Posts tagged hispanics

By: Janell Ross

In the years just after World War II, California’s health department was convinced that one region of the state would absorb most of the area’s surging population.

State officials who oversaw roads and bridges, dams and even schools each had their own ideas. The politics of population change and public spending grew so intense, that state officials decided to create a central repository for population projections, in the state’s finance department. That move might have been relegated to the rarely-read annals of bureaucratic history, if it weren’t for a section of the state budget report released by California Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) office last week.

The state’s central population researchers found that by July, California’s Latino population will reach parity with the state’s non-Hispanic white population. Each group will make up about 39 percent of the people who live in the state. By the end of December, Latinos will outnumber non-Hispanic whites. That’s a population projection that holds meaning not just for California but also for the nation, said Steve Murdoch, a demographer and the former head of the U.S. Census Bureau.

“This is part of a national pattern,” said Murdoch, now a sociologist at Rice University in Texas. “You are seeing it in the North and South, in the East and in the West. The only difference will be when this becomes the new reality in each state.”

In New Mexico — where Latinos reached parity with the non-Hispanic white population in the last decade — and Texas, Latinos are expected to become each state’s majority population by 2020. Other states will follow. When Latino population growth is combined with that of Asian-Americans and much slower black population growth, most demographers anticipate that the United States will become a minority-majority nation no later than 2050, Murdoch said.

Those population changes should in no way be a revelation. Demographers and other researchers have been projecting that the United States will become a minority-majority country since at least the early part of the last decade. California jumped ahead of the national trend because of immigration, births, new residents from other states and slightly higher-than-average life spans, said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan research organization.

The most recent census also revealed that in 108 of the nation’s roughly 3,000 counties, Latinos made up the largest portion of the population. And in 88 of these areas, the population is already majority Hispanic. That’s true of the counties that include cities such as McAllen, Texas (Hidalgo County), and rural and suburban communities, such as Seward County, Kan., Lopez said.

The pattern that will take shape in California this year marks the most significant population shift in U.S. history since Irish, Italian, German and other Southern and Eastern European immigrants began to outnumber U.S. residents of English origin in the late 1890s and early 1900s, then have children, Murdoch said. And that, of course, has political meaning.

In 1920, the country passed its first immigration control laws, with quotas designed to reduce the number of immigrants coming from Southern and Eastern European countries. And Congress took the unusual step of deviating from the constitutional mandate to reassign the congressional seats held by each state based on population growth — because too many rural and mostly white, English-origin representatives stood to lose their seats, according to Murdoch.

Today, states with rapidly growing Latino populations where immigration was uncommon between the 1890s and the 1990s — such as Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and the Carolinas — have passed a number of laws that aim to discourage undocumented immigrants (and in some cases, legal immigrants) from making these places home. Some of those measures include penalizing school districts that fail to count the number of children of undocumented immigrants attending classes.

“Education has been the coin of the realm, if you will, in America,” Murdoch continued. “Meaning historically, it is the way that you progress [economically], how groups come along. I think the extent to which we invest in the education of Latinos and our newest immigrant populations become fully engaged in our economy will depend a great deal on how we provide schools and other services that these children need. That’s what will determine if the country remains competitive or not.”

To reinforce just how self-defeating the country’s spending habits could prove to be, Murdoch points to three key figures. The average age of white women living in the United States is 41, meaning that the share of women who have little to no childbearing years ahead of them is large. The average age of Latinas living in the U.S. is 25. Finally, in 46 of the 50 states, the non-Hispanic population under the age of 18 declined between 2000 and 2010, he said.

President Barack Obama echoed similar sentiments in his inauguration speech Monday.

“We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future,” Obama said.

But if public spending patterns and priorities in Texas offer any indication, the country is already in trouble, said Julian Vasquez Heilig, an assistant professor of education policy and planning at the University of Texas, Austin. In 2011, the state’s most recent legislative session, elected officials slashed $5.4 billion out of Texas’ K-12 education budget.

That same year, Latino students became the majority population in the state’s public schools, Vasquez Heilig said. Across the country today, about 25 percent of all kindergarten students are Latino.

“If the student growth in Texas had been white kids,” said Vasquez Heilig, who studies how educational policies and funding affect diverse students, “I do not believe that the legislature would have cut $5.4 billion from our school budget. I believe personally that there is a racial dynamic to funding in our schools.”

Many states around the country slashed education funding during and just after the recession. Texas legislators who voted for the cuts said the recession and the state’s budgetary struggles made the cut unavoidable. Vasquez Heilig thinks the overwhelmingly white and Republican 2011 state legislature didn’t feel connected or politically beholden to the state’s Latino population and may have been seeking political revenge on the 70 percent of Latino voters who supported Democrats.

“I know that’s controversial but I’m saying it,” he said. “We know for sure that race and politics are inextricably linked.”

And Texas is not alone. Right now, black and Latino children — particularly those from low-income families — generally attend the worst schools in the country and have the least experienced and least qualified teachers. Some of the country’s best-known education reformers pretend that this situation is sustainable, even desirable, according to Vasquez Heilig. Some are even surprised or try to disguise the fact that schools filled with brand-new teachers typically fail to make academic progress.

The Latino voters and the collation of minority voters who helped put Obama back in office will have to push federal and state officials to change this, said Stella Rouse, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland in College Park, whose book, Legislative Process: Interests and Influence, will be published in March. Access to quality education and health care rank among the top two priorities identified by Latinos across the country, Rouse found.

California is moving in the right direction, she said. The state’s house and senate leaders are both Latinos and the legislature is expected to consider a school funding measure that aims to create more egalitarian conditions in rich and poor school districts and pump more funds into teaching students who are learning English.

The Democratic Party in California has done a lot of grassroots political work. Public policy debates about Republican-backed measures designed to discourage illegal immigration, such as Proposition 187, also helped to galvinize that state’s Latino voters decades ago, Rouse said.

By Brett Zongker

WASHINGTON — Latinos are taking a more prominent role in President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, from the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice swearing in the vice president to a star-studded celebration of Latino culture.

Eva Longoria, a co-chairwoman for Obama’s campaign, is hosting a salute to the president Sunday evening. Antonio Banderas, Rosario Dawson, Marc Anthony and other entertainers are scheduled to appear in “Latino Inaugural 2013: In Performance at the Kennedy Center.” The lineup also includes Jose Feliciano, Prince Royce, Frankie Negron, Rita Moreno and Mario Lopez.

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who gave the keynote speech at last year’s Democratic National Convention, will address the audience.

Meanwhile, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee who is the first Hispanic justice on the highest court, administered the oath of office Sunday morning to Vice President Joe Biden.

Latinos have a distinct presence at this inauguration after showing their growing political influence in the 2012 election. Hispanics voted 7 to 1 for Obama over his challenger, Republican Mitt Romney, whose Hispanic support was less than any presidential candidate in 16 years. Analysts said Romney’s hardline stance on immigration was a factor.

San Antonio philanthropist and business leader Henry Munoz III, who is coordinating the Latino inauguration event with Longoria and other Obama supporters, said this is a special moment when the Latino community is positioned to take an expanded role in shaping the country’s future.

“Without question, the presidential election of 2012 proves that Latinos are perhaps the most important influence from this point forward in the election of the president of the United States,” Munoz said. “It’s important that the leadership in Washington view us not as a narrow interest group but as a vibrant political force” that carries not just votes, but influence and financial resources.

Organizers planned a series of symposiums, dinners and events ahead of the inauguration to keep people talking about issues that matter to Latinos, from immigration reform to building a Latino history museum on the National Mall. Munoz led a presidential commission that called on Congress in 2011 to authorize such a museum within the Smithsonian Institution, but Congress has not yet passed such a bill.

Munoz said it’s important to keep Latinos engaged in the nation’s capital to push for their policy priorities through the inauguration and beyond.

“Our work is not done. It doesn’t end,” he said. “We have a tendency to look at this phenomenon as ending on Election Day, when the reality is now it’s time to get to work.”

Longoria said this is her first inauguration. She has taken on a new role as political advocate since her days on “Desperate Housewives,” helping to push for a Latino museum and co-chairing Obama’s re-election campaign.

Even though this is Obama’s second inauguration, Longoria said there is still much to celebrate, including Sotomayor’s role swearing in the vice president.

“I think there’s something beautiful to a recommitment to the people of this great nation,” Longoria told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

Longoria said she hopes to help influence policies, including immigration reform, and that Obama will make that his top priority as an economic issue.

“I’m trying to do my part as a citizen and my part as a Hispanic and as a woman and as an American,” she said. “I think everybody should be civically engaged in a level that would affect policy. That’s the point; that’s how our government is set up.”

By: Andrew Demillo

SEARCY, Ark. (AP) — Former Bush White House adviser and Republican strategist Karl Rove said Tuesday night that Hispanics are the natural allies of conservatives and the GOP will be “doomed” if it alienates them.

Speaking at a private university in central Arkansas, Rove said Hispanic voters are a key constituency for Republicans as the party grows and warned against using language that would drive away their support.

“If we do with Latinos what we did with African-Americans, Republicans and conservatives will be doomed,” Rove said during a question-and-answer session after his speech at Harding University. “Latinos and Hispanics are by and large the natural allies of conservatives.”

Rove served as deputy chief of staff and adviser to former President George W. Bush, who unsuccessfully pushed for comprehensive immigration reform. Rove didn’t single out any proposals or figures in the party that he believed were alienating Hispanics. Instead, he singled out U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Texas GOP Senate hopeful Ted Cruz as prominent Latino leaders in the Republican Party.

“They’re our people,” Rove said. “And yet we’ve adopted language that makes them feel unwelcome.”

Rove said it’s possible for the party to support immigration reform efforts such as a guest worker program that offer a path to citizenship as well as stronger border protections.

Rove, who appears regularly as a contributor on Fox News and writes a column for the Wall Street Journal, spoke as President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney squared off for their second debate of the campaign. Rove said that whoever wins in the November election will face enormous challenges on the nation’s spending and debt.

“Together these challenges represent a real threat to everything we believe as Americans,” Rove said.

Rove said it will be impossible for Congress to address all of its unfinished business — including an increase in the debt ceiling and whether to extend the tax cuts Bush signed into law — between the election and next year.

“We’re going to have an enormous problem by the end of the year figuring out what we’re going to do and what we’re going to delay doing and how long we’re going to delay doing it,” Rove said.

Rove spoke in a congressional district that’s now represented by his protege, freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin. Griffin, who worked in the Bush White House with Rove, is running for re-election against Democratic challenger Herb Rule. Griffin did not attend Tuesday night’s speech and did not meet with Rove while he was in Arkansas, a spokesman said.

Huffington Post

Aylwing Olivas, a 21-year old student at Miami Dade College’s InterAmerican campus in Miami, noticed that undocumented immigrant high schoolers were dropping out at staggering rates.

So between biology classes and his duties as college student body president, Olivas organized a group of friends. After deciding that social media would be the best way to reach undocumented high school students, Olivas’ group developed an online campaign to help Miami-Dade teenagers learn about their options for higher education and develop a plan. But, until this week, the group lacked one thing — money.

On Monday, the InterAmerican campus group became one of five organizations to receive part of a $25,000 grant from Mobilize.org and the Knight Foundation. Thirteen student groups competed for the funds.

Across the nation, undocumented high school students attend college at very low rates. According to a 2008 report by the Immigration Policy Center, roughly 65,000 undocumented children who have lived in the United States for five years or longer graduate from high school each year. Only between 5 and 10 percent of these high school graduates go on to college, according the report. And those that do make it to college campuses often do not graduate. In 2010, only 51 percent of all Latino college students graduated after six years in school, according to the American Enterprise Institute.

The InterAmerican campus’ anti-drop out group will receive a $5,000 grant and technical support from Mobilize.org. Their videos and pod casts will be made available to students at Miami Senior High School, Coral Gables Senior High School and Miami Springs Senior High School, according to The Miami Herald.

Olivas, who is also an undocumented immigrant, hopes that his project will empower others to take action to slow the drop out rate among undocumented students.

“We are trying to empower students within our communities to develop a sense of urgency and to try to do something. If we can get students within high schools to actually go out there and form coalitions and groups within our high schools, than we’ve done an incredible thing,” Olivas told the Mobalize.org judges.

Mitt Romney will deliver a speech Wednesday from the Freedom Tower. How interesting that Romney — who opposes immigration reform despite supporting it before — will be visiting Miami’s version of Ellis Island. It’s even more ironic that the Freedom Tower is now a facility belonging to Miami Dade College which is the incubator for the Dream Act, immigration-related proposal that Romney opposes.

The Dream Act was born in the halls of MDC by a group of overachieving Hispanic students who cannot attend the top colleges that accepted them because they came to this country illegally as infants. In response, these young men and women have stepped out of the shadows to organize themselves and wage an aggressive campaign in favor of a law that rewards their achievements and allows them to fully integrate into our society.

There are Republicans such as Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart who support this legislation, but Gov. Romney promises to veto it if he’s elected president. He calls it a handout, as if serving in our armed services or going to college — a requirement for citizenship in the law — are free and easy.

Gov. Romney’s business record is equally troubling. He and his partners killed 1,700 American jobs while taking home nearly $250 million in profit as they bought and bankrupted companies like Dade Behring, leaving behind unemployed Miamians to pick up the pieces.

In the coming election, our community will have to answer one fundamental question: Will we support the candidate who supports us?

I’ve no doubt that if Romney wins the Republican nomination, he’ll try to run as fast as he can from his offensive positions to win our support. When he tries to do that, the Dreamers from MDC and many others will have a clear answer for him: Too little, too late.

Freddy Balsera, senior Hispanic adviser, Obama Reelection Campaign, Miami