HispanicTrending

February 23, 2017
By Tatiana Sanchez

While Latinos are divided about their future in the United States under President Donald Trump, many believe social and political conditions for Latinos will worsen, particularly with mass deportations on the horizon, according to a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

The report, released Thursday, was administered to 1,000 Latino adults the month before Trump’s inauguration in January. It comes at a particularly contentious time for immigrants, many of whom are fearful of an administration set to drastically clamp down on illegal immigration.

An estimated 54 percent of Latinos said they feel confident about their place in America after Trump’s election, but the remaining 41 percent have “serious concerns.”

“Hispanics who do not hold U.S. citizenship and do not hold a green card — a group likely to be in the country without authorization — are more likely than the U.S.-born and other immigrants to express concern,” the report said.

The Trump administration this week announced new deportation regulations in which anyone in the country illegally who is charged with any offense or suspected of committing a crime could be a target for deportation. The measures drastically expand the number of undocumented immigrants vulnerable to deportation.

Nearly half of Latino adults — regardless of their immigration status — said they worry “a lot” or “some” that they or a close friend or family member could be deported, while 52 percent said they are not worried.

Those concerns are little changed from 2013, according to the report, when 46 percent of Latinos said they were worried.

Preston Rudy, a professor of sociology at San Jose State, said it’s likely many more Latinos are fearful of deportation today than when the survey was conducted.

“People are probably a little more worried now because the terms of the (immigration) debate have shifted,” he said. “I think even if you are U.S.-born, you all of a sudden have a greater sense of the risks at stake, and you know more people that are likely to be deported than you knew before.”

There were an estimated 57 million Latinos in the U.S. in 2015, according to Pew. The majority — about 66 percent — were U.S.-born while 3 in 10 are lawful permanent residents and about 4 in 10 are undocumented immigrants.

The Latinos surveyed considered improving the country’s educational system a top priority in the next four years, followed by protecting the country from terrorist attacks; strengthening the nation’s economy; reducing health care costs; and lastly, dealing with immigration issues.

Their priorities show, “how much the Latino community is participating fully in the political and cultural life of the United States,” said Rudy.

The bilingual surveys were administered over the phone from Dec. 7 to Jan. 15 by an independent research company hired by Pew.

Source: Monterey Herald

February 24, 2017
By Steve Harrison

The president of the N.C. Democratic Party’s Hispanic Caucus blasted Charlotte City Council in a letter Friday, saying council members’ “silence on recent ICE raids has been both deafening and painful.”

Manuel Betancur said the council has been silent on the issue, except for what he called “pitiful parroting of (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) talking points designed to placate, marginalize and criminalize.”

“Then, becoming aware of our existence, you spout the tired line, ‘Charlotte welcomes everyone.’ Seriously? That is all you have to say?” Betancur wrote.

Betancur, the owner of Las Delicias Bakery on Central Avenue, said he had planned to read the letter to council members at Monday’s meeting, but he will be out of town on business.

Betancur was educated as a navy engineer and came to the United States from Colombia.

On Feb. 16, when thousands of people marched in Marshall Park protesting recent federal immigration raids, the city of Charlotte released a statement on immigration enforcement.

The statement, supported by City Council, said that recent federal immigration arrests are “consistent” with immigration enforcement under the Obama administration and “do not represent a major new threat.”

The statement advised residents to “keep calm and refer to reliable information sources before deciding that they could be at risk.”

Earlier that week, Mayor Jennifer Roberts was more critical of ICE.

“I’m concerned by the recent actions by agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) that have brought fear and chaos to our families and our Charlotte community,” she said. “These ICE activities impact not only immigrants and refugees, but also native born citizens who live, study, work, and worship with them.”

Later in her speech, Roberts said, “I believe that no one should be deported for merely having a broken tail light.”

The city has been put in a difficult position by the Trump administration and the N.C. General Assembly.

Two years ago, council members passed a civil rights resolution that said Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police would not enforce federal immigration law and would not act upon information about someone’s immigration status.

That prompted a rebuke from the state legislators, who passed a law prohibiting ordinances like the one adopted in Charlotte, which the state called a “Sanctuary City.” In response, the city removed language from its policies and resolutions stating that it would not assist in enforcing immigration law.

But some legislators are still upset by Charlotte’s position. Roberts and some council members have asked that CMPD Chief Kerr Putney reassure immigrants that police are only focused on solving and preventing violent crime – not in asking about someone’s immigration status.

Mecklenburg Commissioner Bill James believes CMPD should be doing more to comply with the Trump administration’s recent order on immigration.

In the Feb. 16 statement, the city and council members said CMPD “does not enforce immigration laws.”

“Charlotte will not declare itself a sanctuary city because it fears losing what it thinks is important federal funding,” Betancur wrote. “Raleigh holds all the power over our city council. … Are you our same elected representatives who fought tooth and nail against HB2 for our dear LGBT community? You’re not acting like it. Did you lose your spines when Trump was elected?”

Source: Charlotte Observer

February 23, 2017
By Patricia Mazzei

 About a month before Donald Trump — then merely a celebrity real-estate mogul — completed the purchase of the Doral Resort & Spa, the hotel hosted a conference of the Hispanic Leadership Network, a fledgling Republican group created to grow the party’s Latino outreach.

A discussion titled “Immigration Policy and the Hispanic Workforce” featured prominent Republicans urging lawmakers to pursue comprehensive immigration legislation. One of the panelists was the dean of Florida International University’s law school, Alex Acosta.

“We need someone that’s going to say we have to enact comprehensive immigration solutions,” Acosta said at the Jan. 27, 2012, conference. “Part of that means figuring out what we do with all the individuals that are already in our nation. We need them here. They provide construction jobs. They provide agricultural jobs. We need to figure out a way to address that.

“We need to figure out a way to then have a pathway to further future legal immigration. And if we don’t take it all at once, we’re not going to solve it, because you can’t solve part of it without solving the other part. You can’t address immigration without answering what do you do with individuals that are already in the United States.”

Acosta is now President Trump’s second nominee for Labor secretary. And if the experience of Andy Puzder, Trump’s first nominee, is any indication, Acosta’s moderate immigration views could be problematic ahead of his confirmation hearing.

Puzder, a fast-food executive who withdrew his nomination last week after failing to garner enough support from Senate Republicans, had advocated for immigration reform, including for a “path to legal status” for most immigrants in the country illegally.

Other revelations — that Puzder failed to pay taxes for hiring an undocumented housekeeper, and that his ex-wife had told “The Oprah Winfrey Show” he once abused her — ultimately derailed Puzder’s nomination. (His ex-wife later retracted those allegations.) But Puzder’s immigration views had put him at odds from the start with at least two top Trump White House advisers, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, who favor a much harder line.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment Thursday on Acosta’s remarks. Like other would-be Cabinet members, Acosta has not granted news interviews following his nomination.

The embarrassment of Puzder’s failed Cabinet appointment might have pushed Trump to nominate Acosta, perhaps the most conventional of choices for a Republican president. Acosta is a Harvard-educated lawyer who clerked for Judge Samuel Alito before Alito joined the Supreme Court. He cleared three Bush-era Senate confirmations — for positions on the National Labor Relations Board and in the Justice Department — and would be the only Hispanic on Trump’s Cabinet if confirmed again.

In the 2012 panel, Acosta, the son of Cuban immigrants, spoke about immigration in emotional terms, citing President Ronald Reagan’s final address before leaving the White House, in which he referred to the American pilgrim “looking for a home that would be free.”

“Well, the reality is, today, we have people journeying here on little wooden boats or rafts made of tires tied together, and they’re coming here for the exact same reason: because they’re looking for a home that will be free,” Acosta said. “That’s an experience that so many of us that grew up here in Miami have.”

He recalled that, as Miami U.S. attorney, he had “horrific” immigration-related experiences, including meeting the parents of an 8-year-old Cuban boy.

“The boy had drowned in a passage coming from Cuba, and they were in my office thanking me, because they at least were able to stay in this nation,” he said. “I had a case where a woman was raped repeatedly on her way over from Haiti because the smugglers — the folks, the coyotes that brought her over — abused her, and she allowed it because for her that was the price of passage to our nation.

“And so the cost of illegal immigration is not simply exclusion, but it’s abuse of those individuals that are looking to our nation as beacons of freedom,” Acosta continued. “And so we need to take it on, and we need to figure out a way to address illegal immigration and give everyone a pathway to get here legally, in a transparent and in a fair way.”

Acosta also objected to the term “border security” referring solely to immigrant control, noting that drugs and weapons were also smuggled into the country. And he denounced the immigration system as overly bureaucratic.

“I was the federal prosecutor, and when there were immigration issues, I had to get out the directory and start figuring out which agency does this and which agency does that and which agency does that,” he said. “When even the folks on the inside have trouble figuring out the system, that really speaks to: It is a very, very broken system, and it’s time to change it.”

Acosta’s immigration views are consistent with most elected Miami Republicans, who have often clashed with more conservative GOP factions when it comes to how to deal with people in the country illegally. Some FIU faculty have requested that the campus serve as a “sanctuary” for undocumented students, meaning that the university wouldn’t cooperate with federal authorities if they come looking for students to question, detain or deport.

The same day Acosta spoke on the 2012 Hispanic Leadership Network panel, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., delivered a stirringly personal speech to the conference about immigration. (Rubio has since backed away from backing comprehensive immigration legislation.) One of the biggest names involved in the now-defunct Hispanic Leadership Network was Jeb Bush, who on Tuesday praised Acosta on Twitter as an “outstanding addition” to Trump’s Cabinet.

Acosta’s 2012 panel included two former Cabinet secretaries under President George W. Bush — Carlos Gutierrez, who headed the Commerce Department, and Margaret Spellings of the Education Department — and Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, all of whom embraced the sort of immigration policies advocated by both Bush brothers: secure borders and penalties for unauthorized immigrants, but no massive deportations.

The Trump administration on Tuesday unveiled new Homeland Security rules that expose to expulsion most of the people illegally in the country.

Source: Reading Eagle