As a woman veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces, I support the “Borinqueneers Congressional Gold Medal Act” via H.R. 1726.  I encourage y’all to support it to by writing your Senators and Congressmen.  I will be sending Senator John McCain’s office a note to support it since he is a veteran, too.

Gene Rodriguez – New York Leader

Gene Rodriguez — who is the New York State leader for  SOMOS INDEPENDENTS (a/k/a the National Tequila Party Movement) is an American of Puerto Rican descent, and he released this statement with regard to H.R. 1726  today:

Recognizing these brave men that were taken from their warm homeland as volunteers to forego the freezing temperatures of Korea to save trapped Marines, shows the love of country overcame the discrimination they had to endure. They performed the last bayonet charge in American military history. They were the last segregated unit in the Armed Forces. This recognition is long overdue.

From Borinqueneers Congressional Gold Medal Alliance:

Contact your (2) U.S. Senators and your (1) US House of Representatives member (Congressman). The adoption of the Borinqueneers Congressional Gold Medal will require the co-sponsorship from 2/3 of our US legislators. That’s 290 US House of Rep’s members & 67 US Senators!

Contact them, preferably via phone call or email so there is a record. In most cases, the email method will be a web form which is quick & easy to complete. Just include your personal info, & copy and paste the content of the sample letter/email linked below or use your own words requesting their co-sponsorship of the legislation awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the 65th Infantry Regiment Borinqueneers!

NEW April 25, 2013: The official bill number in the US House of Representatives is H.R. 1726 for “The Borinqueneers Congressional Gold Medal Act”. In the US Senate, we will post the bill number once it’s introduced.

• US Senators list (2): http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
• US House of Representatives list (1): http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
• A sample letter/email is available in various formats at: http://www.65thCGM.org/resources.html.

If you live in Puerto Rico, call or email (web form) The Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico, the Hon. Pedro Pierluisi, and thank him for introducing the legislation in the US House! Urge him to keep championing the bill!

• English: http://pierluisi.house.gov/english/contact-us.html
• Spanish: http://pierluisi.house.gov/espanol/contactenos.html

You may also contact other elected officials to seek their support.

Muchas Gracias!

11 million human lives are being discussed. Who is on the right side of history?

As we approach summer, we sometimes consider the cold beverages we purchase.   Mexican-Americans / Latinos ought to consider boycotting Coors Beer if the Coors family is still donating to Heritage Foundation.

The Heritage Foundation was established in 1973 by Joseph Coors (of Coors Beer) and Paul Weyrich.  Interestingly enough the

founders of Coors were German immigrants Adolph Coors and Jacob Schueler who came to the United States in 1873.  They

FUTBOL MARKETING:  Coors Light is working on reversing decades of being stigmatized as a brand that does not represent the Mexican / Mexican-American identity. The brand’s investment in the Primera Division is the first step in an ongoing effort to improve its brand image with Mexicans / Mexican-Americans, and should be one piece of a much larger and broader strategy.

established a brewery in Golden, Colorado. Coors family members have played a prominent role in American politics and public policy, included providing a $250,000 grant to found The Heritage Foundation.

The Heritage Foundation continues to push anti-immigrant stories produced by the Republican anti-immigrant crusader via Kris Kobach. In 2004, Kobach became senior counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), the legal arm of FAIR. John Tanton helped start the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR.

According to the SPLC:

Tanton introduced key FAIR leaders to the president of the Pioneer Fund, a white supremacist group set up to encourage “race betterment,” at a 1997 meeting at a private club. Tanton also wrote a major far-right funder to encourage her to read the work of a radical anti-Semitic professor — to “give you a new understanding of the Jewish outlook on life” — and suggested that the entire FAIR board discuss the professor’s theories on the Jews. He revered a principal architect of the Immigration Act of 1924, instituting a national origin quota system and barring Asian immigration — a rabid anti-Semite whose pro-Nazi American Coalition of Patriotic Societies was indicted for sedition in 1942. Tanton even arranged for his hero’s private papers to be stored in the same library as his at the University of Michigan.

Kris Kobach who writes for the Heritage Foundation has a history of introducing laws that are considered anti-Mexican American:

SPLC states:

Four towns and one state examined in this report all saw a crisis in race relations as conflicts between Latino immigrants and mostly white natives escalated. Latinos reported being threatened, shot at, subjected to racial taunts and more. Police are having trouble getting cooperation from any in their Latino communities. …   Behind all of this stands one man: Kris Kobach, a former Kansas City law professor who was just elected Kansas secretary of state. For the better part of the last six years, Kobach has been chief legal counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which is the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). He helped to write and defend in court the laws in Hazleton, Valley Park, Farmers Branch, Fremont and Arizona, and he is seeking to do even more.

Kobach’s affiliation with FAIR is important. For most of the last three decades, FAIR has been working, as its founder John Tanton once wrote, to preserve “a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” Although the organization is typically less than candid about its motives, its president, Dan Stein, has sounded similar notes. In a heretofore unknown oral history housed in a university library, Stein expressed his anger at the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which sought to end a longstanding and racist system of quotas. President Lyndon B. Johnson, in signing the act, had celebrated the demise of the old racist system, saying that “it will never again shadow the gate to the American nation with …  prejudice.” Stein didn’t see it that way. The act, he said, was a “key mistake” in American policy forced by people who sought “to retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance” and create “chaos.”

We sincerely hope donors will not contribute their money to the Heritage Foundation because bigotry is reeking with their anti-immigrant rhetoric that is clearly anti-Mexican; and their associations with Kris Kobach.

Kris Kobach is the legal arm of Arizona’s SB1070 and he is affiliated with the Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation’s Jason Richwine
Courtesy of David Hills/The Heritage Foundation

Looks like another bigot bites the dust!

Earlier this week, we wrote about the Heritage Foundation’s bogus Immigration study here, and now it looks like Jason Richwine may have resigned from pressure and more than likely equating race and intelligence.

That said, the Heritage Foundation still has many of anti-immigrant and bigot-filled stories on their website produced by Kris Kobach — in fact, Kobach is a non-staff member.  Republican Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is the author and legal arm for many anti-immigrants laws that have spread across our Nation (including Arizona’s SB1070).

According to a story by David Weigel, Jason Richwine’s friends warned him about researching connections between race and intelligence years ago. The Heritage Foundation scholar should have listened.

Jason Richwine Resigns from the Heritage Foundation

By David Weigel

Updated Friday, May 10, 2013, at 3:49 PM

The Heritage Foundation tells me the news without much more detail. The full explanation:

Jason Richwine let us know he’s decided to resign from his position. He’s no longer employed by Heritage.

It is our long-standing policy not to discuss internal personnel matters.

Some background: I’d been asking whether Heritage read Richwine’s dissertation, or talked about any of the potentially explosive IQ research, before hiring him. No answer as of yet, though his deparature means the story will fade.

.

Kris Kobach is the legal arm of Arizona’s SB1070 and he is affiliated with the Heritage Foundation

(Above) Sheriff Joe Arpaio with Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry

From the AP:

It appears Chad Willems of the Arpaio campaign is challenging Lilia Alvarez (wife of Randy Parraz).  Interesting … see below.

From AZ Central:

By JJ Hensley The Arizona Republic

The effort to recall Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is approaching its last month needing more than 130,000 valid petition signatures to force an election.

Organizers of the recall effort on Monday said they have collected 200,359 signatures, still far short of the 335,000 signatures they are required to file by May 30 to force Arpaio into a recall election.

….

Arpaio’s campaign manager, Chad Willems, said Monday’s announcement was another fundraising stunt for the recall campaign. Willems countered with an offer of his own:

“Both sides agree to hire an independent auditor to determine exactly how many signatures have been collected, how many of those signatures are valid, and how many are invalid,” Willems said.

“If the numbers Respect Arizona released today are correct, the Arpaio campaign will pay for the audit.”

Good story by the DRM DREAM Action Coalition:

By: Ryan Campbell Posted date: May 09, 2013

As the vote on immigration nears, unsurprisingly the spotlight has been become brighter and the debate more intense.  Marco Rubio (R-FL), the highest profile conservative in the Gang of 8, has had a dramatic new opponent in his former close ally Jim DeMint, head of the Heritage Foundation. Meanwhile, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) have been spearheading an attempt to try to drown the bill in amendments.  All of this shows a conservative side of politics deeply divided over the immigration issue, ready to split old coalitions and, hopefully, create new ones to elect leaders who will lead in 2014.

The last time the Heritage Foundation came out with a report in 2007, it was thoroughly debunked as being transparently wrong, or, as the conservative Cato Institute put it, “fatally flawed.”  The Heritage Foundation outdid themselves, finding Jason Richwine to help with this year’s study.  Richwine is known for the following quote from his Harvard dissertation:

“The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations. The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market. Selecting high-IQ immigrants would ameliorate these problems in the U.S., while at the same time benefiting smart potential immigrants who lack educational access in their home countries.”

Trust me, he goes on.  This attitude, blocking immigration from certain countries to create a more intelligent America, fits into society somewhere between Rep. Young casually dropping “wetback” in an interview and the Eugenics movement: it is an ugly throwback to a time where overt, institutionalized racism was sometimes justified by phrenology or other pseudoscientific means to keep entire races of people down. The Heritage Foundation, however, backed Richwine and his contribution to their recent study, up until they changed their minds and released statements distancing themselves from him.

Marco Rubio called the report “deeply flawed”; Grover Norquist, who worked with Heritage in the past to put together his famous tax pledge, dismissed it by saying it was “done by one guy”; Haley Barbour (former Mississippi Gov.), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), the Cato Institute and Paul Ryan (R-WI) have all criticized the study as being unrealistic and inflated, and this is just a short list of conservatives.

While the report may still be cited in part, it seems that it was too politically ambitious, and will ultimately fall by the wayside in this debate.

While the Heritage Foundation joins other outside groups such as the ICE union in unrealistically opposing immigration reform, Senators Sessions and Grassley are trying to kill or severely weaken the bill in committee with amendments; between the two of them, they have put up over 100 amendments to the Gang of 8 bill.

Earlier today at the Senate Judiciary Committee where Senators debated amendments for the bill, Sessions assured the public that Lindsay Graham (R-SC) didn’t mean to slander Mexico when he said that many Mexicans were escaping “hellholes” to come to the U.S.  While certainly a bit ugly, this was nowhere near the most anti-immigrant statement made by the Senate Judiciary Committee.  For example, John Cornyn (R-TX) said that ICE agents claim 3 out of 4 border crossings went undetected.  For starters, bringing the ICE union into the discussions on our broken immigration system is like bringing a crack dealer to a drug intervention.  Further, Cornyn had to be corrected by Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), who then cited research studies and reminded Cornyn that his stories were just anecdotes that anyone could say.

Chuck Grassley’s amendment to require that the border be “secure” for 6 months as a “trigger” to begin changing the legal status of undocumented immigrants was defeated, with senators like Chuck Schumer saying that it was a delay tactic.  While the back and forth was uncomfortable, it didn’t get as bad as Grassley screaming at Schumer like before.

There are certainly symbolic and/or humanitarian amendments up for debate, such as Grassley’s to block humanitarian travel home; many a DREAMer has painfully shared a story of a dying grandparent they were not able to visit.  The real battle, however, will be on issues such as how much we will spend on the border, whether gay marriage will be recognized in the bill and whether or not we offer citizenship to undocumented immigrants.   All of these issues implicate sensitive racial issues and security, so we can expect the fringes to be extra fringe-y.

The Senators are getting to the heart of the immigration debate, where every point will be discussed and then be lit aflame on Twitter, MSNBC, Fox News and other media outlets, all ready to fire up those on the fringes.  Between outside groups, gay marriage, citizenship and border security, we can expect the debate to get heated and Senators to get ugly again some time soon.  All of this could create a serious shakeup in the Republican Party, as well as conservative politics in general, that won’t be evident until 2014 when people vote based on this and the gun debate.

Build it, and they will come [anyway].

Did you know that the large government Republicans are wanting to throw more money at a wall even though the United States has met 100% of it’s operational goals of President George W. Bush’s Secure Fence Act of 2006?

However, it looks like Mexican immigrants are starting to take a script from the Cuban immigrant’s boat book.

According to San Diego Reader:

“Officials from the Mexican Navy (La Secretaría de Marina) reported today, April 29th, that 10 to 12 boats per month are abandoned off the coast of Baja California with immigrants aboard. The Associated Press detailed the report in Spanish, which states an estimated of 150 immigrants are abandoned per month. The Navy reported that the boats often break down at sea, with the boat operator leaving the passengers without communication or water.

Small water vessels from Baja California have increasingly been found along the coast of Southern California, as smugglers try alternative routes. Boats have been found ashore as far north as Los Angeles.”

Cuban immigrants are still coming into our country because they know we give them privileged amnesty via the Cuban Adjustment Act via the “wet-foot dry-foot” policy.  Once they make it to our Nation, Cuban immigrants also receive tax payer funded government funded benefits for at least one year (which no other immigrant from another country receives).

Even though Mexican immigrant migration has almost come to a complete stop, we see both Mexican and Cuban immigrants using boats to enter our Nation.  This is precisely why we need to support legal immigration of our clearly broken system — however, will legal comprehensive immigration reform apply to ALL immigrants?

April 12, 2013 –  (The photo released by Carnival shows men aboard what appears to be a yellow rubber boat around 18′ between Cuba and Florida).

According to Cruise Law News, “The U.S. Coast Guard reported April 12, 2013 that two cruise ships responded to migrants at sea in two separate incidents. A Coast Guard representative characterized the migrants as floating in two “rustic vessels” south of Key West Florida.”

The cruise ships involved are the Disney Wonder home ported in Miami, and the Carnival Conquest which is based in New Orleans.  Carnival stated that the Conquest picked up 13 Cuban nationals about 40 miles from Key West.

I am glad to see Congress work on fixing the broken immigration system — but the new law needs to apply to all immigrants because All Men Are Created Equal.

Where are the so called pro national security people at with regard to the entire border of our country?

Did you know that Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and David Vitter (R-LA) have not taken any action with requesting additional funds regarding northern border security despite a U.S. and Canada foil Al Qaeda terrorist plot to derail New York to Toronto passenger train that occurred just last month in April 2013?

Surely these southern senators know the United States has undocumented Canadians in our Nation, too.

Anti-immigrant hardliners like Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and David Vitter (R-LA) have taken strong stances against legal comprehensive immigration reform and many did not support the DREAM Act vote of 2010.    Some of these anti-immigrant hardliners have taken shameful stances in equating the Mexican border to terrorism, but where are they at when it comes to the porous Canadian border and actual Al Qaeda as recent as last month?

As a proud woman veteran of our Armed Forces who served during Gulf War I, I believe we should protect all of our borders that touch Canada, the Pacific Ocean, and the Atlantic Ocean, too. Mexican-American veterans are paying very close attention to the actions of our southern Senators as it relates to the Gang of Eight Legal Immigration Reform — specifically in states with heavy Mexican-American population.   2014 and 2016 is just around the corner, and there are approximately 500,000 new “Latin” up and coming of age voters every single year.

Grassley, Vitter, Cruz and Cornyn more concerned with the brown border instead of the one where Al Qaeda terrorist plot was broken via Canada.

Ted Cruz Seeks to Ban Illegal Immigrants in U.S. from Citizenship, and his  amendment would prevent 11 million currently here from earning legal status.  Ted Cruz will not even agree with the other Cuban-American and Republican Senator Marco Rubio.    No wonder the DREAM Act students are calling Ted Cruz a vendido!

According to US NEWS, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, filed an amendment on a new immigration bill that would eliminate a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already here.

Cuban-American Ted Cruz is living in the State of Texas where the majority of the Latin people are of Mexican descent and the below story hints to why I believe he will be a one term Senator if he does not do a complete 180 to his immigration political views.

From the USA TODAY:

“There are more Mexicans here than ever before,” Villagran, a buyer for a scrap metal company, says of Pasadena. “We’ve kind of taken over.”

And then some. Overall, Texas’ population grew to more than 25 million, awarding the nation’s second most populous state four more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hispanics accounted for 65% of the state’s growth since 2000, while non-Hispanic whites experienced the smallest increase of any group, just 4.2%. The black population grew by 22%.

“We’re seeing the development of two populations groups in Texas: aging Anglos and young minorities,” says Steve Murdock, a former Census Bureau director and now a Rice University sociology professor. “We’re seeing Hispanic growth not just deepen but become pervasive throughout the state.”

A healthy state economy during the recent recession and Mexican nationals fleeing drug cartel violence in Mexico also contributed to Texas’ population boom, he says. Border towns saw sharp increases: Brownsville’s population rose 25% and Laredo’s by 33%.

But natural Latino population increases — more Latinos born in the state than dying — were the main engine, he says. For the first time in recent history, Texas is less than half non-Hispanic white, dipping to 45%, the data shows. Hispanics make up about 38% of the total population.

The state’s burgeoning Hispanic population mirrors what’s happening across the USA, Murdock says. “The Texas of today is the U.S. of tomorrow,” he says.

Another telling statistic: Texas added nearly 1 million children under 18 — 95% of them Hispanic, says William Frey, a demographer for the Brookings Institution. “That’s the future of the state,” he says. “It’s a diverse one.”

DREAM Act activists are referring to Senator Ted Cruz as “vendido.”

Cuban-American Senator Republican Ted Cruz is at odds with Cuban-American Senator Republican Marco Rubio over immigration legislation.

Where is the RNC Chairman Reince Priebus’ leadership at when GOP Cuban-Americans are at immigration philosophical odds?  The Republican Party is acting like a fish without fins.

According to POLITICO:

The Texas freshman is sharply critical of the pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, a central part of the bipartisan bill that Rubio helped write.

This is Reince’s chance to step in and show leadership — but he clearly isn’t giving any signals with regard to legal immigration.

Reince Priebus is the Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The Republican Party is facing a split over immigration reminiscent of what the Democratic Party had to endure during the Civil Rights era in light of the Dixiecrat bigots — yet, Priebus is nowhere to be found on leadership.

David Cantanese of the New York Daily Beast stated the Texas freshman Ted Cruz has become the face of the GOP opposition to immigration reform:

Just in case Reince glances at this story, perhaps this is a good time to tell him that Mexican-Americans make up the bulk of the Latino population pie nearing 50%, and we are tired of the tail walking the dog.

Our time is coming soon — and we are going to remember who stood on the right side of immigration come 2014 and 2016 time.

The tail has been wagging the dog, but it will be time for the dog to wag the tail. Cruz had better do better than to offer Mexicans and undocumented Latinos table scraps.