lutheran church.

The festival honoring the Sicilian saint is usually associated with Swedish people, and the girl who was crowned the St. Lucia “queen” that night did have some Swedish ethnicity in her family background. Of course, she als o had Mexican ethnicity in her as well – through her mother’s side of the family.

The girl didn’t fit the physical “stereotype” that some people would want to associate with Latinos. But she has just as much right to claim the label as anyone else, although I suspect she wouldn’t want to define herself so narrowly – nor should she have to.

That ultimately is the face of the future of the United States.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Census Bureau gave “white” people another eight years of being the “majority,” but that doesn’t stop (http://news.scotsman.com/world/Extra-8-years-before-US.5918661.jp) the fact that Latinos also will be a significant share of this country’s composition.

Immigration reform bill is the ideal. What will be the reality?

It’s just a first step. The bill introduced in Congress by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is not going to be the final result when the day comes that Congress and President Obama are put in a position of having to approve something that offers this nation serious reform of its immigration laws.

It won’t even shock me if the final bill doesn’t even include Gutierrez (who is Puerto Rican) among its sponsors.

BUT WHAT THE one-time Chicago alderman-turned-Congressman is achieving is that he’s forcing the issue to be addressed. Gutierrez had his aides put together a bill that could best be described as the ideal – knowing full well that political realities would force changes to be made before this issue is resolved.

There’s no way now that the Democrats who would prefer to ignore the immigration issue because of the way it will stir up the nativists to start backing ideologically conservative Republicans for Congress in the 2010 general election will be able to do so.

Gutierrez’ role in this is that he has started the paper trail for an issue that has the potential to dominate the public perception of Congress for the upcoming year. By that, I mean we’re likely to see which members of Congress are compassionate, which are purely venal and which ones are merely weak and ineffectual.

Now my understanding is that there will be another immigration bill introduced early next year in the U.S. Senate. It’s also very likely that many political people will prefer to use that measure as a vehicle for doing something with this issue.

THAT MEASURE IS allegedly being put together by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and some political people might feel better supporting something sponsored by an Anglo guy. Gutierrez’ bill, according to various statements issued Tuesday, has the backing of the Asian-, African-American and Progressive caucuses of Congress.

In short, Gutierrez made no initial steps to reach out toward anyone else – other than the people who are directly impacted by such a measure because they understand the ignorance that can be directed at people for not fitting some nativist’s absurd ideal of what constitutes “an American.”

But like I wrote before, this is the ideal. It is the starting point. Gutierrez is giving us a vision of what our Congress ought to be achieving. If it turns ou t that the Schumer bill is the one that ultimately gets amended, passed through the political process and signed into law someday by President Barack Obama, then that final product is going to be compared to what Gutierrez introduced on Tuesday.

Latinos are going to check the two bills out, and if the Schumer product makes too many concessions to appease those people whose idea of immigration reform is to step up the number of deportations, there will be a political backlash.

THE REALITY OF the political situation is this – while many people think Obama and Democrats are putting themselves at risk by passing anything resembling immigration reform, inaction on their part puts them at equal risk from the growing Latino voter bloc.

Doing nothing, or going out of the way to appease the people whose viewpoint IS the problem will be seen as a stab in the back, a sign that all those Latino votes for Obama in ’08 were a waste – similar to how many Latinos who voted for George W. Bush in ’04 now see that moment as an act of political stupidity on their parts.

So what is this dream that Gutierrez has offered us for Congressional consideration?

Basically, the 12 million people who allegedly are in this country without a valid visa (that figure is an educated guess, nobody really knows exactly how many people are in the United States without papers) would get a chance to come out of the shadows.

THIS MEASURE CALLS for some sort of fine to be paid, and while it talks of requiring people to start paying taxes, the chances are good that their employers already have been deducting such taxes from their pay. It now means they get credit for having to pay taxes, and we have to start seeing those people who make jokes about “illegals” taking government services while paying nothing as being as ignorant as they truly are.

Six years of this status, then they could be issued that “green” card. They get the visa that then makes them “legal” (which in my mind shows just how artificial the “legal” versus “illegal” status truly is).

Now the concession to the conservative elements is that the bill says nothing about future newcomers to the United States, other than that the Department of Homeland Security will make annual reports to recommend what policies should be put in place.

That could give the nativists hope that future officials would decide to get overly stringent about more newcomers, although common sense would dictate that these newcomers are a strength of our nation and getting overly strict would hurt our country more than help it.

THERE’S ALSO NO mandatory requirement that employers use the e-Verify computer program that supposedly tells companies whether job applicants truly are U.S. citizens or resident aliens with visa. That’s because the program has been known to not work properly, although the bill does call for trying to improve it so that it would become more reliable.

To me, this is an interesting starting point – even though I can already hear the nativist element complaining. For this measure is a 180-degree turnabout from the mentality that caused Congress (including then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.) to vote to build barricades along portions of the U.S./Mexico border.

Ultimately, this is an issue where political people are going to have to knuckle under and be willing to ignore the more irrational elements of our society, who may have a legal right to think the way they do but shouldn’t be allowed to force their views down the rest of our throats.

It’s going to be an interesting year to see how close Congress and Obama come to giving us the “ideal” immigration reform, a vision of which Gutierrez and his allies have shown us on Tuesday.

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Colorado court ruling gets differing spins

The Colorado Supreme Court handed down a ruling Monday that penalized prosecutors who raided a tax business that catered to the growing Latino population in and around Greeley, Colo.

Now I’m not about to go out of my way to praise Colorado’s high court for having enough sense to realize that this raid was such a ridiculous invasion of privacy that this ruling (which upheld a judge in Weld County, Colo.) was pure common sense.

WHAT CAUGHT MY attention about the ruling was the news coverage of the event, which mostly consists of the brief dispatch put together by the Associated Press that informs us of the ruling, which was a threat because it amounted to immigration officials trying to use confidential tax returns to root out people they suspected of being in the United States without a valid visa.

I first saw the dispatch on the website of the New York Times, which published a four-paragraph story underneath the headline, “Court Bars Tactic in Immigration Cases.”

The closest the account came to providing anything resembling analysis or opinion was in the last paragraph, which pointed out that a favorable ruling could have given prosecutors another way of getting involved in immigration cases.

It also pointed out the fact that people living and working in this country are paying taxes, even if they don’t have citizenship or a valid visa.

WHAT’S THE BIG deal about this?

To me, it was comparing the account to the slightly re-written version of the story that ran on the website of the Washington Times, which for its nearly three decades of existence has been known as the newspaper that puts the conservative spin on national news events (I hear they cover sports fairly straightforward, but I’m not sure how one makes a political point out of reporting that the Nationals have been an awful baseball team since arriving in D.C. from Montreal in 2005).

That story ran under the headline, “Colo. court upholds illegals’ privacy rights.”

It also pointed out in the lede paragraph that authorities “violated the constitutional privacy rights of illegal immigrants,” compared to the New York version of the Times, which told us that the “privacy rights” of “people suspected of being illegal immigrants” were impacted.

THE NEW YORK take (which is actually the generic AP take) on the issue is that these are people supposedly “innocent until proven guilty,” while the Washington take is that they’re automatically illegal by their very existence.

Somehow, I also can easily envision all the nativists of our nation reading that Washington Times’ version of a headline and either saying, “So what?” or sputtering outrage at the thought that an “illegal” has “privacy rights” that need to be observed.

(Think I’m kidding. Read the Internet commentary posted at the end of the Washington Times’ version of the story).

There’s also the matter of who gets a chance to express their views. The New York version of this story reads as though an AP reporter in Denver banged out a few basic paragraphs, then moved on to writing some other piece of copy (perhaps there was a “good” (ie., gory) murder in Boulder or someone in the state Legislature said something stupid.

THE WASHINGTON TAKE gave us the added opinion of Tom Tancredo, the now-retired member of Congress from Colorado who developed a reputation during his time on Capitol Hill as having a particularly irrational hangup with regards to anything related to Mexico, or immigration.

He got presented as the “voice of reason,” which any reasonable follower of the issue would realize is ridiculous.

Technically, neither newspaper is publishing a lie. It’s all about spin and tone used to demonize someone whom the readers of the Washington version of the Times would rather be able to look down upon.

Now I’m not about to overly demonize the Washington Times. I have always thought that any publisher has the right to print whatever they want so long as it’s not blatantly libelous – so long as they’re honest about the fact that they’re trying to spin the “facts” to create a certain perception.

EVEN READERS OF this weblog need to take that fact into account, although I’d argue that I have never given anyone the impression that my copy published here was anything other than commentary giving people the perspective(s) of the growing Latino population.

It just means that we, the people, need to be particularly careful when we read just about anything. Not all sources are created equal, and some are trying to influence our thought process more blatantly than others.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Here’s New York (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/us/15colorado.html) versus
Washington (http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/14/colo-high-court-rules-illegals-privacy-rights-were/?feat=home_headlines) in terms of telling us about activity in Denver of interest to those following the immigration reform debate.

NOTICIAS de LATINO: How do we see ourselves?

The Pew Hispanic Center came out with a new survey of young Latinos (under 25) in hopes of getting a handle on the fast growing segment of our population, and much of the attention went to the fact that Latinos born in this country were more likely than Latinos who immigrated to the United States to have been in a streetgang or to have held a weapon.

But the part of the study that caught my attention was the one that related to how we identify ourselves.

IT SEEMS THAT less than one-quarter of young Latinos think of themselves first and foremost as “Americans,” while more than half go out of their way to identify themselves by their family’s country of origin.

Seriously – 52 percent of those young people surveyed chose to identify themselves as xxxxxxxxxxx-American, making it known where their ethnic origins are. By comparison, 20 percent kept it simple by using the “Latino” or “Hispanic” labels and 24 percent thought of themselves simply as “American.”

Now I know the nativists among our society will see something wrong with this.

They will argue that we all ought to be putting aside those unique characteristics and focus instead on what things we have in common. They’re the ones who usually have lost any sense of where they came from, so they try to demonize those people who have been able to keep straight who they are.

IF IT READS like I am mocking their thought process, you’d be correct.

Personally, I think it would be ridiculous to try to downplay the fact that three of my four grandparents came to this country from Mexico, and I find it borderline offensive that anyone thinks I ought to downplay that fact in order to justify my status as a citizen of this country.

So I find it encouraging that I’m not alone in trying to maintain a sense of place as part of my overall identity. Perhaps (http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=117) if more of us took such an attitude, we’d be better off and less likely to let these ethnic issues cause problems amongst us.

What other issues of relevance to the Latino population are in the public sight these days?

THE MEXICAN VERSION OF SINATRA?: Mexico’s Navy conducted a raid on a party being given by suspected members of a drug cartel, and that has inspired plenty of tacky jokes.

What is making this attempt at confiscating illegal narcotics more intriguing is that it seems the people giving the party actually got themselves a big name in the world of Mexican music – Grammy Award winner Ramon Ayala was at the party in which 11 people were arrested and three more were killed resisting arrest.

The Brownsville Herald newspaper reported Ayala’s presence at the party, noting he is also scheduled to give a performance (http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/party-106230-ayala-raided.html?cb=1260676689) Wednesday in Hidalgo.

It also has led to speculation on the Internet about whether Ayala is connected to the cartels similar to how Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack was once alleged to be connected to a certain subculture within the Italian-American community. I wonder if Ayala will respond similarly to the Chairman of the Board, who was known to threaten his critics with a punch in the mouth.

TRYING TO APPEASE CRITICS MEANS OFFENDING EVERYBODY: The number of people who were deported from the United States was about twice as high during the most recent federal fiscal year than it was a decade ago.

We’re talking about 370,000 people who were tossed out of the United States from October 2008 to September 2009, and there are those who believe this crackdown is part of President Barack Obama’s attempt to give the conserv atives a token gesture before going ahead with serious immigration reform.

If that is the case, it’s a cheap gesture, because the people who are opposed to any reform desires that an Obama administration would back are not going to want to credit him for anything. But it will make those of us who sympathize with those people who got the book remember Obama negatively and make us less likely to trust him in the coming months.

That is the period during which immigration reform is supposed to come before Congress. There are those (http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/2009/12/11/illegal_immigration_critics_demand_obama_overhaul.htm) who think that Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., will introduce some sort of reform measure in the coming weeks, with actual action on a bill coming up early in 2010.

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Padilla's problem on hold, not resolved

Perhaps it is good that Rigo Padilla, a Chicago-area college student, can relax during the Christmas holiday season -- not having to worry if Immigration and Customs Enforcement will break down the door and haul him off to Mexico.

The fact that he can relax about the issue of his pending deportation to Mexico is due largely to the fact that he has become a cause celebre -- with the Chicago City Council and several members of Illinois' delegation in Congress publicly siding with him in hopes that he can remain in the United States.

YET WE SHOULDN'T be deluded into thinking that Padilla's problem has been resolved. It has merely been put on hold.

For those to whom the name is not immediately ringing a bell, Padilla is the 21-year-old who has lived the bulk of his life in Illinois along with the rest of his family, which is all in the United States.

Yet Padilla was born in Mexico, and when his parents slipped into the United States for a better life without first going thorugh the bureaucratic hassle of getting a visa, they brought him along.

Which means he, in the minds of the nativists who have a warped idea of what immigration policy ought to be, became a criminal at age 6.

NOW THE SIMPLE reality of our society is that it is so large that it is not impossible for people to go by undetected, particularly if they make every effort to remain in the shadows of our society and not expect to accomplish very much.

But Padilla popped out of those shadows late last year when he got arrested in Chicago -- driving while under the influence of alcohol was the charge. He ultimately pleaded "guilty" and would have got hit with the same penalty that other people with "clean" criminal records get.

A fine of sorts. Some sort of period of time in which they cannot legally drive an automobile.

But the incident brought Padilla to the attention of immigration, which early this year began the procedure to have him deported back to Mexico. At one point in recent weeks, he was told that his actual removal from the United States would occur within 12 days.

THAT PERIOD OF time became a hollow threat this week when Immigration gave Padilla a one-year extension.

So for now, Padilla can relax. But without some serious change in federal immigration policy, he's going to be back in the same legal predicament in the days before Christmas 2010 that he was in up until Thursday.

I suppose Padilla could become the face of the stupidity of the federal immigration policy that we have now. Because the only thing that ultimately will keep Padilla in this country is if the policy as a whole is made more reasonable.

Because technically, Padilla is a non-citizen without a valid visa who committed a criminal offense (let's not make light of a DUI). That usually is the very definition of the kind of person who gets moved to the top of the list of those who are actually forcibly removed from the United States.

WHAT PADILLA'S SITUATION tells us is that the idea of putting people into overly simplistic categories and trying to boost the deportation tallies is absurd. We'd be booting many people who have established themselves in this country as worthwhile contributors to whom the idea of their home country is as alien a place as someone whose family has been in the United States for three or more generations.

Specific to Padilla's situation, what makes me sympathetic to the 21-year-old is that the arrest and public attention has also made Immigration officials aware of the whereabouts of his parents -- neither of whom has managed to gain legal status for themselves in the 15 years they have lived in this country with their Mexico-born son.

In the strictly legal sense, the parents are just as "illegal" in this country as the son. Yet Immigration and Customs Enforcement hasn't made any attempt to try to remove them.

Could it be that rational people who actually understand the process (most of the people who are so outspoken don't seem to have a clue) realize that deportation is NOT a solution to the nation's problems? Perhaps some even realize that the people who are coming to this country even though the bureaucratic procedures make it next to impossible for themn to ever expect to get a visa are not a problem in and of themselves.

ANY SENSIBLE POLICY of reform for immigration laws ultimately is going to have to figure out a way of making "legal" those people who already are here and have established themselves. In shrot, we have to realize that the people who scream "amnesty" so vehemently are guilty of skipping their medication that day.

If anything, this ought to be a challenge. President Barack Obama and his aides have hinted that immigration reform will be forthcoming in 2010. Perhaps they will feel encouraged by some success on health care reform -- which could happen in early 2010,.

But if it turns out that the powers-that-be let themselves get scared off by the "Amnesty is a dirty word" crowd, then the day of Padilla's deportation will come about eventually.

And Padilla will be the face of the inanity of our nation's immigration policy, which is an embarrassment to anyone with any common sense.

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Latinos can speak for themselves on health care reform

The cynic in me thinks it is an attempt to split Latinos who might otherwise take a favorable position toward the health care reform proposals now being considered by the Senate, and which could soon go to President Barack Obama for final approval.

But one group is trying to use the strong Catholic tendencies that exist in many Latinos to try to draw support away from the health care reform proposals that are being considered.

THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION of Latino Leaders, a San Antonio, Texas-based group, got involved in the health care debate earlier this week when it sent a letter to senators expressing disgust with recent comments made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

With Republicans going out of their way in recent months to make many partisan statements in opposition to health care reform, Reid made a comment that could be perceived as partisan toward health care reform.

Specifically, he compared those people who are adamantly opposed to a reform of the way health care is paid for to those same people of the past who opposed the civil rights movement by claiming that segregation of the races was somehow indicative of the American Way of life.

The association is now demanding an apology from Reid, which may well be the group's right. They can come out and say just about anything they want. It is a free country,.

BUT IN THEIR letter to senators expressing disgust with the Senate's leadership,, they claim to speak on behalf of 33 million Latinos.

Now anyone with sense knows that there are more people of ethnic backgrounds tracing back to Latin American nations in this country than 33 million. But I'm wondering how many people are going to read of this letter and hear that figure and assume that somehow, the association is speaking on behalf of the Latino population.

It ought to be made clear that they are not.

For this is one of those issues -- similar to abortion or gay rights -- where there is a split among the Latino population.

TOO MANY OF us personally know people who, for whatever reason, are incapable of getting health insurance under the current setup. A disproportionate share (about one-third) of the 47 million uninsured are Latino.

Yet there are those among us who are more than willing to follow the Catholic Church's view on the whole health care debate, which doesn't allow for a simple politically partisan response.

As I comprehend it, the church in this country is supportive of the idea of health care reform in Congress, but also is supportive of those people who want restrictions written in that would prevent anyone who obtains an abortion of a pregnancy from being able to be covered.

That ticks off liberal elements who see no reason why abortion should be brought up, and also offends the sensibilities of conservatives who think it somehow improper for government to be involved in the medical insurance of anyone.

HEARING A GROUP say it speaks for 33 million might make us think that the Latino portion of our society has somehow aligned with the Republican critics of health care reform. We might even start thinking that this is the beginning of the "great shift" of Latino voters from Democrats to the GOP.

I doubt it.

Because there are polls showing the majority of Latinos surveyed on this particular issue are somehow finding a way to overcome any potential religious objections the Catholic Church might have. They're largely supportive, and would prefer as few restrictions as possible.

A study taken at the end of November by the Robert Johnson Wood Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico found that 74 percent of Latinos wanted Congress to pass a reform policy with a public option.

ALSO, 67 PERCENT of Latinos surveyed did not want any kind of restrictions placed that would cut people off if their immigration status did not satisfy the ideological desires of nativists, and 61 percent of those questioned were for universal healthcare -- something along the lines of Canada.

It's not a cut-and-dried religious issue for Latinos, just as I'm sure it isn't one for anyone else living in this country. After all, if one-third of the U.S.'s uninsured are Latino, that means two-thirds are something else.

This is an issue that confronts everybody in our society -- even though some people are determined to ignore that factor, and the segment of our society that does not have access to medical coverage and where a serious illness can cause long-lasting financial problems.

Which means that when people hear that a single Catholic organization is demanding that Harry Reid apologize for offending their sensibilities by implying their view might be wrong, I hope they aren't absurd enough to think that view somehow applies to all Latinos.

I'M NOT SAYING that the association's viewpoint should somehow be silenced. That would be un-American.

We should just keep in mind that all they speak for is themselves. The bulk of us Latinos can express our own views when it comes to health care reform.

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No surprises in Waco in Latino/GOP dispute

I wish I could say I was "shocked, shocked" to learn that the Republican Party in Waco, Texas has a problem with a separate group that was created in part to try to get more Latinos into the GOP.

Yet it's about as shocking as the idea that gambling was taking place at Rick's Cafe Americain.

IT'S ALL TOO predictable that the political people of our nation aren't really interested in change. Actually, what they want is for their ideological opponents to learn to shut up and quit expecting to get anything.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that the situation in McLennan County, Texas is a tad absurd.

That is the place where the Hispanic Republican Club was created earlier this autumn. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, this isn't some ideologically liberal outfit. The Tribune-Herald newspaper of Waco reports that some of its organizers are the same people who have been putting together these "Tea Party" protests that rant about taxes and try to claim that President Barack Obama is a socialist.

But these are people who also are involved in trying to win elections.

AND THESE ARE people who realize that the growing Latino population has the potential to be a strong voter bloc. They'd rather not see that bloc become the basis of a Democratic Party of the future that wins election after election.

While the club has the word "Hispanic" in its title (as opposed to Latino, but that's a different issue for a future commentary), they're not even limited to that angle. They're also trying to get more black peole and young people in general into the Republican Party.

They cite the fact that about 40 of the 92 precincts in their county do not have Republican precinct chairs as evidence the GOP is not doing enough to reach out to the minority vote, although party officials told the Waco newspaper that those particular precincts don't have enough potential Republican voters to justify setting up a full-fledged GOP infrastructure.

How big a problem has this split become?

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY of McLennan County sent out a Thanksgiving e-mail to its list of prominent area supporters wanting them to know that the Hispanic Republican Club has nothing to do with them. Not now, and not ever.

They try to justify their behavior by saying their opposition isn't to the concept of Latinos within the Republican Party. Instead, it is to some of the individuals who are leading up the Hispanic Republican Club.

It seems that at least one leader, Janet Jackson (not Tito or Jermaine's sister), has a history of being willing to stand up to the local Republican establishment. So the local GOP wants her frozen out and is willing to kill off any project she might happen to be working with -- no matter now noble.

But there is a way in which I find this particular reasoning to be more offensive than the idea of not wanting Latinos within the Republican Party -- it reinforces the old joke that the GOP is the political party of the Big Tent.

BIG ENOUGH FOR all kinds of people who are just like the leaders, and no room for anyone who might be even remotely different.

It strikes me as being as absurd as the situation used to be for Latinos in Chicago, where there used to be an organization that was part of the Cook County Democratic Organization that called itself the Hispanic Democratic Organization.

Now several members of HDO ultimately got caught up in government corruption charges for the jobs they held on the Chicago and Cook County payrolls.

But what was truly offensive about the organization had nothing to do with government corruption. Instead, it was that its purpose had little to do with getting Latinos more involved in government. It was about making sure that the Latinos who did have some say about local government were sympathetic to the non-Latino establishment that ultimately ran things.

HAD A GROUP come along that would have focused on trying to increase Latino empowerment, it would have run into opposition from the powers-that-be in Chicago.

Perhaps similar to the opposition the Hispanic Republican Club now faces in Texas.

If it reads like I'm implying that officials of all political parties can be guilty of taking on this kind of attitude, you would be correct.

It would also be accurate to say that I do not believe the Democratic Party has some sort of natural lock on the votes of the growing Latino population -- despite the fact that various polls show we're strongly aligned these days with the Democratic Party.

LIKE I HAVE written before, we're Democrats by Default -- voting in line with the burro because the elefante just seems to come up with reasons for not wanting to include us (and at times view us as the source of all problems).

That could all change in future years if the GOP across the country were to take on a more accomodating attitude. But the Republicans are the party that likes to claim they put great faith in the knowledge that "local" people have over their own issues.

If the Waco situation is any way typical of this "local" knowledge, then we Latino voters are going to have that "D" associated with our ballots for years to come.

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We need a larger voice!

There are times I wonder why I bother to put in as much time as I do publishing this weblog, which admittedly earns me just enough money to cover the occasional tank of gasoline in my car.

Then, I read studies such as the latest effort by the Pew Hispanic Center and realize perhaps there is a point to my commentary and analysis -- particularly if it can help people understand the thought process of the growing Latino population.

AFTER ALL, BY 2050 it's likely to be about one-third of the country that is Latino, and only the people who are xenophobic enough to want to have a specific ethnic definition (ie., Anglo) of what is an American will insist on calling Latinos a "minority."

In short, our numbers are growing. But I have encountered many people who don't have a clue as to what is going through the minds of the Latino population.

In short, that is because little gets written.

The Washington, D.C.-based center released a study this week about the types of information provided about Latinos in the news coverage that many people read -- and which provides the substantive background information for much of the commentary and analysis that appears on the Internet (so I don't want to hear that you're better informed because you're too lazy to pick up a newspaper).

I DON'T ENVY the people who had to do the study -- they read 34,452 stories that were published in various news media outlets. The idea was to get an idea of what kinds of things were written about, and how many of them involved Latinos in any way.

The bottom line is that only 645 of those stories in any way mentioned Latinos/Hispanics/Chicanos/whatever label you prefer to use. In short, not quite 2 percent.

That's not even the worst part. Many of the mentions of Latinos in those stories was brief. It's not like Latinos were even the focus of those stories.

Only 57 stories -- about one-seventh of 1 percent -- had a focus that was directly on the lives of the growing Latino population.

THOSE NUMBERS -- 645 and 57 -- are pitiful! They'd probably be even worse if not for the fact that President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Roughly two-fifths of all the stories that mentioned Latinos were stories about her nomination and the political gamesmanship in which the Republicans engaged this summer to unsuccessfully try to halt her appointment.

I remember back in those months being a bit obsessed with the issue, occasionally writing commentary after commentary about how her nomination captured the spirits of Latinos and how there is potential for a political backlash. It's because of that sentiment that Obama is maintaining Latino support -- despite the activists who are ticked off that immigration reform wasn't a higher priority for the Obama administration (maybe next year).

Seriously, at a time when the Gallup Organization shows Obama with a 47 percent favorable rating, other polls specifically of Latinos show him with favorable ratings as high as 57 percent.

THAT IS A significant point. Not that it is one written about all too often.

But then again, the Pew study shows that many Latino "issues" don't get written about too often, and Latinos are usually ignored when writing about the issues that affect all of us.

I have seen for myself through my years working in the news business of occasions where "Latino" coverage gets limited to the "Cinco de Mayo" parade or some other cultural event -- which has the advantage of people in exotic, brightly colored costumes.

That translates into interesting pictures that can be printed on the page or video that can be shown on television.

BUT YOU CAN forget about issues at-large including much of a Latino perspective. The idea often becomes one that Latinos are some sort of separate segment of society. For all the complaining that nativists do about Latinos refusing to assimilate into the United States, there are a lot of people more than willing to throw up roadblocks to make it harder for those who want to assimilate.

Even on the rare occasion when a Latino voice does turn up in something outside of a cultural event, you often get the people who insist on posting their commentary that they don't want to have to read about this. They don't want to hear this voice -- even though it is one that is becoming all too prominent in our society.

What has kept me motivated in publishing this weblog for the past 20 or so months (it's sister site, the Chicago Argus, will soon celebrate its second anniversary of existence) is the idea that someone needs to explain to the masses what Latinos are thinking -- even though we are far from a monolithic group and usually are thinking many different things on the same issue.

Whether it is explaining the cultural issues that Latinos bring to this country, or merely trying to comprehend why Latinos see the larger issues of our society the way we do (many of us are supportive of the general concept of health care reform because all too many of us know people whose circumstances make it impossible for them to get health insurance under the current set-up), somebody needs to be that voice.

IF THERE WERE really only 57 stories (out of 34,000-plus) that focused on Latinos, I sense that I need to crack down even harder with this weblog in trying to add to the pool of worthwhile information available to the public.

In the end, everybody wins if we better comprehend each other.

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