Via The New York times

Roman Catholic bishops urged the Bush administration to halt workplace immigration raids, saying the “humanitarian cost” was “unacceptable in a civilized society.” Speaking on behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, John C. Wester, the bishop of Salt Lake City said that the escalating number of worksite raids over the past year had spread fear in immigrant communities and had made it difficult for detained immigrants to obtain legal representation. Bishop Wester also called on the Department of Homeland Security to refrain from conducting raids in churches, health centers and schools.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Via The New York Times

Speaking at a black-tie event sponsored by a major Hispanic outreach organization, Senator Barack Obama pledged that he would not take “a single Hispanic vote for granted” between now and November and reminded members of the key demographic group of their growing electoral influence.

“If you have any doubt about whether you can make a difference, just remember how back in 2004, 40,000 registered Latino voters in New Mexico didn’t turn out on election day,” Mr. Obama said. “Senator Kerry lost that state by fewer than 6,000 votes.”

He added that in New Mexico today an estimated 170,000 Hispanics are not registered to vote — an untapped bloc that his campaign is presumably trying to add to the voter rolls before Election Day.

Mr. Obama appeared before an audience of several hundred at the annual dinner of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in Washington on Wednesday night and focused a portion of his 18-minute speech on issues of particular importance to the Hispanic community. He was courting the group during a week when his campaign has encountered fresh challenges from Republicans, including those posed by the addition of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to the G.O.P. ticket.

And Senator Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, did not miss an opportunity to skewer his rival, Senator John McCain, for reversing course on a comprehensive immigration reform proposal he once strongly supported. Mr. Obama noted that immigration reform was not a part of the Republican platform at the party’s convention last week, but was a priority for Democrats.

“You’ve got to ask yourself,” Mr. Obama said, “if Senator McCain won’t stand up to opponents of reform at his own convention, how can you trust him to stand up for change in Washington?”

One of the biggest applause lines of the evening was Mr. Obama’s reference to “12 million people living in the shadows” — undocumented immigrants — “taking immigration enforcement into their own hands.”

Mr. Obama continued: “They’re counting on us to stop the hateful rhetoric filling our airwaves, and rise above the fear and demagoguery, and finally enact comprehensive immigration reform.”

Popularity: 13% [?]

When did extreme become mainstream?–That’s the question immigrant advocates, labor leaders, civil rights groups, and Latino organizations are asking in a full page ad in Capitol Hill newspapers this week as supporters of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) march into the offices of Congress, demanding an impractical and hateful agenda of mass deportations, worksite raids, and other expensive and ultimately ineffective approaches as part of their “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” gathering.

The September 10 broadcast of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight program will further stoke FAIR’s flames as it airs live from the site of the annual “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” event, along with dozens (or so FAIR claims) of radio hosts from across the country. Hateful extremism is a difficult challenge and sad reality that our nation faces. However, its appearance in mainstream politics and media marks a disturbing social regression for the United States as hate groups and extremists are allowed to define the debate on immigration.

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Popularity: 17% [?]

By JIM ABRAMS – AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — The 2008 Republican platform, in language that is hostile to illegal immigrants, says the makeup of Congress should be determined by counting only those legally residing in the United States in the next census.

“The integrity of the 2010 census, proportioning congressional representation among the states, must be preserved,” says the platform language, which is a reinterpretation of the Constitution that could affect how congressional seats are apportioned. “The census,” it says, “should count every person legally abiding in the United States in an actual enumeration.”

The 14th Amendment of the Constitution, ratified in 1868, says representatives to the U.S. House “should be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.”

“Our mandate is to count all residents regardless of legal status,” said Mark Tolbert, a spokesman for the Census Bureau.

The bureau does not ask questions about legal status. Immigration groups have put the number of illegal immigrants at up to 12 million out of a U.S. population of more than 300 million.

Michigan Republican Rep. Candice Miller has proposed a constitutional amendment specifying that congressional representation “shall be determined by counting the number of persons in each state who are citizens of the United States.”

Miller, in reintroducing the amendment last year, said that states with a large number of illegal immigrants are gaining unfair representation in the House. Had her amendment been in place before the 2000 census, Miller said, California would have six fewer seats in the House while New York, Florida and Texas would have one fewer seat. States with fewer undocumented residents, including her own state of Michigan and others such as Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, would have picked up a seat, she said.

The 2008 platform goes on to say that “we urge all who are legally eligible to participate in the census count to do so; at the same time, we urge Congress to specify — and to constitutionally justify — which census questions require a response.”

Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group for Hispanic Americans, said Sen. John McCain “has a great track record” on immigration issues but is being undercut by his party’s positions. “The census language manages to be both unconstitutional and insulting,” she said.

Separately, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a nonpartisan coalition of 26 Latino organizations, on Sunday sent McCain a letter saying the GOP platform repudiates McCain’s efforts to provide undocumented residents with a path toward legal status. “We urge you to lead your party’s platform away from the deportation and detention path that deprives newcomers and the nation of immigrants’ positive economic and societal contributions.”

Popularity: 11% [?]

Via CNSNews.com

A draft copy of the GOP platform, which was obtained by CNSNews.com on Wednesday, says “We oppose amnesty” for illegal immigrants.

But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presumptive presidential nominee for the Republican Party, has been a leading proponent in Congress for giving illegal aliens a “pathway to citizenship.”

The GOP platform is being written in Minneapolis this week in preparation for the Republican National Convention, scheduled for early September.

“It [the rule of law] does not mean driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, nor does it mean that states should be allowed to flout the federal law barring them from giving in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens. We oppose amnesty,” the draft says.

“Amnesty has to be an important part of [any immigration solution] because there are people who have lived in this country for 20, 30 or 40 years, who have raised children here and pay taxes here and are not citizens. That has to be a component of it,” McCain reportedly told the Tucson Citizen on May 29, 2003.

In June, McCain told the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials that comprehensive immigration reform is his “top priority — yesterday, today and tomorrow.”

In 2006, McCain worked with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to ensure passage in the Senate of a “comprehensive” immigration reform bill that would have given illegal aliens a path to citizenship while allowing 200,000 new “guest workers’ to enter the country each year.

Sources in Minneapolis told CNSNews.com that the GOP platform should be completed by Wednesday but it will not be officially released until Monday.

In other news, the Boston Globe reported that the Republican platform will not include a call to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That’s another area where Republicans differ with McCain, who opposes drilling in ANWR.

According to the Globe, some platform committee members said they’ll try to bring McCain around to their way of thinking after he’s elected president.

The platform does endorse expanded domestic oil drilling in general.

Popularity: 20% [?]

A coalition of Hispanic groups offered its recommendations for both party’s platforms Thursday, including calls to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to John Trasvina, the chairman of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, 26 of the group’s recommendations are already in the Democratic National Committee’s draft platform.

In explaining his group’s war opposition, Trasvina said that Latinos “are overrepresented in the military; many are immigrants who are fighting for our country before it becomes their country.”

The 24-member coalition includes the National Council of La Raza, MANA, the Cuban American National Council and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.

The coalition is pressing the Republican National Committee platform writers as well, Trasvina said, and its members will attend both party conventions.

The Hispanic platform makes more than 100 recommendations on education, civil rights, immigration, the economy, health and government accountability. Among them:

_ Publicize the Census Bureau’s confidentiality policy so that Latinos — whether legal immigrants or not — will cooperate in the 2010 census.

_ Grant citizenship to the country’s 12 million undocumented workers.

_ Increase Hispanic participation in the federal work force.

_ Enhance health-care access for immigrants, especially along the U.S.-Mexico border.

_Continue No Child Left Behind with more emphasis on Latino students.

The coalition recommended that No Child Left Behind be used to combat the high dropout rates among Latino high school students. “Our 20-20 vision starts today, and that is that we will close our drop-out rate,” Trasvina said at the press briefing.

Both political parties have been courting Latinos, who participated strongly in the primaries, said Susan Minushkin, the deputy director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico, where the 2004 presidential election was close, have large Hispanic populations, making them hot spots again this election, Minushkin said.

“I would say this year there is much more of an interest in the Latino vote than there has been ever in the past,” Trasvina said. “The community is larger and in more states, and the voting participation is higher than it’s ever been. I think this year there will be more consequences if the Latino vote and the Latino leaders are not listened to.”

However, Andy Gomez, assistant provost at the University of Miami and senior fellow at the university’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, cautioned against assuming that Latinos — especially in the second- and third-generation — vote solely on the kinds of issues listed in the coalition’s report.

“The Hispanic community is looking to see which is the particular candidate that first and foremost addresses the immediate needs of the United States,” Gomez said in an interview.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo called a report showing that black motorists are pulled over by city police more frequently than other drivers “very disturbing” and apologized to those who have suffered from racial profiling.

During a tense – yet sparsely attended – City Council meeting Tuesday at which the report was presented, city officials said the Police Department needed to become more diverse and communicate better with the community.

The council session was the first public debate on the report, which was conducted by an outside consultant and released last week. Three town hall forums are scheduled this week.

The report, based on police traffic stops over a six-month period, found that black motorists were twice as likely to be pulled over in the city as non-black drivers, but no more likely to be cited.

It also found that black and Latino drivers were asked to get out of their cars more often than Asian and white drivers. Latino motorists also were patted down “at a significantly higher rate than would be expected,” the report stated.

Asian and white motorists were stopped less often than would be expected.

“I want to offer a very sincere and heartfelt apology to those that have suffered from the profiling that has been done,” Fargo said. “I want to apologize to those citizens who feel they haven’t received equal treatment or protection.”

Fargo said it was time for city and police officials to work with the community “to find solutions” to the issues raised by the report.

Police Chief Rick Braziel said that process has begun. He said many officers in his department received racial sensitivity training this year before the study was conducted because of perceptions within the community that officers were profiling motorists based on race.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

Just west of El Paso, near where Spanish conquistador Juan de Onate crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico in 1598, construction crews have completed a steel fence authorities say is a new model for border security.

The five-meter (18-foot) tall fence has a mesh woven so tightly that feet and fingers cannot grab hold, but it still allows people to see through. Steel pylons are set close enough to stop a truck from bursting through, and two meters of reinforced concrete underground deters any tunneling.

The structure is designed to push would-be illegal immigrants and drug smugglers out into the desert where they are more easily caught, said Border Patrol Agent Martin Hernandez.

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Popularity: 10% [?]

Presidential challengers John McCain and Barack Obama sparred over affirmative action Sunday, with McCain backing an effort to end state and locally run minority preferences and Obama saying policies that consider race need to continue.

McCain, speaking on ABC’s This Week, said he backs a proposed ballot initiative in his home state of Arizona that would prohibit affirmative action policies by state and local governments.

The initiative is part of a nationwide attempt by Ward Connerly to have governmental affirmative action policies eliminated. Connerly, a conservative African-American businessman from Sacramento, Calif., who led a successful drive to ban affirmative action in California, has been trying to do the same thing in other states.

Asked Sunday whether he supported Connerly’s efforts in Arizona, McCain said: “Yes, I do,” adding that he had not seen the details of the proposal.

McCain’s endorsement was an apparent shift on affirmative action. The Republican senator has spoken out against quota systems, but he also has backed affirmative action in certain cases. He opposed a 1998 resolution in the Arizona legislature that asked voters to eliminate most preferences based on race, gender or ethnic origin.

“Rather than engage in divisive ballot initiatives, we must have a dialogue and cooperation and mutual efforts together to provide every child in America to fulfill their expectations,” he said at the time.

Obama, speaking at the Unity minority journalism convention in Chicago, accused McCain of flip-flopping and reminded convention attendees about McCain’s 1998 remarks.

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Popularity: 14% [?]

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Shanta Driver is the national chairwoman of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN).

BAMN formed in California in 1995 to stop Ward Connerly’s attack on affirmative action as a University of California regent and then his campaign for Proposition 209 the following year.

“BAMN is now a national, integrated, youth-led organization that believes that America can be better, that America can fulfill the promise of integration and equality expressed in Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” said Driver, who was the guest on aztalk Live Talk Wednesday last week.

Popularity: 17% [?]