Immigration
“We’re here. We’re not going anywhere”
Angry, exultant and determined, immigrants took to the streets of San Francisco to protest.
Carrying a black and white sign that says “Stop picking on immigrants. Love your neighbor,” the Rev. Norman Fong joins a throng of protesters gathering in San Francisco’s Mission District, the city’s mostly Latino neighborhood. The morning rally and press conference are part of a massive protest in cities across the country, expected to draw as many as a million people from San Diego to New York, all united against punitive immigration bills in Congress.
Continue Reading CloseKatharine Mieszkowski is a senior writer for Salon. More Katharine Mieszkowski.
Florida purging voter rolls
Governor Rick Scott moves forward with a plan to disqualify thousands of mostly Hispanic and Democratic voters
Rick Scott (Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid) Hated Florida Governor Rick Scott has a great idea: A big, massive purge of the state’s voter roll right before a sure-to-be-close presidential election. The governor ordered his secretary of state to compile a list of registered voters who might not be citizens, based on an unreliable and out-of-date state motor vehicle administration database. The secretary of state made a list and then realized the list was not actually very useful or accurate. Then he resigned, and now Scott is just purging away.
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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
Will Latinos elect Obama?
Hispanic voters may not be as decisive a voting bloc as everyone assumes. Just look at the swing states
(Credit: AP/Jae C. Hong) The conventional wisdom is that the growing Latino vote is key to President Obama’s reelection prospects. By all accounts, Latinos favor the president over Mitt Romney by wider margins than they favored him over John McCain in 2008, when he won two-thirds of the Hispanic vote and captured crucial swing states with large Hispanic populations, including Colorado, Nevada and Florida. Bloomberg reported this week that lower-than-average unemployment in the key battleground states “coupled with the growth of adult minority populations in those states create a higher bar” for Romney in his quest to oust the incumbent.
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Jefferson Morley is a staff writer for Salon in Washington and author of the forthcoming book, Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 (Nan Talese/Doubleday). More Jefferson Morley.
Rep. Steve King: Immigrants are like dogs
Updated: On Monday, the Iowa GOP rep used a degrading metaphor to describe how America should select immigrants
Steve King (Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing) [Updated below]
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, compared immigrants to dogs at a town hall meeting yesterday, telling constituents that the U.S. should pick only the best immigrants the way one chooses the “pick of the litter.”
King told the crowd in Pocahontas, Iowa, that he’s owned lots of bird dogs over the years and advised, “You want a good bird dog? You want one that’s going to be aggressive? Pick the one that’s the friskiest … not the one that’s over there sleeping in the corner.”
Continue Reading CloseAlex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald. More Alex Seitz-Wald.
Mitt’s new Latino hurdle
The conservative Hispanic group Romney will address this week once slammed "right-wing extremists" on immigration
Mitt Romney (Credit: AP) As part of an effort to win back Latino voters, Mitt Romney will address a conservative Latino business group this week that has advocated immigration policy views in stark contrast to his own. Romney’s “self-deportation” policy put him well to the right of many of his GOP primary challengers, and the Latino Coalition once slammed “right-wing extremists” who opposed comprehensive immigration reform.
The presumed GOP nominee’s Wednesday speech to the Latino Coalition comes as polls show Romney way behind President Obama among Latino voters and with little hope of capturing the 44 percent of the bloc George W. Bush won in 2004, a highwater mark for the GOP. Even New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) — whom Romney floated as a potential vice-presidential choice — mocked the presumed GOP’s immigration policy last week.
Continue Reading CloseAlex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald. More Alex Seitz-Wald.
Obama’s broken immigration promise
ICE said it would target dangerous immigrants, but it's actually deporting a higher percentage of non-criminals
A man in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, stands next to the border fence as two U.S. law enforcement officers look on from the U.S. side of the fence. (Credit: AP/Raymundo Ruiz) The Obama administration claims that it is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants while focusing on those with criminal records. But new data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows that the number of deportation orders has declined dramatically since last summer and non-criminals comprise a growing percentage of those expelled from the country.
That wasn’t supposed to happen under a policy of “prosecutorial discretion” announced by ICE director John Morton last June. The goal of the policy, announced with much fanfare in the Spanish language media, was to spare “longtime lawful residents” from deportation and to focus on criminals.
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Jefferson Morley is a staff writer for Salon in Washington and author of the forthcoming book, Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 (Nan Talese/Doubleday). More Jefferson Morley.
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