by Grazia Salvemini

Workplace enforcement, more so than border enforcement, is what’s needed to help the United States develop a true comprehensive immigration policy, contends national authority Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at University of California at San Diego.

Basing his assessment on a four-year UCSD study of immigration patterns from Mexico, Cornelius recommends that the United States provide more legal and better assimilation opportunities, including legalization of most undocumented workers presently residing here, and helping Mexico develop alternatives to immigration through social projects.

He and other experts discussed the report’s findings with Hispanic Link News Service and other media during a June 10 teleconference.

For the survey, a team of students interviewed more than 3,000 Mexican migrants and potential migrants over the past four years. Their written report concluded, “Tens of billions of dollars have been invested in the border enforcement build-up since 1993, with little concern about its efficacy.”

The study’s summary noted that 4,700 migrants have died in clandestine border crossings since 1995. It found that increasing numbers of those who succeed in crossing are reluctant to return to Mexico for family visits because of the rising expense and turmoil of having to reenter the United States. Many now bring families and put down roots, Cornelius explained, stating, “Border enforcement has clearly accelerated this trend.”

Though the number of hours the Border Patrol spends patrolling the U.S. land boundary with Mexico has increased, Cornelius said apprehensions have been falling since the second half of 2006. He attributes this not just to more border enforcement, but to reduced circulatory trips, the increased use of coyotes (people smugglers), more crossings through legal ports, and the U.S. recession.

That many undocumented Mexican migrants no longer return home frequently for family reunions or traditional community celebrations creates a serious economic void, Cornelius says.

The report calculates:

One out of five migrants enters the United States through designated crossing stations, the preferred mode of entry as it reduces physical risk.

While many try to cross in the San Diego sector, fewer than half are apprehended, with 92 percent-98 percent eventually succeeding on subsequent tries.

Three out of fi ve migrants now rely on coyotes. Cornelius says the use of coyotes “virtually guarantees success.” However, their fees, which past studies showed averaged $978 in 1995, have doubled and tripled since then. During the UCSD study period, they averaged $2,100.

Cornelius adds that the tens of thousands of coyotes work in a “decentralized industry.” Many operate on referrals from previous customers, family and friends. They are often paid upon successful delivery. Therefore, it is in their best interest that their customers reach the United States safely. Joining Cornelius in assessing U.S. immigration enforcement strategies, Kevin Appleby, director of Offi ce of Immigration and Refugee Policy with the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, calls U.S. responses to the dilemma “a dark period in immigration history.”

Migrant families are coming to avoid separation, he emphasizes, saying family unity must be considered in weighing new legislation.

“Economic development is the Church’s answer to a border wall,” he says.

Immigration analyst Tamar Jacoby calls the UCSD research fi ndings that border enforcement as we’ve been doing it doesn’t work “shocking.” She also recommends more vigorous workplace enforcement, stating that a “lesson for policy is realism could really help.”

The study, entitled “Controlling Unauth­orized Immigration from Mexico: The Failure of ‘Prevention through Deterrence’ and the Need for Comprehensive Reform,” can be accessed on-line at www.immigrationpolicy.org.

(Grazia Salvemini, based in Washington, D.C., reports for Hispanic Link News Service). ©2008

by José de la Isla

José de la Isla

HOUSTON — The recent ban by the Veterans Administration on allowing voter registration in its facilities has a familiar ring to it. All this has happened before.

The controversy centers around a May 5 VA directive claiming voter registration drives at its facilities are not permitted because they could disrupt other operations and may pose a violation of the Hatch Act. This is the law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity on the job.

VA spokesman Matt Smith said the reason for the directive stemmed from wanting to ensure that staff stay focused on the work at hand and don’t have to decide the partisan political agendas of those who want to conduct voter registration drives on their premises.

For years the VA had allowed local managers to decide whether to permit such drives, Ian Urbina reported in The New York Times. But in 2004 a Democratic Party chairman in California filed suit when he was refused permission to register voters at a VA campus. A lower court ruled against the county chairman in January, saying he failed to prove any veteran was actually prevented from voting.

In May the VA banned all outside groups from registration drives on its properties.

The same month, VA officials turned down a request by the California Secretary of State to allow the sites to become official voter registration agencies that would distribute materials and help applicants fill out cards and return them.

A federal appellate court is about to hear arguments following the lower court’s January decision. All this despite President Bill Clinton’s executive order in 1994 requiring federal agencies to help register, distribute materials and assist applicants fill out cards and return them.

Now why does all this sound familiar?

Back in 1984, New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya ordered his state agencies to provide voter-registration services. This was followed by similar actions in New York, Ohio and Texas. But the Texas employment commissioner balked. He fi led a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor asking whether state workers — partly paid with federal funds — should distribute voter-registration forms.

Ronald Reagan had been elected in 1980, and the 1982 mid-term elections suggested a strong public opposition against Reagonomics. That was the backdrop to the controversy that followed.

Donald Devine, directing the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, implied in a letter to the then Democratic governors of New York, Ohio and Texas that state personnel were being forced to influence people to register — Democratic. Then he went the next insulting step, asking the governors to turn over materials used in federal programs and suggested their grants were in jeopardy if they didn’t comply.

Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste called it “blackmail.” Mario Cuomo of New York said Devine was in fact curtailing access to the ballot box. And Texas Gov. Mark White called a press conference at a state agency in which he passed out registration cards.

Within days after Devine’s letter was made public, the Republican U.S. Senate approved a resolution encouraging voter registration drives at all levels of government. There was no violation of the Hatch Act nor confl ict with funds paying for state personnel. House hearings chastised Devine for selectively applying federal legislation and misapplying it for partisan purposes. to “intimidate” the governors.

Later, New York reported about 150,000 new registrations. Ohio lottery, liquor stores and unemployment offi ces came up with 59,000 forms. In Texas, 450 human services offi ces received desktop registration dispensers, and a fl yer was sent to welfare, Medicaid and food-stamp recipients. In the fi nal analysis, trying to block voter registration is an old ploy. It is the kind of dirty tricks Richard Nixon’s operations and Karl Rove’s antics were famous for. It is unworthy of our times. By its very nature, registering voters — whoever does it and whoever the registrants are — is a necessary civic activity, not a partisan one.

Perhaps the next revisions of the Civil Rights Act should include a category for federal administrators who obstruct voter registration.

[José de la Isla writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. He is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (Archer Books). E-mail joseisla3@yahoo.com]. ©2008

by Alejandro Meneses

Alex Meneses

Hispanic leaders and analysts are expressing enthusiasm over the Democratic presidential nomination of Barack Obama but maintain he has yet to win over the Latino vote.

This, they claim, will be critical for him — or John McCain — to reach the presidency.

Generally, Latino leaders hailed the nomination of the first black presidential candidate of a major party as a historic national milestone.

Obama gained the 2,118 delegates needed to clinch his party’s nomination in the Montana and South Dakota primaries June 4. Several super delegates endorsed him that day. His delegate count is 2187.5 to Hillary Clinton’s 1927.

“He will need the Hispanic vote to win. He’s going to have to work hard for it. One cannot take it for granted,” said Andrés Ramírez, vice president for Hispanic programs of the pro-Democrat think tank NDN. Most Latino support in the primaries went to Clinton. In California and New York, Latinos backed her by about a 2 to 1 margin.

Analysts stress Hispanics will be critical in November in swing states such as Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico.

Ramírez credited Obama with showing much initiative in reaching out to Hispanics. He maintained both Democratic candidates set records in Spanish-language advertising expenditures during the primaries.

The NDN hailed as “landmark” a 30-second ad Obama delivered in flawless Spanish during the Puerto Rico primary.

But Los Angeles’ La Opinión, the country’s largest Spanish-language daily, criticized his campaign for not communicating enough with the Spanish-language media.

Columnist Pilar Marrero wrote May 31, “The Barack Obama presidential campaign’s indifference to the Latino press has been a problem since the beginning of the race. The people surrounding the candidate don’t seem too aware or concerned about maintaining communication with the media that informs the Spanish-speaking community.”

La Opinión had endorsed Obama. Obama supporter Juan José Gutiérrez, director of the Los Angeles-based Latino Movement USA, concurred that until now Obama has not mobilized the Latino community as he has done with blacks and youth, proposing, “We have to start pressing right away and make sure we are visible in this campaign.”

But, he added, with what Latinos know of Obama now, they would not choose Hillary Clinton “the same way they did in the beginning.”

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois has been a leader in rallying Hispanics and immigrants to press federal offi cials to pass immigration reform that offers legalization to the undocumented. He helped organize the massive 2006 pro-immigrant demonstrations in Chicago and elsewhere.

At a December 2007 meeting with Gutiérrez and several grassroots leaders, Obama promised, if elected president, he would push hard for immigration reform in his first year.

Gutiérrez points out that Obama stated his commitment to address the issue before Clinton did. “No more than 15 of us met with him,” he said. “Now it will be necessary for him to fi ll up a stadium of Latinos.”

The meeting convinced Gutiérrez that Obama was the right candidate. He says Obama’s goals on a wide range of issues from comprehensive immigration reform to ending the war in Iraq resonate strongly with the Latino community.

“I haven’t met a politician in my life who makes me feel that with this person things can get done, that there is sincerity, openness and originality. He’s genuine,” he said. “It’s not easy to fi nd this type of politician, especially at those political levels.”

Analyst José de la Isla explained Obama represents the political “change” that the U.S. public was demanding when they gave Democrats the majority in Congress in 2006.

He said the 2006 Latino mobilization was an expression of this call for change and a major agent that made it happen. He added the Democratic leadership, however, failed to bring about much promised reforms.

“(Obama) is the change that people were talking about,” he said. “He was very adroit, sharp in perceiving what the public was saying and the rest of the Democratic Party was not.”

Gutiérrez said Obama has offered fresh policy views on a variety of issues, including his approach to Latin America, especially as it refers to speaking, “without preconditions,” to Cuba.

Republican National Committee spokesperson Hessy Fernández said Obama’s willingness to talk to “hostile leaders” while turning his back to “friends” like Colombia through his opposition of a free trade agreement speaks to his “inexperience.”

Gutiérrez responded, “It indicates that with Barack Obama there will be a different dynamic of doing politics,” but he added that as in all politics, “there will be possibilities, but no guarantees.”

He said, “The fact that we support Senator Obama doesn’t mean we’re giving him a blank check, and that once he reaches power he can do whatever because we’ll be satisfied history was made.” Hispanic Link.

(Alex Meneses Miyashita, based in Washington, D.C.. is a correspondent with the Mexico City daily El Universal. Email: alexm377@hotmail.com). ©2008

by Dana Guest

Gloria Molina

Gloria Molina, the lone Hispanic serving on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, voiced reservations to Hispanic Link News Service in a June 4 interview about the advisability of reshaping the Board’s district lines to create a second “Hispanic-majority” seat. A request to do so is now under consideration by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Presently, in a county where nearly 50 percent of the 10 million residents are Hispanic, the board includes Molina, Yvonne Burke, who is African American, and three white males.

Blacks, who made up 12.4% of the county’s population in 1980, now stand at 9.8%, according to the Census Bureau figures.

Responding to Hispanic Link reporters following her address to 175 guests attending a “Latino Leaders” luncheon in Washington, D.C., Molina expressed concern that shifting district lines could eliminate black representation on the board.

“One of the most dangerous things to us would be to exclude the African-American community,” said Molina.

The board manages an annual budget of $22 billion, larger than that of about 80 percent of U.S. states. Each of the five districts contains more than two million residents.

Molina’s concern is challenged by Alan Clayton, equal opportunity director for the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association, which has filed a federal voting rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice.

“We enhance the ability of Latinos, but we do not undercut the ability of African Americans to elect candidates where they currently have electoral power,” Clayton stated.

Supervisorial District #2, now served by Burke, who is retiring this year, has a black voting-age population of 29.5 percent. Two other African Americans who are competing in a November runoff to replace her.

Among those supporting the administrative complaint are redistricting expert Leo Estrada, associate professor of Urban Planning at UCLA, and Attorney Armando Durón, who had served back in 1991 on the county board’s redistricting committee as an appointee of Molina. Now a co-counsel in the administrative complaint, he said he was “shocked” by Molina’s comments. The proposed districts have carefully avoided reducing black infl uence in District 2, he said.

A pair of demonstration maps proposed by the LACCEA offer a 30.9 percent and a 30.5 percent black voting-age population in the reshaped district, according to Clayton.

“Alan Clayton has made a compelling case to show that African Americans are not affected by the proposal presented,” Joaquín Avila, a national expert on voting rights and redistricting who fi led a 68-page legal brief on behalf of the administrative complaint, told Hispanic Link.

Clayton and the LAC-CEA submitted their intervention request to the Department of Justice in February of 2003 and, in spite of repeated status requests, are still waiting for an answer.

Molina called another proposal to expand the Board of Supervisors to nine members “a good idea because it would allow for better representation of the entire community.”

The majority of board members opposed it, claiming it would be too costly. Board members like the power they have, Clayton responded. “They don’t want to give it up.”

(Dana Guest is a reporter with Hispanic Link News Service in Washington, D.C. Reach her care of ­editor@hispaniclink.org).