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: 2% [?]

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: 52% [?]

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: 39% [?]

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: 51% [?]

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: 57% [?]

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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: 86% [?]