In her latest insult to Latinos, Ann Coulter claims Latinos don’t have the family values which long have been part of Latin American culture.

The “facts” Ann Coulter cites are either blatantly untrue, or she cherry picks facts in isolation of other relevant factors, favorite tactics of her accomplices Charles Murray and Heather Mac Donald. Murray is also the author of the book “The Bell Curve”, which claims whites have higher IQs than minorities and will remain that way, which has attracted criticism from other researchers and others who claim Murray massaged his data, just as he massaged the statistics Ann Coulter now uses!

Lie #1 – Ann Coulter Claims Immigrants Don’t Assimilate

Through out her op-eds, Coulter emphasizes Nativist claims that immigrants, especially from third world nations, don’t assimilate, drop out of high school, become dependent upon welfare, commit crime, vote Democrat, etc. Nativists always bitterly complain about the 1965 immigration reforms, which eliminated blatantly racist per-country quotas dating from the 1920s that were intended to bar non-European immigration altogether, and severely restrict immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Not surprisingly, eliminating the 1920s immigration quotas has allowed many more non-Europeans to immigrate legally to the U.S. This chart, from a scholarly paper, compares immigrants in 1980 and children of immigrants in 2005 to native born whites in: high school completion (HS+), college completion (BA+), high earning occupation, above poverty level, and lastly home ownership.

In every single category, Latinos show dramatic improvement from the first generation in 1980 to the second generation in 2005! Over 85% of the children of immigrants live above the poverty line, almost equal to white native-born Americans, hardly evidence of a permanent underclass that Ann Coulter and her fellow Nativists constantly whine about.

Lie #2 -Hispanics Don’t Work Harder

Ann Coulter wrote: “Hispanics actually work about the same as others, or, in the case of Hispanic women, less.” Charles Murray selected the 30-44 age group to make this claim, but the median age for Hispanics is 27. Raoul Lowery Contreras debunked that in his recent op-ed “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the 2012 Labor Participation Rates for men 20 and over are—Hispanics 81.7% and non-Hispanic Whites only 73.9%. Murray purposefully excludes a huge working cohort of the 18-29 age group to make Hispanics look bad.”

Lie #3 – “Hispanics are less likely to be married.”

47.8% of Hispanics are married versus 51.4% in general, a 3.6% difference. 56.2% of Hispanic immigrants are married , and 38.8% for native born Hispanics. What Murray and Ann Coulter don’t tell you is that Hispanics, especially native-born Hispanics, are much younger than our general population. The median age for Hispanics is 27, versus 42 for whites, 32 for blacks, and 35 for Asians. Hispanic couples are also more likely to marry after having an illegitimate child, and fewer Hispanics are divorced (8.9%) than for whites (12.2%), or blacks (12.9%).

Lie #4 – Hispanics are “less likely to go to church.”

According to Pew Research, 68% of Hispanics say religion is important in their lives (60% for whites), and 44% attend church weekly (40% for whites). Among evangelical Hispanics, the fastest growing religious grouping among Hispanics, the same statistics are 85% and 70%.

Lie #5 – Hispanics are “less likely to call themselves “conservative” than other Americans. “

According to Pew Research, 34% of the general population describe themselves as “conservative” versus 32% of Hispanics, but 35% of Hispanic immigrants describe themselves as “conservative.” Young adults usually are more liberal in their views, and since Hispanics are a young demographic with a median age of 27, we can expect Hispanics to trend conservative in their views. Technically she’s right about Hispanic self-identification as conservatives, but 2% is not significant. These small gaps in self-identification don’t explain the 50% or so margin of victory for Obama this election, as Ann Coulter would have us believe!

Lie #6 – “In 1980, Hispanics were only 2 percent of the population,…”

As Raoul Lowery Contreras pointed out, “According to the Census, 6.4% of the 1980 American population was Hispanic“, not 2%. Anybody who can Google can find that statistic in seconds. Another lie!

Lie #7 – “More than half of all babies born to Hispanic women today are illegitimate.”

Ann Coulter then adds insult to injury with her most egregious lies “More than half of all babies born to Hispanic women today are illegitimate. As Heather MacDonald has shown, the birthrate of Hispanic women is twice that of the rest of the population, and their unwed birthrate is one and a half times that of blacks. That’s a lot of government dependents coming down the pike.”

Unwed birthrates for all native born are 41.4%. According to Pew Research, Hispanic unwed birthrates are 45.1%, and the rate for blacks is 71.4%. Ann Coulter claimed the Hispanic unwed birthrate is over half, and the unwed birth rate for Hispanics is 1-1/2 times that of blacks. CDC says 53% preliminary data for 2011, somewhat higher than Pew’s stats based on 2009 data, but even 53% is barely half, and far less than CDC’s 72.5% unwed birthrate for blacks.

Nativists like to pick on Mexican immigrants, but their unwed birthrate of 36.3% is 5% less than native born Americans (41.4%).

Pew Research reports that 8.1% of Hispanic women gave birth in the past year, as compared to 6.5% overall, 5.9% for women, 7.0% for blacks, and 6.4% for Asians. Birth rates for Hispanics nowhere near twice as Ann Coulter claims. Another lie!

Ann Coulter would like you to think birthrates among Hispanics are due to their third world origin, but in truth the reason birthrates among Hispanics are higher is simply that Hispanics are much younger, and younger women are more fertile. This chart shows the population distribution by age, and clearly Hispanics, especially native born Hispanics, are a very young demographic.

Summary

Ann Coulter, with help from her accomplices Charles Murray and Heather Mac Donald, has libeled Latinos, the large majority of whom are immigrants or 1-2 generations removed. Republicans should receive many more votes from Latinos, but rhetoric from conservatives like Ann Coulter are alienating many Latinos from the Republican Party. Ann Coulter’s ignorance on Latinos and her insulting, inflammatory rhetoric, are a prime example why many conservative Latinos hold their nose and vote Democrat. President George W. Bush proved that Latinos will vote for GOP candidates with engagement and a positive message. This chart from Resurgent Republic proves the value of outreach, and also proves what happens after several years of shrill rhetoric about immigration and Hispanics.

Conclusion

The Republican Party needs to change course or we shall go the way of the Whig Party. Ann Coulter and other Navists who hold themselves out as Republicans even as they ignore the values of the Party of Lincoln, are a huge liability. We will continue to call out Ann Coulter and anyone else who trashes Hispanics or other New Americans in such a shameful manner.

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Bob Quasius is the founder and president of Cafe Con Leche Republicans.   Original link

For Immediate Release – An Open Letter to Ann Coulter – Original Link

Marshall, MN – We demand an immediate apology for your latest anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rant titled “America Nears el Tipping Pointo.”

Also please stop referring to yourself as a conservative and an expert on liberals. Hatred of minorities and immigrants is not a conservative value, and you apparently get most of your facts about Latinos and immigration from organizations founded and led by population control liberals like John Tanton. Tanton founded or co-founded the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), US English, Pro English, etc. Although you’ve made a career as an ‘expert’ on liberals, apparently you’re not always able to recognize liberals like Tanton and Roy Beck, especially when they appeal to your ‘dark side’ on Latinos and immigrants.

If Abe Lincoln or Ronald Reagan could read your latest column, they would turn over in their graves. You obviously know nothing about the Latino vote, and your repeated and shrill rhetoric against Latinos are a major reason that so many conservative Latinos hold their nose and vote Democrat.

Reagan famously told Lionel Sosa “Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.” He’s right, and whenever Republicans have engaged in constructive outreach to Latinos, Latino support for the GOP has improved, while harsh rhetoric such as in recent years has depressed GOP support among Latinos. As Marco Rubio pointed out recently “It’s very hard to make the economic argument to people who think you want to deport their grandmother.”

Abraham Lincoln had issues with Nativists too. Fragments of the vehemently anti-immigrant “know nothing” party joined the Republican party when the “know nothing” party disintegrated. Instead of allowing himself to be bullied by Nativists, Lincoln reached out to German-Americans, a major group of New Americans of the era, who had voted Democrat because Whigs and Republicans had never bothered to ask them for their vote. Lincoln even bought a German language newspaper to help with outreach, and Lincoln’s two presidential campaigns were successful in large part due to outreach to German-Americans.

According to Pew Research, 62% of Latinos are ideologically conservative or moderate, and yet just 27% of Latinos voted for Mitt Romney. Before Mitt Romney softened his tone after the primaries, some polls found Mitt Romney’s Latino support among likely Hispanic voters in the 14% range.

In 2004, following years of sensible Latino engagement by forward thinking Republican leaders, George Bush won 40% of the Latino vote. If not for the shrill anti-immigrant and anti-Latino rhetoric from people like you, that trend would have continued and Mitt Romney would have won the election.

You conveniently never mention in your columns that the GOP was competitive in California until the harsh rhetoric surrounding proposition 187 caused Latinos to leave the GOP in droves. Since proposition 187, the GOP has not been competitive in statewide races. This phenomenon has followed the rhetoric and spread from California to the rest of the nation. The GOP is now often perceived by many Latinos as hostile to Latinos.

There’s a common thread in your rantings… you parrot talking points from John Tanton and his motley alliance of population control liberals and bigots. For example, in a 2001 memo to a supporter, Tanton bragged about hiring a lobbyist to manipulate Republicans:

“The goal is to change Republicans’ perception of immigration so that when they encounter the word “immigrant,” their reaction is “Democrat.”

“Our plan is to hire a lobbyist who will carry the following message to Republicans on Capitol Hill and to business leaders: Continued massive immigration will soon cost you political control of the White House and Congress, given the current, even division of the electorate, and the massive infusion of voters about to be made to the Democratic side. We are about to replay the Democratic hegemony of 1933-53, fueled back then by the massive immigration of 1890-1924.”

Apparently you’re not as adept in detecting liberals as you would have us believe!

The real reason why Republicans did so poorly among Latinos is due to manipulation by anti-immigrant groups, and shrill rhetoric by yourself and a small minority of Republican politicians which provides ample ammunition for liberals to frame the Republican Party as anti-Latino and anti-immigrant. The Republican Party is neither anti-Latino or anti-immigrant. In fact, a May 2011 poll by Pew Research found a majority of Republicans favor comprehensive immigration reform, including a 49%/49% split of “staunch conservatives.”

We won’t allow extremists like you to hijack this issue anymore! The future of the Republican Party depends upon dispelling the perception among many New Americans that the GOP is hostile on immigration.

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About Us – Cafe Con Leche Republicans is a national organization of Republicans who welcome “New Americans”, defined as immigrants and family of recent immigrants. Our mission is to make America and the GOP, more welcoming to “New Immigrants” through political activism, “in-reach” and education within the Republican Party, and lobbying government to adopt more immigrant friendly policies. We also seek to bring more conservative and moderate “New Americans” to the Republican Party. These efforts will strengthen the GOP, and lead more Republicans to embrace welcoming policies for immigrants and their families. We have members nationwide, with chapters in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and California. Our members and leadership are predominantly Hispanic, though we define ourselves by mission and guiding principles, not ethnicity, and we welcome all who share our goals. Our leadership is 100% Republican.

by Bob Price (re-posted with permission – original link)

Now before all you noise makers on the extreme right get your knickers in a wad, this is not a story about amnesty. But it is a story about fixing a problem that should have been fixed in the last decade. It is also a story about learning how to communicate our message in a way that doesn’t drive away people who should be aligned with our core values and principles. Immigration is a problem Democrats don’t want to fix because it is an effective wedge issue to keep Hispanics, who share your same social conservative values, from voting with you.

So called “conservative” organizations like FAIR and NumbersUSA are really left wing environmental and pro-choice backed groups that have figured out they can play your amnesty string and keep you so pissed off at illegal immigrants that now, in some circles, the word Hispanic is equal to “illegal alien”.

If the Democrats wanted to solve this problem, they would have pushed through Congressman Luis Gutierrez’ reform plan back in 2009. They clearly could have passed it in the House and Senate without one single Republican vote. But they did not. Why? Because it is a winning strategy for Democrats to use against Republicans.

Recently, conservative icon and radio talkshow host Sean Hannity told his listeners that he has “evolved” on immigration. That is what smart people do after a decisive loss. They look at issues that caused their defeat and find ways to fix them. In this election, Republicans only earned the vote of 29% of the Hispanics who voted. It is not because Hispanics want amnesty or abortion or many of the other liberal social policies of the left. It is because our rhetoric drives them away from us.

“We’ve got to get rid of the immigration issue altogether,” he said. “It’s simple to me to fix it. I think you control the border first. You create a pathway for those people that are here. You don’t say you’ve got to go home. And that is a position that I’ve evolved on. Because, you know what, it’s got to be resolved. The majority of people here, if some people have criminal records you can send them home, but if people are here, law-abiding, participating for years, their kids are born here, you know, it’s first secure the border, pathway to citizenship, done, whatever little penalties you want to put in there, if you want, and it’s done.”

Wow, that sounds an awful lot like “The Texas Solution” Plank of the Republican Party of Texas 2012 Platform. While not a perfect solution, The Texas Solution makes steps in the right direction.

Hannity has already caught a lot of heat for his “evolution”. But it is a necessary step. For the Republican Party to survive and succeed in this era of changing demographics we must evolve and reshape our message without changing our core values. Fox News reports this is happening among conservatives and other Republicans. I stand alongside Hannity on this issue.

But winning the Hispanic vote is not just about immigration reform. Like many other minority groups, Hispanics should be aligned with Republicans because many of our core values align. But that is not enough. We cannot simply reach out with an immigration reform olive branch. We must look for ways to make minorities feel wanted in the Republican Party. Those minorities who have come to the Republican Party have done well. Look at Senator Marco Rubio, Senator-Elect Ted Cruz, New Mexico and Governor Susana Martinez. Look at the number of Hispanic state legislators in Texas have been elected these past few years. But when you get to the grassroots level, minorities tell me they don’t feel welcomed when the attend Republican meetings and other conservative groups. They don’t want to be put on a pedestal, they want to be included.

We have a long way to go to rebuild the Republican brand. The liberal media will hold onto the myths like the “Republican War on Women” and will continue to drive the wedge between Republicans and Blacks, or Republicans and Hispanics. That is just who they are. It is what they are motivated to do. But we must stop giving them soundbites to use against us. Comments from Akin and Mourdock did more to harm Republicans this year because the media will amplify it and keep beating the drum. They completely ignored the insane remarks by Harris County DA Candidate Lloyd Oliver and his war against women.

When the media comes to Tea Party and Republican events, they will look for the most extreme looking or sounding people they can find and make them our icon. We must shift this tone and lead our way out of this. For every idiot they find to quote, we must put forth fifty true Republican voices that speak the truth about what we believe.

President Ronald Reagan believed winning elections required winning the communications war. We have been losing that for a very long time and it is time to take it back. It is time for us to evolve. To evolve into people who communicate our ideas in a way that is not offensive to others. Many times it is not what we say, but how we say it. It is the angry tone or the hostile rhetoric that drives the wedge. We must learn to communicate in a way that conveys our values and principles but in an educational and non-judgmental way.

It is a long road to 2014 and even longer to 2016. We have many battles to fight and win along the way. Let’s see if we can win some more allies along the way.

By Raoul Lowery Contreras (re-posted with author’s permission – original link)

Our Founding Fathers never conceived that a massive “Brown Horde” would take over their White Male paradise, the United States of America. The “horde” has done just that in the last three Presidential elections including reelecting Obama, who by all political measures should have disappeared into one-term Hell.

First they voted for George W. Bush in 2004 in percentages (44%) for a Republican that topped any Hispanic vote for any Republican in history. Then they came back in 2008 and 67% of them voted for Barack Obama to experience helping elect the first “Black” President. They came back November 6 and threw in a 70% vote for Obama topping 2008.

Without that percentage and an increase in 30% more Hispanics than voted in 2008, Obama could have lost Florida, Nevada and Colorado and lost the election.

Tellingly, the same “gender gap” that existed among all women in their lack of support for Republican Romney, exists among Hispanic women. The University of Washington-based LATINO DECISIONS reviewed national exit polls and concluded that 76% of Hispanic women voted for Obama while 65% of Hispanic men voted for Obama – a gender gap of 11 points.

Professor Isidro Ortiz of San Diego State University told NBC San Diego: “Why would a Latino or Latina voter look at those (Republican) positions and say they are favorable to us?”

They seem to have ignored these facts: Record levels of unemployment and underemployment among Hispanics (19%), modern record levels of Hispanic/Latino poverty (28%), a drop of two thirds (67%) of Hispanic net worth since June, 2009 and the fact that Obama plain lied about “fixing” immigration in his first year in office. He never mentioned it again until an El Paso Speech in his third year, and then again in 2012 but never, never sent an immigration reform proposal to Congress.

These facts weren’t enough to convince them to dump Obama, so Professor Ortiz is correct – they rejected what they perceived the Republican Party to be – the illegitimate off-spring of insane ethnic-hating old White male Republicans. These haters themselves reject the GOP’s birth as the first legitimate opposition to America’s Original Sin, Slavery.

These people think that the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution are illegitimate. They think this not because the amendments were ratified by state governments created by Washington and staffed with newly freed slaves, but because they changed –forever – the status of what the Supreme Court had ruled weren’t people in 1857. It ruled that they were property and could never become citizens because they were African Blacks.

Those same Founding Fathers had written the first immigration laws in 1790 that required “new” citizens to be “free and White.” That was the law until 1868.

Compare the founding of the Republican Party and the bloody civil war it took to cement into the Constitution the rejection of the Founding Father’s preoccupation with race. The founder of what is now the Democrat Party – Thomas Jefferson – was a principal architect of legal slavery and original immigration laws. In his writings, he posited that Negro men smell like they do because they “urinate through the pores of their skin.”

Democrats have slavery, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, lynching of thousands of Black men and total segregation of Blacks and Whites and in Texas, Mexicans. The Republicans have the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments, the Supreme Court’s race-based rulings in 1954 (Hernandez v. Texas, Brown v. Board of Education), Republican bayonets that integrated a Little Rock high school, Senate Republicans overcoming Southern Democrat Senators to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964/1965 and Southern school integration directed by Richard Nixon’s Justice Department.

Democrats killed George W. Bush’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2007 at the direct order of national labor unions. They are against the key element to any immigration reform, a guest worker program.

What, then, can Republicans do to meaningfully bring some Hispanics home?

They can name rising star Hispanic Republicans to a Commission – Senator Marco Rubio (Cuban), Representative Raul Labrador (Puerto Rican) and Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez (Mexican Americans) – that will provide Republican congressmen a market-based-outreach keyed on a Comprehensive Immigration Reform plan supportable by Speaker John Boehner and the Republican House. Then Obama and Senate Democrats can put up or shut up.

The GOP wins the economic argument every time; it loses the welfare argument every time. It can, however, win the immigration argument by simply creating immigration reform. It can also shed insane Mexican haters like Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, former congressman Tom Tancredo, Pat Buchanan, his sister Bay and muzzle Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama and David Vitter of Louisiana.

The GOP cannot reflect only White male southerners, it must reflect a diverse society of 314,728,350 (million) Americans; better yet, it should not just reflect, it should mirror the country.

National pro-immigration reform group Cafe Con Leche Republicans today reacted to the presidential election debacle. Bob Quasius, president, said

Yesterday’s election results show it is imperative that the Republican Party improve Latino outreach or become permanently uncompetitive in presidential and many other races. Exit and election-eve polls put Mitt Romney’s votes among Latinos at 23%, although over 60% of Latinos are center-right, according to Pew Research.

Polls consistently show a majority of Republicans support immigration reform, including a path to legalization, and a PEW Research poll from May 2011 showed that even among staunch conservatives there is a 49/49% split on immigration reform. However, due to lack of engagement and outreach and shrill rhetoric on this issue from a small minority of Republican politicians, Democrats have been successful in unfairly framing the Republican party as anti-immigrant and anti-Latino, particularly in states where there has been harsh rhetoric on immigration.

This trend started in California. Prior to proposition 187, Republicans were competitive in statewide races, but since Governor Pete Wilson jumped on the proposition 187 bandwagon, many Hispanics left the GOP and since then the GOP has not been competitive in statewide races in California.

Latino outreach improved during the Reagan/Bush years, and President Bush won over 40% of the Latino vote during his reelection campaign, proving that Latinos can be swayed to vote Republican with the right messaging and sensible solutions to issues of interest to Latinos like immigration.

However, since SB1070 and other harsh laws were passed, mass exodus of conservative Hispanics has occurred in Colorado following Tom Tancredo’s candidacy for Governor, in Arizona following SB1070, and in Nevada due to harsh rhetoric from Sharon Angle in the U.S. Senate race.

Cafe Con Leche Republicans initially supported Newt Gingrich, and one of our reasons is that Newt’s campaign recognized the importance of outreach to Latinos and a sensible stance on immigration reform, neither mass amnesty nor mass deportations but a solution that addresses our broken immigration system and seeks to strike a balance between accountability for illegal immigration, and the need to keep families together and avoid damaging our economy. Newt’s campaign reached out to us, and ultimately Cafe Con Leche Republicans provided five members of Newt’s national Hispanic leadership team.

When Newt dropped out of the race and Mitt Romney became the nominee, we decided to support Mitt Romney. Numerous attempts to connect with the Romney campaign’s Hispanic outreach proved fruitless. In our one year of existence, we’ve also had just one conversation with the RNC’s Latino outreach, and were left with the impression the RNC wasn’t interested in working with us due to our pro-immigration focus.

A common complaint among Latino Republican leaders is that RNC Latino outreach is dominated by a small clique of Latino Republicans from Washington DC and Florida, to the exclusion of others, particularly from the Southwest. We share the frustration of Latino Republican leaders from outside the DC/Florida clique that Mitt Romney received bad advice to largely ignore immigration, and some of Mitt’s rhetoric and association with immigration extremist Kris Kobach early in the campaign provided useful fodder for Democrats to frame Mitt Romney as anti-immigrant and anti-Latino, which we don’t believe is the case.

It’s time to root out the small minority of immigration extremists from the GOP. That process is already underway, for example Russell Pearce, the author of SB1070, has now twice been defeated by conservative Republicans who differed mainly by having sensible positions on immigration reform. We’d like to see Kris Kobach leave the party. Kobach is a top lieutenant to John Tanton, a notorious bigot and population control progressive, who once bragged how he manipulates Republicans. In a letter to a supporter, Tanton in 2001 stated:

The goal is to change Republicans’ perception of immigration so that when they encounter the word “immigrant,” their reaction is “Democrat.”

Our plan is to hire a lobbyist who will carry the following message to Republicans on Capitol Hill and to business leaders: Continued massive immigration will soon cost you political control of the White House and Congress, given the current, even division of the electorate, and the massive infusion of voters about to be made to the Democratic side. We are about to replay the Democratic hegemony of 1933-53, fueled back then by the massive immigration of 1890-1924.

It’s time for the GOP to recognize this pattern of manipulation, and fully embrace immigration reform based on free market principles, and not arbitrarily low quotas promoted by population control progressives like Tanton. Harsh rhetoric on immigration coupled with lack of adequate engagement with Latinos and race baiting by Democrats has resulted in very low GOP support among Latinos, and we ignore this at our own political peril.

The 2012 election served up lemons for Republicans, but with sensible changes in strategy and direction we can make lemonade instead. Already we’re hearing that party leaders have woken up and ‘smelled the coffee’ and we’re hopeful this situation can be turned around.

President Obama promised to pursue immigration reform during his second term. Due to President Obama’s history of immigration fakery and failure to put anything on the table during his first term, we have reason to doubt this promise, but he is welcome to surprise us. With the election behind us, we have put our partisan hats and boxing gloves aside, and we stand fully ready to work with President Obama and Democrats on immigration reform, which won’t happen without bipartisan support. We hope that President Obama will ‘hit the reset button’ in his relationship with Republicans in Congress, as the hyper-partisanship that has characterized the last four years has been a major stumbling block to governing our nation.

Original link here.

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About Us – Cafe Con Leche Republicans is a national organization of Republicans who welcome “New Americans”, defined as immigrants and family of recent immigrants. Our mission is to make America and the GOP, more welcoming to “New Immigrants” through political activism, “in-reach” and education within the Republican Party, and lobbying government to adopt more immigrant friendly policies. We also seek to bring more conservative and moderate “New Americans” to the Republican Party. These efforts will strengthen the GOP, and lead more Republicans to embrace welcoming policies for immigrants and their families. We have members nationwide, with chapters in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and California. Our members and leadership are predominantly Hispanic, though we define ourselves by mission and guiding principles, not ethnicity, and we welcome all who share our goals. Our leadership is 100% Republican.

Marshall, MN – National pro-immigrant Republican group Cafe Con Leche Republicans, today reacted to Vice-President Joe Biden’s latest claim about immigration reform. Biden is quoted by Politico:

Right now, you’ve got the president and I and a lot of Democrats out there breaking our neck trying to get a real immigration law that takes millions of people out of the shadows, making sure that ‘Dreamers’ don’t have to go back in many cases to countries they’ve never been,

If the Latino vote comes out, the Hispanic vote comes out and changes the election, all of a sudden those guys who paid no attention to you, no attention to the Hispanic community, no attention to the Latino community. All of a sudden they’re going to say, ‘Oh my Lord I guess we better get in line with the president. I guess we better start moving in the direction of paying attention to this incredible, this incredible pool of talent we have out there. So this is a chance to gain influence that’s almost disproportionate to the impact that you may have directly in the election.

Bob Quasius, president of Cafe Con Leche Republicans, taken aback by Biden’s statements, reacted:

Earlier this week we blasted Obama for his long record of ‘immigration fakery‘, making promises at election time, then once elected putting nothing on the table, and blaming Republicans for his own lack of leadership on immigration reform. Obama ignored the Hispanic community until it was time to fire up his campaign and discovered enthusiasm among Hispanics was lacking.

Incredibly, now Biden claims the Obama administration has been ‘breaking their necks’ on immigration reform. The Obama administration has deported record numbers of immigrants, not just “gang bangers” as Obama claimed, but DREAM eligible youth, and many long term residents who did not have criminal records. During the first six months of 2011, our “Deporter-in-Chief” deported 46,686 parents who had at least one U.S. citizen child, while more than 5,100 children of immigrants have ended up in foster care because their parents had either been detained or deported, according to ICE.

Obama has aggressively rolled out secure communities nationwide despite widespread complaints the program fuels racial profiling, and a recent study found 3,600 Latino citizens were falsely arrested! Thousands of Latino citizens born in South Texas have also been denied U.S. passports, and as reported by CNN, some were deported, based merely on Hispanic surname and midwife birth.

Obama failed to exercise leadership with Congress on immigration reform and put nothing on the table during his first two years, even when Democrats enjoyed super-majorities in both Houses of Congress. Instead, in June of 2011 Obama offered a ‘deferred action’ plan (“Morton Memo“) for long term residents with family ties, DREAM eligible youth, etc., presenting as “new policy” existing DHS policy for deferred action,  that had existed since 2000 (“Meisner memo“).

Under DHS policy that has existed since 2000, the Obama administration could have curbed deportations of DREAM eligible youth and long term residents without criminal records, but failed to act until it was time to launch his reelection campaign.

One year after the Morton memo was released, ICE had ‘reviewed’ 411,000 cases for deferred action, and closed just 2%. Recent numbers for Obama’s latest deferred action plan showed that just 2% of those who applied had been granted relief. The program is a ‘band aid’ that offers two years of relief from deportation, with no guarantee applicants will be spared deportation after two years.

Biden’s choice of words was in poor taste, though not surprising given Biden’s long history of gaffes. This reminds us that Joe Biden is just a heartbeat away from the presidency, and his selection as Obama’s running mate a second time highlights another Obama bad hiring decision.

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About Us – Cafe Con Leche Republicans is a national organization of Republicans who welcome “New Americans”, defined as immigrants and family of recent immigrants. Our mission is to make America and the GOP, more welcoming to “New Immigrants” through political activism, “in-reach” and education within the Republican Party, and lobbying government to adopt more immigrant friendly policies. We also seek to bring more conservative and moderate “New Americans” to the Republican Party. These efforts will strengthen the GOP, and lead more Republicans to embrace welcoming policies for immigrants and their families. We have members nationwide, with chapters in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and California. Our members and leadership are predominantly Hispanic, though we define ourselves by mission and guiding principles, not ethnicity, and we welcome all who share our goals. Our leadership is 100% Republican.

By Thomas Martin Salazar, (content originally Published through Cafe con Leche Republicans)

In 2008 President Obama made a promise to many Hispanics and Latinos that said he would make immigration reform priority. He promised that immigration reform was an important issue that should not wait to be addressed down the road, but during his first term.

Here we are four years later and in an interview with Univision, Obama tells the American people that his greatest failure was not passing comprehensive immigration reform.  This would be ironic if it was not such a tragic understatement. In fact, President Obama and his administration are aggressively  enforcing  immigration laws.

In the last four years President Obama rounded up and deported more than 1.5 million illegal immigrants. Moreover, he masqueraded as an immigration reformer – working to seduce the Latino community, by suing Arizona all the way up to the Supreme Court for passing SB 1070 and by opposing Maricopa county Sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Yes Obama and his campaign surrogates boast with pride about how Obama is the immigrant’s champion, but they neglect to tell the truth about Obama’s own immigration policies.

They conveniently ignore the fact that Obama has pioneered the Secure Communities program. According to a Research Report by Aarti Kohli, Peter Markowitz, and Lisa Chavez, President Obama took this pilot program, which was started under President Bush, from 14 jurisdictions to 1,595. This program empowers state and local police all throughout the United States, to do the very exact things for which his administration sued Arizona and Maricopa county Sheriff Joe Arpaio. More revealing statistics from the same research study states,

“Latinos comprise 93% of individuals arrested through Secure Communities though they only comprise 77% of the undocumented population in the United States;”

And

“Only 2% of non-citizens arrested through Secure Communities are granted relief from deportation by an immigration judge as compared to 14% of all immigration court respondents who are granted relief”

This is unequivocally a disproportionate assault on Latinos. But the facts do not stop here.  The President has deported more than 1.5 million illegal immigrants, which averages to just below 400,000 people a year. Furthermore, Obama’s immigration policies have left more than 5,000 American citizens in foster care because their parents were rounded up and deported. His administration in the name of national security continues to deny passports to United States citizens whose birth certificates came from midwife and not through a hospital. This has disproportionately affected Latinos. This new policy of no longer accepting midwife birth certificates as an acceptable form of Identification goes far beyond just impacting Latinos who are seeking to obtain passports; in fact, there are even incidents where Federal immigration officials coerced United States citizens into signing away their citizenship. These are not the actions of a man who cares about immigrants and their families nor is it the actions of an immigration reformer.

Recently Obama has again been making his rounds – reaching out to Latinos with his promise and message of reform. Ironically, Obama and his campaign want Americans to believe that immigration reform will become a reality within the next four years. Indeed, it is such an important issue to our President that he failed to even reference immigration in his new glossy pamphlet. Thus it seems that immigration reform is not as important as the President claims.  Then again, in the first four years immigration reform was supposedly a high priority.

While the President plays the victim, blaming lack of bipartisanship for why he has failed to pass immigration reform, I would ask you to look at his real record on immigration. Look at the millions of people he has rounded up and deported. Moreover, how debased it is that our government would see fit to seize children from their own parents, and place them in the foster care system. What type of nation have we become, when basic parental rights and child rights are neglected? Sadly, under President Obama this is a reality. Obama needs to be held accountable for his deception. In the end, Latinos have a choice of either voting for the deporter-in-chief or they can vote for a new direction.

Editors note: as with all blog postings that appear with a by-line, the opinions presented are the author’s and not necessarily the positions of Cafe Con Leche Republicans.

Thomas Martin Salazar is an Arizona leader of the Café con Leche Republicans. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from Grand Canyon University and is currently working on obtaining a MDiv in Biblical Communication from Phoenix Seminary. Thomas has also served as the Grand Canyon University College Republicans Vice President and interim President (February 2007-April 2008) and as a Maricopa County Republican Precinct committeeman (August 2009 – August 2012).

Guest Op-ed by George Benavides

I am an American. An American of Hispanic Descent. I am no different from my any other Americans of different culture. I am proud of my background; heritage just like any other American is of her/his culture.

I do not like to ask for handouts or charity, just like my other Americans. I prefer to work, a job, not welfare. I find that I am not alone when I say that we, Americans, regardless of culture, prefer to be employed or to practice entrepreneurship on equal basis. I do not want any special favors nor do I want to be singled-out because the color of my skin is darker or lighter. I want the same things that the other Americans of their culture want; an opportunity to a decent education, employment, home and a safe place to raise my family.

My family roots were here before the United States annexed our soil as one to make us one (several states) of the United States. I am not a foreigner, just a human being. My first language was not English. This does not make me less. Perhaps if we look up to individuals who speak more than one language we would be better prepared. On my mother’s side, I am of Native-American Descent, (Mayan, Yaqui and Aztec) who resided in Mexico. On my father’s side, it is of German and Spanish descent, they came to Mexico seeking freedom from oppression in their country.

I want every opportunity that is given to my other fellow Americans of different cultures. I want the respect, the love as a human being, an opportunity to serve each other equally, an opportunity for equal education, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and all my constitutional rights to practice in those freedoms.

As for my family, we have given ourselves to this great country, the United States of America. We hold just about every decorative medal that the United States Armed Services has to offer, including the United States Congressional Medal of Honor, and others that follow.

I am proud to be an American, an American of Hispanic Descent (Mexican Heritage)! Encourage your children to learn a second language and encourage them to continue with their education.

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George H. Benavides is a former U.S. Presidential Elector (1989) and Decorated Vietnam Veteran, and resides in Glendale, Arizona

By Alex Gonzalez (re-posted with the permission of the author and Latinos Ready to Vote – original link)
The politics of poverty and education tarnish the advancements of Hispanics/Latinos in the country. The politics of poverty too often box-in Latinos as a needy group while not taking into consideration that Latino are similar to “whites” in poverty rates.  It is true what Mitt Romney says about Latinos: Latinos are the same as any other American group whose aspirations are driven by the pursuit of The America dream.   Additionally, it is also 65% of Latinos  who do not want to be singled out as minority and thus choose to self-identify as “white” while maintaining their  country of origin roots.  So when explaining why 25% of Latinos live in poverty,  Hispanic Republican officials failed to acknowledge that what caused poverty among Latinos was generated by the mere fact that Latinos are a generation  behind  average Republican voters. Thus, poverty among Latinos is a condition of youthfulness, as opposed to cultural or racial factor.

Moreover, the unintended consequences of  not making  this economic connection between youth and education  forces Latino Republicans and elected officials to falsely portray Latinos as a group prone to poverty, and thereby, potential democrat voters.  However, this “poverty” image for Latinos by Latinos has unintended consequences in the political arena where Republican voters–rather than seeing young Latinos as the next generations of Republican voters– often buy into the idea that Latinos are a group of poor voters who only vote democrat because they want “handouts” (notwithstanding the fact that Latinos will pay for the benefits paid to baby boomers).

As a result,  often Hispanic Republicans–who otherwise could make a clear argument that Latinos will become the ideal college-educated voting bloc high-tax contributors — miss the opportunity to make a substantive conservative, appeal to Latino.  Therefore, Republican Hispanic officials fail to note that the poverty is not based on sole Latino issues, but rather a condition that prevails  among  the “White” southern  and in other rural states.  While the number of  “poor”   Latinos in the nation dropped to 13.2 million,  there about 22 million of non-Hispanic  “poor” whites. The failure of no addressing this poverty among “whites”, gives the impression that the  poverty  is a  non-“white”  issue, and thereby, creates false argument that  poverty affects only Latinos.

Below is the report by Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas stressing that the only reason why the Latino poverty levels is at 25% while “whites” levels is only at 10%, is the difference on age.

Limited English Skills, Relative Youth Contribute to Hispanic Poverty Rates

Hispanic poverty rates are high compared with other major demographic groups and have improved little in the past four decades.  In 2010, 26.4 percent of Texas Hispanics fell below the poverty line versus 9.2 percent of non-Hispanic whites (Chart 1A); nationally, 24.6 percent of Hispanics and 10.5 percent of non-Hispanic whites were poor (Chart 1B) Hispanic performance has also been disappointing when compared with other minorities nationally. Hispanic poverty rates have fallen 12 percentage points in Texas but less than 1 percentage point in the U.S. over the past 40 years. Black poverty declined 12 percentage points in Texas and 9 percentage points in the U.S. during the same period. Although Hispanics have logged much greater improvement in Texas than in the U.S. since 1970, their poverty rates remain higher here.

In the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey, Hispanic is an ethnicity that can fall into any race category and is based on self-identification. A total of 50.5 million people—16.3 percent of the U.S. population—consider themselves Hispanic, according to the 2010 census. Of those, 9.5 million reside in Texas, representing 37.6 percent of the state population. In Texas, the Hispanic population grew 42 percent between 2000 and 2010; nationally, it increased 43 percent. As a result, the Hispanic population’s well-being plays an increasingly important role in regional and national economic prosperity. Hispanic workers’ skills and education will help determine the future productivity of the labor force and competitiveness of U.S. industry.

Immigrant–Native Differences

Rapid immigration could explain why Hispanic poverty rates have not kept pace with improvements realized by other relatively poor minorities that experienced much less influx from abroad—such as non-Hispanic blacks. Hispanic immigrants tend to have low levels of English fluency and education, which are correlated with poverty. Indeed, overall poverty statistics (depicted in Charts 1A and 1B) mask considerable progress among Hispanics born in the U.S., the native born. The poverty rate of native-born Hispanics has declined over the past four decades and was 7 percentage points less than that of foreign-born Hispanics in 2010 (Chart 2). The native born benefit from more education, better English proficiency and U.S. citizenship.  Growth in the number of native-born Hispanics—accounting for more than 46 percent of the nation’s Hispanics age 16 and older—has outpaced immigrant inflows since 2000.

The poverty rate of native-born Hispanics was still 10 percentage points higher than that of non-Hispanic whites in 2010, even with Hispanics’ improved economic state. One contributor is Hispanic household heads’ relative youth—poverty tends to be more pervasive among younger families and declines over time. Because earnings rise with age at a decreasing rate, poverty will fall faster for Hispanics than for non-Hispanic whites, narrowing the gap in coming years.

Poverty Rates Fall with Time in U.S.

Although Hispanic immigrants have the highest poverty rates, these rates fall as immigrants spend more time in the U.S. (Chart 3). The Hispanic immigrant cohort that arrived in 1965–70 experienced a poverty rate of 24.7 percent in 1970, 17.5 percent in 1980 and 16 percent by 2010. Hispanic immigrants arriving in 1975–80 initially had a 31.6 percent poverty rate, which fell to 25 percent a decade later and to 17.2 percent by 2010. Every immigrant cohort pictured experienced sharp poverty rate declines during the first two decades following arrival. However, the chart reveals that the initial poverty rate has increased across cohorts. For immigrants who arrived in 1965–70, 24.7 percent lived in poverty in 1970; for arrivals in 1975– 80, 31.6 percent lived in poverty in 1980. Rising immigration from Mexico and Central America accounts for much of the trend. Those groups have less education on average than earlier waves of Hispanics from places such as Cuba and Puerto Rico.

What Contributes to Poverty?

Among household heads, the poverty gap between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites was 13 percentage points in 2010. The gap can be decomposed into two sets of contributing factors—the differences in characteristics between the two groups, and the differences in labor market rewards (or penalties) for those characteristics.5 The focus here is on the former, the contribution of the two groups’ differing attributes to the poverty gap. Age is one factor—Hispanics are younger than non-Hispanics, on average, and younger people tend to be poorer. The poverty rate among Hispanics would drop if their average age were the same as that of non-Hispanic whites. We also examined the importance of the household head’s immigrant status, education, English ability and year-round employment. We note whether the household head is a single female, in addition to household characteristics such as the number of children, family size and residential location. Poor English-speaking ability makes the largest contribution to the poverty gap, explaining 6.1 percentage points of the 13 percentage-point poverty gap between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites (Chart 4).

In other words, absent the language barrier, the poverty gap would be 6.9 percentage points. Differences in educational attainment explain 1.3 percentage points of the gap. This number probably understates the importance of schooling since it assumes both groups received the same quality of instruction. In reality, studying in the U.S. provides higher returns than learning abroad. Whether the head was employed year-round accounts for 1.7 percentage points of the poverty gap; the household head’s age accounts for another 1.8 percentage points of the gap.  The number of children in the household— which is larger (by 0.6 children) for Hispanics than for the non-Hispanic white group—is responsible for 1.1 percentage points of the gap. After controlling for the number of children, other differences in family size actually reduce the poverty gap by 0.7 percentage points, probably because Hispanic households include more adults than do non-Hispanic white families. The number of female-headed households does not significantly affect the poverty gap, even though half of all Hispanic children are now born to unmarried women, most of whom are themselves U.S. born.

The choice of urban-area location and state of residence decreases the gap by 0.7 percentage points. This may be surprising since many Hispanics live in areas with low-income housing and underperforming schools.8 However, these circumstances are offset by Hispanics living in or moving to parts of the country with strong economic growth, such as the Southwest (including Texas), the South and the Mountain West. Meanwhile, the household head’s immigrant status contributes 0.5 percentage points to the poverty gap, a comparatively small number. This effect is so small because English ability and education capture much  of the difference between Hispanic natives and immigrants.

Differences in characteristics cannot explain 1.8 percentage points of the poverty gap. This portion of the gap is due to differences in how the labor market values characteristics among Hispanics and non- Hispanic whites. For example, non-Hispanics may earn a higher return on education than Hispanics, on average, because they are more likely to be U.S. educated. However, discrimination can also play a role. This decomposition of the poverty gap doesn’t consider such factors as comparatively less work experience, living in states with low minimum wages and lower rates of unionization. More importantly, the lack of legal status and the Great Recession are key contributors to Hispanic poverty. About half of foreign-born Hispanics are undocumented immigrants. They earn less, change jobs more frequently and receive less government aid. As a group, Hispanics’ relatively lower educational attainment and their employment concentration in economically sensitive sectors such as construction increase their vulnerability to the economic downturn.9

 The Outlook for Hispanics

The future of the U.S. Hispanic population depends on its rapidly growing native-born segment. Improving education is crucial to closing the poverty gap, a goal helped by new generations that assimilate and attain higher education levels.10 Although 49 percent of Hispanic immigrants don’t have a high school degree, only 20 percent of the second generation and 18 percent of the third generation and beyond lack one. While that is impressive improvement, it compares with just 8 percent of non-Hispanic whites who lack high school completion.

Ironically, while Hispanic natives acquire far more education than their immigrant parents, they lose some positive attributes of the first generation as they assimilate. Hispanic immigrants have high labor force participation rates, high geographic mobility, high marriage rates and low nonmarital birth rates. Their children are less geographically mobile and are experiencing rising out-of-wedlock births, a troubling trend given that households headed by women tend to have elevated poverty rates. Other concerns include the growing elderly Hispanic population, which is less likely to receive pension or Social Security benefits, contributing to a high poverty incidence.

Bi is a research analyst and Orrenius is an assistant vice president and senior economist in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Zavodny is a professor of economics at Agnes Scott College. You can also read the report in pdf file here>> 

Guest op-ed by Luis Alvarado (re-posted from Politico with permission of the author – original link)

A few days ago President Obama came to California once again – mostly to fundraise after being accused of not engaging the Latino community after 15 visits he made a visit to the Central Valley at what he thought was a Latino event.

This visit would send a message that he respects and honors the Latino community.  He came to honor Cesar Chavez with a dedication of a national monument.  Chavez, a Union organizer from the 1960s is best known for his march with JFK and his grape boycott against grape ranchers.  Chaves is seen as a hero to many Latinos, but in the gathering for the dedication only union supporters were allowed in.

In California today you can find streets, school, and even gardens named after Cesar Chaves.  Schoolbooks teach students of the suffrage that farm workers endured and how the Movement of Chavez overcame oppression.  How can Latinos not be enamored with him?  This week Ruben Navarrette Jr., a contributing reporter for CNN, wrote an article on the presidential dedication and called it “He Hit A Foul Ball.”  In his article he correctly illustrated how the real Cesar Chavez was actually anti-illegal immigrant, how he used Immigration officers to have the aliens deported and even physically attacked. Yes, Chavez was the original Minute Man.

Chavez highjacked religious fervor and sacred images to justify and pressure workers to rise, he used fear to keep union members in check and learned that not until he could get Latinos to feel distressed would they fall in line to punish the perceived oppressors, tactics that are still being used today to incite Latinos to vote on certain issues or against certain candidates.

With the presidential race declared a coin toss and polls show Latino apathy as a danger to Obama and other Democratic races, the fear and hate tactics of the 1960s are now being used today at full blast.  This week, a union independent expenditure sent a mailer to the Latino community in the City of San Diego where a contested mayoral race could be influenced by the Latino vote.  To help the union candidate, the mail piece had pictures of a bullish police officer with sunglasses and all.  The image included dangling handcuffs and a fabricated message in Spanish that his opponent would go after Latino children and hurt them, In essence the bogeyman himself.  Yet if Latinos were to look at the facts of that race, one could conclude that the union candidate could be more of a disadvantage to Latinos.

Ruben Navarrette received hate mail for his article from other Latinos who were uncomfortable with the image of Cesar Chavez being disparaged.  But I applaud him for attempting to bring our community out of the political dark ages and into a political process where we can be stakeholders of our own destiny, because we understand the issues and we can debate our positions.  Not because the unions scare us into punishing their opponents.  The day we stop letting unions from claiming to talk for us and represent all of the Latino interest, is the day we will find ourselves masters of our own destiny in our own country.

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Luis Alvarado is a Strategic advisor, Revolvis; Former Los Angeles Regional Chairman for the McCain/Palin Campaign

Editor’s note: as with all blog postings with a by-line, the opinions presented are the author’s, and may or may not be the positions of Cafe Con Leche Republicans