It’s obvious that Obama threw us under the bus. All you need do is look at the number of immigrants in internment, which has increased on his watch (375,000 in his first year).

Obama’s not too busy to act; he’s acting plenty. Problem is, he’s focused on enforcement. Enforcement = Detention.

I fear if we make nice to Obama, it’ll be the death of us.

Seems Obama has forgotten his promise, we need to remind him with massive marches in the streets, make sure all Americans know that keeping immigrants out is racist!

Not pushing an amnesty is the ONE thing Obama has done that the public agrees with. He knows no one wants it.

MAYBE you’ve all missed this:

ZOGBY POLL: An Examination of Minority Voters’ Views on Immigration

In contrast to the leadership of many ethnic advocacy groups, most members of minority groups think immigration is too high.

* Hispanics: 56 percent said it is too high; 7 percent said too low; 14 percent just right.

* Asian-Americans: 57 percent said immigration is too high; 5 percent said too low; 18 percent just right.

* African-Americans: 68 percent said it is too high; 4 percent said too low; 14 percent just right.

Most members of minority groups feel that there are plenty of Americans available to fill unskilled jobs.

* Hispanics: 15 percent said legal immigration should be increased to fill unskilled jobs; 65 percent said there are plenty of Americans available to do unskilled jobs, employers just need to pay more.

* Asian-Americans: 19 percent said increase immigration; 65 percent said plenty of Americans are available.

* African-Americans: 6 percent said increase immigration; 81 percent said plenty of Americans are available.

When asked to choose between enforcement that would cause illegal immigrants in the country to go home or offering them a pathway to citizenship with conditions, most members of minority groups choose enforcement.

* Hispanics: 52 percent support enforcement to encourage illegals to go home; 34 percent support conditional legalization.

* Asian-Americans: 57 percent support enforcement; 29 percent support conditional legalization.

* African-Americans: 50 percent support enforcement; 30 percent support conditional legalization.

Interesting you say this Caesar, because I found another Zogby poll that came to the opposite conclusion: http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.cfm?ID=795,

which found that a majority of hispanics favored immigration reform that would include legalization.

Also, Caesar, Zogby was PAID and told by CIS what to ask in this poll. Smell a bias?

Yes! March in the street by the millions. Show Americans just how important your cause it to you!

As it appears Latino vote is needed to president Obama but he is unwilling to do anything in return. Latino voters are not going to switch to republicans since they are even less likely to implement immigration reform and he knows it all too well. Therefore Latinos need to become swing woters for a democrat if republican is winning and for a republican if a democrat is winning thus effectively blocking any political process till their issue is resolved. They were asked to excercise patience maybe they should make politicians learn some patience since many elections in this country now decided by really couple of percent even 10 percent latino vote can have tremendous impact by not blindly siding with democrats but voting their interest. A lesson could have been learnt by Obama in Massachusets – if more latinos were happy they’d vote for a democratic candidate given needed couple points.
After all illegals are nothing but slaves most americans want. And slavery was abolished throughout history of the world only when slave became more of a nuisance then help – they became hard to control didn’t look well after master’s tools and so forth.
So by becoming political nuisance can only latino voters show to be a force of their own not some tools in republicans’ or democrats’ arsenal.
Watch polls, watch states and vote accordingly so there’s always almost even number of dems and republicans in Congress so nothing could be done till the issue of immigration reform is addressed.

It is sad to see that there is no anger in Latino population about reforming not happening. And it may not happen. For past 200 years and you have develop a habit of been abused. Look at your history.

Look at the core of this issue.

Why is so many inmates that are Latino
Why you have minimum paying jobs
Why your population is general unhealthy. Obesity etc.
Why does only thing that comes good out of Mexico is drugs and cheap labor.

In the name of no amnesty this system is breaking the Latinos values and making them another second class cizten like the blacks. I have seen firsthand how a dad is deported, and his kids and wife are left to provide for themselves. Now, how can a women will little education, and two kids in school provide an American dream. Their can’t. Kids will finish high school and may end up in gangs, or commit a pity game and then can’t find a good job. The mother will work all her live and when time come to retire, she will be too sick or old to enjoy the lifestyle that a regular American takes for granted. Who will benefits here.

I recently saw George Lopez DVD. He gets it. He was talking about your values, and culture that should be kept, but why is the general Latino population not getting is, that if you don’t act now and demand your rights, you will lose your soul. You will be a second class citizen in this country only good for cheap labor.

and p.s. to “maria.” I happen to be very good friends with no less that two former KKK members that are also latino men.

Hey all you pro-immigrant Latinos here, after Asian Americans like me and Mike Honda help you pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform you promise to keep the ball rolling to allow in the other 500 million people around the world who want to immigrate to the USA, so we can finally and totally end the US racist power structure, right? I mean you support CIR to give green cards to all the undocumented people around the world who want to live here, and not just the ones currently in the USA, right?

la Macha:
“People of color”? What an insulting phrase to use. Everbody has color. I’ve never seen or met a person who didn’t have color.

@ La Macha

500 million peeps?

There might not be one solid “Latino voting bloc”, in the words of Legalatin, but a majority voting one way or the other has made a difference in the last 2 presidential elections, and that is clear from the results up and down the ballot. So you can choose to ignore those voters, but there will be a price to pay for not hearing what they have to say. Breaking promises for politicians always comes at a price.

How, VinhLe, can you infer from “500 million peeps” that I am anti-immigrant?

First off, I am loathe to jump into something that I am uninformed on. Yes, I am uninformed on whether 500 million people immigrating to the U.S. is feasible, desirable, etc etc.

I understand the notion from a Human Rights perspective, i.e. everyone is human and deserves a good shot at a decent life. Morally just, for sure. Yet, the 500 million number, at first glance(no serious research done), could completely cancel out any chance for them to have a better life.

For example, the United States’ current population is somewhere around 300 million. 500 + 300 would make 800 million. Is it reasonable to assume that such a rapid increase in population(has this even happened before?) would cause a panoply of problems, like infrastructure collapse?

On another note, Vinh Le, as you are concerned with the well-being of humans worldwide, you should yell at the Europeans, who are severely restrictive as it relates to Immigrants coming to their counties. In fact, Europe has no automatic citizenship through birth, barely confer asylum upon anyone, and are strikingly intolerant of other cultures.

Re: “You were used by a slick politician. He called you Latinos, promised you amnesty and said, Si se Puede.”

Most of us preferred Hillary and voted for her in the primaries. As for Obam, he was betetr than the McCain. He’s old, and we might have been stuck with Sarah Palin as President.

As for Obama, I don’t see him winning a second term, and I don’t think he cares. He can make more money giving speeches around the world for his corporate masters.

Bryan J.
Those are just the adults, they have children also you know, 4 children average per family (what current immigrants have) works out to 500 million. China and Indian both accommodate more than 1 billion people without problem, why cannot the USA accommodate less than that? And what makes you think me and others are not active in Europe also?

carmen–people of color is a phrase that has been used to organize people who are racialized in a discriminatory way for decades. this phrase didn’t just come out of nowhere. do some homework.

@Bryan–re: 500 million peeps–yes. I am ultimatly for the total destruction of any border. I know that will not happen any time soon or in my life time or in my children’s life time. but I think borders are inhumane and not based in any sort of natural need for the environment or humans. So if 500 million want to come–let them. but when our world is ruled by natural flows of resources and human needs–500 million won’t be showing up any way.

@bubbles–I don’t necessarily agree that he was a liar–I think he was a politician who got plastered as a “socialist” and many progressives began to believe it and hope for it. I think he’s always been a mainstream sorta centrist dude–and mainstream sorta centrist dudes will never do anything that might get them in trouble: witness, bill clinton.

Exactly, Sabina–people act like the only reason the US and other “first world” nations are where they are today is because of “hard workers.” Well–maybe so–but there was also economic systems that permanently indebted colonial states, slave labor, etc.

Sabina–I’m with you. It makes me laugh when people say “fix what’s wrong with your country instead of coming to mine”–because they don’t seem to realize–the US and other first world nations are what’s wrong with most of the countries!!!! And that “fixing” their country would necessarily mean the destruction or overthrow of the US and first world economies!!!! I am with you searching for solutions that right wrongs done–I think that while it can’t fix everything, it will provide a peaceful means to replacing a violent economic system that has wrecked so much havoc on the world…

I have to disagree about whether Obama lied about immigration reform during the campaign. Since the primaries I have noticed that Mexican-Americans are not on his radar. He said whatever he had to say to get our votes.

Everything I thought about him has been confirmed. Oh, and what about the shabby way he is dealing with the case of discrimination against Hispanic farmers by the Department of Agriculture? This guy does not care about us and to me he isn’t even a Democrat.

As for bill Clinton, Obama does not measure up to him. When Bill Clinton was elected, the right wing was still at the height of its popularity. A Democrat was able to win, in part, because Ross perot got 20% of the vote, much of it coming from Republicans. Clinton had to fight tooth and nail for Democratic issues and sometimes he lost, but at least he tried.

Conversely, Obama won when the GOP was in decline. He had a mandate like no other president has had in our lifetimes. And what has he done?

Serve Wall St.

He doesn’t even pretend to fight for the average person. If he were to address the economy, or even acknowledge that we are in a very deep recession, then maybe the Democrats would not be losing ground. But then again, the man has no experience running anything, so how would he know what to do. If he is one term, that is fine with me.

Vinh Le said:
“China and Indian both accommodate more than 1 billion people without problem, why cannot the USA accommodate less than that? ”

The vast majority of people living in China and India are poor. Why would you want to wish that same situation upon the United States?

Obama, the Democratic Party and others who aspire to get re-elected or elected in November and beyond should know that betrayal will be punished hard at the polls.
Support for comprenehisve immigration reform in 2010 will be a litmus test in November.

Carmen–as I said in my first comment to you–it was used to organize “people who are racialized in a discriminatory way.” “Non-White” has it’s problems as well, for example: latinos are often mestizos–which means that they are part “white” (or European) and part indigenous. What does “non-white” mean to those of us who fit that label?

i am not denying that POC doesn’t have it’s problems–there are whole dissertations written on the identity politics of “people of color.” But at the same time, most other identity markers have many of the same issues that “POC” does.

And I want to emphasize again that the term “people of color’ has been around for a very long time, and used quite successfully as a way to politicize and organize those who experience racism.

i’m mexican-american and i don’t support amnesty (which we already did in 1986 for 3 million people), mass immigration, or illegal immigration, partly for the same reasons cesar chavez did. it would flood the labor pool (which is what happened with the maquiladoras), which would put pressure on wages in industries that all these extra workers would be in, making them go to other places or jobs. if you legalized all the workers here today and unionized them (if you could even unionize them all), a whole new wave of them would come and undercut the older workers, and we’d be back at square one (that is, if we did nothing with any enforcement provisions). of course, you could let everyone who wants to come here, come in at an unlimited number, but not only would that swamp our immigration services, infrastructure, etc., no union would be able to collectively bargain for all these tens or hundreds of millions of new workers in the country, not AFL-CIO, not SEIU, not the IWW, no one. most of these workers coming illegally from poor countries are usually content with low wages here, because it’s 5-10 times (or even more) what they would be earning back at home.

you can’t say that we don’t allow many immigrants to come here legally, because it’s just untrue. since the early 90′s, we’ve immigrated at least 1 million people a year, and the top senders haven’t been from europe, canada, or australia, but mexico, china, india, and the philipines.

what we need is:
1. e-verify, as well as going after employers (with fines/jail) who hire undocumented workers.
2. real border enforcement with fencing, sensors, cameras, etc.
3. a guest worker program (a program that protects those workers while they work here) for the few industries that could use extra workers, like agriculture.
4. we could also fix these trade agreements that are part of the reason some of them are coming here.
5. after all that’s been done, THEN we could talk honestly about some kind of (one FINAL) amnesty.

anything about amnesty before that, or mass immigration, etc. is just ridiculous and unfeasible.

I don’t support illegal immigration or mass immigration. But I know that something has to be done for those undocumented immigrants currently living in this country. It is not feasible to deport all 11-12 million of them since the economy of this country would suffer greatly; more than what it is now. And realistically speaking, amnesty won’t happen again. But what will happen to all those people? Michael, do you want to keep them in the shadows until they die and their children, now legal, get to the live the American Dream afterwards?

I see your point that most of the time, when they are coming to the US, immigrants in general are better off than what they had back in their country of origin. But is it humane to you? To pay the minimum wage to those persons that pick up all the fruits and vegetables that you are eating; to those that prepare the meats that you eat. Ok so fine. Lets say you deport them. Who will work in those areas? Legal, American citizens. Of course they won’t do it for the same wage and since the manufacturers need to make profit from their products, they’ll have to increase their prices. And because the manufacturers increase their price, so do the stores have to do the same. And so, the buyer, meaning YOU ALL, get to pay double of what you originally paid for your fruits, vegetables, and meats. There is the solution that Michael presents to you.

I think those anti-immigrants should go out one day to a Hispanic community and live their lives; work where they do, travel where they go, and see that it is not at all a piece of cake for them. At the very least, anti-immigrants should be aware of the impact that undocumented immigrants have on this country and on themselves before they share their thoughts.

Re: “Of course they won’t do it for the same wage and since the manufacturers need to make profit from their products, they’ll have to increase their prices.”

Worse that that, they will just move their companies. Even agriculture can move. Next time you go to the grocery store, notice how much of our food now comes from foreign countries.

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la Macha said:
“@Bryan–re: 500 million peeps–yes. I am ultimatly for the total destruction of any border.”

And a result of the total destruction of any border would be the total destruction of the United States.

Yes, Sabina, I agree, alternative is needed. But it seems you are speaking of gradual reform, not an complete change like destroying borders, etc.

don’t give up. this monday, march 8’10, Obama is meeting with his the Secretary of Homeland security, janet napolitano, Sen. Chuck Schumer of new york(Dem) and Lindsey Graham od north carolina(Rep) and other security members to jump start immigration reform. watch it on msnbc. uumm Senator Graham, a Republican supports Immigration reform and since he is on board, the democrats need 1 more republican to introduce the bill. please don’t give up. if so, don’t give up on the Dream Act, which will probably pass this year, in fact before the summer or during the summer before any real immigration reform is passed. you all have come so far and now you want to give up. if that’s how you feel, then you might as well leave the country, but for the sake of your futures, DON’T GIVE UP (THE FIGHT).

@ La Macha,

Even before borders, Humans maimed and killed each other for a variety of reasons. There is no “Truth”. The World is not a good place, naturally. The latter fact must be taken into account in advocacy for current immigration reform, or any reform for that matter. It is, unfortunately, an uphill battle of the most epic proportions. On another note, as you care about the rights of human beings, please do not neglect the unacceptable nation state of Cuba’s profound neglect of the rights of its citizens.

Re: “yes, I want total destruction of the borders–and it’s a false argument to suggest that the only alternative is the stone ages–borders are a very recent phenomenon..”

Borders aren’t a recent phenomenon–look at the Great Wall of China. Do you believe in the concept of countries? It seems like you’re saying that we should just have unrestricted immigration regardless of the cost. Does it work the other way too? Should Americans be allowed to move into Mexico and buy everything up, regardless of the impact on Mexicans?

Why is it that in the immigration debate, nobody ever criticizes the Mexican government? Don’t they bear some responsibility for what is going on?

Eliminating the border won’t solve the problems in Mexico. I support immigration reform, but the reality is that not all of Mexico will fit in the USA. Immigration cannot continue unabated. At some point Mexicans are going to have to reform their own country.

What we can do is demand that NAFTA be renegotiated, or repealed, and we can demand that our government stop backing oppresive regimes in Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

bubbles-is that the only thing we can do? we cna’t work on anything simultaneously? or with long term generational goals?

it’s also telling that you can name one wall historically as a example of a “border”–which was built as a means of protection rather than border enforcement. that is: it was not used as a way to differentiate china from another country–it was used as a way to locate armies that existed as a “first line” if you will.

And to be clear–I am not saying “unrestricted immigration regardless of cost”–I am saying “dissolution of the nation/state” and through that, the disolving of national borders. Specifically–national borders would no longer exist because *nation/states* would no longer exist.

please see: Andrea Smith, Angela Davis, Vine Deloria, Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Audre Lorde, Edward Said, et al. for nuanced and complex discussions of “nation/state.” THis is not a new, undeveloped, or otherwise “out there” concept. Scholars have been studying the ‘nation/state’ through Marxism for centuries and through scholars of color (i.e. post colonialism) since edward said.

@Bubbles- Yes, it helps to look it up But really, Mexican and US electeds are basically the same people with different accents. They go to the same American universities and have the same mentors, socialize in very similar places, marry in the same pools. So Mexican policy is written with the intention of benefitting that same small group of people. Mexican officials will never do anything to challenge their US counterparts, they’re a team. Just one more reason why the border is nothing but a cruel joke.

@Byan J- I also don’t think it’s possible to just change everything all a once. even after the cuban revolution some things never changed, and people continue to work on them. Bottom line is if we want a better world, we have to work a lifetime no matter what happens.

Yeah, I am already quite negligent in blogging/reading blogs when I shouldn’t be to have the time to read in-depth scholarly articles. But I am sure they have legitimate points. My real problem with the theory is not the theory in itself; it is that theories effect on immigration reform within the United States.

We must try to include whatever reasonable, caring minds are still amongst the U.S. populous to be for a legalization/ increase in legal limit for Latin Americans reform. This theory, to me, would tend to turn away otherwise willing allies. But who really knows.