Latinos in the USofA

If Kamala Harris had narrowly won the presidency, we'd be talking vigorously about this book, trying to understand why some Latinos shifted their party preferences in the vote. Since the Donald sneaked narrowly through to commit his ungoverned mayhem on the nation, most of us will likely miss it. But we shouldn't.

Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America by Paola Ramos is a lucid and affecting dissection of the fraction of the Latino electorate that has been drawn to Trump. Ramos, like her father Jorge Ramos, is a serious journalist. She's not spit balling when she delves into why some American Latinos are attracted to the right. The book is generous and fascinating, bolstered by the personal stories of her subjects who are her neighbors and more and more of ours.

Ramos explores three facets of Latino experience in this country: tribalism, traditionalism, and trauma.

Tribalism refers to the common trope in communities who experience exclusion from the "national mainstream," versions of "I want to identify with and as one of Them," however folks see the ruling class. Hence we get the life story of a Latino Border Patrol agent who succeeds indeed -- and then receives a nasty surprise about his own origin story. Traditionalism is represented by the Bronx beauty parlor owner who fears the Anglo society around her and looks to Trump to protect her. (No knock on hairdressers: I go to such a person to get clipped and she's very clear about which side of the class divide she and most of her Latino customers are on.)

The section on trauma did the most to open my thinking to what my neighbors bring with them from south of the border. The contemporary media environment enables them to subsist on the home country news in a way past immigrants might not have. During the pandemic, many imbibed Russian propaganda and disinformation that we seldom saw in English language sources. English speakers took in plenty of nonsense; new immigrants and Spanish speakers got an extra dose while shut away from the virus.

Ramos interrogates the history of Simon Bolivar, the hero leader of the overthrow of Spanish rule in the southern continent. His legacy is mixed.

Two things can be true at once. Simon Bolivar could have been both a liberator and an authoritarian caudillo. He could be a hero to some, an enemy to others. That seems a recurring story in Latin American history and politics, strongmen achieving "democracy" by way of authoritarianism. Or, rather, their own distorted version of democracy. ...

Democracies in Latin America are haunted by the shadows of strongmen. ...[For example] Nayib Bukele [in El Salvador] is simply the latest iteration of this dark legacy. ... Millions of people love Bukele. Millions of people want Bukele. They look up to him, not just in Latin America, but also in the United States.

She goes on:

For many Latinos, the purpose of being in the U.S. is to heal. To run away and escape from these wounds of the past. Yet the United States has a long history of exploiting the political trauma many Latinos carry -- particularly those fleeing communism and violence -- to score political points. ... American administrations have leveraged that pain, exacerbated it, and carefully weaponized it to their advantage. I thought about everyone who has been featured in this book ... So many of them don't appear to have healed from their wounds. ...

... America's foreign policy created fertile grounds for the steady rise of authoritarianism, not just in Latin America, but in our own backyard. It all comes full circle.

Ramos concludes:

The image America has of us doesn't necessarily translate into the image many Latinos have of themselves. Americans may see us as minorities, but many feel like the majority. They may see uses immigrants, but many feel like border vigilantes on the inside. They may see us as Black, but many feel white. They may see us as Indigenous, but many feel like Spaniards. They may see us as liberal on paper, but many feel conservative in their hearts. They may see us as people who value democratic ideals, but many yearn for the authoritarian strongman. The path toward finding ourselves in this country has never been linear. In our quest to find belonging in America, many Latinos are quietly oscillating between identities, spaces, and stories that are often disconnected and at odds with each other.

Latinos in this country are our future. That coming into demographic might has meant one trajectory in California and a different one in Florida. But what does it really mean? Ramos provides glimpses. There will be more.

• • •

For what it is worth -- not much but there will the more to come -- Latinos are rapidly becoming disillusioned by the Trump regime's record on "Jobs and the Economy" according to the YouGov/Economist poll. In January Hispanics gave Trump a favorable 41-36 rating; but late February, they were registering 32-58 disapproval. That's a -31 point swing in a month!

Travel advisory

 

I'd been wondering when it would come to this. 

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The NAACP over the weekend issued a travel advisory for Florida, joining two other civil rights groups in warning potential tourists that recent laws and policies championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida lawmakers are “openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.”

The NAACP, long an advocate for Black Americans, joined the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Latino civil rights organization, and Equality Florida, a gay rights advocacy group, in issuing travel advisories for the Sunshine State, where tourism is one of the state’s largest job sectors.

The warning approved Saturday by the NAACP’s board of directors tells tourists that, before traveling to Florida, they should understand the state of Florida “devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”

Once again, we are living in a States of Disunion. Sad -- and angry for my Florida friends.

Cruelty is repellent

Alejandra Molina, writing for Religion News Service, reports an intriguing development: In Florida, Latino evangelicals mobilize against DeSantis’ crackdown on immigrants.

(RNS) — After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered state regulators to deny licenses or renewals to those sheltering unaccompanied migrant children, more than 200 faith leaders and evangelical pastors of Spanish-speaking churches made their way to downtown Tallahassee last year in February to protest the governor for preventing them from doing the “work that God has called us do.”

Many of those shelters were housed in local Latino evangelical churches, according to the faith leaders who also demonstrated against a law that now forbids state and local governments from contracting with transportation companies that knowingly bring undocumented immigrants.

Now, as DeSantis prepares for a possible 2024 presidential bid and as he’s unveiled an immigration package that seeks to impose stiffer penalties for Floridians who “knowingly transport, conceal, or harbor” unauthorized immigrants, some Latino evangelical leaders say they’re willing to break the law if it’s enacted and are mobilizing their flocks — this time in larger numbers — to “fight against DeSantis.”

Much is made of DeSantis' success in winning Florida's Latino voters from the Democrats in his recent re-election. And the churches whose leaders have been riled by his anti-immigrant policies are very conservative -- happy enough with DeSantis' anti-LGBTQ initiatives and encouragement of a broad abortion ban. But there is such a thing as going too far ...

The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who serves as president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said “there is angst in the Latino evangelical community” over DeSantis’ immigration proposal.

“Every Latino pastor in the state of Florida, every Latino pastor who pastors a Spanish-speaking ministry, if I were a betting man, we have undocumented individuals in each of these churches, bar none,” he said. ”So are you saying that the same Latino pastors that are pro-life, pro-religious liberty, biblical justice, no to socialism and communism and yes to parental rights —  that this leadership, that we are criminals?”

The pastor lauded DeSantis’ “outreach to the Hispanic evangelical community,” but said he is concerned about the third degree felony penalties for harboring someone who is undocumented as well as hospitals collecting immigration information. This doesn’t mean that Latino evangelicals favor President Joe Biden’s handling of immigration issues, he added.

One reason these doubts about DeSantis may be unlikely to have much immediate electoral impact in Florida is that even these pastors' church members who are citizens and could vote, very likely don't vote. Latinos notoriously participate at low rates. If they are also new citizens and thus newly eligible, it often takes people many years in their new country to get into the election habit.

But performative cruelty to the Spanish-speaking migrants can be felt as viscerally morally offensive. DeSantis is attacking deep communal values that are strongly held. The community gets by through communal care; they expect their politicians to have the same values.

In California thirty years ago, a majority of the Spanish-speaking community was turned for life against Republicans by Governor Pete Wilson's cruel anti-immigrant measures. A generation of Latino political leaders grew up determined to participate fully in the governance of the state. They became some of recent decades most notable politicians (for better and less good) -- Kevin de León, Xavier Becerra, Alex Padilla ...

In Philip Bump's new book The Aftermath, he quotes Lisa García Bedolla, a UC Berkeley political scientist, about the generally stand-offish posture of many (most?) potential Latino voters toward elections and the Democratic party:

“There’s growing independent identification in the United States, and especially among the immigrant-origin communities, so Asian Americans and Latinos are much more likely to be independent,” García Bedolla told me. “In a weird way, you know, the support for the Democratic Party is more, well, they [Republicans] hate us. So I guess we have to go over here.”

This dynamic seems to be what DeSantis is setting up. Florida is not California, but cruelty is cruelty and repellent everywhere. Inflicting moral injury has not ended well for Republicans.

Signs of Democratic life

I didn't watch or listen to Trump's big speech on Tuesday. I don't understand why anyone should: he just makes stuff up and lies. Attend to what he does? Sure. And if it is as evil as it appears to be, get in the way. But I don't rot my brain by listening to him.

But it appears I did miss something. In addition to the Democratic response by the former Kentucky governor, over on Telemundo and Univision, Astrid Silva was giving the Democratic Spanish language response and it's a doozy.

Even if you don't speak Spanish, watch this young Nevada DREAMer for a bit. She's awesome.
I wonder if they'll try to deport her? I'm sure our thuggish border cops and President Bannon would just love to. If she ever is allowed to become a citizen, let's run her for office!

Here's some of what she said, for the linguistically challenged (like me).

... During his first weeks as President, Trump signed executive orders that endanger our entire community. He took actions that focus specifically on hurting immigrants and refugees. He is spending resources on targeting working immigrant families for deportation, he wants to spend billions of dollars to build an unnecessary border wall, and he’s looking for ways to deny entry to our Muslim brothers and sisters.

He made it very clear during his presidential campaign that he wanted his supporters to believe that all immigrants are criminals and refugees are terrorists. And recently, he directed immigration enforcement agents to arrest and deport any undocumented person they find, essentially legalizing racial profiling and setting in motion his mass deportation plan. Among the people that ICE arrested, are mothers, fathers, DREAMers with DACA, a victim of domestic violence, and many more.

... Instead of closing the door on Muslims and insulting countries around the world, President Trump should work with our allies to combat and defeat ISIS and other terrorist, and seek peace. Instead of standing behind oil companies and special interests, undoing the progress we’ve made to combat climate change, President Trump should be a leader and protect the quality of our air and our water. Because we only have one planet, and if we destroy it, what are we going to leave for our children?

Latinos suffer more from asthma than other groups. The state of our environment is key to our wellbeing. Instead of getting rid of the ACA, which gave health insurance to millions of Latinos, Trump and Republicans should make improvements to the program so it can cover more people and cost less.

Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood, even though community clinics provide preventive and primary medical care for hundreds of thousands of people.

...We are living in uncertain times that are completely abnormal. In which the administration constantly questions the media and tries to actively destroy their credibility.

We can’t let these actions become normalized.

H/t to Dara Lind for flagging this for those of us who don't watch Spanish-language TV.

Let's be there for the kids

The election forced this young woman to clarify what mattered to her way too young. She knows where she stands.

“If I had to go through this again to help everybody else who’s Mexican-American, I would do it a thousand million bajillion more times,” she said.

***Meanwhile a good friend is calling out truths in the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco supervisors approve Nieto memorial

By a vote of 9-1, the Supes have approved a memorial for Alex Nieto, the young man our trigger-happy cops murdered on March 21, 2014. The Department of Parks and Recreation was ordered to proceed with an installation at the site on Bernal Hill where Nieto was killed. This bitter sweet victory for Nieto's family, friends, and allies is the result of months of organizing against the SFPD's casual use of deadly force in Latin and Black communities. Nieto supporters held his picture high while the pols discussed.

Termed-out Supervisors Avalos, Campos, and Mar, along with still-serving Supervisor Cohen, were co-sponsors. The only opposition came from Supervisor Farrell who is apparently sucking up for the endorsement of Police Officers Association when he makes his rumored run for mayor.

Supervisor Campos called out the police union for its claim that remembering a young man who died at police hands implied that the Supervisors did not adequately appreciate cops' service. Supervisor Cohen, who was subjected to POA bullying during the discussion that led to declaration the declaration of a day remembering Mario Woods -- another SFPD victim -- agreed, asking the cops to remember that their victims were human beings. The POA didn't bother to show up for the Nieto memorial vote.

San Francisco's usually impotent Office of Citizen Complaints has meanwhile found that one of Nieto's killers, Officer Roger Morse, had "reflected discredit on the department" by gloating on Facebook after a suburban jury cleared the uniformed shooters in a civil trial. OCC findings rarely result in discipline -- absence of effective penalties is why bigotry and excessive force never seem to get rooted out from the SFPD.

Meanwhile, San Franciscans await the Mayor's decision on who to appoint as new chief of the department. Any appointment from inside, including Acting Chief Toney Chaplin, would signal continuation of dirty business as usual under the continued sway of the Police Officers Association.

Latino vote

In the aftermath of last Tuesday's white-lash, one of the hardy perennials of dispute in recent Democratic losses is back. Was or wasn't the Latino vote much smaller and less for Clinton than so many had expected?

Pew reports:

Hillary Clinton won 65% of Latino voters on Tuesday, according to National Election Pool exit poll data, a level of Democratic support similar to 2008, when 67% of Hispanics backed Barack Obama. However, Clinton’s share of the Latino vote was lower than in 2012, when 71% of Latinos voted to reelect Obama.

While Clinton underperformed among Latinos compared with 2012, Republican Donald Trump won 29% of the Latino vote, a similar share to 2012, when Mitt Romney won 27%, and to 2008, when John McCain won 31%, according to exit polls.

Meanwhile, the polling group Latino Decisions calls, figuratively, bullshit!

Matt Barreto, UCLA Professor of Political Science and Chicano Studies, and Co-Founder of Latino Decisions, presented the results of the Latino Decisions Election Eve poll. The key finding: Latinos backed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a 78-19% margin.

As pointed out in the presentation, the Latino Decisions finding on national presidential margin is consistent with high-quality, large-sample, bilingual polls carried out by a number of groups in recent months. ... Further, Barreto pointed to an examination of the actual election results from counties and precincts which are majority Latino show higher rates of Latino voter turnout in 2016, and show Clinton winning roughly 80% of the Latino vote.

Barreto contends that the exit polls routinely choose precincts to survey that do not include adequate numbers of Latinos to generate accurate estimates and consequently cannot.

This is all reminiscent of 2004, when exit polls suggested that 40 percent of Latino voters went for George W. Bush. Latino researchers contested that margin then, as they contest exit poll estimates now.

Long experience getting out Latino voters makes me lean toward the Latino Decisions view. Pollsters aren't going to get accurate measures without linguistically and culturally appropriate interviewers. As is true in all polling, quality is expensive. So I look at lowball findings like Pew's with a lot of skepticism. Is our repeated mystification about Latino polling and voting a byproduct of our as-yet-incomplete assimilation of the legitimacy of Latino citizenship in a U.S. culture more multifaceted than we realize?

Election oddments: part 1 -- landslide counties

This graphic was part of a larger New York Times story about how people with different political leanings have sorted themselves into separate geographical communities over the last two decades. By "landslide counties," they mean counties where either the Republican or Democratic presidential nominee prevailed by more than 20 percent. Mostly what it seems to say is that white Democrats live in cities, brown and black Democrats are more widely dispersed and white Republicans live in rural and exurban areas. Also that there are a lot of voters in urban counties!

Their data is worth perusing, but this picture of the sort caught my eye for a different reason. See that large gray area that takes up most of central California? Aside from northern Maine and rural Wisconsin, we in this state have the largest territorial expanse in the country where neither party has an overwhelming advantage. That's interesting. Presumably, at least in part, it means that there are significant numbers of Latino residents, some of whom are voting and many more of whom might, throughout that area, keeping party contests more competitive.

No wonder the current Congressional race between Republican incumbent David Valadao and Democratic challenger Emilio Huerta (grandson of labor activist Dolores Huerta) in the 21st Congressional district is so heated, featuring wild and arguably false charges from the GOP camp. Huerta has been criticized as a weak candidate by some Dems. We'll see how this intra-Latino race turns out in a year with growing Latino turnout.

On Tuesday this thing will be over, praise be! For the next few days I'll be putting up collected oddments that have caught my eye which will soon be just history.

Getting out the Latino vote

If only Latinos voted in proportion to their (registered, citizen) numbers, this country would be a different, perhaps better, place. But, mostly, they don't. In 2012 only 48 percent of eligible Latinos voted.

These days, academics and campaign professionals rely on practical experiments to discover how to persuade unlikely voters to go out and cast a ballot. Latino Decisions reports on one such experiment under the title Mobilizing Latinos with Identity Appeals. Researchers arranged for telephone calls to good-sized populations (several thousand in each set) of potential Latino voters in California and Texas in areas which were majority Latino. One group got a message about recycling. One was urged to vote by "the American Voter Project," trying to turn out “American voters” to make the “American community heard.” Another was contacted by the “Latino Voter Project,” as part of a campaign to turn out “Latino voters,” and was designed to make the “Latino community heard.”

The results appear in this chart:

Researchers concluded that more affluent Latinos, who usually have been in the U.S. for a generation or more, respond well to the "American" message -- but many (even most) Latinos for whom Spanish language culture is daily life respond better to the "ethnic identity" message. Both messages increase Latino turnout significantly, especially if targeted to the appropriate voters.

The chart reminds me of what I learned in the 2004 campaign when I worked in Albuquerque in campaigns that might have been expected to help the Democratic presidential candidate. Nowadays we take for granted that New Mexico is a blue state. But in 2004, George W. Bush narrowly outpolled John Kerry. The Latinos I worked with (who mostly called themselves Hispanics) were not surprised: they said no campaign had never contacted any of their relatives. These citizens might as well as have not existed as far as both Republicans and Democrats were concerned.

The Latino Decisions chart says to me that simply contacting Latino voters about the election at all, with any message, raises turnout. In some places, the better message is American patriotism; in most Latino places, the best message is Latino identity. But in either case, what comes first is bothering to reach out to people who may not think voting is for them. The dividends of making the contact will be large.

The Clinton campaign seems to be running a strong field operation where it matters. Their data -- their understanding of who their potential voters are -- is very good. Here's hoping they are doing the job of making those contacts in the places where potential Latino voters have been accustomed to being ignored. That's how to get out the Latino vote.***The Washington Post has a terrific story about how canvassers from the Center for Community Change are going to door to door in Florida to turn out unlikely, but registered, Latino voters. Many don't know for sure how or where to vote, but they are eager to absorb explanations from a Spanish speaking canvasser. These people will not feel ignored!

Impediments to Latino voting

Studies and reports from advocacy outfits and think tanks are a dime a dozen. (I know; I used to help churn these out.) Very occasionally, one really does assemble inaccessible information that matters, or ought to matter. The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) has published such a study on obstacles to Latino voting. The entire document is available online, but I wanted to pull out some bits that particularly struck me.

We know that, because of economic dislocation in Puerto Rico, many islanders are moving to the U.S. to work. This Spanish-speaking group are native born citizens, unequivocally eligible to vote in any state they move to. However, in states which have implemented voter ID requirements to register, they face a particular hurdle:

A Puerto Rican birth certificate would normally constitute proof of its holder’s U.S. citizenship, but in 2009, the Puerto Rican government adopted new standards for official birth certificates, and simultaneously invalidated all Puerto Rican birth certificates issued before 2010. Since the adoption of the new standards, to register to vote in a state with a proof-of-citizenship requirement, all Puerto Rican-born voters must either have a U.S. passport, or must have gone through additional procedures and paid fees to obtain a new birth certificate after July 2010.

This could matter in Florida where many have settled, as could other obstacles:

... Latino voters are more likely than others to be erroneously identified as potential noncitizens as a result of post-registration citizenship verification procedures. ... Any process that targets naturalized citizens is likely to have a disproportionate impact on Latinos, and in one representative instance in Florida, such an effort resulted in creation of a list of suspected noncitizens of whom 87% were people of color, and 58% were Latino, even though Latinos accounted for less than 20% of the state’s eligible voters.

Then we get to language issues. It used to be that under the Voting Rights Act, many jurisdictions had to provide materials in widely used languages, but the Supreme Court tossed out that requirement a couple of years ago. Election administrators are usually underfunded and overburdened. Without federal supervision, language assistance is often the first thing to go, even if there is no malice. But the effect on Latino voting is measurably large.

Where quality language assistance is available, the rate at which eligible Latino and Spanish-speaking voters register and vote tends to improve; registration and turnout are lower where language assistance is not comprehensively available. Professors Michael Jones-Correa and Israel Waismel- Manor found that Latino voter turnout was 11% percent higher in counties covered by Section 203 of the VRA than in uncovered counties that do not provide Spanish language assistance, and Latino registration 15% higher in covered than uncovered counties. Provision of Spanish- language printed materials was associated with a 4% increase in Latino registration rates, and employment of Spanish-speaking staff was associate with a 6% increase in Latino registration.

Election officials too often act stumped by Latino names.

Maria del Carmen Sanchez has a lot in common with other potential Latino voters in her home state of North Carolina. Like more than one-fourth of the state’s Latino electorate, she is a naturalized citizen, born in Cuba. And like many Latinos, she has a name that non-Latino municipal officials sometimes struggle to understand. Ms. Sanchez’s full given name was Maria del Carmen Sanchez Ennes. Maria del Carmen is her first name, and Ennes is her mother’s last name, while Sanchez, her father’s last name, is the last name she went by before her marriage. After marriage, Ms. Sanchez’s North Carolina driver’s license listed her married name, Maria Sanchez Thorpe, but mistakenly denoted “Sanchez” as her middle name. When she first obtained a Social Security Number as a child, moreover, her name was mistakenly recorded with “del” denoted as her middle name, and without any notation of “Carmen” or “Ennes.”

In 2007, when Ms. Sanchez attempted to renew her North Carolina driver’s license, she was initially refused service because employees determined that the married name on her previously-existing driver’s license record did not match the name on her U.S. passport: Maria del Carmen Sanchez. Unbelievably, the solution employees offered her was to obtain a divorce so that her legal name would revert to that reflected on her passport. ...

Her odyssey within a culturally uncomprehending system continued for several additional rounds before she finally managed to register to vote.

Then there are the obstacles to voting created by what Salvadoran leftists taught some of us to call "strategic incompetence."

The costs of inadequate and mismanaged voting resources, and resulting long lines, vary widely across racial, ethnic, and geographic lines. One of the most striking revelations to emerge from the study of voting waiting times is that their negative impact on Latino and African American voters is far greater than it is for white voters. For example, the average wait for all Latino voters nationwide in 2012 was 19 minutes, compared to 12 minutes for white voters.

Although African Americans experienced the longest national-average wait times, at 23 minutes, Latino voters faced the longest waits in Florida, where precincts serving larger proportions of Latino voters closed later than precincts serving mostly white voters.

... Whether or not conscious intention to impair Latino and African American voting is a factor, the individual choices that election administrators have made in equipping polling places have clearly resulted in less opportunity for members of these communities to participate in elections.

The experience of being questioned at the polls in and of itself is an obstacle to citizen participation. Who wants to risk being questioned when you try to exercise a basic right? Not many of us. The report takes up the case of Indiana which has invited partisan poll watchers to question the eligibility of voters.

... Indiana increased the potential negative impact on voters of its ID requirement when the state adopted a provision in 2013 that gives poll watchers appointed by candidates, political parties, and proponents of ballot initiatives the power to demand to see and inspect any voter’s identification. We cannot reliably estimate what percentage of Indiana’s Latino residents eligible to vote are likely to face additional scrutiny of their identification documents at the polls in 2016.

However, where scrutiny is applied and voters increasingly doubt their ability to satisfy new voting requirements, the participation of Latino and other underrepresented voters is likely to suffer the most. Analysis of the 2008 Survey of the Performance of American Elections revealed that 65% of Latino voters nationwide reported being asked for photo ID at the polls, compared to just 51% of white voters. ... The University of Chicago polled young voters aged 18-29 in November 2012, and found that 57% of Latinos were asked for photo ID, compared to just 42.2% of whites.

Thanks to Facing South for pointing to this study.

California history: when we packed those people in trains

Last week, in a post surveying immigration history, I made a glancing reference to the practice in the U.S. southwest of "packing Mexican workers in trains and sending them home." I've since realized that this is not universally remembered history.

One of the many California bills Governor Jerry Brown has signed this year aims to change that. Here's how the law's legislative sponsor Assemblymember Christina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) explains her measure:

... Assembly Bill 146 encourages that the “Mexican Repatriation,” the unconstitutional deportation that occurred in California 1930’s, of over 1 million U.S. citizens and lawful residents of Mexican descent, be included in student history textbooks and courses of study. ...

“I firmly believe that this is a lesson worth teaching. In fact, a certain Republican Presidential frontrunner, should now see that his unworkable and reckless plan for mass deportation, will be a human disaster, just as it was so many years ago. He could learn a lesson from the minds and the hearts of our young school children,” Assemblymember Garcia commented.

Take that, Donald Trump.

Here's a video that tells the story of the Mexican expulsions. The picture is from the video.
***'Tis the season when Gov. Jerry closets himself with all the bills (640 or so!) the two house of the California Legislature have laboriously passed through committees, procedural hurdles and final votes -- and decides which he'll sign. He has until October 11 to complete the process.

Brown can be infuriating. After all that, he's been known to kill off, without much warning, the carefully crafted products of years of agitation. And these rejected measures were usually brought by his own party. So it was with the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2012 -- Democratic legislators brought the requirement that employers pay overtime to these workers back in 2013 and Brown signed that bill into law.

With that history, waiting for the Governor to act is an annual pins-and-needles ritual for advocates.

He's signed a lot of what I consider good stuff this year: a bill requiring police departments to collect and report information, including race, on who they stop and who they shoot; a new requirement that schools teach an accurate sex education curriculum in middle and high school; and permission for physician-assisted suicide, explaining his affirmation in a thoughtful message.

Measures encouraging divestment by state pension funds from fossil fuels and suspending the high school exit exam await his consideration.

Brown can be thorough and thoughtful -- you'd think a bill prohibiting flying drones in such a way as to impede firefighters would be a no-brainer. But he has just vetoed such a measure. He held it would have just added to an already over-long criminal code. If people flying drones push their luck, this one might come back ...

Immigrants have changed US -- again and again

The Pew Research Center has issued a new report marking the 50th anniversary of the 1965 revision of U.S. immigration law which set the contours of our contemporary demographic trends. The headline take away is that the law revision enabled this country to move into a new and different demographic reality, by enabling migration of more and different people.

This fast-growing immigrant population ... has driven the share of the U.S. population that is foreign born from 5% in 1965 to 14% today and will push it to a projected record 18% in 2065. Already, today’s 14% foreign-born share is a near historic record for the U.S., just slightly below the 15% levels seen shortly after the turn of the 20th century. The combined population share of immigrants and their U.S.-born children, 26% today, is projected to rise to 36% in 2065, at least equaling previous peak levels at the turn of the 20th century.

... As a result of its changed makeup and rapid growth, new immigration since 1965 has altered the nation’s racial and ethnic composition. In 1965, 84% of Americans were non-Hispanic whites. By 2015, that share had declined to 62%. Meanwhile, the Hispanic share of the U.S. population rose from 4% in 1965 to 18% in 2015. Asians also saw their share rise, from less than 1% in 1965 to 6% in 2015.

The Pew Research analysis shows that without any post-1965 immigration, the nation’s racial and ethnic composition would be very different today: 75% white, 14% black, 8% Hispanic and less than 1% Asian.

If you live in California, it's easy to yawn about this -- so yeah, what else is new? But obviously these changing realities are what drives much of the terror that riles the crazier white corners of the land.***When I was accidentally thrown into working on migration politics by the California immigration panic of 1994 (otherwise known as Prop. 187), I knew next to nothing about the history of immigration to this largest slice of an underpopulated continent. This report is full of items that might have given me a fuller picture -- and still do.

• The new United States' very first law in this area, the Naturalization Act of 1790, "excluded non-white people from eligibility to naturalize. " Our white forbears wanted more workers, but not those people, however defined over the decades. This prohibition was not removed until the Reconstruction era 1870 naturalization act allowed "eligibility to individuals of African nativity or descent."

• In the late 19th century, the white people of the west sought and got Chinese (and other East Asian) Exclusion Acts. Tough workers from Asia were a wonderful tool for building the transcontinental railroad, but they weren't having any more of those people. In 1903, federal immigration law also banned "anarchists, beggars, and importers of prostitutes." Restrictions of various sorts on Asian immigration lasted until well into World War II and beyond. They were only removed for Chinese when we found ourselves promoting our benevolent variant of imperialism as an alternative to Japan's. Competition with Communism led to further openings to Asia in the 1950s.

• The Immigration Act of 1924 set a hard cap of 165,000 annual immigration visas, and used national-origin quotas to confine this to persons of English-speaking or other northern European origins. The restrictionists had got their way, notably in ending mass migration from southern and eastern Europe. Pew doesn't say this -- and correlation does not equal causation -- but The Great Migration of African Americans from the south to take up factory work in northern cities might never have been possible without the 1924 immigration restrictions. Industrialists needed somebody in those jobs.

• The 1965 revision changed all this. Pew opts for the safe explanation, attributing its radical opening to mass worldwide immigration to multiple factors without pulling out a dominant thread.

  Scholars attribute passage of the 1965 law in part to the era’s civil rights movement, which created a climate for changing laws that allowed racial or ethnic discrimination, as well as to the growing clout of groups whose immigration had been restricted. The economy was healthy, allaying concerns that immigrants would compete with U.S.-born workers. Some, however, say that geopolitical factors were more important, especially the image of the U.S. abroad in an era of Cold War competition with Russia. Labor unions, which had opposed higher immigration levels in the past, supported the 1965 law, though they pushed for changes to tighten employment visas. And political players changed: President Lyndon B. Johnson lobbied hard for the bill, and a new generation of congressional leaders created a friendlier environment for it

  And so, in the Sixties, the United States once again affirmed itself a "a nation of immigrants" without much sense of the implications. (I bet the capitalists knew where we going, but it took the rest of us, and the new Americans, awhile to catch up.)

• Meanwhile, throughout the country's history, Mexican and Latino immigration had been a constant. For Mexicans, the border crossed them rather than they crossed the border. When the Southwest needed labor, the Mexicans served. They weren't included in naturalization systems and quotas. When the bosses were done with them, they sometimes literally packed them in trains and sent them back. But in the new era of (more) civil rights, some began to exercise citizenship. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act sought to regularize the legal status of millions of people in legal limbo; roughly 2.7 million people acquired legal status. They and their children have gradually taken up their role as citizens in the states where immigration is largest: California, Florida, New York and Texas.

And so here we are today with another 11 million people living among us without a documented legal status. President Obama's executive initiatives (DACA and DAPA) have done something to sort this out; Republicans are still screaming for the cattle cars to try to stop the tide of history.

Pew makes a couple of points about contemporary legal immigrants that I found new:

Asia currently is the largest source region among recently arrived immigrants and has been since 2011. Before then, the largest source region since 1990 had been Central and South America, fueled by record levels of Mexican migration that have since slowed. Back in 1970, Europe was the largest region of origin among newly arrived immigrants. One result of slower Mexican immigration is that the share of new arrivals who are Hispanic is at its lowest level in 50 years.

Compared with their counterparts in 1970, newly arrived immigrants in 2013 were better educated but also more likely to be poor. Some 41% of newly arrived immigrants in 2013 had at least a bachelor’s degree. In 1970, that share was just 20%. On poverty, 28% of recent arrivals in 2013 lived in poverty, up from 18% in 1970. In addition, fewer of the newly arrived in 2013 were children than among the newly arrived immigrants in 1970—19% vs. 27%.

Obviously, if you have any interest in immigration issues -- and who can not? -- Pew's entire report is worth exploring. it is highly accessible, full of graphic enhancements, and waiting for a click. Give it a look.

Taking notice

That Latinos don't like Donald Trump is no great surprise. He's a blustering insult. But it's interesting that the next least popular Republican in this list is Ted Cruz. Apparently Cuban ancestry doesn't inoculate him among Latinos against disapproval of his fractious arrogance, insofar as these voters have noticed he exists.

Gallup describes its findings:

In terms of familiarity, only Trump and Bush are recognized by a majority of Hispanics. Eight in 10 have formed an opinion of Trump and about six in 10 of Bush. Familiarity dwindles to roughly 40% for Rubio and Cruz, both Cuban-Americans, as well as for Perry and Chris Christie, but drops well below that for all the others.

That +11 percent positive score for Jeb! derives from 34 percent positive ratings versus 23 percent negative. That is, a lot of people are withholding judgement on the guy. If he keeps talking, he can probably manage to lower this as more Latino voters become aware of him.

A seasonal decision

Okay -- I get it. I have to buy only organic strawberries, out of concern for the people who work and live in the fields, Those other strawberries aren't likely to kill me, but they are poisoning people in central California.

Lots more here.

What if Republican postures are not just "pandering"?

In a post here last week I discussed a poll showing that, for most U.S. Latinos, new immigrants whether legally here or not are just family and neighbors, not some kind of dire threat. Near universal Latino rejection of immigrant bashing has alienated this growing community from the Republican Party.

This newspaper headline (click to embiggen) on a free paper widely distributed in my immigrant neighborhood reinforces what most people already know: the U.S. right is out to get them. No wonder hardly anyone grows up to be a Republican.

A Republican pollster is trying to get his party to wise up:

Freed Steeper, who served as an adviser to both Presidents Bush, told the New York Times in a story published Wednesday that the GOP may continue its struggles in national elections if it keeps up its often derisive rhetoric toward Hispanic voters.

“Racism may be a part of it,” Steeper admitted. “The Republican Party needs to stop pandering to that.”

Steeper then gave Republicans some blunt advice on the matter.

“The Republican Party needs to throw in the towel on the immigration issue," he said.

TPM

A Republican-held Congressional district that might prefer a Democrat

Very interesting -- a California Republican Congressman wants it broadly known that he's becoming

... the lone GOP member with 185 Democrats to co-sponsor a plan that would give millions of unauthorized immigrants the chance to attain citizenship.

A handful of House Republicans have expressed support for citizenship legislation similar to the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate over the summer. But [Congressman Jeff] Denham is taking the additional — and politically provocative — step of locking arms with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other Democrats trying to neutralize opposition from House conservatives and shake up a polarized immigration debate.

“I’m the first Republican,” he said in an interview. “I expect more to come on board.”

[Quote is from a Washington Post article behind a paywall.] It's not hard to understand why Denham is eager to separate himself from Republican intransigence on immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for the the undocumented.


An October Latino Decisions poll found that if there is no vote in the House on immigration policy, Latinos will overwhelming blame the Republican Party.

The survey identified Denham's Central Valley district (CA-10 which centers on towns extending south from Tracy through Manteca, Modesto and Turlock) as leading the first tier of Republican seats where an angry Latino reaction to Republican obstruction might improve a strong Democratic candidate's chances in 2014. The district is 40 percent Latino demographically; in the voter eligible pool (people who are citizens of voting age) 34 percent are Latino. Latino's are about 25 percent of registered voters. The area voted for Barack Obama in 2012 by a 3.6 percent margin.

Denham's Wikipedia page includes the information that he has voted with his Republican colleagues 95 percent of the time, so he's got a lot of work to do if he wants to distance himself from the poisonous Republican brand.

At least one Democratic challenger has surfaced, Turlock farmer Michael Eggman. Eggman is already blasting Denham about the government shutdown -- he's not likely to let Denham run away from his Republican affiliation. ***

That Latino Decisions poll highlights what the Anglo community too easily fails to understand in the immigration debate: those 11 million undocumented people who live here, work here and are at risk for deportation are not hidden away out of sight of most Latinos -- they are neighbors and even family. Republican resistance to making sense of our broken immigration system seems -- and literally is -- as an attack on many Latino citizens' friends, uncles, sisters, even parents. The immoral cruelty of a system that values these people's labor but denies their humanity is all too real.

The resulting outrage is a political force. Download the Latino Decisions report to explore how Governor Pete Wilson's choice in 1994 to inflame anti-immigrant fears for his political gain has made California an overwhelmingly Democratic state as the Latino age cohort who felt attacked came of age and engaged with politics. National Republicans are following a similar path to oblivion.

No more evictions! No mas desalojos!

The people of eastern (lower) 24th Street in San Francisco were out Saturday, marching and dancing in our latest protest against Mission gentrification.


The current tech boom is wreaking its creative destruction here. Google, Facebook, etc. are using San Francisco, and particularly the Mission's relativity low rents and cultural excitement, as a bedroom community for its squadrons of young workers. Every morning, the Google buses, private buses to Silicon Vally, haul these new residents south.


Compared with the the people who've been the core of the place since World War II -- Latino families, white lefties, artists -- this wave of newcomers can pay the moon for housing and entertainment. Naturally there are speculators who want to cash in on them. These speculators are evicting people and small businesses as fast as they can, making a quick buck while trashing the cultural stew that is the Mission's attraction.

The Mission still gives a good parade. Some of the people most vulnerable to the current wave of displacements are our most honored artists like Rene Yanez and Yolanda Lopez whose creative work, including building the annual Dia de Los Muertos celebration, helped make the Mission the attraction it is.


The Mission has been more resistant to successive waves of gentrification than many areas of San Francisco. The late '90s tech boom crashed before swamping the local scene. Latino families have tended to hang on to the houses their grandparents bought from the Irish in the middle of the last century, providing a distinctive anchor amidst what outsiders saw as an urban dumping ground.


Its hard not to fear this wave of prosperous newcomers will swamp the present culture. This billboard hangs outside La Galeria de la Raza …


... while another wave of neighborhood organizers mobilize for self-preservation.

Hispanics to the fore

The Spanish language TV broadcasting network Univision created this video to sell advertising. I think it presents some simple demographic realities engagingly.

I am not the melting pot; I am the new American reality...

Where I live in California, the more usual term for this growing segment of the population is "Latino," both among people whose language-heritage is Spanish and in the media. But the federal government adopted "Hispanic" for the complicated ethnic/racial group they seek to count through the census. It seems more commonly used in the east and may eventually predominate.

The Mexican-American woman who helped the feds choose the "Hispanic" ethnic designation explains the choice in this article:

Let’s face it, the people in America of Spanish origin have been discriminated against because of the color of their skin and their Spanish sounding names, nothing can change that except laws but laws unfortunately don’t necessarily change hearts and minds.

So in order for people of Spanish origin to better share in the American dream, we should have in place an accurate accounting of their needs and accomplishments, and the only way to account for this, is to trace their origin beginning with the Spanish influence that has long been a blessing and a curse, to their rightful place in America.

Immigration reform: "We’re in the defibrillation stage"

Immigration Reform Has No Pulse
The key moment came when Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — the leading Democratic author of the Senate’s immigration bill — laid things out for House Speaker John Boehner.

“Without a path to citizenship, there is not going to be a bill,” he said. “There can’t be a bill.”

Brian Beutler, TPM

And that's something Republicans in the House will refuse to offer. The charade will probably go on for awhile, but we are not likely to see immigration reform out of this Congress.

Racism and "Redoubt Republicanism"

New York Times commentator Charles Blow took aim at that Heritage Foundation immigration "study" that has turned out to be written by some right-wing hack whose Harvard Ph.D. work consisted of asserting that Latinos have low IQ scores, probably because Latinos are genetically dumb. Blow has a name for the weasel words -- "skill-based" differences -- this author suggests when trying to "blunt negative reaction."

Skill-based. Clever. Or Machiavellian.

In reality, it’s just another conservative euphemism meant to cast class aspersions and raise racial ire without ever forthrightly addressing the issues of class and race. This form of Roundabout Republicanism has entirely replaced honest conservative discussion, to the point that anyone who now raises class-based inequality is labeled divisive and anyone who raises race is labeled a racist.

It’s a way of wriggling out of unpleasant debates on which they have stopped trying to engage altogether. The new strategy is avoidance, obfuscation and boomerang blaming.

This “skill-based” phraseology is simply the latest in a long line of recent right-wing terms of art.

I don't quite agree with Blow that this is "Roundabout Republicanism."

I think better term for what is practiced here is "Redoubt Republicanism." This is a political movement that has chosen to lock itself away, against the United States that is, and even more against the United States that will be. They seem to think they are re-enacting the battle of the Alamo, heroes standing pat against a foreign horde. Clinging to white supremacy, Republicans are immured in a prison of their own making.

Also, since when did anyone, left or right, believe that IQ tests measured anything except the ability to take IQ tests? I thought scientists like Stephen Jay Gould had killed that notion off a generation ago. But the ghoulish myth recurs ... Harvard must have gone downhill.