By SAM MILLER
The Orange County Register

Nearly half of Latino Californians say the high likelihood of divorce makes marriage too risky, perhaps explaining why nearly twice as many Latino adults than other adults never get married, according to a survey of 2,000 California adults.

The California Healthy Marriage Coalition this week released the results of the survey to coincide with National Hispanic Marriage Day on Sunday.

Three-quarters of those surveyed said they would like to be married someday, but one-third of Latino adults never do marry. Just one in six non-Latino adults never marry, according to the coalition.

“A lot of Hispanics delay marriage until they have achieved a level of success financially that would make them feel they have arrived at a point in their life that they could get married,” said Patty Howell, vice president of the Healthy Marriage Coalition. “That tends to be a factor that is bigger in the Hispanic population.”

Of the adults surveyed, 511 identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino. Of those, nearly half were interviewed in Spanish.

While just 57 percent of the general population said they want to get married, 75 percent of Latino respondents said they do.

Howell said the results show that communities must provide more marriage education and relationship skills, like that provided by the local organization Amor de Orange County.

“It speaks to me of a need, of a hunger, of a desire. Everybody needs it. Otherwise you’re facing some odds of failure that are really foolish,” she said.

Popularity: 12% [?]

birthplace of the lowrider, Los Lobos and Oscar de la Hoya — is to Mexican-Americans what Harlem is to the black community. Now it wants to become its own city. Commonly mistaken for a part of Los Angeles, East L.A. is actually an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County, with more than 130,000 people — 96 percent of them Latino — packed into 7.4 square miles.

Cityhood proponents complain that East L.A. is treated as an afterthought by the county Board of Supervisors, and they want the community to take charge of its own destiny.

“We’re a nationally branded area,” said Diana Tarango, vice president of the East Los Angeles Residents Association, the prime backer of the effort. “We should be making our own decisions about planting trees on the street or putting up light poles.”

While outsiders often see the area as gang-plagued and poverty-ridden, East L.A. possesses cultural and political symbolism for Mexican-Americans.

Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, pronounced East L.A. “the epicenter of Latino culture.”

For decades, East L.A. has been a first stop for immigrants just over the border, though these days there are nearly as many Salvadoran pupuserias selling filled tortilla patties as Mexican taquerias selling tacos.

Neighborhoods seem plucked straight from Latin American villages: a backyard rooster can be heard crowing, or a man peddles the rice-based drink horchata from a shopping cart. Brilliantly colored murals of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Aztec chieftains decorate walls of housing projects and corner grocery stores.

In the 1960s and ’70s, the community was the focus of the burgeoning Chicano civil-rights movement.

In 1970, police and thousands of Chicano anti-Vietnam war protesters battled in the street, and Los Angeles Times columnist Ruben Salazar was killed in the melee. A park in East L.A. is named for him. A boulevard nearby carries the name of Cesar Chavez, the migrant farmworker leader.

East L.A. is a fusion of cultures north and south of the border. Spanish is the predominant language, but it is a hybrid version, Spanglish, punctuated with Hispanicized English words: “breka” for break, “marqueta” for market, “cora” for quarter.

While nortena music booms from downtown stores, East L.A. has also produced artists such as Los Lobos, who have combined Mexican oompah sounds with American rock rhythms. Lowriders, often with customized Chicano-theme paint jobs, cruise the streets.

Among the community’s famous sons are boxer De La Hoya and actor Edward James Olmos. Olmos came full circle when he starred in the 1988 movie “Stand and Deliver” as the real-life East L.A. teacher Jaime Escalante, who turned barrio kids into calculus champs.

Proponents of cityhood hope to draw on that cultural pride. The bid marks East L.A.’s fourth attempt at incorporation since 1961; the last one was in 1974. Tarango and others say the movement failed because of political infighting.

Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., who supports cityhood, said she is encouraged this time because residents are well-organized and informed.

“It has a great chance of passing,” said the congresswoman, whose district includes East L.A. “But they will need to allay fears that incorporation will mean an increase in property taxes.”

Voters probably won’t get their say on cityhood for two years while the issue wends its way through the bureaucratic and political process.

The residents association must first submit a petition by December asking a county commission to conduct a study on whether a city of East L.A. would have an adequate tax base. So far, organizers have collected about half the 10,000 signatures needed, said Oscar Gonzales Jr., association president.

Gonzales said he expects the study will be favorable — a similar report ordered up by the residents association found the city would generate $51 million in revenue, well above an expected budget of $45 million.

If the bid for cityhood passes muster with the study commission and the county supervisors, the question will be put to the voters of East L.A. The supervisors are not taking a position until they see the study.

Some East L.A. residents fear cityhood will cost them more. They worry, for example, that mom-and-pop stores that now manage to operate without business licenses might be forced to obtain them.

“I think it’s good as it is,” said Jacob Salazar, owner of a sporting good store. “I don’t see any reason to change it.”

But supporters say a city council would be more responsive than the county supervisors.

Auto dealer Louis Herrera said local officials would be more motivated to attract businesses like the Starbucks that opened last year. That would boost the downtown shopping district, which is dotted with 99-cent stores, dusty windowfronts filled with gowns for first communions and “quinceaneras,” or Latin sweet-16 parties, and signs advertising Western Union money transfers to Mexico.

“The county is huge. Each supervisor has 2.1 million people,” said Herrera, who also heads the East Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. “We’re sort of like a lost child.”

Popularity: 16% [?]

Anyone turning in their U.S. citizenship application on Wednesday or after will have to learn “What are two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy?”‘ and “What does the Constitution do?”

The questions are among 100 included in a new, redesigned civics test. Applicants for naturalization will be quizzed on 10 of the 100 and must correctly answer six.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials revamped the test to emphasize the understanding of American democracy concepts rather than just memorization of historical and government facts.

Anyone who gets their citizenship application to the appropriate USCIS office before Oct. 1 and has an interview scheduled for after that date will get the choice of taking the current test or the new one, the agency said.

Starting Oct. 1, 2009, all citizenship candidates will have to take the redesigned test regardless of when they applied for naturalization, USCIS said.

People who applied for naturalization before Oct. 1 and whose interview occurs before then will take the current test and not the redesigned exam.

Popularity: 11% [?]

By Dan Hoyle,  Salon.com

Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters in Reno sits in the heart of a bustling neighborhood of Latino clothing stores, taco stands and tax advisors. On a late September day outside of the King Ranch market, across the street from the campaign office, Latino voters spoke in Spanish about their hopes and concerns for the fast-approaching presidential election. Hermilla Sanvicente, 37, who works in real estate and also owns a hot dog stand, said that until this year, she had been uninvolved in politics. “But this time, between friends, we’ve been talking about it,” she said. “It’s very different.” She will cast the first vote of her life for Obama.

Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to win Nevada in a presidential election in the last 40 years. But the Obama campaign believes that by turning out thousands of newly registered younger and Latino voters, many of whom have been hard hit by a sinking economy, they can capture the Silver State’s five electoral votes. Those five votes could be pivotal on a national electoral map that remains too close to call.

In 2004, George W. Bush narrowly defeated John Kerry in Nevada, receiving 50.5 percent of the vote to Kerry’s 48 percent — including a crucial 40 percent of Latino voters. Because 90 percent of Nevada’s population lives in Las Vegas’ Clark County or Reno’s Washoe County, the campaigning is concentrated in those places. The Democrats traditionally do well in Las Vegas, while the Republicans dominate in rural Nevada (where Bush won as much as 80 percent of the vote). Both sides see Reno’s Washoe County, where Bush won 51 percent of the vote in 2004, as the crucial battleground in the state.

If the national race is a dead heat to the finish, Washoe County could indeed play a decisive part. How well the campaigns reach out to Reno’s Latino voters therefore could be key: They make up roughly 20 percent of the city’s population and 12 percent of its voting population.

Interviews with more than a dozen Latino voters last week, in Reno and in rural northern Nevada, showed that Obama has some momentum, but still has his work cut out for him. Support for Obama was strong in Reno (where he’s scheduled to campaign again Tuesday), and included several first-time voters, while in rural Nevada, many Latino voters seemed apathetic about the election. Some small-business owners expressed skepticism about Obama’s tax plan, and a few seemed unsure about his level of experience.

But one central theme of the Obama campaign seems to be resonating here. “I want Obama, because the other ‘huey’ just seems like Bush refried,” said Jesus Sanchez, 40, a construction worker, using the Mexican slang for “dude” to describe McCain. In his 23 years living in Reno, Sanchez says getting work has been “worse than ever.”

As Erik Herzik, the political science chair at University of Nevada-Reno, puts it, Nevada has been “ground zero of the economic meltdown. Nevada’s economy has been turned around like we’ve never seen before.” In August, unemployment in the state hit 7.1 percent, its highest rate in 23 years, above the national average of 6.1 percent. Nevada has the nation’s highest home foreclosure rate, a position it has held for the last 20 months, with one in every 91 households receiving a foreclosure filing in August, according to RealtyTrac, a researcher and seller of foreclosed homes. Latinos have been particularly hurt by the foreclosure crisis, and are also heavily represented in the state’s beleaguered gaming and construction industries.

The Obama campaign believes that the economic pain here will trump other concerns, such as Latino Catholics’ conservative stance on abortion, or historical mistrust between the Latino and African-American communities that some speculate could work against Obama.

“Latinos have been hit hard by the struggling economy — they’re some of the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis,” said Jeff Giertz, an Obama campaign spokesperson. “Tourism and casinos are down, where a lot of Latinos work, so they are looking for solutions on the economy.”

But the economy isn’t the only worry on their minds. Several Latino voters I spoke with expressed deep concern about immigration reform, including putting a stop to government raids that have sent fear through Latino communities with large numbers of undocumented people. Bruno Limon, 18, a supermarket cashier, said he saw Obama on a Spanish language news broadcast recently in which Obama said he was going to stop the raids. “Maybe some of us shouldn’t be here,” said Limon, who is a U.S. citizen and plans to cast his first ever vote for Obama. “But they’re treating us like criminals.”

Of the two presidential candidates, there seems to be greater confidence in Obama’s ability to work for immigration reform. In 2005, McCain co-authored a major immigration bill with Sen. Ted Kennedy, but essentially it went down in a blaze of populist revolt fueled in part by right-wing talk radio. Since then, McCain has said he would no longer vote for that bill, struggling to placate the GOP base while also trying to appeal to Latino voters. Rick Garko, a McCain spokesman, insists that the issue comes down to “McCain’s ability to reach across party lines, something Obama has no record of doing.”

Unsurprisingly, in light of the migrant worker status quo, quite a few Latinos said they couldn’t vote at all — as many as three in four people I approached over several days. One man in cowboy boots declared, “I’ll vote for Obama, so that he gives me papers,” before lifting his young son into the back of a new-looking SUV.

McCain might be able to gain support from Latino small-business owners here, some of whom are wary of Obama’s tax policies and of change in tough economic times. Small-business conservatism could also exert paternal influence on the many construction workers who take their political talking points from their boss. Jose, 46, said in blunt terms that his boss had instructed that “we shouldn’t vote for ‘el negrito’ [Obama] because the country isn’t ready for a change.” “But,” he added, smiling and scooping up his young daughter, “with Mr. Bush, the economy’s headed down.” He remains undecided about his vote.

For others, an end to the war in Iraq is a priority. Latino voters see the war as aggravating a troubled economy, and many have relatives serving overseas. Marta, 37, a homemaker, said she remains undecided, but is clear that she wants to see an end to the war. She is looking to the debates to gain insight into Obama’s plan for Iraq.

Beyond the Reno area, the Obama campaign is hoping to reach out to Latino voters in rural northern Nevada, where it’s a tougher sell. In Elko, a mining and ranching town of more than 18,000 that Obama has visited three times (twice in the primaries), Latino voters were hardly burning with electoral passion. Elia Pineda, 30, a cashier at La Unica, a Mexican restaurant, didn’t know Obama had visited the prior week, and she didn’t care; she had never voted and said she wasn’t going to this election. Jose and Eva Alegria, an elderly couple in nearby Carlin, home to the largest gold mine in North America, had given up on voting several elections back.

Creating excitement around a Democratic candidate in rural northern Nevada, where Bush won upward of 80 percent of the vote in 2004, is difficult, said Debbie Stone, a Republican and executive director of the Chamber of Commerce in Winnemucca. “Northern rural Nevada is so Republican it’s silly,” she said with a laugh. Trying to find Latino voters who would discuss their thoughts on the election was an almost impossible task in the dusty, neon casino town of more than 7,100 people.

In Reno, visits to both the McCain campaign office (where I was shooed away for not clearing my visit through the proper channels) and the Obama campaign office revealed no Latino volunteers manning the phones, although in the Obama office one volunteer could be heard pleading to another potential volunteer, that “we very much need Spanish speakers.”

On the whole, the Obama campaign says it is confident that by running on the economy in Nevada, and by registering and turning out thousands of new voters, that Latino supporters will help deliver the state. They point to thousands of newly registered Democrats since 2006, closing the advantage in registered Republicans in Washoe County from 16,500 in 2004 to 3,200 now.

The McCain campaign is skeptical on this. “Democrats love to tout voter registration numbers, but that’s putting the cart before the horse,” said McCain spokesman Gorka. “High taxes and big government doesn’t fly in the West.”

From the perspective of Herzik of University of Nevada-Reno, “If I’m a Republican looking at this bulge in Democratic registrations, I’d be real nervous.” But the Latino vote has never materialized as much as anticipated, says Herzik. “It’s always been called the sleeping giant, but it has yet to wake up. If I’m a Democrat, I’d be foolish to take this to the bank, given past performance.”

But a secret weapon for the Democrats may be the legions of Bay Area liberals who have been making weekend migrations to Reno to canvass for Obama. Although the Obama campaign was cagey about the numbers, Alise Moss, 53, a healthcare consultant from Sparks, Nev., who has hosted several groups of California volunteers at her house, claimed that on a recent weekend the campaign had 400 volunteers show up. “We love those crazy Californians,” said Moss with a laugh. “California’s navy blue, and they don’t mind coming over here and knocking on doors, and all those rejections.”

If they can help get enough new Latino voters interested, they may help paint Nevada a rare shade of blue come Nov. 4.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Dionicio Morales, a former labor organizer whose efforts to help his community resulted in the creation of one of the nation’s largest Latino social service providers, has died. He was 89.

Morales died of natural causes Wednesday at Beverly Hospital in Montebello, said his daughter, Magdalena Morales.

He was organizing garment workers in the early 1960s when he decided to do something to help residents of the largely Hispanic neighborhoods east of downtown Los Angeles who lacked health care, job training, child care and other services.

He created the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation in 1963 and called the White House for help. He was referred to the Mexican Embassy, where by chance then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson was meeting with Mexico’s ambassador about the same issue.

Morales eventually persuaded the vice president to meet with members of the Mexican-American community during a visit to Los Angeles. Johnson later helped his foundation secure funding from the Department of Labor.

The Mexican American Opportunity Foundation has since grown to serve more than 100,000 people. It provides a variety of services, including English classes and immigration assistance, mainly to people with low and moderate incomes.

Born in Yuma, Ariz., in 1918, Morales was raised near Moorpark, then a small farm town, 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles. For a time he lived in a tent with other workers in the area’s apricot and walnut groves.

He said he learned firsthand the need for health care and other services after several friends and relatives too poor to see a doctor died in a tuberculosis outbreak.

In addition to his daughter, Morales is survived by his wife, Maria; another daughter, Margarita Padilla; sons Tim and Dionicio Jr.; and several grandchildren.

Popularity: 12% [?]

By Gustavo Reveles Acosta / El Paso Times

EL PASO — Nearly three quarters of the 727,070 El Pasoans last year said buenas noches when they went to sleep and buenos días when they woke up, according to new information released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The census’ American Community Survey figures for 2007 indicate that 74 percent of all residents in the El Paso metropolitan area spoke Spanish at home, even if they are fluent in English.

The numbers also say that one out of every five people living in the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California use mainly Spanish, and not English, at home.

“Spanish was my first language and it’s the language that my parents speak, so I just use it when I’m there. I don’t even think about it,” said Mariana Solis, a registered nurse who grew up in the Lower Valley. “And although I speak English, I sometimes feel more comfortable speaking Spanish. It’s like going back home.”

The census indicates that 24 percent of the El Paso population speaks English only, and that fewer than 2,000 people said they speak a language other than English or Spanish at home.

Dennis Bixler-Márquez, a University of Texas at El Paso professor of multicultural education and the director of the Chicana/o

Studies Program there, said he was not surprised to hear the numbers released by the census.”Border communities like El Paso, by virtue of their proximity to the home land, will continue to have tremendous linguistic renewal,” he said. “People here, even those who have been in the country various generations, will retain their language much more than the Hispanic populations formed in the interior of the United States.”

Bixler-Márquez said the steady flow of new immigrants into the U.S. Southwest could also be responsible for the common use of Spanish and the widespread distribution of Spanish-language media, music, literature and even signage in the region.

“When you have an increase in immigration, like we have seen in El Paso for decades, you will see an increase in the Spanish-speaking communities and the institutions that support them,” he said.

The wide use of Spanish by people of El Paso has forced local governments, agencies and stores to publish most local notices in English and Spanish.

Aracely Lazcano, the spokeswoman for the county of El Paso, said it makes sense for her to write news releases and public notices in both languages.

“Our goal is for our message to reach the intended audience as quickly as possible,” she said. “If we were to send out notices in English only, the message will eventually get to Spanish-speaking families but it will take some time.”

Eastsider Bonnie Ortiz, 64, said she used to speak Spanish at home when she was a girl, but that the custom was lost with her children and grandchildren, who speak “very little Spanish.”

“I only spoke English to my children and they only speak English to their children. It’s sad, but the Spanish was lost in my family,” she said. “I think it’s just part of living in America. You lose your ties to Mexico.”

Bixler-Márquez said only a slowing trend in immigration would stop the strong influence Spanish has over El Paso and the rest of the Southwest.

“But in the foreseeable future, I don’t see that happening. Our trends don’t seem to show any slowdown on immigration.”

Gustavo Reveles Acosta may be reached at greveles@elpasotimes.com; 546-6133.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Former Rep. Eligio “Kika” De la Garza was being treated in a hospital Wednesday for injuries he and his wife suffered when the SUV they were riding in was involved in a head-on crash in Texas.

The accident occurred in McAllen, in southern Texas, on Tuesday, Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, said in a statement. De la Garza, 80, and his wife, Lucille, were hospitalized. De la Garza underwent surgery Tuesday night and his wife had surgery Wednesday, said Hinojosa’s spokeswoman, Elizabeth Esfahani.

The family was not immediately releasing other details.

Sgt. Joel Morales, a McAllen police spokesman, said the accident was still under investigation but it appeared two cars collided and one of them hit the small sport-utility vehicle carrying the de la Garzas. He said there was “frontal impact” to the de la Garza’s vehicle.

A 67-year-old McAllen woman in one of the cars also was taken by ambulance to the hospital.

Esfahani said two cars collided and one of those hit the car carrying the De la Garzas head-on. Messages left for a McAllen Police spokesman after business hours were not immediately returned.

De la Garza, a Democrat, served 32 years in Congress after he was elected in 1964 and was chairman of the House Agricultural Committee for 14 years. He was a staunch defender of farm programs, civil rights and equality for minorities. He also worked to improve relations between the U.S. and Mexico.

He was the second Mexican-American elected to Congress from Texas and is one of the founders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

De la Garza previously served six terms in the Texas Legislature.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Via The Library Journal

More Latinos than previously assumed use public libraries in the United States, according to a new study, Latinos and Public Library Perceptions, sponsored by WebJunction in partnership with 40 state libraries and conducted by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI). It also recommends how to draw more Latinos to libraries, stressing service, outreach, and user privacy.

Latinos are now the country’s largest ethnic minority. A previous study by the American Library Association estimated Latino library use at 49 percent; the new study, based on a more representative sampleof 2,860 Latino adults, reports 54 percent. Specifically, 1 percent reported daily visits, 11.2 percent reported weekly visits, and 17.8 percent reported monthly visits. Also, 9.7 percent reported visits every other month and 14.1 percent said they went to the library once or twice a year. However, 23.6 percent said they last went to a library more than a year ago and 22.5 percent said they’d never been to a library.

Drawing more users
While Latinos in the United States generally hold positive perceptions of libraries and value the availability of Spanish-language materials, more important is service. Latinos and Public Library Perceptions recommends that library workers get to know the local Latino community, to understand demographic diversity. Also, advertising in Spanish or via Spanish-language media should stress that the library is a place to learn English, via English-learning materials and children’s programs. (Nearly 47 percent of Latinos with less than a high school education had never been to a library.)

Since only 47 percent of Latinos who use the library for Internet access have such access at home or work, the availability of public access computers should be stressed. Finally, given that foreign-born Spanish-speakers—about half the adult Latino community—may worry that libraries reveal personal information, the report advises libraries to stress confidentiality in library public relations materials and also in Spanish-language signs and posters.

The challenge of diversity
The report acknowledges that “the sheer density of diversity among Latinos makes library outreach a potentially unwieldy effort.” While Mexican-Americans are the largest group of Latinos, representing about roughly 70 percent of the Latino population in the United States, there are three major sub-groups: new immigrants, established residents who have followed the rural-urban flow to major metropolitan areas, and internal migrants.

As with the larger population, frequency of Latino library visits is affected by sex, age, income, and education level; however, for Latinos, other factors include birthplace, generation in this country, and language preference. The strongest predictor of library visits among Latinos is English fluency.

(The report defines the terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” as interchangeable and use both to “denote individuals who can trace their heritage back to Spanish-speaking countries in the Western Hemisphere.”)

Reasons to visit
Why do Latinos go to the library? Borrowing movies or music were the top reasons. Learning English was more of an influence than reading or borrowing books. Other strong lures were using the computer and taking children to the library.

First-generation immigrants disproportionately reported never attending the public library, according to the report, and second-generation immigrants, born in the United States to foreign-born parents, disproportionately reported going to the library less than once a year.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Carlos Pereira grinned widely as he stood in the outgoing tide of newly sworn-in citizens leaving a Miami naturalization ceremony. So far, he had registered 328 people, mostly from Latin American countries. Only 62 of them were from Cuba.

”This year is exceptional because there is so much diversity,” said Pereira, a native of Honduras who heads the Miami-based Center for Immigrant Orientation. “This change is exciting because it will bring a diversity to political power.”

The trend that Pereira sees in the voter registration trenches mirrors the one pollsters are seeing statewide: There is a new Hispanic majority in Florida, and it is not Cuban.

According to numbers from the Democratic polling firm Bendixen and Associates, 44 percent of the state’s 1.1 million Hispanic voters hail from the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other Latin American countries — slightly more than the Cubans, at 40 percent. In 2000, non-Cuban voters represented 19 percent of the Hispanic vote, Bendixen polling shows.

Hispanic Democrats also now outnumber Hispanic Republicans in Florida, making what had long been a relatively predictable voter population for politicians much more fluid.

”In order to survive here, candidates are going to have to keep the Cuban line, but also have to increasingly appeal to the non-Cuban Hispanics by catering to their issues,” said Florida International University pollster Dario Moreno.

The newcomers, many of them just entering the U.S. political fray, are poised to exert unprecedented influence in this election year as the unquestioned dominance of the traditionally Republican Cuban voting block begins to wane.

”Over the last 10 years, there have been significant voter registration efforts targeting these groups, and we’re seeing dividends of that at the ballot box,” said Fernand Amandi of Bendixen & Associates, which recently signed on to do polling work for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. “They are going to continue to assert themselves politically and to influence elections on local, state and national level for years to come.”

Despite their growing might in numbers, these other Hispanic voting communities are a political unknown. Although many are registering as Democrats, there are certain issues related to their homelands that may lead them to vote differently than their new voter registration cards suggest.

ISSUE OF FREE TRADE

One such issue is the free-trade agreement with Colombia — supported by congressional Republicans and stalled by Democrats — which is pushing many Colombian-American Democrats to question their party affiliation.

The non-Cuban Hispanic voters are in varying stages of local political organization. Many of them — including Colombians, Venezuelans and Dominicans — have organizations agitating for more political power.

The Dominican community has a sophisticated network of political operators strategically placed across the state, with phone banks that marshal 30 volunteers to call likely voters. They organize political caravans that wind through South Florida neighborhoods.

The problem, according to many local Dominican activists: Their energy is focused on the wrong elections.

Read Complete Article

Popularity: 14% [?]

The announcement on Thursday that minorities collectively will make up a majority of people in America by 2042 comes at a contentious moment in U.S. history. A bitter and largely negative debate about immigration roils the country. Stoked by angry politicians, the shouting rarely goes beyond variations on the theme of how to send 12 million illegal immigrants back home. Hardly anybody acknowledges that 38 million legal immigrants and their 31 million children already call America home. These people, along with other minorities, will be a powerful force in shaping America’s future.

Word to the wise: The future is here; get used to it. The changing demographics and the story that they tell are cause for pride, not panic. America is growing richer in its diversity: Immigrants and minorities will continue to assimilate into the U.S. culture, just as they always have. They will bring fresh ideas, new perspectives, energy and vitality with them.

The census update says that non-Hispanic whites will make up less than half of the U.S. population by 2042, about nine years earlier than previously predicted. The change will be largely driven by Hispanics, whose numbers will nearly triple to 133 million, or about 30 percent of the 2042 population. Asians will nearly double to 9 percent of the population, compared to 5 percent today. Blacks will increase slightly to 15 percent from 13 percent. And far more people will identify themselves as mixed-race, up to 16 percent from 4 percent.

Immigration will continue to contribute to the increasing diversity, but the numbers are mostly being driven by birth and death ratios. Non-Hispanic whites are older, dying more and having fewer babies. Hispanics are younger and, consequently, producing more babies.

What does it all mean? For those of us in South Florida, Los Angeles, parts of Texas and other places, the future America looks like our present. As we have, America will learn how to work, play, educate, build, love, fight and celebrate across ethnic and racial lines. The country will learn to vote using multi-language ballots, decipher cultural differences in medical care, teach children in many languages, make justice equal for all.

Anyone who fears the change that is coming should understand that our country has been in a constant state of flux since it was founded, embracing British, Italians, Irish, Jews, Africans, Spanish, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Cubans, Haitians and others. Diversity has made America strong, current proof of which is on display at the Beijing Olympics. We should continue to welcome and embrace it.

Source The Miami Herald

Popularity: 12% [?]