Top Stories

There are 30.1 million Hispanic adults in the United States and 14.4 million of them–or 48%–are women, according to recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates. This fact sheet describes the demographic, employment and income characteristics of Hispanic women in the U.S. using data from the 2007 Current Population Survey and the 2006 American Community Survey. The findings reveal striking differences between Hispanic and non-Hispanic women, and native-born and immigrant Hispanic women from different countries of origin. “*

When Congress passed an economic-stimulus package giving hefty rebates to most taxpayers, it tried to make sure that illegal immigrants didn’t get any of the cash.

But in doing so lawmakers inadvertently penalized at least a million legal U.S. residents - and tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed overseas - simply because their spouses lack a Social Security number.

“Imagine an American soldier in Iraq whose foreign-born wife is waiting for an immigration petition to be approved and doesn’t have a Social Security card. Now the couple can’t even get a rebate,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose. “That is really stupid.”"*

A UPS envelope destined for South Florida is sitting in a warehouse in Louisville, Ky., instead threatening to set off an international dispute that touches on both immigration and national security.

Cristina Bustos, 33, of Bonita Springs said relatives in Monterrey, Mexico, shipped her the envelope in late March. It contains the birth certificates of two relatives living in Florida who want to apply for their Mexican passports at the consulate in South Miami, she said.

The envelope never arrived. Bustos said she received a voice-mail message from a UPS employee in Louisville telling her that it was being detained there. The reason: It contains official identification documents from another country, and she needs to identify herself further before receiving them.“*

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted Wednesday to give the sheriff’s office nearly $1 million to capture illegal immigrants, despite strong objections from small-business owners.

Members of the Arizona Small Business Association asked the board to hold onto the money until it was sure Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s saturation patrols were not using racial profiling.”*

Depression and other mental troubles are on the rise among Latin American women immigrants to the United States, as they battle economic woes and try to bridge the cultural gap, experts say.

“If you control for socio-economic factors, Latinos have the same rate of depression as other population groups, but since Latinos are usually poorer, they have higher rates of depression,” Sarah Huertas-Goldman of the University of Puerto Rico told AFP at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting.

“It’s because they are poor, with all the stresses that brings,” she said.”*

In this tight battle for the democratic nomination we’ve heard a lot about the candidates courting super-delegates.

But, one superdelegate is courting the candidates. He says he’ll sell his vote for a price. A very high price: $20 million.
…
Ybarra wants every cent of the $20 million to go toward registering and educating eligible Mexican-American voters, who he calls the key to the white house.”*

The latest battle in the war on illegal immigration isn’t over the smuggling of undocumented workers, it’s over the trash they leave behind.

Government officials and border activists say the garbage dumped in the desert by illegal immigrants and their smugglers is staggering.

And the cleanup is costing taxpayers millions.

In 2006 alone, more than 1.18 million pounds of trash was collected along southern Arizona border, many in the meeting spots where immigrants rest, change clothes and wait to hitch a ride further north with a smuggler.”*

At random times near the Tijuana-San Diego border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers have been setting up checkpoints, boarding buses destined for Mexico and pulling off people who don’t have proper documentation.

The operation appears to be an expansion of a broader federal crackdown targeting illegal immigrants in jails, airports and workplaces across the country.”*

Hey, you know what’s a riot? Comparing one of the country’s foremost Latino politicians to “a shoeshine guy” because of his race.

A spokesman for Antonio Villaraigosa says the Los Angeles mayor is planning a statement in response to an ethnically-flavored drive-by served up by Rush Limbaugh yesterday. [Update: Villaraigosa’s press secretary says there won’t be a statement after all; meanwhile, the head of the National Hispanic Media Coalition calls Limbaugh’s remark “nasty, bigoted [and] racist.”"*

New census data shows that about a quarter of children younger than five in the U.S. are of Hispanic decent. Pedro Noguera, professor of education at New York University; and Jeffrey Passel, from the Pew Hispanic Center, discuss the rising number of Latino children and what it means for America.”*

It was a quiet May Day in the mountains of Colorado, and much calmer on the immigration-rights demonstration front across much of the state and nation than the past two years. But as Coloradans gather to celebrate Cinco de Mayo today, there is a growing sense of unease over intensified enforcement efforts and stalled federal reform of immigration laws.

Congress has seemingly gridlocked on comprehensive immigration reform, and the topic is a non-starter for the three candidates still vying for the presidency. Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both backed presumptive Republican candidate Sen. John McCain’s failed amnesty proposal two years ago, and they all have given the nod to a border fence.”*

Burger King Corp. says it is conducting an internal investigation into blog postings that criticize a Florida farmworker group, allegedly made by a top official using his young daughter’s screen name.

The Miami-based fast-food chain said it is also looking into e-mails apparently sent from its own server that were sympathetic to the group.

A newspaper said last week on that the blog postings were reportedly made by Stephen Grover, the No. 2 burger chain’s vice president for food safety, quality assurance and regulatory compliance. He has been a key part in the company’s feud with the farmworker group, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, over improving work and wage conditions for tomato pickers.“*

A South Texas town has abolished an anti-Hispanic segregation law more than seven decades after it was enacted.

The Board of Aldermen unanimously voted Monday to abolish an ordinance that banned “Spanish or Mexican” residents who were not servants or maids from occupying “any building on the American side or portion” of the once-divided town of Edcouch.”*

On Cinco de Mayo, John McCain reached out yesterday to Hispanic voters, launching a Spanish-language campaign website and acknowledging that the harsh anti-immigration tone during the Republican primaries harmed his party’s image among Latinos.

The Arizona senator championed an overhaul of immigration laws, including a path to citizenship, but the package failed to get through Congress. Under attack from GOP rivals who called him too lenient on illegal immigration, McCain declared that Americans would not back reform until the borders are secure.”*

The sandy streets of Sasabe are empty. Migrant smugglers have to hunt for business at border-town shelters. Deported migrants give up after one try, taking their government up on free bus rides home.

A U.S. crackdown is causing the longest and most significant drop in illegal migration from Mexico since the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials say the U.S. economic downturn, tighter security and a more perilous and expensive journey are persuading many who try to sneak into the U.S. to give up sooner.”*

Jaime Escalante, whose success in teaching advanced mathematics to inner-city Los Angeles teenagers was immortalized in the movie “Stand and Deliver,” will be honored today at the Capitol.

Escalante, 78, is one of 14 trailblazers receiving Latino Spirit Awards from the California Latino Legislative Caucus.

Escalante, now living and teaching college classes part time in Bolivia, taught for 17 years at Los Angeles’ Garfield High School and for seven years at Sacramento’s Hiram Johnson High School, retiring in 1998.”*

Denver’s Cinco de Mayo celebration is a good time to enjoy food and music but its big business for advertisers.

“This year we have 77,000 more square feet of exhibitor space” said Andrea Barela, an event organizer.

More companies than ever are lining up this year to target the Latino community.

“I think people recognize the value of the Latino community and how important it is to get that captive audience,” Barela said. “*

For the Rev. Nino Gonzalez, last year’s contentious debate over immigration reform was a rude awakening — one that has propelled him into the political arena.

Mainstream white and black evangelical leaders initially denounced the bipartisan effort to create a path to legalization for undocumented workers. Some even argued for the roundup and deportation of millions of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S., the very people to whom Gonzalez ministers every day at Iglesia el Calvario just south of Orlando.

“I was stunned, shocked and surprised,” Gonzalez said of the initial reaction of those he thought of as his spiritual allies. “They turned their backs on the Hispanics.”*

In Los Angeles, they’re circling the taco wagons.

A Los Angeles institution, taco trucks roam the City of Angels selling juicy burritos and spicy $1 tacos filled with pork, beef cheeks or tongue, goat and almost any other meat that can be wrapped in a tortilla and dabbed with hot sauce.

The problem is, some don’t roam enough. County supervisors last month sparked a save-the-taco-truck movement by raising penalties for caterers parking in one place for more than an hour to up to $1,000 and six months in jail.”*

The cell phone, with its camera, music player and Web browser, has been likened to a modern day Swiss army knife - but few users routinely take advantage of all its features.

One ethnic group, however, is increasingly relying on the various applications the ubiquitous mobile gadget has to offer. Recent surveys and research indicate that Latinos depend on their cell phones for more services than other ethnic groups, turning to it for messaging, downloading music, surfing the Web and e-mailing.

It is a relationship created out of culture, social preferences and necessity, observers and users say.”*

Anne Hobbs was angry. The head of the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission had just learned of a Hispanic couple who said their landlord asked for their driver’s licenses — but didn’t ask the same of non-Hispanic tenants.

Hobbs said it sounded like the couple were “treated differently than everybody else because of national origin,” and sent the case to the state’s top prosecutor, hoping he would sue on their behalf under fair housing laws.

When Attorney General Jon Bruning received the case, he was angry, too — for a different reason than Hobbs.

“I’m not going to use taxpayer dollars to file lawsuits for illegal aliens,” said Bruning after learning the couple was in the U.S. illegally. “You’re not going to get a free lawyer” from his office, he said, “if you’re not a citizen of this country.”"*

The increase from almost one in five in 2000 has broad implications for governments, communities and schools nationwide, suggesting that the meteoric rise in the Hispanic population that demographers forecast for mid-century will occur even sooner among younger generations.

“Hispanics have both a larger proportion of people in their child-bearing years and tend to have slightly more children,” said Jeffrey S. Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center and co-author of a recent study predicting that the Latino population will double from 15 percent today to 30 percent by 2050.

“So this means that in five years, a quarter of the 5- to 9-year-olds will be Hispanic, and in 10 years a quarter of the 10- to 14-year-olds will be Hispanic. It’s just going to move up through the age distribution with each successive cohort being slightly more Hispanic,” Passel said.”*

The number of Hispanics in the United States grew to 45.5 million last year, and the country’s largest minority group now makes up more than 15 percent of the U.S. population, the U.S. Census Bureau reported on Thursday.

Hispanics surpassed blacks as the largest U.S. minority in 2003 and continued to widen the gap by growing at nearly three times the pace of the black population, Census Bureau figures showed.

The Hispanic population grew by 1.4 million in the year ending July 1, 2007, while the black population grew by 540,000 to reach a total of 40.7 million, the agency said in a report on minority populations in the United States.”*

More than three million Latin American immigrants in the United States, responding to the economic downturn and new uncertainties about their future, have stopped sending money home to their families in the last two years, according to a survey released on Wednesday by the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington.

…

The drop in the number of people sending remittances, as the money transfers are known, is a sign of pressures on Latino immigrants as a result of the slump in the low-wage job market and of the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, the survey shows. Of the immigrants interviewed, 47 percent said they did not have legal status. The others were American citizens and legal immigrants.”*

I posted about this back on April 8th with the title “Illegal Immigrant Births - At Your Expense, Taxpayers Foot Bill For Roughly 300,000 Children Born Into Citizenship When Their Parents Are Illegal - (non-biased headline, don’t you think)” - Good to see this “story” getting some attention.

The CBS newscast that carries her name recently aired a one-sided and inaccurate report about illegal immigrant women who give birth to their children in the United States. The news story challenged the broader constitutional law of birthright citizenship and stated — without providing the correct context — that the births cost U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars annually.The story’s central figure was a woman identified as an illegal immigrant, who was lying in her South Texas hospital bed — her right arm wrapped around her newborn and her left hand punctured by an intravenous needle — while reporter Byron Pitts lectured her that “many Americans who struggle to take care of their own families think it is unfair that they should have to take care” of non-U.S. citizens.

Immigrant advocates found the report so crass, and so far below the network’s journalistic standards set by legends Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, that they accused Couric of sinking to the depths of Lou Dobbs, the CNN broadcaster and contributor to CBS’s “The Early Show” who has inflamed national anti-immigrant sentiment. One Hispanic group posted on its website a photo of Couric that morphs into Dobbs. “*