Free Republic

A predominantly Latino audience trickled into the half-filled venue as Jorge Hernandez, “El Guero (Blondie),” took the stage just after 7 p.m. Sunday at the Nebraska State Fair. In contrast, people had packed around the fence surrounding the Open-Air Auditorium Friday before country musician Miranda Lambert had played her first note. A capacity crowd of 6,200 had filled the benches on Friday, and 5,800 came Saturday to hear two other country artists. Theories on why Sunday’s crowd was smaller and slower to form ranged from fear of immigration officials to the different cultural tradition of Latinos. Hernandez, the performer, speculated...

Women are waiting longer to have children, and more women than ever are choosing not to have children at all, according to a new Census Bureau report. Twenty percent of women ages 40 to 44 have no children, double the level of 30 years ago, the report said; and women in that age bracket who do have children have fewer than ever — an average of 1.9 children, compared with the median of 3.1 children in 1976. “A lot of women are not having any children,” said Jane Lawler Dye, a Census Bureau researcher who did the report, which looked...

Two eye-catching things were buried in the new Census Bureau projection that, by 2042, America will no longer be a white man's country. One is that the proportion of African Americans also will fade, or at least not get much bigger. The other is that the number of Hispanics will soar, to about 30 percent of the nation's population. Not only will America not be a white majority country, but it will almost certainly be a bilingual nation. In many cities, Spanish will be as likely to be heard on the streets, in schools and workplaces as English. This seismic...

A federal judge ruled Friday that a Wichita Catholic school policy requiring students to speak only English didn't break any civil rights laws.

A majority minority nation: that's what the U.S. Census Bureau is projecting by the year 2042, according to new figures released this week. By mid-century, according to the government's projections, Hispanics, Asians and blacks will outnumber non-Hispanic whites by about 32 million. The statistics make for interesting headlines -- and, no doubt, cause heartburn in certain circles -- but the fact is: they are more or less meaningless. The problem in all such predictions is that they don't take sufficient account of intermarriage and assimilation. From our founding as a nation, there have been those who worried that "foreigners" would...

Big Oil Continues to Rake in Record Profits August 1, 2008 Washington, DC—Senate Democrats responded today to a Department of Labor report which indicates that the nation shed another 51,000 jobs in July – the seventh straight month of losses – as unemployment rose to a four-year high of 5.7 percent and Chevron announced a second-quarter profits of nearly $6 billion. Democrats also called attention to the disproportionately higher unemployment rate among Hispanic American workers.According to the Department of Labor report, the unemployment rate among Hispanics was 7.4 % last month. The disproportionately higher jobless rate among Latinos underscores the...

Number of cases amounts to public health crisis. AIDS rates in the nation's Latino community are increasing and, with little notice, have reached what experts are calling a simmering public health crisis. Though Hispanics comprise about 14 percent of the U.S. population, they represented 22 percent of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses tallied by federal officials in 2006. According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Hispanics in Washington, D.C., have the highest rate of new AIDS cases in the nation. Even with the United States embroiled in a fierce debate over immigration policy, officials are downplaying or ignoring...

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Two-thirds of U.S. Hispanic voters support Democrat Barack Obama for president over Republican John McCain and the partisan gap among the United States' fastest growing voter bloc is broader than at any point this decade, a study found. The nationwide telephone survey by the Pew Hispanic Center released on Thursday said 66 percent of a sample of 2,015 registered Latino voters polled said they backed Obama, with 23 percent supporting McCain, a senator from Arizona. The survey said Obama's strong showing represented a sharp reversal in his fortunes from the primaries "when he lost the Latino vote...

A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation concluded that the number of Hispanics infected with HIV/AIDS is on the rise, with as many as one in four gay Hispanic men having HIV, almost equaling HIV rates in the sub-Saharan Africa. Although Hispanics make up about 14 percent of the US population, they represent 22 percent of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses in 2006. Hispanics in Washington DC appear to have the highest rate of new AIDS cases in the country. The 22 percent was the result of analyzing HIV rates in 33 states and Puerto Rico, but not California,...

California-based immigration reform activist Rick Oltman says he is continually amazed that both presidential candidates continue to pander to Hispanic voters as if they are one huge monolithic voting bloc. ...Oltman, national spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization, says most voters vote based on income level. "The average wage for Hispanic Americans in California is at the poverty level. People who are low income workers, when they vote, tend to vote Democrat," Oltman contends. "So all of this pandering for the Hispanic American vote over the fact that somebody is going to offer an amnesty that allows illegal aliens to...

For years immigrant entrepreneurs have taken over small stations with relatively weak signals, providing what for many Caribbean and Latin American immigrants is a key source of information about their local communities, U.S. life and politics, and news from the homeland. When Carlos Aragon, a native of El Salvador, founded Radio Fiesta six years ago on the second story of a strip mall in Woodbridge, he intended it to play just that role for Hispanics in Prince William County. "The intention was to create a bridge between the Hispanic and the Anglo community, interviewing politicians and informing the community and...

For decades, critics of affirmative action have contended elite colleges, in their zeal to form racially diverse student bodies, have discriminated against top white applicants. In a twist on that long-running feud, federal authorities are investigating an allegation that Princeton University discriminates against Asian-American applicants by accepting black and Hispanic students with lower entrance scores. At the heart of both arguments lies the question of whether and how colleges should consider race when choosing a class. The Supreme Court has ruled race can be a factor in the process, though racial quotas have long been declared unconstitutional. Critics say admission...

The family that planted corn in the front yard of their $500,000 home is gone from Carrie Oliver's street. So are the neighbors who drilled holes into the trees to string up a hammock. Oliver's list goes on: The loud music. The beer bottles. The littered diapers. All gone. When she and her husband, Ron, went for walks in their Manassas area neighborhood, she would take a trash bag and he would carry a handgun. No more. "So much has changed," she said in a gush of relief, standing with her husband on a warm summer evening recently outside a...

The Coatesville Police Department continues to receive reports of black city residents robbing, assaulting and raping Hispanic immigrants, according to Police Chief William Matthews. And, if the activity is not stopped, police say it could trigger the formation of violent Hispanic gangs as a type of cultural protection. With the city's black community, growing immigrant population - many of whom do not speak English - combined with the city's social issues, "It's not long before you have black-on-brown crime," said Matthews. "And we're seeing the beginning of that." Matthews, who first spoke publicly about the problem last fall, spoke candidly...

Have you ever wondered what term to use when describing someone whose ancestry links to a Spanish-speaking country? Is it Hispanic? Latino? Latin? Spanish? What's the difference? The ancestry of the U.S. Latino population is linked to the following regions, in alphabetical order: Central America, Greater Antilles, Mexico, South America and Spain. Collectively, these represent 22 Spanish-speaking countries. In the United States, this group comprises more than 48 million individuals, outnumbering Canadians in Canada and twice the population in Australia. If the U.S. Latino population represented a country, it would make up the second-largest Hispanic "nation" in the world, second...

Marketers increasingly use commingling of languages for ads A billboard on U.S. Highway 77/83 reads, "Our huevos are bigger." The bigger huevos are the subject of a Stripes' convenient store advertisement for its in-store restaurant, the Laredo Taco Company. The sign's clever use of bilingual double entendre has caused quite a stir on this stretch of the Texas-Mexico border, in addition to being a source of amusement for some. The success of the sign hinges on the Spanish word huevo, which literally translates as egg and figuratively refers to a part of the male anatomy. The commingling of Spanish and...

Honk if you love Hispanics. A license plate that touts "Hispanics Discovered Florida" may soon join the 109 specialty tags drivers can choose from. The idea to celebrate the contributions of Hispanics came from National Hispanic Corporate Achievers, a Longwood group that sponsors minority job fairs. The plate would become a fundraising tool to support job and mentorship programs. Danny Ramos, the group's president, said the tag's message is about cultural pride for Florida's 3.6 million Hispanics -- even if not all of Latin American or Spanish descent identify with the term.

Hurdles of language, mistrust addressed: A burgeoning Hispanic population has helped rebuild New Orleans during the past two and a half years. Now officials are coming to grips with the challenge of moving and finding safe refuge for that population should another hurricane threaten. Since Hurricane Katrina, as many as 14,000 Hispanic immigrants have arrived in New Orleans to provide muscle and skills for the recovery effort. Now civic groups as well as government officials say overcoming cultural and language barriers between emergency officials and Spanish speakers -- especially the undocumented -- has taken on new urgency.

Today the President made statements regarding North Korea and legislative agenda, he also spoke at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast and the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives' National Conference. He then went to Camp David to meet with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. For more details of these and other events visit the White House website Click here Pray for President Bush -- Day 2843 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in Japan Defense Secretary Robert Gates held a news briefing

With an eye on the fast-growing Hispanic market, State Farm Insurance Cos. will announce Thursday that it will be the lead sponsor of the largest national campaign thus far to encourage Latinos to become U.S. citizens and register to vote. That will make it the first mainstream U.S. corporation to put money behind the massive mobilization effort ahead of the November presidential vote. State Farm, one of the country's top home and auto insurers, will inject $1 million into the "Ya Es Hora" (It's About Time) campaign. The drive -- backed by the largest Spanish-language broadcast and print media in...

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND - Border congressmen and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are looking into ways of de-funding the Department of Homeland Security so it cannot continue constructing a border wall. Opponents of the border wall in Congress are not sure if they can succeed with this strategy but they have not given up hope of putting sufficient congressional hurdles in place so that the project is delayed until after the November presidential election. Border congressmen say that because Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff waived more than 30 laws and regulations in order to speed up construction of the border wall,...

Sen. Barack Obama’s protracted nomination fight with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton not only seasoned the Democrats’ young standard-bearer for the general election, it also showed the kinds of places where he’s strong ­ and those where he needs to focus his fire if he’s to prevail in November. For a while, in the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries, his weakness was portrayed as working-class white voters. As the primaries moved to the more rural states of West Virginia and Kentucky, the name of the group of concern morphed into the related “Appalachian voters. ”But a look at the primary and caucus...

This is NOT an exerpt but a synopsis. AP should have no quibble This article details how Senator John McCain, in a secret meeting with Hispanic leaders in Chicago, double talked to them. He said on thing to them, but according to a very conservative Rafael Rivadeneira, a vice chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Illinois, he says one thing to Hispanics at a meeting like this one, but says something totally different to white conservatives. The implication: he is a liar. No one really knows what he believes.

By Michelle Malkin  •  June 19, 2008 09:02 PM Last night, John McCain met with a carefully screened group of Chicago-area Latino voters. The town hall was closed to the media. Several readers e-mailed an eyewitness account of the event. Here’s an excerpt: I was one of the 150 people at the Drake Hotel in Downtown Chicago Wednesday night who came to hear John MC Cain speak to Illinois Hispanics.I had e-mail in my request to attend after seeing an article in the news paper announcing this event.This is what i received……….We are pleased to confirm your invitation to attend the...

I was one of the 150 people at the Drake Hotel in Downtown Chicago Wednesaday night who came to hear John MC Cain speak to Illinois Hispanics. I had e-mail in my request to attend after seeing an article in the news paper announcing this event. This is what i received.......... We are pleased to confirm your invitation to attend the "Hispanic Voices Reception" with Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. The event will take place on June 18, 2008, at The Drake Hotel, 140 E. Walton Place, Chicago, Illinois, in the Drake Room. A volunteer will call you in the...

It might not be perfect, but the manner in which the presidential candidates are chosen in the United States works. snip the $64 million question is staring everyone in the face: Where do Hillary Clinton’s supporters go from here? These are their choices: Support Barack Obama, the rival she ran such a ferocious campaign against; cross party lines and give their vote to Republican John McCain; or go for the unthinkable — abstain from voting. snip Even after Obama increased his Latino voter outreach, the numbers didn’t move his way. Major endorsements from high-profile Latino politicians such as Rep. Luis...

For years, the Dar al Hijrah mosque was an isolated, slightly mysterious presence in Falls Church -- a stark stone building hidden behind a row of trees, rarely visited by non-Muslims in the multi-ethnic Culmore neighborhood, and known mostly for traffic jams on Leesburg Pike as worshipers arrived for Friday prayers. These days, the mosque bustles with visitors chattering in Spanish and Vietnamese as well as Persian and Urdu. Immigrants from a dozen countries gather there each Thursday, many with toddlers and baby strollers, to pick up donated chicken, bread, fruit and vegetables. On weekends, the doors are thrown open...

My desktop background at work features a beautiful night shot of the Texas Capitol. I chose it because it's something non-partisan that conveys my interests. I try to keep my political side out of the office as it isn't really work appropriate. The other day I was approached by a girl I work with who commented on my photo. She is an adamant Hillary supporter and life-long democrat. She looked at me and said "Your hispanic and Republican? Are you sure your not just a closet democrat?" My response was: "I've been a Republican for 22 years and nine-months. Are...

ATLANTA (AP) — Hispanic workers die at higher rates than other laborers, with 1 in 3 of these deaths occurring in the construction industry, a government study reported Thursday. Hispanics tend to hold more high-risk jobs than those in other racial groups, but language and literacy barriers and poor training and supervision may also be factors, researchers said. The leading causes of death in recent years have been falls and highway-related accidents. "Many of the Hispanic workers in construction are undocumented, and many of those who are recently arrived do face a language barrier," said Rakesh Kochhar, associated director for...

The nation's economic downturn — especially a slump in the construction industry — is having a disproportionate impact on Hispanic workers, a study released Wednesday found. Hispanics have lost nearly 250,000 jobs over the past year in the construction sector alone, pushing their unemployment rate (seasonally adjusted) to 6.5 percent in the first quarter of this year. By comparison, the unemployment rate for non-Hispanics was 4.7 percent, said the study by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. Two years ago, the gap was much smaller. At the end of 2006, the unemployment rate for Latinos was...

Construction Slump Hurts Hispanic Immigrants First Time In 5 Years Foreign-Born Hispanics Have Higher Unemployment Rate POSTED: 6:27 pm EDT June 4, 2008 WASHINGTON -- The construction industry slump has led to an increase in the unemployment rate among Hispanic immigrants. A Pew Hispanic Center analysis of census and Labor Department data has found that, for the first time in five years, foreign-born Hispanics have a higher unemployment rate than Hispanics born in the U.S. The unemployment rate for Hispanic immigrants in the first months of this year is 7.5 percent compared with 6.9 percent among native-born Hispanics.

Ken Vogel reports that the Clinton campaign is using the results to openly argue that Barack Obama has a problem with Hispanic voters — an idea Clinton backers have previously mentioned only behind the scenes. “It was a 100 percent Hispanic primary and it shows that he has a problem with the Latino community,” Terry McAuliffe, campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton, told a handful of reporters after polls closed Sunday. “He cannot close in this key core constituency,” McAuliffe added. Voters in Puerto Rico are in some ways different from Hispanics living stateside, both because there’s a long tradition of...

The term “La Raza“, or “the Race” originated in a book titled “La Raza Cósmica,” written in 1929 by José Vasconcelos. The book’s title translates to “The Cosmic Race,” and was Vasconcelos’ attempt to explain “the ideology of a future ‘fifth race’ in the Americas; an agglomeration of all the races in the world with no respect to color or number to erect a new civilization: Universópolis.”

SOUTH LOS ANGELES Four people were arrested and a school went on lockdown after a fight between black and Hispanic students raged, according to authorities. Police were sent to Locke High School shortly after 1 p.m. Friday afternoon. The fight allegedly involved some 600 students.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A fight at a troubled South Los Angeles high school escalated into a campuswide brawl involving as many as 600 students before it was quelled by police officers in riot gear. The melee, which students said was between rival black and Hispanic gangs and started around noon on Friday, forced the authorities to shut down the school, Locke High, and keep students in their classrooms. After restoring order, they rounded up those involved and separated them, holding Hispanic students in the gymnasium and black students in another room.

Hispanic voters registered as Democrats have overtaken Hispanic Republicans in Florida, signaling a trend that, if it continues, could have far-reaching implications for the 2008 election and U.S. foreign policy. Until now, the politically influential, mostly Republican Cuban-American community in Miami-Dade made Florida the only state in the country where, among Hispanics, Republicans outnumbered Democrats. April voter registration statistics show 418,339 Hispanic Democrats statewide, compared to 415,068 Hispanic Republicans and 345,108 registered with neither party, according to a Florida Democratic Party analysis of state data. The state provides registration data sorted by party and race to the public only in...

What do you call a candidate who wins 90 percent of the African-American vote, between 30 percent and 50 percent of the Hispanic vote and 40 percent of the white vote in a tight Democratic primary race? A general election loser. Apply those percentages to the general election, and the candidate will bomb. In 2004, President Bush won 43 percent of the Hispanic vote, 58 percent of the white vote and 11 percent of the African-American vote. That means that John Kerry did better among Hispanics than Barack Obama has done in the Democratic primaries; better among whites than Obama...

The United States grew steadily more diverse last year, with Hispanics holding on to their rank as the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group -- a trend with far-reaching implications for American politics and immigration policies. New Census Bureau figures show that the nation's Hispanic population grew by 1.4 million in 2007 to reach 45.5 million people, or 15.1 percent of the total U.S. population of 301.6 million. Blacks ranked as the second-largest minority group, at 40.7 million people. Racial and ethnic minorities account for more than one in three Americans, a new milepost ..

California may be loosening its grip on two groups that helped define the Golden State during the 20th century: predominantly white baby boomers, who are now approaching retirement age, and Hispanics. New U.S. Census Bureau data being released today shows the state's white population is shrinking - particularly in the Bay Area. From 2000 to 2006, the San Jose and San Francisco metropolitan areas saw their white population decline by more than 200,000 people, trailing only the New York City metropolitan area. Meanwhile, Texas has replaced California as the leader in the nation's Hispanic growth surge. California is still adding...

Hard numbers: Illegal alien drunk drivers in North Carolina By Michelle Malkin • April 19, 2008 WRAL reports on a new statistical breakdown of illegal alien drunk drivers in North Carolina. It’s a blood-pressure-raising look at the deadly revolving door, catch-and-release, the deportation abyss, and the danger of sanctuary policies embraced by those sworn to defend and protect the public: Seven-year-old Marcus Lassiter won’t see his eighth birthday. George Smith was on his morning commute to Duke University but never made it to work. Betty Coates might struggle with daily tasks for the rest of her life. Johnston County Sheriff...

Hispanic immigrants delivered a letter to the Vatican embassy in D.C. asking Pope Benedict XVI to intercede in “mean-spirited” policies that they say have destroyed thousands of families. Ricardo Juarez of Mexicans Without Borders led about 30 immigrants, some of whom were here illegally, past the carefully manicured lawns along Embassy Row to the front door of the Apostolic Nunciature. The pleadings of the 30 Hispanic immigrants highlight a critical issue for the Vatican. Hispanic Catholics have been filling the pews in the D.C. area. In Arlington County, nearly half the diocese is Hispanic. “Our voice is not strong enough,”...

Alejandro Salazar slumps into a cushioned seat halfway into the bus, looks out from under a baseball cap and thinks about a future more than a thousand miles away. He came to the Las Vegas Valley from Mexico five years ago to build houses, launching a run of $700-a-week paychecks that made it worth crossing the desert into the United States. But those weekly checks were whittled down to $200 over the past year; he sold his van and is returning to Aguascalientes. “At least I have family there,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. He has $60 in his jeans...

The suburbs of the US are no longer the same as those immortalised in 1950s movies, with white families living in big houses and the father driving off to work in his Buick, past manicured lawns. These days, it is more likely that English will not even be the first language you hear on the streets. In Langley Park, Maryland, the kiosks sell Spanish-language newspapers; the supermarket shelves are stocked with tortillas and assorted black beans. Mexican music plays in the background while the tannoy blares out announcements in Spanish. Outside, groups of men hang out on the street corners...

SUMMARY: He says: "Who in their right mind, if they were African-American or Hispanic or Asian-American, if they were gay or lesbian, would join the Republican Party?" Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean came under attack for speaking out against conservative gay men and lesbians as well as Republicans of color. "They can't become more diverse," Dean said Tuesday at a speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Who in their right mind, if they were African-American or Hispanic or Asian-American, if they were gay or lesbian, would join the Republican Party?" The Log Cabin Republicans issued a statement Wednesday against...

Hispanics With Clogged Arteries At Greatest Risk Of Stroke, Heart Attack, Study Shows ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2008) — Hispanics who have even a small amount of plaque build-up in the neck artery that supplies blood to the brain are up to four times more likely to suffer or die from a stroke or heart attack than Hispanics who do not have plaque, according to a study published in the March 19, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. For the study, researchers used ultrasound to determine the thickness of the plaque in the...

Second-, third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans speak English fluently, and most prefer American music. They are increasingly Protestant, and some may even vote for a Republican candidate. However, many Mexican Americans in these later generations do not graduate from college, and they continue to live in majority Hispanic neighborhoods. Most marry other Hispanics and think of themselves as "Mexican" or "Mexican American." * The educational levels of second-generation Mexican Americans improved dramatically. But the third and fourth generations failed to surpass, and to some extent fell behind, the educational level of the second generation. Moreover, the educational levels of all...

NEW YORK -- When Beatriz Kehdy was growing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil, she felt uncomfortable with the standards of beauty that she says were a part of the culture in which she was raised. An emphasis on external beauty and the body, she says, became increasingly foreign to her own personal values. Kehdy moved to New York City almost 10 years ago and eventually discovered a sense of place in Islam and in the hijab, or headscarf worn by women in the faith. "When I wear the hijab, I feel more respected, people talk to me with respect," she...

When Northern Virginia's Latino soccer leagues kick off the 2008 season early next month, fans of Honduras de Manassas will have to travel outside their base in Prince William County to see their team score goals. So will supporters used to watching Juventus Sure¿o crush the competition in Woodbridge. Devotees of longtime Manassas powerhouse Fiorentina will need to switch allegiance. Their team is sitting out this season. As Prince William proceeds with its crackdown on illegal immigrants, one result is a shake-up and shrinking of the area's entrenched Hispanic soccer leagues. The reason is simple, organizers say: Players and fans,...

I agree with J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s (does he have a shorter name ?) recent column that progressives are left with an embarrassment of riches—two credible, serious candidates, either of whom would be a good choice for president. We are in a win-win position having two Democrats running for office against an opponent, John McCain, who has little or nothing compelling, professionally or personally, that would make someone vote for him besides his service in Vietnam. What might derail a Democratic victory would be unfair and untrue attacks on the part of the candidates and the unspoken competition that exists between...

A lawsuit filed Thursday in a New York federal court by Latino immigrants seeks to force immigration authorities to complete hundreds of thousands of stalled naturalization petitions in time for the new citizens to vote in November. (snip) The class action suit was brought by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund on behalf of legal Hispanic immigrants in the New York City area who are eager to vote... (snip) “It is astonishing the government should be so unresponsive to immigrants who have enthusiastically taken all the steps to become Americans,” said Janet Murguía, president of the National Council...