Obama trying to keep the issue alive for '11

President Barack Obama spent parts of the past two days meeting with various people about immigration reform – activists on Monday and the Latinos in Congress on Tuesday.

As a result of those meetings, we got to hear plans some sort of presidential address about the issue to be forthcoming, along with plans to ensure that the American people know that it is the Republican caucus that is strongly behind the effort to keep any sort of reform from even being considered.

ALL THAT MAY be nice, but I couldn’t help but think that one religious leader summed up the real significance of this week’s meetings. Rev. Sam Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference told the Politico newspaper and website, “the president is clearly on our side. He is our senior ally.”

I don’t think that Obama believes a speech on national television would change one person’s mind about this issue. If anything, it might offend some people that their favorite program was pre-empted for “political b.s.”

What this is really about is making sure that Latino leaders go back to their home communities and constituencies and tell them that Obama “is clearly on our side.”

Obama and his political alllies want our votes. They’re counting on our electoral influence to stave off the strength of the conservative ideologues who eagerly have been waiting ever since Nov. 5, 2008 for the chance to cast a vote against the Obama administration.

BUT MANY OF our ranks have wondered why Obama was not willing to put the same amount of influence into addressing immigration reform as he did into healthcare reform (which the far right hated almost as much as they hate real immigration reform).

Obama is using these meetings to plan tactics that are meant to ensure that we don’t have significant numbers of Latino voters deciding there’s no difference between the political geeks of differing parties. He doesn’t want us to stay home.

If it sounds like I think the Monday and Tuesday sessions were little more than a chance for Obama to drop to his knees and beg for our support, then so be it.

If anything, perhaps we should thank those dimwits in the Arizona Legislature who voted for the measure that takes effect in one more month that gives the local police greater incentive to try to enforce federal immigration laws.

BECAUSE THAT SEEMS to be what has motivated Obama and many of his aides to realize that there is a serious problem here, and that some people are going to be more than willing to be led like sheep by those with a nativist ideological bent toward policies that are ignorant, harmful, and in many ways, un-American.

That is what I think of the latest poll by Quinnipiac University Polling Institute of people in Ohio, to whom a plurality would like to see their state adopt an Arizona-like measure, and to whom a large majority (72 percent) think that immigration “reform” ought to be enforcement-oriented, and should not worry about greater assimilation. That number gets particularly high when one considers what “white, born-again Evangelicals” think.

Only 10 percent of those people want policies oriented to integrating newcomers into our society.

It almost makes me think of the political fight in the 1960s over civil rights, when many of the activists thought then-President John F. Kennedy wasn’t willing to take the hard-and-firm action needed to achieve true respect of rights for all people.

IT WOUND UP taking a political pragmatist like Lyndon Johnson (a former Senate Majority leader) to actually push the Civil Rights Bill through Congress and sign it into law, which is the act that usually gets him the distinction as being the president who did the most for black people in our society.

Could it be that Obama is starting to realize he needs to shift out of the JFK mode and into LBJ-type action? If anything, we saw that his people are capable of it in the way they pushed healthcare reform into law – despite the overwhelming desire of Republican members of Congress to kill it.

That is what is frustrating to many Latinos, who earlier in the year were starting to talk about Election Day boycotts and sitting on our collective culos when it comes to casting ballots.

We understand the forces out there that are determined to see that nothing in the way of real immigration reform is ever achieved (some people benefit from the bureaucratic mess that currently exists).

BUT WE ALSO know that the nation as a whole will suffer until this mess is cleared up.

It’s nice to see that Obama is “on our side” for now. But his long-term legacy when it comes to Latinos is going to be determined by the end result – not just the fact that he gave some lip service to Luis Gutierrez and his Congressional colleagues when they met for an hour Tuesday in la Casa Blanca.

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Police know better than nativists where we should be on immigration reform

Ever since Arizona’s state Legislature threw a lit match into the cannister of gasoline that is the immigration reform debate, we have endured heated rhetoric in our society.

Just on Monday, I read reports indicating that state officials in Florida are moving ahead with their own version of an Arizona-type measure that requires their local cops to more vigorously enforce federal immigration laws.

IT SEEMS THAT about 20 of the 50 state Legislatures in our nation have plans to proceed with efforts to emulate Arizona.

This comes at a time when significant numbers of people admit these measures seem aimed at the growing Latino population, although some people don’t seem to care much about that fact. It also comes at a time when a majority of people, while wanting reform to immigration laws, admit that such reforms need to include measures by which people already here should be allowed some procedural means of remaining in the United States.

Then, there was the report by the Police Foundation, a Washington-based group, that says many of the local police who in theory would be called upon to take these extra actions as part of their jobs have their own qualms about doing so.

Some 67 percent of police chiefs across the nation think that their local criminal investigations would be weakened if they have to deal with immigration issues, according to the foundation.

THE REASON OUGHT to be obvious, and it has little to nothing to do with any support that law enforcement types might personally feel for the growing Latino population in this country,.

In fact, it reminds me of a political campaign I covered once in the Chicago suburbs where a police sergeant was running for a mayoral post at a time when that local City Council was approving a measure restricting local police from inquiring about a person’s immigration status.

That candidate (who wound up losing) said she favored the measure because she liked anything that made people feel more comfortable about dealing with their local police departments.

It was not like immigration was an issue that fell within her department’s jurisdiction, so she wasn’t going to worry about questioning people about whether they had a visa – just because they came to police attention for having been in an automobile accident or some other unrelated incident.

BUT UNDER THE Arizona measure, police handling that local accident would be required to question people about their immigration status – if they fit that officer’s understanding of what constitutes a person likely to be in this country without papers.

Which means the local cops themselves largely see this issue as one causing potential for headaches – not only would some people be scared away from wanting to cooperate with (or get too close to) police, it also creates situations where an officer’s over-diligence could come back to bite his department.

All it is going to take is one U.S-born person facing deportation because some police officer in Arizona (or any state that elects to follow their lead) thought they didn’t “look right” insofar as what should constitute a U.S. citizen.

That same Police Foundation study said local departments faced with such laws are going to have to create policies and procedures to monitor racial profiling and abuse of law enforcement authority, in addition to working with leaders of the ethnic communities to develop local policies.

IN SHORT, THIS has potential to create a lot more work for police departments that already are overburdened with trying to maintain control over their communities.

I couldn’t help but notice that the same study recommends that police become the loudest lobbying group for immigration reform.

“Local law enforcement leaders and policing organizations should place pressure on the federal government to comprehensively improve border security and reform the immigration system, because the federal government’s failure on both issues has had serious consequences in cities and towns throughout the country,” their report reads.

It is a shame that many of these state officials who want to rant and rage about immigration and “too many foreigners” in this country don’t listen to their local cops on this issue.

BECAUSE WHILE MANY of these local officials claim they are acting because of the federal government failure to act, the problem is that too many of them are moving in the wrong direction on the issue, giving too much credence to the nativist thought process rather than trying to find real solutions to the bureaucratic mess that has become our nation’s immigration policy.

As far as the federal government is concerned, their failure to act has become bogged down in the Republican desire to gain more influence from the Nov. 2 elections so they can dump on the policies of President Barack Obama – who has figured the loss of political capital he would suffer from pushing the issue in vain is not worth it.

No one will ever accuse Obama of being Don Quixote, using immigration as the equivalent of a windmill. A part of me can’t even blame him for thinking there is little more he can do until the partisan mood changes on this issue.

All I know is that for every bit of energy some Latinos put into trashing Democrats for apathy and inaction on this issue, there are certain other GOP types who are showing us with their conduct on this issue why they are unfit to hold electoral office – no matter how many people actually vote for them come November.

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GOP is going to have to reach out to Latinos, if they want to remain relevant

I find it reassuring, if not always sincere, whenever a Republican political person does something that is meant to reach out to the fast-growing portion of our society with ethnic origins in a Latin American nation (or Spain, itself).

Because to me, that means somebody is accepting reality. If anything, I wish there were more Republicans who were willing to openly talk about the significance of the Latino population to our nation in the 21st Century.

THE PROBLEM WITH contemporary electoral politics is that there are too many Republican politicians who are willing to kow-tow to that portion of our society whose nativism overwhelms their common sense. That is what causes the GOP these days to so strongly think that the local political people in Arizona have a clue as to what they are doing with regard to immigration laws.

It also is what inspires them to think they can pass measures with regards to citizenship (which is an accident of birth, nothing else) that go against the letter of the law of the U.S. Constitution.

In light of that, what should we make of Carly Fiorina – the former Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO who now is running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat from California. During her primary campaign, she adopted much of the ridiculous rhetoric being spewed these days on immigration, and even now says her idea of immigration reform starts with putting more law enforcement-types along the U.S./Mexico border.

But she’s also trying to make her gestures of support, trying to show she’s not completely unsympathetic to the interests of the Latino population (which in her home state that was once a state in Mexico comprises about one-third of the electorate).

OF COURSE, SHE’S going after the segment of the population that is a little more computer-literate. She’s giving us a new website, en Español, to be called Amigos de Carly (at www.amigosdefiorina.com, to be exact, as opposed to http://carlyforca.com/ in English).

It gives us her background and a few basic stances on various issues, along with a Spanish-language translation of her “blog,” which in all honesty reads more like a collection of press releases than any compilation of her personal thoughts.

Like I wrote earlier, it is nice to see a gesture from Fiorina that admits we exist. I just don’t know how much stunts like this are going to accomplish.

Because I could easily see this being a site that sways huge numbers of Latinos over to her side. It’s not so much that Latinos think all that highly of Barbara Boxer. It’s more that many of us are going to look at the people that Fiorina will be associated with as she tries to turn herself from a one-time business executive into a politician.

WE’RE GOING TO see some individuals who leave us shocked and appalled. It won’t matter how many fluffy, friendly statements she puts out in Spanish so that those of us who struggle with the English language can understand them.

This could be a case where the only Latinos who wind up coming on board are those among our ranks who are eager to differentiate themselves from the masses. I’m not saying “self-hating,” but I couldn’t help but notice an Associated Press report about Fiorina that quoted former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez as saying the new Arizona law will have local police harassing “gardeners and parking lot attendants” instead of drug dealers.

The kind of Latinos who will be won over by such efforts will be those who want to claim they’re not some lowly gardener or parking lot attendant, failing to realize that we’re all tied in together and those of us who have been more fortunate in life can easily be brought down by the actions of those political people who don’t want to have to distinguish between people and want to lump all Latinos into one undesirable group.

Those people who want to behave in such a way toward Latinos are the problem in our society. Until Republican political types are willing to stand up to them (instead of catering to them for their votes), we’re going to have rising tensions.

CREATING A WEBSITE en Español to translate the same message spewed in English without taking into account the kinds of concerns the growing latino population has are wasting their time and money.

If anything, a Spanish-language website may be nothing more than the 21st Century equivalent of expecting Latinos to vote for you because you showed up at an ethnic rally, ate a mushy tamale and let yourself get photographed while wearing a sombrero.

I’d like to believe that Fiorina and other Republican political people are willing to include our interests, because many of us truly are Democrats by Default. I just haven’t seen the evidence yet.

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Mexico 1, Argentina 3 – Fin

I must confess to not realizing it until it was pointed out to me by an announcer for the World Cup broadcasts on ABC – none of the South American teams that qualified for the international football tourney have yet been knocked out.

It must be all that talk we have had to put up with about what a shame that such soccer “powers” like Italy and France got knocked out early on, and how England had to struggle to make it as far as they did – which was getting whomped 4-1 on Sunday by Germany.

OBVIOUSLY, THAT SOUTH American trend will end on Monday, since Brazil and Chile have to play each other.

But Uruguay and Argentina both managed to advance to the quarter-finals this weekend, and I won’t be surprised if Japan’s time in the 2010 World Cup ends Tuesday against Paraguay.

This could easily become the tourney that features the other continent that comprises the Americas. It surely won’t highlight the North American continent, which is now completely out of the World Cup. Does this mean the U.S. television ratings now plummet, and we have to put up with the “NASCAR crowd” claiming the game doesn’t matter?

Their rants get so old and so lame.

INSOFAR AS EL Tri is concerned, this was a great World Cup for Javier Hernandez – the son and grandson of Mexico national team players – who managed to score two of the four goals Mexico achieved the entire tourney.

Sunday’s match against Argentina showed that equipo de futbol at its best – and showed why it isn’t ridiculous to think they could make it all the way to the championship game.

Otherwise, all I have to say is “Ugh!” And “Argh!,” over that Mexico almost-goal in Minute 70.

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Will U.S./Mexico rivalry look to Uruguay for a sense of moral victory?

Equipo Mexico midfielder Gerardo Torrado is the optimist – he is predicting a victory for Mexico’s national futbòl team when they take on Argentina on Sunday.

He may be the only person willing to publicly say that outcome could occur, since many of the world’s real football experts seem to think Argentina is just too powerful for anyone to beat in World Cup play – now that we’re down to 16 teams and those teams have to win in order to keep playing.

I’M NOT GOING to lie. I myself am inclined to think that Sunday will be the end for the national team of my grandparents’ homeland whose matches I have followed throughout this year’s football tourney.

If Mexico were to somehow buckle down and win on Sunday to be able to take on the winner of Sunday’s other match (England/Germany), it would probably wind up becoming in the Mexican sporting spirit one of those symbolic victories that would be claimed as supreme – no matter how badly they played thereafter.

But a part of me seriously wonders if the World Cup final on July 11 could wind up being Argentina versus Brazil, which means that I am inclined to expect defeat to come this weekend for El Tri.

With that spirit in mind, I must confess to starting to look at the other 15 national teams that remain alive in World Cup play this time, trying to figure out who could be worth following. Not that I am making predictions here.

BUT THERE ARE some matchups that catch my attention – including the Spain/Portugal matchup scheduled for Tuesday. For the lamest of reasons, I am taking an interest in Spain (my father and stepmother recently took a trip that sent them through Barcelona, and my “gift” was a ballcap with the Spanish team’s logo).

So I may have the appearance of a Spain fan as I write this while wearing my new cap.

Those of us looking for a Latin American ethnic interest to root for could also take an interest in Chile (which likely will get whomped on by Brazil come Monday) or Paraguay, which may beat Japan on Tuesday and get to take on the winner of Spain/Portugal.

But I have to admit a good part of my interest now is shifting to Team U.S.A.

NOT THAT I’M about to fall for the Landon Donovan hype that some are spewing (greatest U.S. soccer player ever! Million dollar endorsement contracts likely because he scored that late-match winning goal against Algeria!) these days.

But I am inclined to think that the United States national soccer team will beat Ghana on Saturday (which would be the elimination of the last Africa-based team from the Africa-based World Cup), while I also expect Uruguay (which managed to get through the first round of World Cup play without giving up a single goal in any of its three matches) to beat South Korea.

Which means that when the winners of those two matches meet up on Friday for the quarterfinals, I would be watching to see how the U.S. team matches up against Uruguay compared to the Mexico national team – which managed to lose 1-0 to Uruguay in a match that could have caused Mexico to get knocked out of the tourney if South Africa had managed to increase its lead against France, instead of letting it dwindle down to a one-goal victory).

In short, Mexico played somewhat lackadaisical against Uruguay. Will the United States team play equally poorly? Or, will they manage to put up a better performance so as to further enhance the idea that the United States has surpassed Mexico as the dominant team in the North American/Caribbean region of the world?

IT ALSO LIKELY will be the only way there is anything close to resembling competition between the two nations in this year’s World Cup tourney.

The only way the two countries could play each other would literally be if both were to go on historically-signficant hot streaks so that they would meet in either the final or the Third place match to be held July 10.

I don’t expect either team to be capable of that, although I honestly think Team U.S.A. will manage to last for one round longer than Mexico’s national team.

Which means we might literally have some Mexico fans watching to see if Uruguay somehow beats up on the U.S.A. on Friday by more than they beat Mexico. That could wind up being the point that enhances the bragging rights of both nations – who handled Uruguay better?

AND JUST FOR kicks, I will say that Brazil will beat Chile, Slovakia and Uruguay on their way to take on Argentina in the finals, which will beat Mexico, Germany and Spain to get there.

Come July 12, you can send me e-mails telling me how much of a baboso I truly am.

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Latino plea for patience meant just as much for all Democrat supporters

Perhaps it is because President Barack Obama is noticing the polls that say even his Latino voter supporter is down (although still solid), but the president seems to want to throw us a token gesture of support when it comes to the issue of immigration reform.

Obama himself didn’t say a word. But on Thursday, when speaking to the gathering in Denver of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano gave us some sympathetic rhetoric.

NAPOLITANO GAVE US an assurance that Obama remains on our side of this issue, and that we should blame a divided Congress for the failure of the issue to advance.

She said that Obama favors measures that would make it possible for those people already here, working and contributing to our society to find a way to gain the visa that is all precious and would allow them to live their lives openly – without fear of the federal government.

That is nice. It is cute. It is the same rhetoric we have heard from the president.

Yet it doesn’t put us any closer to action. That is what causes Latinos to be frustrated, just as much as anyone else – only for different reasons.

IT SEEMS NO one is pleased with Congress these days. A new Gallup Organization poll had only 20 percent of those surveyed saying they approve of Congress’s collective behavior. The pollster says that is one of the lowest approval ratings it has ever recorded for Congress in a midterm election year.

They say that would indicate many people will vote against their incumbent member of Congress just for the sake of replacement.

Of course, the problem when it comes to immigration reform is that some Latinos will vote just to be ornery, while some non-Latinos will vote in an ornery fashion because they don’t want political officials who accept the reality of the 21st Century that Latinos are a part of the society and must be acknowledged.

That is why we hear the nativist rhetoric being spewed all too often. The fact that many Democratic Party political people, including at times Obama himself, seem willing to accept such rhetoric as having a place in our society’s electoral politics is why Latinos are concerned, and wary, of Democrats.

IF IT WEREN’T for the fact that too many Republican officials (in all honesty, not all of them) are openly hostile, then the Latino voter support for Obama would be significantly lower than the 57 percent the same Gallup Organization came up with in a poll released earlier this month.

That is why we now get to hear from Napolitano – a political official with something of a record of being sympathetic to Latino interests.

She is the former Arizona governor whose name will forevermore live in infamy (to paraphrase F.D.R.) because of her thoughts that the construction of a physical barricade along the U.S./Mexico border was ridiculous.

As she put it to the Associated Press, “you show me a 50-foot wall and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border. That’s the way the border works.”

SO THE FACT that someone who – if she were still Arizona governor instead of being a presidential cabinet member – would have used her power to veto the hideous law Arizona enacted a couple of months ago that has stirred up the immigration reform debate to new levels of intensity is willing to give us a few words of encouragement is now (I suppose) meant to make us want to remain on Equipo Obama insofar as this year’s elections are concerned.

Which ultimately makes Napolitano’s appearance a part of the larger Democratic strategy of trying to get as many of the people who were excited to vote for Obama in ’08 to at least be willing to take a couple of moments to cast a vote come the Nov. 2 elections.

It is natural that Republicans will make some Election Day gains this year, particularly in areas that traditionally were Republican but managed to back Obama two years ago. What is at stake is whether those electoral gains will be so large that they suddenly make the Republican Party a viable competitor to the Obama agenda.

Because right now, the conservative ideologues are all mouth (they may have hated it, but we still got health care reform enacted into law). Napolitano’s plea for patience with Obama on immigration reform is just as much a plea for all Democrats to be patient and supportive, as much as it is meant for Latinos not to jump ship.

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What would it take for the Pope to “do” Havana?

Officially, the fact that Catholic Cardinal Francis George is in Havana this week has nothing to do with the fact that Cuban officials are eager to have the Pope himself visit their country – possibly in 2012 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the discovery of a wooden statue of the Virgin of Charity.

The story goes that the statue was found by three men from the eastern copper mining town of El Cobre floating in the water off the coastline with a label reading, “I am the Virgin of Charity.” St. Mary was declared patron saint of Cuba in 1916 under the label of “Our Lady of Charity,” and many Cuban-Americans will celebrate the related feast come Sept. 8.

WHAT REMAINS OF Cuba’s Catholic population (the Carribbean island nation officially is Communist and atheist in character) is prepared to celebrate as much as they can. Being able to put the papal seal on such celebrations would truly give the event a jolt.

Cuban officials have had their own meetings with people from the Vatican to try to do the work necessary to prepare for such a visit – which will be a rigidly structured event planned out to the most minute of details.

So it isn’t coincidence that George’s visit to see what remains of the Catholic Church in Cuba will have some influence on whether Cuba’s overtures are taken the least bit seriously by those officials at the Vatican.

Officials with the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, which is where George presides these days, downplayed the tie, saying he is not interested in seeing the Cuban government but wants to see the church itself.

“HE’S INTERESTED IN church life. There is a Catholic church in Cuba,” said Colleen Dolan, a spokeswoman for the Chicago archdiocese, to the Chicago Tribune newspaper.

In theory, that is accurate.

George’s visit to Cuba included a visit to the shrine of Our Lady of Charity of Cobre, who is the patron saint of Cuba. It also includes a mass at the Basilica and visits to rural parts of the island where local people risk being Catholic, even though it officially remains a status that will open one up to suspicion and scorn from the powers that be.

That is why it is a little naïve to think that one can observe the Catholic church in Cuba without having to take under consideration the government itself. The reality is that for many years, the regime of Fidel Castro cracked down on the Catholic Church not only because of the Communist ideology that often preaches atheism, but also out of a belief that the one-time elites of Cuba used the church to hold down the masses in Cuban society.

THAT WAS WHY it was considered a big deal back in the 1990s when the Cuban government lightened up enough to permit Christmas celebrations. It also was a sign when former Pope John Paul II visited the island in 1998 – the first time a Catholic official visited Cuba since the ’59 revolution.

Not that many people in this country were paying attention, since his visit coincided with the exact moment that people here learned the degree to which then-President Bill Clinton was a sinner in his activities with one-time intern Monica Lewinsky.

There are those who think the Cuban government was just making gestures for show to try to put a more pleasant face on their nation’s international image.

Which is why seeing for himself how the Catholic Church is treated in Cuba could be more important than any of the negotiations taking place at higher levels of the church and the government.

THE RIGHT WORD from George in terms of perceiving sympathy and a sense of tolerance for the church could go a long way toward encouraging Vatican officials to take seriously the Cubano desire to see Pope Benedict XVI in Havana two years from now.

The wrong word, and the whole thing could shrivel up in an instant, with the only Catholics paying attention to Cuba in 2012 will be those old-time exiles whose prayers won’t be answered until they learn that the Castro brothers are both deceased.

In short, this will be a delicate process of negotiation, and we probably won’t know for sure that the Pope will visit Cuba until we literally see his feet touch down on the tarmac at Josè Martì International Airport.

Let’s only hope nothing happens related to President Barack Obama that causes that papal visit to be detracted from the way the John Paul visit of ’98 was.

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What’s more pathetic – Nebraska town’s ominous-sounding law or Oval Office hissy fit?

As I would have expected, Fremont, Neb., voters used a special election this week to pass a law meant to make conditions in their municipality so ominous for Latinos that many will want to leave.

Local people will claim their new ordinance (approved by a special voter referendum) is not directed at any one group. Yet the reality is that this is a town whose population has gone from far less than 1 percent Latino to just under 10 percent Latino in the past two decades.

WHICH MEANS THAT when these particular people rant about “foreigners” coming in and taking jobs, it is a Latino group they are addressing – as the town’s meatpacking industry (Hormel Foods has a plant in town, which is near all the other companies that have their plants in or near Omaha) has been attractive to newcomers from Mexico who are seeking work.

Yet anger or disgust isn’t what I feel. Pity is more like it. I find it sad that these people fear the future so much that they feel the need to give in to the nativists of our society who come up with wacky proposals that will wind up embarrassing us all.

It is because I realize that Fremont is not about to impose its policy because of the inevitable court challenges that will come about. Which means all that was really inspired by the Monday election (57 percent of those local voters supported the measure, to 43 percent who opposed it) was a lengthy court battle.

This is an issue that already will cause a lengthy court fight because of what it happening in Arizona. Fremont, Neb., has merely added to the pending litigation.

IF ANYTHING, I can find encouragement in the fact that the local political people tried to avoid taking this step because they had enough sense to realize the flaws and the folly of a prolonged court battle. It was only through a quirk in procedure that the issue was able to get this far.

I couldn’t help but note the thoughts of Scott Getzschman, a city council member, who was fully aware of how this situation will turn out.

As he told his hometown Fremont Tribune newspaper, “I do caution everyone that voted for this that there will be a cost to pay. It may not be legal counsel, but it could be damages, and the damages are what is going to cost the city. It’s going to cost us in services and it will cost us in increased taxes.”

Yes, I would find it ironic, and somewhat humorous, if this measure approved by a conservative base that – when not complaining about immigration often rants about taxation – winds up tagging itself with a big bill in terms of the money it will have to pay in local taxes to enable their local government to pay for the cost of addressing this particular issue.

THAT COULD BE the ultimate justice for a town that thinks it can change the local law so as to discourage people who might actually want to live and work there.

At least in Nebraska, there is some sense that some people have some sense. I’m not getting that same impression from the latest partisan squibble to come from the White House, where it seems Sen. John Kyl, R-Arizona, is on the attack against President Barack Obama.

The two met recently to talk about the issue, and Kyl is now giving his own version of what happened during that meeting when talking to political partisans whom he wants to view himself as some sort of heroic figure fighting to keep the foreign element out of our nation.

He uses the word “hostage” to describe Obama’s actions, as in Obama is refusing to do anything in support of what he considers real immigration reform (ie., more deportations and troops along the Arizona/Sonora border). As Kyl told a Tea Party activist gathering in his home state recently, “they don’t want to secure the borders unless and until it is combined with comprehensive immigration reform.”

THAT LINE OF logic would actually be surprising to some Latino activists with an issue in immigration reform – because the perspective seen by many Latinos is of a president who is too willing to give in to the conservatives on this issue and is not willing to do anything along the line of serious reform.

If anything, Kyl’s comments ought to be read by those activists as evidence of what they’re up against – an opposition that is determined to squash anything along the lines of trying to reduce the bureaucratic mess that currently constitutes our nation’s immigration policy.

For if Obama truly is refusing to give more to the people who want to distort immigration policy into a national security issue, then perhaps he is doing something on behalf of the growing Latino population.

But the fact that this squabble shows just how far down the political debate on the issue has devolved probably makes it more pathetic than anything that came out of Nebraska.

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EXTRA: Mexico 0, Uruguay 1

I must admit to feeling a knot in the gut of my stomach at half-time of the World Cup match between El Tri and the Uruguay national team.

Mexico had just managed to give up a goal, while elsewhere, South Africa was refusing to surrender to the French.

WERE WE REALLY going to get that situation where South Africa would manage to survive beyond this round, sending the Mexican national team back to Mexico City feeling almost as much shame as the France squad (two losses and a tie) must feel right now?

It didn’t turn out that way, in large part because France managed a face-saving goal in the second half of their match.

So while Mexico and South Africa each finished this round of play with one win, one loss and one tie, Mexico prevails and the Bafana Bafana from South Africa get to be the first host squad to fail to advance in World Cup play.

But I must admit to thinking it somewhat inspiring that South Africa (the team that everybody was prepared to write off entering play on Tuesday) refused to give up. The national team ranked 83rd best in the world kept trying to the very end to achieve a large enough victory that could have advanced them to the next round of the World Cup.

SO NOW, MY attention will shift to the next round (where teams get knocked out by losing a single match). Yes, I realize that 17th ranked Mexico is likely to get bashed about by powerhouse Argentina. I was never under the illusion that this team was going to win the whole thing this year.

But I do have the delusion that someday, we could get a matchup between the U.S. national team (which will qualify for the next round if they beat Algeria on Wednesday) and Mexico during the World Cup.

Matches between those two teams get feisty enough under normal conditions. Having one count during the international tourney of the World Cup would be a unique sporting moment – regardless of who would prevail in the end.

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They’re going to find out that erasing us is an effort in vain

In one city, local people who would like to erase Latinos from this society are trying desperately to use the power of the polling place to do so, while in another, there is a group of people realistic enough to know that we’re here to stay is making a special effort this week to record our presence.

Those were the two stories related to our nation’s fast-growing Latino population that managed to capture my attention on Monday.

THE ONE THAT is attracting international attention relates to the special election that was held in Fremont, Neb., to give local residents a chance to express their views about a proposed ordinance that would make it a local crime to offer jobs to people who are not U.S. citizens or don’t have the proper work permits required of non-citizens who want jobs here.

It also would make it a crime for a landlord to rent an apartment to someone who turns out not to be a U.S. citizen.

The underlying motivation behind this move is the fact that the meatpacking plants in and near Omaha, including the Hormel Foods plant right in Fremont, are hiring more and more people who fall into the category of Mexicans who have come to this country in search of work.

Because Fremont is so close to Omaha (local officials boast it is a 20-minute drive), it winds up that many of these newcomers from Mexico are choosing to live in the town of just over 26,000 people. In the 2000 census, the town only had about 4 percent Latino population – but that percentage has risen significantly. Officials estimate it will nearly double (ie., 9-10 percent) when the Census Bureau’s latest count is made public next year.

WITH JUST OVER 2,000 people of Latin American ethnic origins now living in Fremont, it’s not exactly an enclave for Latinos. But considering this was a town that estimates it had about 165 Latinos in 1990, it must seem like a shock to those people who live in such a place because they envisioned it as isolated enough from the rest of the world so they wouldn’t have to encounter “such people.”

I’m sure the people who created this referendum question to push through a local ordinance think they’re hitting the root cause of the “problem,” take away the ability of these “foreigners” to get jobs and to find a place to live in Fremont, and they will go away.

Now at the moment I am actually writing this, I have not yet learned the election results – although I will be shocked if the ordinance approval fails.

This particular election is politically quirky because it wasn’t the elected officials who pushed for it. In fact, local officials actually rejected the job and residence bans when it came before them a few years ago. The mayor of Fremont is on the record as opposing this.

YET LOCAL RESIDENTS who are absolutely determined to control the vision of what they think this country’s populace should look like used the unusual measure of getting a referendum on the ballot. In short, they’re trying to force their elected officials to implement a law that these particular people want.

That takes a lot of motivation and determination. In short, I expect them to turn out to the polling places in great numbers, while people who are less motivated or even opposed likely will have better things to do (such as go to work, they have jobs).

The major problem is that this particular law comes off as so strong-armed that it is very vulnerable to a court challenge. There are a lot of people who are going to be incredibly disgusted in the future when they realize that their enthusiasm for their vote on Monday will not overcome the unconstitutionality of this particular measure.

In short, this vote is in vain. It is not going to erase, or lessen, the numbers of Latinos in this country. It is as misguided as the recent actions by the Arizona Legislature (which seems to be the angle taken in most of the news coverage being provided by the English newspapers).

WHICH MEANS THE realistic action may be what is occurring these days in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, located just a few miles from the Back of the Yards where the meatpacking industry used to be centered until it went off to places like Nebraska back in the late 1960s.

StoryCorps, a project of the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center, has a mobile recording studio parked in the Pilsen neighborhood – which throughout Chicago’s history has been an entry point for whatever ethnic group was newly arrived in the United States. Which means these days, it is predominantly people of Mexican ethnic backgrounds.

Through Saturday, the studio will be parked in the neighborhood next to the National Museum of Mexican Art. They’re hoping to get local people to sit down and be willing to talk about the realities of their lives – as part of an effort to document for future generations what this country was like at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Because they’re in a Mexican-American neighborhood, this week they’re going to be getting the Mexican-American perspective – at the exact moment that some people in our society seem so eager to erase that perspective from our society.

WHICH IS WHAT I find ironic.

Even if it were possible for these nativist-inspired people to come up with a way to legally reduce the numbers of certain ethnicities that are already here, they’d find that our stories are being preserved for posterity. People of the future will know we were here, and will think it ridiculous that some people in our society were so hostile.

Because the constitutionality of their actions is so questionable, I can’t help but think their actions are laughable. They’re doing the equivalent of banging their collective head against a wall, bloodying themselves up in the process rather than us Latinos.

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Hoosiers to battle over Arizona’s take on immigration enforcement

I guess some people just don’t know how to communicate their intentions with each other. That is how I can best describe the political battle that has arisen in Indiana, as related to the new law in Arizona that requires local police to get more vigorous in their attention paid to federal immigration laws.

In the days following the Arizona Legislature’s approval of the measure that requires local cops to question people about immigration status if they have “reasonable suspicion” (not necessarily the “probable cause” that police usually are required to have in order to detain someone) to think it is an issue, members of the Indiana Legislature made their own pronouncements.

ONE LEGISLATOR WENT so far as to say that he would sponsor a similar measure for the Hoosier State, if the federal government did not start behaving in accordance with his conservative beliefs about what is appropriate by year’s end.

That legislator, Mike Delph, a Republican from Carmel, was going around engaging in rhetoric that presumed the people of his state were eager to get involved in this political battle to show their support for Arizona’s political people.

But people in Indianapolis have had their own rallies to protest the event. Delph’s Democratic Party challenger come November is using this as an issue against him on the campaign trail – turning the little-known Indiana legislator into one whose rhetoric gives aid and comfort to the nativists of our nation.

And now, most recently, an Indiana city has gone ahead and joined the ranks of municipalities across the nation that are passing “symbolic” resolutions saying they won’t do business with companies based in Arizona.

THAT CITY IS Bloomington, Ind., which is the home of the main campus of Indiana University.

A city council member, Susan Sandberg, told the local press that even if one wants to believe that Arizona was well intentioned in passing this measure, it still manages to “violate” the U.S. Constitution and “erode” the civil rights of people within the state.

Hence, Bloomington, Ind., becomes a city that officially boycotted Arizona companies back in 1993 when the Arizona Legislature refused to go along with the trend of other states across the United States in making a holiday of the birthday anniversary of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now, they’re once again going against the desires of Arizona when it comes to the nation’s immigration policy.

WHICH MEANS THAT when Delph next year introduces his measure to have Indiana issue moral support for Arizona by enacting a similar measure in the Midwest U.S. (Indiana’s Latino population comprises just under 5 percent of the state, although state officials say they expect it to double during he course of the next three decades to about 649,749), he’s going to have a difficult time convincing people that his view represents that of the Hoosier State.

He now gets to see just what a partisan debacle he could drag his own state into, should he decide to proceed with his intentions of pursuing the issue in Indiana.

Two dozen Republican legislators, led by Delph, went so far last week as to send a letter to Bloomington, asking them to “take a step back” from their symbolic gesture – which even they admit will not break the economy of Arizona all by itself.

Thus far, Bloomington officials deserve praise for not giving in. Mayor Mark Kruzan told the Associated Press that the letter was a political stunt, meant to make the conservative ideologues who want to pursue this issue more likely to back Delph’s campaign come November.

KRUZAN MAY HAVE put the issue in its proper focus when he admitted that the split in our society over immigration policy is bad, but said, “we need to unite to protect our freedoms, not allow them to continue to erode.”

Now Bloomington is not the first Indiana municipality to pass such a measure. East Chicago approved something similar a few weeks ago. But with a population that in 2000 was 52 percent Latino, that town can be dismissed by the ideologues as not fitting in with their vision of what this country ought to be like.

Bloomington is a little harder, although I’m sure we will hear all the pompous rhetoric about it being a “college town” equally unrepresentative of their vision for the United States.

Yet when one thinks about it, these ethnic and academic towns are representative of the direction our nation is headed during the 21st Century. Which makes me wonder if the real motivation for these kinds of measures is to somehow keep in check the communities that aren’t anxious to isolate themselves from the future, so as to prevent them from surpassing by too much the parts of the nation that haven’t been as attractive for the newcomers to our nation.

IF ANYTHING, IT becomes a reminder that those people who always claim polls show the bulk of the nation is supportive of what happened in Arizona is, in and of itself, a distortion of truth.

What those polls really say is that a bulk of the nation thinks the immigration policies need reform. But we have no concensus on what reform is. For every poll claiming people want reform, there are others that show a large share of the people think reform includes developing measures by which people already in this country should be allowed to remain.

Which means those Indiana legislators who thought they could pass a nativist-inspired measure in their home state may well have received a lesson from the home city of their primary public university – not all of us would approve of such hateful policies.

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¡Oh, be quiet!

Excuse me for thinking that the righteous indignation coming out of Arizona these days – with Gov. Jan Brewer and Republican Senate hopeful J.D. Hayworth, among others, being upset that the federal government is going to challenge their state’s recent action related to immigration – is just a bit much to bear.

Brewer, in particular, is getting all worked up at the fact that the federal government is planning an attempt to smack down her state’s new law that gives in to the nativist element of our society in trying to influence the nation’s immigration laws.

WHAT IS CAUSING the latest round of hissy fits from Arizona is Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton, who while being interviewed on television in Ecuador earlier this month made a straightforward, declarative statement.

Attorney General Eric Holder will have his staff file a lawsuit against the state of Arizona, challenging the legitimacy of the state law that requires local police to more vigorously enforce those federal laws – while also making it a criminal offense to pick up day laborers for construction projects.

Brewer is getting all whiny about the fact that her state is going to have to spend significant dollars fighting off a legal challenge (which in all honesty it brought on itself by giving in to the portions of our society with irrational hangups with regard to immigration).

Although, on some level, she knows such a challenge is coming because her staff is working to put together a legal fund to pay for the court battles that are coming.

BREWER IS TRYING to get some people worked up over the fact that Clinton made her comments while in a foreign country, saying that act alone was “outrageous.”

In an interview with the federal government-oriented website (and newspaper) Politico, Brewer said, “if our own government intends to sue our state to prevent illegal immigration enforcement, the least it can do is inform us before it informs the citizens of another nation.”

Now I am sure the nativists who have their problems with the idea that this is a country that encourages people from other countries to think of living here think that this is a significant point.

Anybody with sense, however, will see it for nonsense – and not just because of the Ecuador “aspect.”

IT IS SILLY to think that the people of Ecuador watching their local television earlier this month learned before anyone in the United States that there will be a lawsuit along the lines of “U.S. vs. Arizona.”

Before Brewer even signed the measure into law, federal government officials were critical.

On the day she signed it into law, but about a couple of hours before she put pen to paper to make the act official, President Barack Obama himself was critical of the law.

He made it clear then that the federal government would be reviewing the situation to ensure that the law wasn’t abused in ways that would violate the rights of people living in this country (and yes, every living creature has certain rights). How explicitly does he have to use the word “lawsuit” to make it clear that such an action will be occurring in the court system?

MY POINT IS that if Brewer truly did not realize that a court action of some type was going to be filed against her state and she was going to have to come up with a defense of her actions (which in reality were more about appeasing the conservative elements of her political party), then she is either incredibly naïve, or about the stupidest public official in the nation.

Personally, I don’t think she’s stupid.

I think this is just more rhetoric to get her base worked up, keeping them incensed enough to want to turn out to vote on Nov. 2. Get enough angry people who never got over the Election Day outcome from 2008 and make them think their votes can “take back” their country, and perhaps she can prevail.

If she can also dredge up the image from the political past of Hillary Clinton as some sort of evil witch spewing her bile, all the better – from their perspective.

PERHAPS WHAT REALLY has her bothered is the fact that the most recent primary elections in several states are giving us evidence that the “backlash” against Obama and Democrats won’t be quite as severe as the conservative partisans were hoping for? The real “majority” thinks this is ridiculous, if not embarrassing.

So even though Fox News, in the form of Greta Van Susteren, says this move is “huge news because no official decision has been announced,” it really isn’t. If anything, this is an example of Fox News putting their spin on a story.

I hear of Clinton’s offhand comment and think she gave the same answer as before (the federal government does not approve of Arizona’s meddling in national immigration policy). It’s not like she gave any specific details about what would be in the lawsuit.

It is not like she told us when it would be filed. I don’t know any more about the issue now than I did when I first heard Clinton’s comment.

SO AS FAR as anything that is coming from Brewer these days, I’d say it is more of the partisan hot air that is best ignored – because it is all that heated rhetoric that is keeping us from coming up with a legitimate solution to the bureaucratic mess that is our national immigration policy.

Which really does need a serious reform.

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READING MATERIAL: Arizona spreads like a political plague

Part of what makes the recent enactment by Arizona state officials of a new law that gives local police greater authority to enforce federal immigration laws is that the effect is NOT limited merely to Arizona.

The insidiousness of such a policy is having its impact on surrounding states, as well as motivating nativist knuckleheads in other parts of the country to try to use the law to legitimize their backward beliefs about what U.S. foreign policy should be.

I STUMBLED ACROSS a pair of stories worth reading about how Arizona’s acts are affecting the upcoming elections in New Mexico and California. Both are worth checkinrg out for yourself.

In the latter state, Meg Whitman won the Republican primary for governor by converting herself into an ideologue willing to demonize the growing Latino population for many of the state’s problems. She won the primary, buy many political pundits think it will hurt her come the general election against Jerry Brown – who once again wants to be California’s governor.

What does that do to Abel Maldonado? He was lieutenant governor under Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he is the GOP nominee for the Number Two spot under Whitman. He is Latino (a Californio, to be exact, his family has been in the state for generations).

Does the Latino nominee wind up getting taken down by Whitman’s desire to out-bigot her GOP primary opponent. Or does he find ways to keep himself separate from her image, thereby allowing him to resurrect himself politically in the near future when she is a distant memory?

THEN, THERE IS New Mexico, where Gov. Bill Richardson’s lieutenant governor, Diane Denish, is looking to move up and replace him. She has the Democratic Party nomination, while the Republicans went ahead and nominated Latinos for both governor and lieutenant governor.

Yet GOP gubernatorial nominee Susana Martinez is feeling the need to appeal to the Republican ideological base by trying to make the same shift Whitman did in her primary election cycle.

Martinez wants to reverse the policy imposed by Richardson (born in California to a Mexican mother and raised as a child in Mexico City) that allowed non-citizens without visas to get driver’s licenses, and even qualify for in-state tuition rates if they could show they had lived in New Mexico for most of their lives (pretty much the same policy that Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., wants to bring to the nation with the DREAM Act).

Denish is feeling some pressure. She’s coming up with similar rhetoric, although she is saying she would merely quit offering those two benefits to new people. Those who already have them can keep them.

WHICH MEANS MARTINEZ is creating the image of the candidate who would take away a migrant worker’s driver’s license, while Denish would be the one who would let him keep it – provided he is using it to drive safely.

This is the kind of act that will cause Latinos to think their interests are better represented by someone not of their ethnic brethren, and likely will cause the confusion among know-nothing political pundits who will express confusion why Martinez did not “clean up” among the Latino vote in that state.

All caused because of the fact that Arizona thinks it can impose policies without regards to what it does to the rest of the country. For that reason alone, we all ought to be eagerly awaiting the day when the Supreme Court of the United States issues the ruling that kills off this new Arizona law – once and for all.

This is one of my lazier days. Basically, I’m telling those of you in search of information about the growing Latino population to go elsewhere for the day. Full-fledged original commentary will return to The South Chicagoan on Saturday.

BUT A COUPLE of other stories stuck out in my mind.

Some are trying to make an issue of the fact that a Mexican citizen on trial in Sioux City, Iowa for rape and murder had removed from his jury pool the only person who was Latino (Latina, actually). They say Melecio Camacho DeJesus’ trial will be hurt by having a lilly white jury.

Yet the Sioux City Journal reported that the one Latina juror admitted under questioning she was already convinced of Camacho’s guilt – meaning her removal from the jury panel likely was the right thing.

And finally, I’m not sure what fits the stereotype less – Latinos who are gay, or Latinos who choose to live in Utah?

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EXTRA: Mexico 2, France 0

(Not in) POLOKWANE, South Africa – Could it be that we have found the sound that can drown out the vuvuzela?

It seems we have, and that “sound” is none other than the fanàtico futbol Mexicano.

AT LEAST THAT was the impression I got after watching Thursday while Mexico played France to a 2-0 win in World Cup play.

Both teams were desperate for a victory if they were to hope to have a serious chance to advance in the international tournament. Defeat today amounts to a virtual guarantee that play ends for them after the final game in group play scheduled for Tuesday.

The crowd at Peter Mokaba Stadium seemed to be Mexican-leaning (and not just because of the guy wearing his Chespirito costume), and not just because the singing of Mexicanos Al Grito de Guerra (the national anthem) came off as much louder and enthusiastic than those singing the famed French anthem La Marseillaise.

It literally seemed like the boos of the officials when they ruled against Mexico drowned out the buzz of those stupid horns (although I honestly believe the vuvuzela isn’t any more obnoxious than the constant clap of ThunderStix that one often hears coming from the crowd at U.S. sports events).

IT FELT LIKE a home match for El Tri.

Come the second half of the match, the Mexican national futbol club produced – although at times it seemed like the score should have been run up more because the French at times seemed to be napping.

It wasn’t until the 63rd minute that Javier Hernandez gave Mexico the lead (even though Las Francesas will probably insist forevermore that Hernandez was offside), and gave every Mexican-American (no matter how serious they take the game) a jolt of excitement – particularly in these times when the ethnic tensions in our society seem to be focused on those people who have a hangup about the fact that the Latino population of the United States is growing so much.

Legendary player Cuahtemoc Blanco (he’s 37, and the third-oldest player to score a goal in World Cup history) managing to get a second goal off a penalty kick around the 77th minute was just an added bonus, one that will probably cause many nativists to make ridiculous claims about how little the World Cup means (they’d probably rather watch NASCAR auto racing).

IT CAN BE nervewracking being a fan in the United States of Mexican futbol, knowing that some people will consider that interest in the birthplace of my grandparents to be a subversive act in and of itself. I have known some serious soccer fans who think of themselves as cosmopolitan ands sophisticated who will openly admit they root against Latin American teams because they’d rather have a “more European” flavor to the World Cup finals.

Which is why it can be upsetting in those moments when El Tri decides to play down to the level of their most loud-mouthed critics. And also what makes Thursday’s sporting victory all the more pleasurable to those of us of Mexican ethnic backgrounds living in this country.

So excuse me for thinking how wonderful it would be if Mexico and Uruguay could be the national teams that advance from Group A – despite the early rhetoric of those “experts” who were convinced that France would have to win, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if South Africa could also advance?

Mexico’s victory on Thursday (which apparently was France’s first loss in World Cup play ever to a team from North America or the Caribbean) put an end to that fantasy. And it wasn’t just the very vocal Mexican soccer fans sitting in the stands who were able to enjoy the moment.

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Is cumulative voting a useful tool to get Latinos into electoral office?

The concept of cumulative voting, one in which people are given multiple votes for specific electoral offices and allowed to use them as they wish, is one generally thought of as a relic of the past.

In my home state of Illinois, we used to elect our members of the Illinois House of Representatives through cumulative voting. Yet we haven’t done so in three decades.

IN NEW YORK state, the idea was an even older one. Various reports indicated it hadn’t been used in nearly a century. Yet it was resurrected this week in one suburban community of New York City, with the end result being that black and Latino people managed to get themselves elected to the local village board.

Port Chester, N.Y., now has a Latino (specifically, his ethnic origins are from Peru). More incredibly, they also got a black man who openly identifies himself as a Republican. If the GOP had any sense, they’d be boasting about that latter fact, although I sense many will shudder in disgust at the thought.

The board also now has a split of two Democrats, two Republicans, one who identifies himself as a “conservative” and a sixth member who calls himself an “independent.”

It sounds like a nice split that will allow the bulk of people who live in that town to have some sense that their interests are represented among the composition of the Board of Trustees.

SO NATURALLY, THE social conservatives are getting themselves all worked up into a frenzy. They’re going on Fox News and calling the whole thing some sort of scheme. They're even tossing about the word "unconstitutional," implying that holding elections in ways that allow everyone to feel included is somehow immoral and ought to be illegal.

Things were better when that Board of Trustees consisted of six white people. By my count, it is still four of six. But that just isn’t enough to satisfy some people who are bent on total domination.

The situation in Port Chester is one where almost half (49 percent, to be exact) of the roughly 28,000 people who live there are of Latino ethnic origins. Yet the election of Luis Marino was the first of a Latino ever in the village’s history.

It was the sense that the old system of voting was set up in a way that was meant to strike down any serious attempt to make electoral gains that caused the federal courts to intervene.

THAT IS WHY we got cumulative voting, by which people were given six votes to cast on trustees to represent them. People could pick six different people, or give all six votes to a single candidate if they so chose. Also, the polling places were kept open for a week.

It made it very convenient for people to find some time to actually cast a ballot.

Now I’m not about to imply that such a method be implemented on a national scale, or on any scale larger than what it is being used now.

But it was nice to see that a community was willing to acknowledge that its large Latino population was not being adequately represented – instead of just spewing out some rhetoric that implies it is the fault of Latinos themselves for not voting in greater numbers.

ULTIMATELY, PROCEDURES THAT wind up impeding the ability of governing boards to look like the people whom they represent ARE a problem, no matter how long they have been in place.

If it means that something as unusual as cumulative voting has to be considered, then perhaps it should be in the mix. Although I must admit the Port Chester version of cumulative voting differs from the way it was done in my home city, where its purpose was to ensure that every legislative district was represented by at least one Democrat AND one Republican.

Whodathunkit that a tool from the political past – one whose critics used to claim it was a scheme by which political machines could try to confuse people and gain extra support for their political allies – would be the same mechanism that would help enable the cause of increased political empowerment for Latinos?

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Will Internet videos sway Tejanos back to the state GOP?

I remember back about the time of the Bicentennial in this country a television commercial that got heavy airtime.

The commercial would show about four or five people speaking, each identifying themselves by name and saying, “I am a Republican.” All of those individual faces would be non-Anglo people, either African-American or of distinct ethnic character.

THE CAMERA WOULD then pull back to show a huge crowd of people saying, “We’re all Republican. Then, the camera would pan the crowd, and we’d get to see a GOP party that included people of just about every single type of human imaginable.

Sounds cute? (Or perhaps to the more hard-core nativists who make up an outspoken faction of the GOP these days, too much trite P-C trash).

That commercial, which I haven’t seen in some 34 years but still remember vividly, came to my mind when I learned of the way in which the Texas Republican Party is trying to undo some of the damage it did to itself when the party’s delegates passed a platform of stances on various issues that makes them out to be a batch of nitwits out of touch with the 21st Century, particularly when it comes to the growing Latino population of this country.

The party prepared a batch of spots depicting various Texas residents talking about why they are a part of the Republican Party. Those spots will be in English and Spanish. The point is to get faces of people who clearly are Tejano to say that the one-time Party of Lincoln does not hate Latinos.

KERA TELEVISION IN Dallas reported that party officials say these spots will be the first of many outreach efforts between now and Nov. 2 (ie., Election Day) to get Latinos involved in thinking they have a place in a political party that likes to think it is about family and morals and having government butt out of the affairs of business (except when those businesses need a bailout).

Now this is the 21st Century. So the party doesn’t plan to air the spots on television. Instead, they prepared the spots and videos and put them on YouTube, the site that theoretically allows people to post their own personal video for public consumption – and which as of when this commentary was being written was featuring videos entitled, “Conservative Bumper Sticker Suggestions,” and “Booty On YouTube.”

So people willing to wade their way through the videos of teenagers fighting or cheerleaders jiggling about can find the message that the Texas Republican Party is now trying to push, and which the national GOP tried pushing several decades ago.

It’s only too bad the message didn’t stick then.

IT JUST STRIKES me as being ridiculous that this message of trying to reach out to people who are potential voters has to repeatedly be made. You’d think that the GOP faithful would either “get it” that they will be a losing entity politically if they try to be the party of a single racial entity, or that the people who put such spots together would accept the fact that they’re wasting their time in that there are some people who are a part of the Republican Party because they perceive it as the party of “their kind” and aren’t particularly interested in reaching out to others.

In short, I expect these new YouTube videos to be largely ignored.

Because the party did make itself clear this past weekend when its delegates passed their platform.

The Texas Republican Party is the entity with so many stances that seem to single out Latinos (and the few that don’t seem to single out everyone else who isn’t a white Texan oilman) that it seems ridiculous to believe that they could suddenly do an about face.

THE PARTY THAT officially says Texas should adopt an Arizona-type law to get local cops involved in federal immigration enforcement (even the Republican governor thinks that move would be dumb) and that says “American English” ought to be the state’s and nation’s official language now wants us to think they didn’t mean it.

What is ironic is that these spots were previewed at the same GOP party convention where the hostile platform was approved. Which emphasizes the idea in my mind that these videos are for show. The rhetoric speaks more honestly than the pretty pictures.

Which makes me wonder about the Saturday Night Live potential for parody of these videos.

Because I remember how that show parodied the original television commercials.

THEY NAILED DOWN every little detail of getting a black man, a Latina maid and an Asian college student to say they were Republicans. Then, when the camera panned over the larger crowd, it turned out to be a gathering entirely of middle-aged white men, with the three “minorities” shunted off to the side, occasionally looking at the larger group to see their glares of hostility.

It just seems that some things will never change.

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Hispanic population in ______ higher than initially estimated

That headline appeared recently in the Birmingham Business Journal, except that the blank was filled in with the abbreviation “Ala.,” to top off a story about how surprised local officials were about how many Latinos were living in the Yellowhammer state.

Yet what is truly unique about the situation is that it is not a unique story at all. The Census Bureau came out with its estimates showing how much population may have increased from 2008 to 2009, and those will be the last figures offered until we get the official population count next year that results from this year’s Census.

IT SEEMS THAT one can fill in the blank with the name of just about any place and the story would be accurate. Because the stories that were resulting from the new population estimates (which are not as solid as the actual population count we will get next year) had the constant theme of more Latinos living in places where many people would not have thought to look.

In the case of Alabama, the bureau figures there are about 152,516 Latinos living across the state – which is an 18,000-person increase compared to the 2008 estimate.

Or, take Nebraska and Iowa. The two Plains states saw significant increases. Nebraska now has 7,375 more Latinos than it did the year before, while Iowa has 6,488 more Latinos – which is the largest annual increase reported in nine years.

Want to be more specific? Take Yakima County, Wash., where officials say that the number of Latinos living in or near the state capital shot over 100,000, a 26.8 percent increase this year. It also means that 42.2 percent of the county’s population is Latino.

SO FROM THE Deep South to the Plains States to the Pacific Northwest, the Latino population is on the rise. There’s no limit to the places where people with ethnic origins in a Latin American country (or Spain proper) will settle to have a better life in the United States.

The reality of the situation is that a large number of newcomers to this country are Latino – just under half of the 3 million who came here between 2008 and 2009, to be exact.

More specifically, take the area surrounding the national capital in Washington. Maryland gained about 66,000 new residents, with about half being Latino. Virginia gained about 113,000, with about one-third being Latino.

Now one might argue that Washington has always been a unique place that attracts people from all over. So it would be expected for newcomers to try to settle near there.

YET EVEN THE places that remain overwhelmingly Anglo in percentage aren’t as white as they used to be.

Take Utah (no Mormon jokes, please). It now has a 19 percent non-white population, down from 85 percent white nine years ago. Yet the portion of the population that is African-American only increased by 1 percent. It is the Latinos who account for the change.

Specifically, officials say the Latino population increased by 68 percent during the past nine years. Which means that a state that once had virtually no Latinos now is developing an ethnic population.

This IS the 21st Century in our society. It is happening, yet some people who have nativist hangups about such things try to con the bulk of our society into going along with their restrictive thoughts, tossing about rhetoric that implies some sort of national security issue is at stake.

EXCUSE ME FOR not buying it, and thinking that people with sense won’t buy it either.

For the reason I felt it interesting to run through these numbers (these communities and states were picked by myself at random) is to show that this Latino population growth is something that is happening, and that people who are obsessed with somehow trying to stop it are wasting their time.

If anything, the people who are concerned about assimilation ought to be trying to find ways to include the newcomers, rather than exclude. Because there are going to be more of us.

Because it comes down to child birth, more than any other factor.

YES, THERE ARE some of us newcomers who are immigrants. But there are those of us who are just newborn. Which means we’re U.S. citizens by birth (which is what motivates the crackpots who push for changes in the law so as to deny citizenship to people born here – which in reality is all that citizenship means, where were you born?)

The number of newborns across the country who would not be identified as white rose from 46 percent in 2008 to 48 percent in 2009, and there are those people who believe it will go over 50 percent (becoming the majority) either this year or next.

In that regard, Utah is once again interesting. Nearly 10 percent of that state’s population is under 5 years of age. Nationally, 48.3 percent of children under 5 are minorities. Nationally, the median age for a white person in this country is 41, while for a Latino, it is 27.

We’re young. We’re procreating. Our numbers are going to continue to rise. People who are fighting this trend are wasting their time, while also creating tensions with the growing Latino population that will become harder and harder to erase in the future.

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Let GOP approve platform, what matters is whether people have sense to disregard hooey

The Texas Republican Party held their convention this past weekend, and managed to tick off many Latino activists because of some of the nonsense it tries to peddle.

I’ll be the first to admit that reading through the list of things that the party approved as staples of what being a Republican from Texas stands for, I have to wonder how anyone could be brain-dead enough to actually believe this.

THE FACT THAT an overwhelming majority of the GOP delegates at the convention in Dallas publicly support this trite talk shows me how out of touch they are with the direction our society is headed – and how desperate they are to try any long-shot measures to postpone the 21st Century.

But then again, political parties of every type have their platforms. They make grand statements, then find out that rational people aren’t narrow-minded enough to actually believe that every aspect must be backed absolutely.

The Republican Party nationally has always included the provisions in its platform that make it the party that opposes abortion being legal, while the Democratic Party is the one with the platform that says abortion is a woman’s business, and no one else’s.

Yet somehow, I usually find some people on each political side who manage to disagree with their party’s official stance. So my gut reaction to the nasty trash talk against Latinos contained in the Texas Republican pllatform is that many people are going to ignore the provisions that they find to be too ridiculous to take seriously.

AMONG THE PLATFORM’S provisions are one urging the Texas Legislature to approve a law similar to what Arizona did a few months ago that has infuriated people of sense across the country. The party also wants Texas to oppose anything that resembles “amnesty” toward people in the country who are not now U.S. citizens.

Bi-lingual education programs would have to have a cut-off date, if Texas Republicans were to get their way, while those young people who have lived the bulk of their lives in this country even though they may not have the proper papers for legal residency would have to be treated as foreigners when it comes to financial aid toward higher education (ie., no aid permitted).

Of course, the Texas Republican vision of the world doesn’t merely limit the presence of Latinos.

They believe Texas officials should urge Congress to drop out of the United Nations, and should evict the UN from their international headquarters in New York. I’m almost surprised that Texas Republicans didn’t add a clause stipulating that Texas schools must teach that it is a myth that man ever walked on the Moon.

AND YES, TEXAS Republicans put their own version of an “English-only” provision in their party platform.

Only I must admit to getting a kick out of their phrasing. It stipulates that “American English” should be the official language of Texas and the United States.

None of that phony, fruity British-type English. Never mind that it was their language, and that all the other takes on it are dialects.

Actually, I can’t help but wonder what constitutes “American” English. I can think of at least a half-dozen dialects spoken in differing parts of the country. When combined with accents, it’s not like the people of this nation all talk alike.

WOULD IT GO even go so far as to say that someone with ethnic origins in a Latin American country who learns to speak English with an accent would be accused of not speaking it “American” enough to satisfy Texans?

Or does this mean that the Texas Republican Party thinks that everybody should talk just like a white Texan? I’d like to write that I can’t think of anything more absurd than that – but then I read the portions of the platform that aren’t directed solely, or primarily, at Latinos.

Such as the one where Texas GOPers say they think it should be a felony criminal charge for anyone who performs a marriage ceremony for a gay couple, or that tells Congress to “repeal and reject” health care reform (which it insists must be referred to as “ObamaCare”).

Then, there’s the clause that says Texas should repeal its state lottery. I can’t help but think that such a thought alone would lose the support of many Texans who are just as addicted to their games of chance as residents of other states. You might as well come out and support a ban on Bingo at the old-folks home.

THERE ARE JUST too many things on this list (which I have not included in its entirety) that show just how out of touch these particular political people are. I can’t get offended at the thoughts of the Texas Republican Party as much as find them to be an absurd batch of people.

It makes me laugh. Except for one part of the platform – which calls for banning the use of “red light” cameras. I’m all for that.

It seems that even the village idiot (if the U.S. is seen as a village, would Texas be our idiot) comes up with a good idea occasionally.

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No change? That’s bad, long-term, for GOP

The Gallup Organization came out with a new poll Friday, one that claims that most people haven’t had their views on immigration issues shifted by the actions earlier this spring by Arizona state officials.

That has some conservatives already boasting. See, “No damage done!,” they will shout. It means they are correct, they will scream.

BUT ANYONE WHO looks seriously at the situation will realize how ridiculous such rhetoric is. For all that has happened in the past couple of months since the Arizona Legislature approved a measure requiring local police to more act in ways that more vigorously enforce federal immigration laws is that people have had their existing views reinforced.

If anything, Arizona has whipped up the nation into a frenzy, with everybody more determined to see to it that their viewpoint prevails, and that their opponents are crushed into dust.

Rather juvenile, if you think about it rationally. It also is what will prevent our government officials from being capable of doing the serious negotiation and compromise (which is what Democracy truly is about) that will provide real reform of the mess that has become our nation’s immigration policy.

But that appears to be where we as a society are, according to the folks at Gallup (who also once gave us “President Thomas Dewey,” so perhaps the poll should be taken for what it is worth).

THE NEW POLL says that 61 percent of Latinos surveyed are likely to vote for a Democrat to represent them in Congress come the Nov. 2 general election. That is up from 60 percent back in early April before the Arizona action became official.

When it comes to African-American people surveyed, 85 percent were likely to vote for a Democrat (compared to 86 percent before). For Anglos (non-Hispanic white people, to use Gallup-speak), 53 percent are supportive of Republican congressional candidates, while 38 percent are backing Democrats.

Both of those percentages for white people are unchanged from a few months ago.

In short, nothing has significantly changed – unless you really think a 1 percent boost in Latinos backing Democrats is significant.

IF THAT WAS the extent of what this study had to say, then perhaps I’d agree with those pundits who are determined to propagate nativist thought that this superficially backs their perspective.

Yet there is more – people were questioned about how enthusiastic they were about having Nov. 2 arrive so they could cast their ballots.

When it comes to Latinos, 63 percent of those surveyed said they were “very” or “somewhat” enthusiastic about voting, while 36 percent were “not very” enthusiastic about casting a ballot. That is up from the 59 percent who were “very” or “somewhat” enthusiastic.

That is not a large boost.

BUT IT IS an increase, which is something not shown by the Anglo or African-American voters surveyed. White people “very” or “somewhat” enthused dropped from 60 percent to 56 percent, while among black people, the figure drops from 67 percent to 61 percent.

So what does it say when the only group that shows an increase in enthusiasm about casting ballots come November is the group that is the brunt of the attack by the political people who most eagerly push for laws such as the Arizona policies for local police?

What also does it say when the group that shows an increase is the one that is the fastest-growing segment of our population? Does this mean that these people now swaying to the Democratic Party because of current circumstances have the potential to become a permanent part of that overall voter bloc?

I’m convinced that it is, even if Democratic political officials at times seem determined at times to blow this potential advantage with their indifference.

BUT INDIFFERENCE FROM some Democrats has the potential to be overcome by open hostility by a segment of the Republican Party that is determined to shift that political party to reflect their perspective solely.

Take Texas, where the state’s Republican Party is finishing its business Saturday with a convention where they considered changes to the party platform – Texas-style GOPers want a demand that in-state tuition rates be rescinded to those college students whose parents are not citizens or visa-ed residents, and that the Legislature in Austin follow the lead of the Legislature in Phoenix in passing an immigration measure similar to Arizona.

I guess there are some Texans who think that making the nation “safe” means creating the image of the Texas Rangers being unleashed on Latinos, even though all it would do would be to resurrect images of harassment from the past that literally cause some people to translate the name of the famed law enforcement agency as “los Vigilantes.”

Even though vigilante in Spanish does not have the same, exact ominous meaning as it does in English, it still is not the direction that someone in the 21st Century should want our society to move in.

IT ALSO IS why I can’t help but chuckle at the reports Friday that Texas Gov. Rick Perry thinks he can get 50 percent of the Latino vote. It reminds me of an episode of “The Sopranos” where actor Dominic Chianese’s “Junior Soprano” character snapped at federal prosecutors demanding information during an interrogation that he wanted to be intimate with sexy actress Angie Dickinson.

“Let’s see who gets lucky first,” he quipped.

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