Letter to president Obama

March 29, 2009

President Barack Obama

The White House

Washington DC

Re: American Hispanics require Comprehensive Immigration Reform now!

Dear Mr. President;

The Hispanic Electorate

On November 4, 2008, Hispanics overwhelmingly voted for you for President of the United States giving you 67 percent of the Hispanic vote to McCain's 31 percent.

Hispanics gave you victories in Nevada (5), Colorado (9), New Mexico (5), and California (55) for a total of 74 electoral votes.

The 2008 Hispanic vote of 67% not only enabled you to carry 4 pivotal states but additional states with sufficiently large Hispanic populations in state exit polls showed support for your candidacy. These states include: Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, and Texas.

In 2012, the probability you will carry Arizona is high and will give you a total of 84 votes in the 5 state New West region.

In 2008, McCain carried Arizona (10) as the favorite son receiving 1,012,878 votes (54%) and giving you 851,589 votes (45%).

Had McCain not been a favorite son, it is probable you would have picked up Arizona considering the polls leading up to November 4 indicated you were becoming competitive with McCain.

In Texas, McCain received 4,467,748 votes (55.5%) and you received 3,521,164 votes (43.8%). In 2012, Texas will be added to the New West region adding its 34 electoral votes to the 84 providing for a total of 118 electoral votes in the New West region which will then have 44% of the total electoral votes cast in the United States.

For Republicans searching to find a way out of the political wilderness, the 2008 election provides some clear guideposts — and a flashing yellow sign about the road they’re on.

Even in a year when total voter turnout increased dramatically, Hispanics managed to boost their share of the vote from 8 percent to 9 percent, giving you a lopsided margin of 68 percent to 31 percent, the most for a Democrat since 1996. The numbers represented a sharp drop off in Hispanic support for Republicans since the Bush-Cheney high water mark of 40 percent just 4 years ago.

What’s received less attention is the impact Hispanics had on down-ticket races. Hispanics supported Democrats in races for the Senate and House by even slightly higher margins than they gave you. The Pew Hispanic Center, using exit polls published by CNN, has estimated Hispanics’ share of the vote increased most significantly in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, where they helped elect two new Democratic senators and four new Democrats to the House. All four states were carried by Bush in 2004.

Hispanic voting patterns could change the political landscape well into the next decade and beyond. Increasing numbers of Hispanic voters could play a critical role in the 2010 Senate races in Colorado and Florida, where they comprised 13 percent and 14 percent of the vote in 2008 and gave you 61 percent and 57 percent of their votes, respectively. Arizona, Colorado and Nevada will also be likely battlegrounds for the 2010 governors’ races, which will be critical in setting district lines for congressional and legislative races for the next decade.

Hispanics — entrepreneurial, family-oriented, strongly anti-abortion and supportive of traditional marriage — are a natural constituency for the GOP. Nevertheless, the extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric of many in the so-called Republican “base” has created a huge obstacle to the party’s appeals. For Hispanics, the Republican brand is more than tarnished — it is toxic. Republicans have cut off their noses to spite their faces.

National Review Online contributor Heather MacDonald writes of “the growing underclass culture among second- and third-generation Hispanic Americans.” Peter Brimelow, of the anti-immigration Web site vdare.com, recently told Michael Ruhl of the University of New Mexico’s Talk Radio News Service “the issue in the immigration debate is not racism or xenophobia, it’s treason.”

I myself am a 5th generation American Hispanic serving in the U.S. Army during Vietnam returning to become college educated before heading up economic development for two city governments and now running for the Phoenix City Council. Having someone indict me with "treason" is un-American.

While such talk may be red meat to elements within the Republican party, it’s impossible to overstate its impact on Hispanic voters — tax-paying, patriotic, law-abiding citizens, many of whose families have contributed to our country for generations and each belonging to the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the country.

Two months into your term, your administration so far includes a massive economic stimulus, overhauling the energy grid, health care reform, restructuring education and outlawing secret ballot union elections. Yet while nearly every Democratic constituency has skin in the president’s game, both the White House and congressional Democrats stand silent on solving the immigration problem. For too long, Democrats have been able to talk a good game to Hispanics about normalizing the status of 20 million undocumented workers, knowing hard-right Republicans will screech out in opposition. Only one major union, the Service Employees International Union, dared support comprehensive reform in 2007; the rest could remain blissfully silent, knowing Republicans would kill the bill and loudly take credit for it, alienating Hispanics in the process.

Congressional Democrats and the union bosses they answer to followed Sun Tsu’s advice one should never interrupt an adversary who is destroying himself. Republicans have nothing to lose and much to gain by calling the Democrats’ bluff. Americans know our immigration system is broken, wrenching families apart, hurting thousands of law-abiding businesses and leading to the exploitation of millions of workers. Few believe in mass deportations, and most realize it isn’t about open borders or amnesty.

The U.S. Constitution

Another urgent concern is cities and states continue to attempt to approve ordinances and laws depriving the undocumented rights granted in the U.S. Constitution with the most recent being a controversial proposed ordinance in Fremont, Nebraska. This week, the county clerk certified enough petition signatures had been collected to put the ordinance on the ballot via special election but the city has asked a court to rule the ordinance is unconstitutional and can't go before voters.

ICE

ICE raids across the USA have wreck havoc on Hispanic families primarily Hispanic children born in the United States.

Hispanics arrested by ICE are held in ICE Detention Centers where U.S. Constitutional rights of detained Hispanics are violated. The Amnesty International report just released reveals the human rights violations associated with the dramatic increase in the use of detention as an immigration enforcement mechanism.

The number of people in detention has increased exponentially in the last 10 years to about 300,000 annually.

On any given day in 2008, there were more than 30,000 people in custody.

Confined in prison facilities, detainees are held under civil immigration laws, under which they are neither accused nor convicted of a crime. Conditions are often deplorable and detainees are routinely denied due process.

With no right to counsel, they are often subject to mandatory detention without the right to judicial review, and face challenges in their use of habeas corpus.

Therefore, U.S. Constitutional rights of detained Hispanics must be restored immediately regardless of the status of immigration reform.

Delay in ICE Raids May Signal Policy Change

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has delayed a series of proposed immigration raids and other enforcement actions at U.S. workplaces in recent weeks, asking agents in her department to apply more scrutiny to the selection and investigation of targets as well as the timing of raids, federal officials said.

A senior department official said the delays signal a pending change in whom agents at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement choose to prosecute — increasing the focus on businesses and executives instead of ordinary workers.

"ICE is now scrutinizing these cases more thoroughly to ensure targets are being taken down when they should be taken down, and the employer is being targeted and the surveillance and the investigation is being done how it should be done," said the official, discussing Napolitano's views about sensitive law enforcement matters on the condition of anonymity.

"There will be a change in policy, but in the interim, you've got to scrutinize the cases coming up," the senior DHS official said, noting Napolitano's expectations as a former federal prosecutor and state attorney general.

Another DHS official said Napolitano plans to release protocols this week to ensure more consistent work-site investigations and less "haphazard" decision-making.

Napolitano's moves have led some to question your commitment to work-site raids, which were a signature of Bush administration efforts to combat illegal immigration. Napolitano has highlighted other priorities, such as combating Mexican drug cartels and catching dangerous criminals who are illegal immigrants.

Napolitano's moves foreshadow the difficult political decisions your administration faces as it decides whether to continue mass arrests of illegal immigrant workers in sweeps of meatpackers, construction firms, defense contractors and other employers.

Critics say workplace and neighborhood sweeps are harsh and indiscriminate, and they accuse the government of racial profiling, violating due process rights and committing other humanitarian abuses.

The raids have enraged Hispanic community and religious leaders, immigrant advocates and civil liberties groups important to the Democratic base, who have stepped up pressure on you to stop them.

At a rally last week in Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, head of the archdiocese of your home city, called on the government "to end immigration raids and the separation of families" and support an overhaul of immigration law. "Reform would be a clear sign this administration is truly about change," George said.

Also last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus made similar calls as the caucus met formally with you for the first time.

"Raids that break up families in that way, just kick in the door in the middle of the night, taking a father, a parent away, that's just not the American way. It must stop," Pelosi added at a Capitol Hill conference on border issues sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But you also face pressure from conservative lawmakers and many centrist Democrats, who say workplace enforcement is needed to reduce the supply of jobs that attract illegal immigrants, and that any retreat in defending American jobs in a recession could ignite a populist backlash.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks to reduce immigration, said your aides are trying to manage the issue until an economic turnaround permits an attempt to overhaul immigration laws.

"I think their calculus is, how do they keep Hispanic groups happy enough without angering the broader public so much they sabotage health care and their other priorities?" Krikorian said.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group, said to the contrary, groups such as his support your focus on going after bad employers and criminal illegal immigrants first — or as he put it, prioritizing "drug smugglers, not window washers."

Violence caused by the Mexican drug cartels

Another urgent concern is caused by Mexican drug cartels which have a severe adverse impact on the undocumented and their Hispanic American families.

The scale and spread of violence caused by the Mexican drug cartels make it more important than ever we not only secure the border but learn the identities and backgrounds of the 20 million undocumented workers living throughout our country. Nobody wants blanket amnesty.

Rather, it is about cracking down on border security and drug smuggling that exploit and do harm to all living in the United States including American Hispanics and undocumented Hispanics. Border security and bringing an end to drug smuggling must be combined with a total overhaul of America’s immigration laws. Providing a path to citizenship for those who can establish their identities, pass a background check and pay their back taxes is the best way to concentrate our efforts on those who are here for crime, not jobs — and reduce the pervasive atmosphere of prejudice and suspicion that now surrounds every job applicant with an accent or, in some cases, just an Hispanic surname like — Garrido.

It will be a difficult and an uphill road with lots of sharp curves, but for those that oppose immigration reform now, there’s no alternative. The path they’re on leads right over a cliff.

Your turn to deliver on campaign promises

American Hispanics delivered in 2008 and now it is your turn to deliver on campaign promises.

There is an urgency for American Hispanics and to date, this urgency has not been considered by your administration.

In fact, your appointment of Janet Napolitano is a slap in the face at the Hispanic community.

Never the less, Hispanic News endorsed your candidacy and continues to believe you may become one of America's greatest Presidents but not without the support of American Hispanics who require Comprehensive Immigration Reform become an urgent priority of your Administration.

Our urgency needs to become your urgency.

The movement of increased Hispanic American voting can significantly increase in 2010 and future elections but only if Hispanics become a priority!

American Hispanics require Comprehensive Immigration Reform now!

― Jon Garrido

CEO and Owner of Hispanic News

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