­by José de la Isla

José de la Isla

MEXICO CITY – Do you remember the 1992 election when Bill Clinton adjusted his policy thinking to accommodate President H.W. Bush’s big vision of a free-trade zone for all of the Americas?

Clinton’s Fleetwood Mac vision had to turn on a dime, and he did it successfully. Clinton even had his advisor Henry Cisneros come to Mexico City for a private chat about it with President Carlos Salinas.

Eventually, a North American Free Trade Agreement was signed under President Clinton, one that excluded labor issues and had weak national provisions for Mexico’s development.

The treaty was like having cause without anticipating effect.

It was one, but not the only, reason for the rise of immigration to the United States, especially by the most marginal Mexican populations.

Then September 11th closed the border, like damming a stream where a freer flow of back-and-forth movement by job-seeking people had occurred before.

Where Latin American economic development had been a priority, it receded to near zero as “terrorism” and military solutions became the hot buttons.

Unfortunately, the national mentality changed also toward all of our neighbors to the south. Since that time, Democrats have retrenched and Republican interests have narrow-focused on free-trade expansion. Neither is a vision for a new North America, especially one where the old problems have not gone away.

We are back again where we were before the 1992 election.

In the current environment, our presidential candidates show little vision about the geography issue. Do they know we are North Americans? That the Western Hemisphere matters to our future? That Mexico is the gateway?

Will someone, please – for our own sake – ask the top candidates what that vision is.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently issued a seven-point plan of action on the Western Hemisphere. He touched on our vital interests in energy, trade and security. Much of it rehashes, rhetorically, longstanding concerns (Castro, trade, “must rebuild relationships,” etc.)

However, it was refreshing to see the confession, “since the terror of 9/11, America has become so preoccupied with other regions that we have forgotten our friends in our own hemisphere.”

Indeed, the candidates in the presidential campaign of 2008 can serve the nation best when they focus on a national and hemispheric vision. It’s time to sober up the jingoistic attitudes setting in. Illegal immigration, and the pogroms that have been coddled and allowed, are detrimental to our standing in the world and to our own future.

Angry voters with cynical beliefs, increased retrenchment, isolationism and the weird 19th century notions about the Americas – is that the nation the presidential candidates want to lead?

To change that course will take guts.

An addled public waits to see which one is not bidding to become President Chicken.

A phrase went around last July before the Mexican presidential elections here. In private conversations, people said it was not possible to make one good president out of their top three contenders.

The U.S. political scene seems to be going in the same direction. The seven declared Democrats and eight Republicans in the race are watering down, not improving, the public’s understanding about what kind of future we can build with respect to our neighbors.

It’s the vision thing, again.

Unless someone comes along with clear insight, we will be discussing this again, in similar terms, in 2012.

In the 1992 Clinton-Bush campaign, we got to the starting gate. In 2008, it seems we are there again for the long-delayed national debate.

[José de la Isla, author of “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power” (Archer Books, 2003), writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail joseisla3@yahoo.com.] c 2007

­by Marvin J Ramirez

Marvin Ramirez

Senate Finance Committee approved by a bipartisan vote of 17-4 the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, which would expand coverage to more than three million children and maintain coverage for the 6.6 million children currently in the program. Latino children would especially benefit, since close to 40 percent of all uninsured children in the U.S. are Hispanic. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Thursday on President Bush not to block expanding health care to millions of children.

In a statement to the press, Reid shows his concern that despite of its strong bipartisanship, the bill might not go anywhere if the president doesn’t act on it.

“Today we came one step closer to fulfilling the bipartisan Senate’s promise of improving the lives of millions of American kids,” Reid said. “By overwhelmingly approving a plan to renew and enhance the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee voiced our commitment to ensure low-income, uninsured children have access to health care.  This bill does not go as far as some of us would have liked, but it is a strong example of bipartisan compromise.”

According the statement, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) it’s very crucial for Latinos.

It’s  very critical to the well-being of Latino children and their families, the most uninsured racial/ethnic group in this country, Reid said.

“There are still 9 million uninsured children in America, 38.8 percent of whom are Latino.  Unfortunately, our President has failed to protect Latino families served by SCHIP by submitting a budget request that would not even provide enough to cover those already enrolled.

That is why the Senate will take up legislation investing $35 billion in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, $30 billion more than the administration’s request.

My question is why people have to beg every so often, for funds to cover programs that will keep the future generations healthy to take the country to the future?

by José de la Isla

José de la Isla

HOUSTON — In their mad scramble to gain credibility from the increasingly important Latino vote, presidential candidates are already harvesting endorsements and forming “advisory” committees of prominent Hispanics.

So how is one candidate more in tune than another? What is authentic interest and what is entirely self-serving?

In fact, who sets the Latino agenda?

The late Los Angeles Times columnist Frank del Olmo complained in 1987 about the efforts of then-San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros who proposed a summit to prepare a national agenda for the 1988 presidential race.  Del Olmo reasoned, it is simply not possible to combine the political interests of Mexican Americans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Central Americans. He even referenced what he called “the myth of a Hispanic vote.”

Today, the list would go beyond ethnicities to regions, income groups, education categories, religion, citizenship status, and gender.

Of course, there is no myth now but a functioning reality about the importance of the Latino vote.

Yet, what exactly is the Latino perspective when so many “issues” are put on the table? With the possible exception of the deep-seated dismay with Congress’s inaction on immigration and (so far) education, other matters can cut any which way.

True, Del Olmo was correct to object to a one-size-fits-all mentality. Yet, an agenda resulted in 1988, formulated by 50 leaders, of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference. It offered a buffet of 14 policy issue areas. In 1992, a similar bipartisan agenda was offered to George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Even those who follow politics closely may be surprised to learn that this contemporary effort, while significant, was not unprecedented. Actually, the first such effort occurred in 1939.

In his forthcoming book, “The Search for a Civic Voice: California Latino Politics,” Kenneth C. Burt brilliantly documents the First National Congress of the Mexican and Spanish-American Peoples of the United States (known as El Congreso). Representatives to it came from Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Montana and New York.

The basic values expressed in the first meeting, held in Los Angeles, stand up to this day. Eduardo Quevedo, its presiding chairman, talked about promoting unity within the Hispanic community by combating inequality. The movement would form alliances with other progressive organizations. Its agenda was directed at state-level initiatives and federal action. It had a transnational perspective, showing presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lázaro Cárdenas’s shared responsibilities in matters of immigration and progress.

El Congreso stood for democratic rule in those pre-World War II days, when some prominent state and national leaders flirted with fascism and others rationalized for Stalinist Russia.

And most applicable today, they stood for civic participation — extending voting rights by eliminating discriminatory practices, and engaging in outreach to turn out the vote.

The national mobilization foreseen in 1939 was not carried out. But its spirit has persisted over the seven decades. Now, a new initiative — ya es hora, now’s the time — involves the National Council of La Raza, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, the Service Employees International Union SEIU and the We Are America Alliance, ImpreMedia, Univisión, and 300 regional and local organizations in 15 states.

This is the kind of action that makes presidential frontrunners perk up. The Wall Street Journal concedes the mobilization “could influence the agenda and outcome of the 2008 election.”

So, who speaks for Hispanics? The voters do, of course. And it seems candidates listen, but only after a scrappy Latino agenda packs a brawny wallop at the polls. And with each election, their hearing improves.

(José de la Isla, author of “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power” (Archer Books, 2003) writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail joseisla3@yahoo.com.) © 2007

by José de la Isla

HOUSTON — With the U.S. Senate’s refusal to act on an immigration reform bill this year, the old Chinese definition of “crisis” seems appropriate. “Crisis” in translation is generally held to mean “danger” and “opportunity.”

The danger is quite obvious. The National Conference of State Legislators reported in April that nearly 1,200 pieces of immigration legislation had already been introduced at the state level this year, more than double last year’s total. By year’s end, possibly every state in the union will be looking at “remedies” to restrict activity and movements by immigrants.

Such actions may appease assorted nativists and others who are just plain frustrated by federal inaction, but it’s a long way from a solution. It comes with plentiful “shoot-yourself-in-the-foot” dangers.

Immigrants and their children will account for all U.S. work-force growth between 2010 and 2030. As an example, Central Florida’s economic growth is tied to its fast-growing Hispanic population (many of them immigrants).

Many countries with homogeneous populations and little immigration (such as Germany, Italy and Japan) don’t grow as fast economically as other developed countries.  The same is true of regions within the United States.

Particularly disturbing here are the values and public attitudes that restrictive measures engender. Even if and when federal immigration reform comes about, ethnic-conflict jargon will have set up xenophobic, polarizing mindsets that could last generations and take decades to overcome.

Restrictive policies will contribute to making a nation that’s already gripped with fear about terrorism reach a new level of suspicion concerning the people within it. Some current proposals compete with the Jim Crow law of segregation days. It’s like the ’50s all over again.

A polarized nation led by a large but shrinking, grumpy white population will emerge as Hispanics become 17 percent of its people by 2020 and 24 percent by 2050.

It’s still a long while before 2009, when hopefully a new Congress will act responsibly in the national interest.  Meanwhile, local “reforms” based on emotion can cripple law-abiding working families, many of whom are U.S. citizens.

Now, the opportunities are much less visual, hidden behind dismal, disconcerting statistics in Mexico.

Mexicans make up roughly 60 percent of the unauthorized immigrants in the United States. Much of our immigration pull stems from the huge discrepancy in the standards of living between us and our neighboring countries. It’s one of the widest in the world.

But anyone who thinks emigration is good for Mexico is mistaken. It only makes things worse. In June, the United Nations Program for Development reported the main contributor is “inequality and not poverty.”

The program’s Thierry Lemaresquier points out it is neither the richest nor the poorest who leave. Instead it is those in the middle. This is precisely the group that Mexico most needs for its own development.

That correlates with another recent revelation.  Quoted in the Mexico City daily El Universal, Mexico’s Secretary of the Public Interest (Función Pública) stated that in the last five years, 35 percent of potential direct foreign investments decided against entering Mexico because of the perception of the country’s corruption and lack of transparency.

The vicious cycle is one that pushes people out and discourages investment within. It is a formula for slow growth and stagnation — consequently more emigration.

Between now and 2009 is a good time for inter-parliamentary commissions, immigrant hometown associations, Latino chambers of commerce, civic groups and transnational interests to demand that Mexico clean up its act.

President Felipe Calderón and the parties that make up Mexico’s Congress need to hear it from every direction. It’s a better solution than the ludicrous convulsion taking place in the United States, stemming from our own lack of reform.

So that’s the danger and the opportunity. Just as in the Chinese word for “crisis.”

[José de la Isla, author of “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power” (Archer Books, 2003) writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail joseisla3@yahoo.com.]© 2007

by Marvin J Ramirez

Marvin Ramirez

The recent Tuesday, June 26 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that race cannot be a factor in the assignment of children in public school is slap in the face to African-North Americans and Latinos who have faced more than a century of discrimination in society.

The court struck down public school choice plans in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, saying that they relied on an unconstitutional use of racial criteria, with the 5-4 vote.

Similar plans already in place or being proposed nationwide could be in danger now, which would sharply limit the power of local governments to achieve diversity using race-based criteria.

“The troubling end-of-term Supreme Court decision that forbids local school boards from using race as a factor in their efforts to achieve school integration endangers the progress made during the civil rights movement and the quality of our educational system,” said Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oak).

“As someone who is passionate about ensuring equality for people on all the issues, the recent ruling has saddened me and it forces us to redouble our efforts to defeat the effects of housing and other segregation patterns,” Lee said.

Decided May 17, 1954. BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) its aim was to end discrimination in the schools based on race.

Cites the case: “Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, pursuant to state laws permitting or requiring such segregation, denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment – even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors of White and Negro schools may be equal.

After that decision, schools around the nation started using race to integrate the schools in order to insure equal access to a good education to all children.

“Today’s shocking decision undermines the commitment to equality in education that was spelled out in the Brown vs. The Board of Education decision, and threatens to turn the clock back on half a century of advances in racial equality in education,” adds Lee.

After attacking and weakening affirmative action, which was part of the Civil Rights Act some 40 years ago, I just hope that after this Court ruling, the schools find ways to continue integrating the so every child in the U.S. can have the same opportunity for a quality and competitive education.

The enemy of the immigrants, obviously is also the enemy of the civil rights laws that protect the groups that have been historically more oppressed.