Immigrants and Politics Blog

[KR: I got the following post from Farmworker Justice, an organization that advocates for migrant and seasonal workers. Apparently, the administration published the new rule in the federal register this morning. The rule has generated opposition from several organizations and newspaper editorial boards.]

Guest post by Farmworker Justice

December 18, 2008

This morning, the Bush Administration finalized midnight changes to the H2A guestworker program that slash wages and worker protections for our nation’s farmworkers. These changes have been denounced by groups like the United Farm Workers, National Council La Raza and Farmworker Justice.

The new regulations will slash wage rates for both U.S. and foreign workers by:
- eliminating the “prevailing wage” salary requirements;
- reducing employers’ obligations to recruit U.S. workers for these jobs before hiring vulnerable guestworkers; and,
- cutting oversight of the program that could detect and curtail labor abuses.
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[KR: A historic election that went largely under the radar during the Presidential transition period. Notable that the first Vietnamese American in Congress did not come from Orange County, but this was a special election given Jefferson's corruption problems. As the story notes, Cao came to the U.S. at age 8.]

1st Vietnamese-American elected to US Congress
By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press
Sun Dec 7, 10:11 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – The first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress took advantage of dissatisfaction with a longtime incumbent dogged by corruption allegations and reflects the changing nature of New Orleans politics since Hurricane Katrina.

Republican immigration attorney Anh “Joseph” Cao defeated Democratic U.S. William Jefferson on Saturday in an election postponed for a month by Hurricane Gustav.
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[KR: Irene sent this story out last week. I wonder if Chu's appointment to Department of Energy will make any difference. Somewhat ironic that a Chinese American heading a Berkeley-run lab will head the same department that hung Wen Ho Lee out to dry.]

Chinese-American activists oppose any Bill Richardson cabinet nomination
By Ken McLaughlin
The San Jose Mercury News (CA)
December 2, 2008

In a move bound to create political tension between Latinos and Asian-Americans, a group of Chinese-American activists in Silicon Valley has launched a nationwide grass-roots movement to fight President-elect Barack Obama’s nomination today of Bill Richardson as commerce secretary.

The group is upset at the New Mexico governor for his handling of the nearly decade-old case of Taiwanese-American Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. U.S. officials once suspected Lee of giving nuclear secrets to China when Richardson was President Clinton’s energy secretary.
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[KR: Volunteering in a campaign is a relatively low-frequency activity, but it may have been higher this year, and it may have given more noncitizens a chance to participate.]

Unable to vote but eager to be part of political process, noncitizen immigrants volunteer
By Juliana Barbassa
The Associated Press, October 30, 2008

San Francisco (AP) — From Florida to California, they’re working hard on the upcoming election — knocking on doors in ethnic neighborhoods, manning the phones in myriad languages and distributing political flyers. But come Tuesday, they won’t vote. They can’t: They’re not citizens.

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[KR: Irene sent this news story about the Indian American vote possibly trending GOP this year because of the nuclear deal. This reveals to me some of the dangers in relying on news reports for gauges of mass opinion; as we found in our National Asian American Survey, most Indian Americans are voting for Obama. It may also be a challenge to use these as a gauge of elite opinion since I have heard from journalists that the Democratic convention was teeming with Indian Americans this year. I'll have more on the survey shortly.]

N-deal a reason to switch to Republican camp for Indians
By Ishani Duttagupta
The Economic Times (India), October 16, 2008

Deven Verma and his son Vishal Verma - both partners at Silicon Valley based venture capital firm Edgewood Ventures - have recently turned Republican supporters. ‘The Indo-American nuclear deal has highlighted the fact that a Republican government is good for India.

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[KR: Most polls put Latinos' support for Obama at around 65%, so perhaps ads like these are part of an attempt to hold those gains. Rarely do Spanish-language ads get attention by mainstream media, but since Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge were involved, it spawned a surprising number of mainstream news stories. Here is a video and reporting from the Washington Post.]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/17/obama_invokes_rush_limbaugh_in.html

Obama Invokes Rush Limbaugh in New Spanish-Language Ads
By Ed O’Keefe, Washington Post

The Obama campaign has released new radio and TV ads in Spanish that seek to tie Sen. John McCain to anti-immigrant comments made by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The ads also suggest the Republican has “dos caras” — “two faces” — when it comes to his relations with Latino voters. The new messages, airing in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, come in response to recent Spanish-language ads by the McCain campaign that suggest Obama is responsible for the collapse of last year’s bipartisan immigration reform efforts.

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[IB: This article discusses the erosion of “block voting” among immigrants, who historically favored the Liberal Party, the centrist party that long formed the government in Canada. As immigrants and minority allegiances to the Liberals fade a bit, both the right-of-center Conservative party and the left-of-center New Democratic Party hope to pick up votes of new Canadians and Canadian-born minority voters.]

Immigrants’ loyalty to Liberals waning
Tories, NDP make gains with voters who have historically supported Grits
Marina Jimenez, The Globe & Mail

Immigrants, once a bedrock of support for the Liberals, no longer automatically vote for the party, loosening an allegiance that dates back to the Trudeau era.

Fifty-eight per cent of visible-minority newcomers supported the Liberals in the 2006 federal election, down from 71 per cent in 2000, according to an analysis of the Canadian Election Study, a survey of voting behaviour undertaken by academics.

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[IB: This is an interesting story, especially in the context of the current political season in the United States, since all major Canadian parties, from left to right, are working hard to court the immigrant vote. This article looks at the current minority Conservative party’s efforts to make a break through with new immigrant voters and with non-white minorities in Canada, highlighting the Conservative record on economics, foreign trade and their stance on certain social issues.]

Mission: immigration; Tories hope for a breakthrough with visible minorities
By John Ivison
The National Post (Canada), September 11, 2008

Vaugahn — How to turn conservatives from visible minorities into Conservatives? Over a working breakfast with reporters, Stephen Harper mused on the biggest hurdle standing between him and majority government. ‘I honestly think the problem we’ve got in Toronto, where we haven’t done as well, is not that there are more Liberals but that conservatives don’t vote Conservative, especially new Canadians,’ he said.
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[KR: It is unlikely that FL will be as much a tossup this year as Ohio or Pennsylvania, but back in July 2008 when an Obama landslide looked possible, this story may have been plausible. Chances are that, come November, Cuban Americans and Florida will follow the same pattern of the last 2 Presidential elections.]

July 13, 2008
Will Little Havana Go Blue?
DAVID RIEFF
New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/magazine/13CUBANS-t.html

On the surface, political life in Cuban Miami seems unchanged. Little Havana is still partly a Disney version of a displaced Cuba and partly a genuine community hub, where families who have long since left for suburbia still come for nostalgic weekend lunches… Most officeholders in Florida and, for that matter, most national politicians continue to at least pay lip service to the dream of a post-Communist Cuba, even though, early this year, Fidel Castro succeeded in seamlessly handing over power to his brother Raúl — testimony, if any was needed, to the stability of the regime.

Yet if Cuban Miami does indeed continue to dream, it is also beginning, quietly, tentatively and painfully, to adjust. Backstage, something very new is happening. Call it the Miami Spring, or Cuban-American glasnost. This community that has clung for decades to its certainties — about the island itself, about the role the exile community would play after the Castro brothers passed from the scene, about where Cuban-Americans should situate themselves in terms of U.S. domestic politics — is in ferment. This matters not only in terms of the destiny of the Cuban-American community itself but also in terms of the 2008 elections since, despite claims made on background by some of Barack Obama’s advisers, Florida is likely to play a pivotal role in determining whether Obama or John McCain becomes president, and the Cuban-American vote is likely to play its usual outsize role in deciding which candidate prevails in the state.

[KR: This ruling is probably not the final word on the extent to which localities can choose not to cooperate with federal authorities on deportation, but it underscores the "tale of two cities" nature of local immigration policies and practices across the country.]

Judge throws out lawsuit against LAPD rule on immigration queries
The slaying of Jamiel Shaw II put a spotlight on Special Order 40, which limits when officers can ask about immigration status. The jurist rules the order doesn’t conflict with federal or state law.
By Joel Rubin
Los Angeles Times

June 26, 2008

A judge Wednesday threw out a lawsuit filed by a Los Angeles resident who wanted to repeal a long-standing LAPD order that restricts when police officers may ask people about their immigration status.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu, granting a motion from the city and the American Civil Liberties Union, said Harold Sturgeon had failed to prove that Special Order 40 was in conflict with federal and state laws that dictate the flow of information between local and federal agencies regarding people’s immigration status.

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