The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting the following:
“Fabian Nunez, who as California Assembly Speaker became one of the state’s most prominent Latino lawmakers, is taking on a new media career — joining a team of 2012 election analysts with powerhouse Spanish-language Univision Communications.
Democrat Nunez joins a pair of GOP analysts — journalist Helen Aguirre Ferre and Dr. Emilio Gonzalez, who served as director of the Homeland Security’s immigration services — in the new analyst job with Univision. The new team is charged with delivering political analysis on the issues and the candidates of the 2012 presidential election on Univision’s evening newscasts, “Noticiero Univision,” for the network’s popular Sunday news show, “Al Punto” (To the Point), and its morning program, “Despierta America.” The network will use the team as part of a plan to marshall more social network and interactive coverage with its “Destino 2012? coverage, according to a Univision news release.
”As Hispanics continue to grow innumber and influence, and become even more engaged with technology and social platforms, Unvision will….keep audiences abreast of the news that will impoact their lives, so in turn they can make informed decisions,” according to a statement Monday by Isaac Lee, president of News/Univision Communications.”
Since leaving his position as the Speaker of the California Assembly and the controversial pardon of his son’s manslaugher case, Nuñez has maintained a rather low profile. I think that this might be a step toward reshaping his image in taking this public step as a media analyst. It will be interesting to see how the viewers of Univision react to him. I’m not too surprised that he’s stepping back out into the public sphere — are you?
Jon Huntsman is leaving the GOP primary race, but it’s worth noting that his absence will leave a void for those in the GOP who wanted more moderation and nuance on the immigration issue. Contrast some of Huntsman’s statements with those of Mitt Romney who continues to move to the right on immigration. This week Mitt Romney received the endorsement of Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, who has promoted many of the state anti-immigration laws.
Here are a few of Huntsman’s statements on immigration:
“I believe that young kids when they’re dragged here to the United States have no say over their journey. They have no say over their destiny,” he said at an event at the Salem Chamber of Commerce. “And we either have a two-tiered bifurcated system or we allow, somehow, people to achieve the American dream.”
“I hate the thought of a fence on the border. As an American, the thought of a fence to some extent repulses me, because it is not consistent with the image that we projected to the rest of the world. But the situation is such today that I don’t think we have a choice, and before we begin the conversation of processing 11 or 12 million undocumented workers, we’ve got to secure the border. There’s got to be an alternative rather than sending people back. That’s unrealistic.”
“Yes, they came here in an illegal fashion. And yes, they should be punished in some form or fashion. We can find a solution. If President Reagan were here, he would speak to the American people and he would lay out in hopeful, optimistic terms how we can get there, remembering full well that we’re dealing with human beings here. We have to agree. But let me just say one thing about legal immigration. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that our legal immigration system is broken. And if we want to do something about attracting brain power to this country, we need to focus as much on legal immigration.”
What are your thoughts? Do you think that the remaining GOP candidates will regret having taken more extreme positions on immigration?
2012 could be the actual beginning of the long expected Latino political awakening. Why? Perhaps sheer numbers, the reaction to the dire economic costs the community has endured, the evaporation of Latino family wealth in the housing bubble and great Mortgage scams, high unemployment and under-employment, continuously high drop out rates for high school completion of any ethnic group, the appallingly high prison population, and an alarming obesity and diabetes problem that plagues the community. All of these issues are maddening and worthy of action. Simply stated, the Latino community writ large is in crisis.
This crisis is further exacerbated by the anti-immigrant (now largely anti-Latino) social and political movement emerging throughout the country with such mean-spirited fury in Arizona, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina and many other locales signals a most distressing phenomena. The continued aggressive deportations have helped portray Latinos as a marginalized class of dark, uneducated, criminally menacing and generally undesirable people. Our discouraging lack of unity or even outrage is sadly absent amongst our fellow Hispanics. This general lack of passion suggests that a boiling point has not been reached. Hence, to expect an out-pouring of angry or concerned Latino citizenry at the polls is not in the cards.
This lack of cohesiveness readily explains President Obama’s tepid leadership on Latino issues. At times, the Democrats smack of a craven or pusillanimous approach. For instance, the Congressional Democrats, more specifically those in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, have been reluctant to challenge the President on his record deportations that have separated American born children from their parents and have occasionally caught US citizens in the ICE dragnet. As for the GOP, it manifests irrational derailment (crack up) or plain madness. An example of this is how many Republicans refuse to address the immigration problem humanely, while ratcheting up the heated rhetoric that many Latinos find offensive. Additionally, the Republican approach to Latin American foreign policy is irrational, as evidenced by the recent failure to confirm Ambassador Aponte and the continued linking of Hugo Chavez to Iran. Neither party appears to feel the need to cater or attend to our disturbing issues. It is as if our 50 million + population does not matter and may be satisfied with only a handful of swing states: Florida the biggest prize, which empowers the Cuban Americans out of proportion and the smaller states like New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada give the Hispanics some electoral heft. Overall, the Latino vote in electoral terms is largely viewed as those reduced groups of prosperous or “assimilated” Hispanics.
A lot can take place within a 15 year span. Children grow, people mature, faces age and, at times, are replaced. You may find the facades of buildings remain the same all the while the folks who dwell inside alternate. So is the case within Logan Square, a neighborhood in the Northwest side of Chicago. At one point, the population within the area was dominated by Latinos, however, nowadays it seems that Caucasians are the populous race. Neighbors I grew up with have gone and moved away, replaced by college kids and young professionals.
At this point, you could see that this piece revolves around the topic of gentrification. However, before we move on, I should state that it isn’t one in which I will condone or condemn the phenomena, but rather one in which I inform through personal experience.
I am not saying that Logan Square is the only area in Chicago, let alone, the U.S. that has undergone the gentrifying process. Several neighborhoods around Chicago have had the same experience (Lincoln Park and Pilsen are but two). However, like many individuals who are from such areas, there are personal stakes. At 8 years old, my parents, two Ecuadorian immigrants, had decided to open up a small business located within the neighborhood, El Condor. At first it was meant to be nothing more than a dollar store. Over the years it had grown to be a distributor of Latin American products. I spent my childhood hanging around their storefront, thoughtlessly watching the area change through the arrival of higher income individuals as well as through redevelopment efforts.
I’ll be quite honest I am torn between the old and the new. I remember being a child and experiencing the neighborhood during its shadiest of forms. I still remember walking down Milwaukee Avenue at the age of 12 and being held up at knife point for what little money I had in my pocket. I can’t forget the anxiety and the constant looking over my shoulder during my teen years. In fact, it had gotten to the point where I had to carry a weapon, myself, in the event anything transpired.
The commentary continues on White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Muñoz this week with a writer at Fox News Latino asking if she’s being treated as a modern day Malinche? For those of you needing a refresher, Malinche, the lover of Hernan Cortes, is treated as both a heroine and traitor depending upon one’s reading of history. It’s an interesting question, but also one that would not be posed if the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs were an Anglo named Cynthia Main instead of Cecilia Muñoz.
My initial reaction to the piece was that there was a lack of analysis of what Muñoz has been saying. More specifically, Ms. Muñoz has been telling us that more than half of the people who have been removed are serious criminals when other data suggests that they aren’t. And then there’s the issue of Muñoz addressing DHS’s prioritization of removals when new evidence suggests that the application of deportation prioritization are inconsistently applied. So there’s a disconnect in the policy implementation where the folks on the ground are pursuing a different course of action from what the leadership (people like Muñoz) are publicly saying.
In the eyes of many immigration policy observers, the administration and Cecilia Muñoz, since she’s part of it, continue to have a credibility problem. As more people shed light on this issue of who is being deported and for what, look for more people to publicly question what has been going on with the Secure Communities program and deportations given the goals of DHS. The scrutiny may even ramp up if more US citizens are caught in the deportation dragnet.
Word is that the White House is considering Cecilia Muñoz to replace Melody Barnes as President Obama’s domestic policy chief. So ultimately, Muñoz will have to decide whether she wants to continue to be part of an administration that some feel is “worse than Bush” on immigration. Because of her previous advocacy in immigration, people will continue to focus on what she says when she’s tasked with discussing immigration on behalf of the President.
On Friday, November 25th, DREAMers lost a brother in the struggle, Joaquin Luna. Joaquin was a DREAMer from Mission, TX, a border town, where undocumented students are further imprisoned as the multiple checkpoints make it nearly impossible to even get out of the small confines of their town.
Joaquin was born in Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas, and was brought to the United States at 6 months. He was adopted by his aunt and uncle because his birth mother was not in full capacity to properly take care of him. Unfortunately, they could not fix his legal status, and he was caught in limbo like the rest of us.
On Friday, Joaquin dressed up in a nice suit, kissed his mother and his father goodbye, and then headed straight for the restroom where he shot himself with a small handgun leaving behind his dreams, letting them evaporate into thin air. He wanted to become an engineer. He was going to graduate in May with honors. Just five more months. He had a full ride to many prestigious universities one of them being Texas A&M University, he could’ve been an Aggie, like me, like all my Aggie DREAMer brothers and sisters, and then, he would have found us, we would have found him. But there’s no sense in reminiscing on what could have been. The damage is done, and 2 million other DREAMers have lost a brother and are mourning, all around the country in solidarity with his friends and loved ones.
Maybe it is our fault, for not reaching out to the Valley sooner, for not expanding faster.
While the Obama administration has publicly said that it would prioritize deportations to focus on criminals and others who posed an immediate threat, there have been DREAM Act eligible youth who have been detained and processed into deportation proceedings. In recent months, young people who are in college and/or who have completed degree programs have been fitted with ankle monitoring bracelets, sent to deportation hearings, and have been locked up in detention. These are the very people that many have been under the impression that DHS resources would not be expended on given the public statements about enforcement prioritization.
If you haven’t been following the continuing saga of the Obama administration and its defense of record deportation numbers, I’m going to provide some quick links in this post to get you caught up. There is some different of opinion in the Latino and immigrant advocacy community about the perceived targeted criticism of Cecilia Muñoz, the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House, who has been the spokesperson for the immigration policies.
Plainly, there is a credibility problem with the immigration issue in the administration.
What are your thoughts? Are the criticisms of Cecilia Muñoz and the administration valid, or should people ignore the messenger and just focus on the bigger picture and problems with the current immigration situation? Does Dolores Huerta’s message to “defend Cecilia Muñoz” resonate with you? Do you think Huerta would be asking people to defend the messenger of the administration’s policies if that person was not Latina or did not have a background in immigration advocacy?
