Free Republic

HUNTINGTON PARK (CBSLA.com) — Huntington Park is making history and not everyone is happy about it. Councilman Jhonny Pineda announced at Monday night’s city council meeting the appointment of two undocumented immigrants as commissioners, CBS2/KCAL9’s Kara Finnstrom reports. “You are out of order!” one woman in the crowd yelled at the councilmembers during the meeting. Some critics say Pineda, who joined the council in March, specifically picked Medina and Zatarain because they worked on his campaign. Others say they don’t believe undocumented immigrants should serve the government this way.

Is "The Donald" in for the long hall, or is he going to "Pull Out" at the last minute -- like he has done so many times before? http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/16/donald-trump-us-presidential-race I don't think he has demonstrated that he is in for the long haul. Therefore I have taken the liberty to give him the handle of Trumpus Interruptus! I confess that I was excited (as was his collective base) when he announced in 2012 that he was considering a run for the republican nomination for President of the United States. I was thus willing to overlook the fact that he was...

California Poll The latest telephone poll taken by the California Governor's office asked whether people who live in California think illegal immigration is a serious problem: 19% responded, "Yes, it is a serious problem." 81% responded, "No es una problema seriosa."

Editor’s Note: By participating in the historic Spanish-language debate on Univision, Republican candidates finally realized that they need Latino votes. But is it “too little, too late?" NAM editor Elena Shore monitors Spanish language media. The first Spanish-language Republican presidential candidate debate couldn’t have come at a better time for the GOP. Latino support for the Republican Party has dropped substantially when the Latino vote is more important than ever. The candidates’ jostling over who is tougher on immigration has alienated Latinos even further. Seven of the eight Republican presidential candidates showed up at the University of Miami Sunday with...

In politics, the surest path to irrelevance and powerlessness is to be taken for granted by one party and written off by another. That's the road Latinos are on, thanks to major blunders by the Republicans campaigning for president. In June, all but California's Duncan Hunter blew off an invitation to address the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. In September, a debate on Spanish-language television had to be postponed after all but Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to commit. After taking criticism for the snub, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney have committed to taking part...

All told, 78 percent in this ABC News Good Morning America poll say they often or sometimes come into contact with people in this country who speak mainly Spanish rather than English – including 55 percent who encounter it “often.”

News reports say the passage of Amnesty Two (the DREAM ACT) to extort US taxpayers to fund the educations of illegal immigrants.........is dead, for now. Senate action on the DREAM Act, to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, faded Tuesday as the measure's chief Senate sponsor acknowledged he was having difficulty surmounting Republican opposition, news reports said. Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat-Ill, has been seeking to attach the DREAM Act to the US defense authorization bill pending in the Senate. But in an interview Tuesday, he said the DREAM Act isn't among the items on the table...

EAGLE, Colo. -- An Eagle woman accused of chasing a group of Hispanic children with a sword faces a number of charges, including ethnic intimidation, after allegedly calling them "illegal spics," according to police. Amanda Jane Darling Harris, 21, allegedly chased the children, aged 9 to 15, with an 18-inch samurai sword because they were playing in a parking lot of the Villa apartments, according to a police report. Police investigated the incident on Sept. 20, and Harris was jailed until she posted a $3,500 bond this week. According to the police report, the teens said Harris yelled at...

Bakersfield, Calif. (AP) -- A bid to make English the official language of this San Joaquin Valley city failed after much debate. The city council also shot down on Wednesday another proposal that would have made clear that Bakersfield is not a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, but it approved a resolution calling on the federal government to enact immigration reform. After the meeting, opponents of the English-only and the sanctuary resolutions praised the council for making the "morally correct" decision. . . . Famed labor leader Dolores Huerta, who spoke to city council members, called the defeated resolutions "hateful" and...

Given the responses I got the last time I focused on this issue, I almost hate to bring it up…but here goes. I think Tony Snow is exactly right when he says here: “I deeply admire what [Mr. Bush] did on immigration and I think he’s right,” Mr. Snow said. “I think the policies the president outlined generally are the ones that eventually this country is going to adopt.” Let us hope so, because the alternative “solutions” out there - “let everyone in and register them all Democrat” on the left and “ship them all back to Mexico no matter...

The heated debate over immigration has spurred Bernard Ortiz - and a handful of presidential candidates - to help mobilize Iowa's Latinos in an effort to shape the outcome of the state's upcoming caucuses and the 2008 presidential election. Ortiz, as a union worker, has helped hundreds of Latinos register to vote, while some presidential candidates have reached out beyond traditional mailings and phone calls to seek their support. For example, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, both Democrats, have introduced Latino outreach programs. Some Republicans have also made efforts to draw Latino voters, at least...

FReep This Poll! Are Spanish-language media helpful or harmful to English-learning Latinos? More Helpful Harmful Don't Know

Entitlements: About to become law is an agreement allowing illegal aliens to get Social Security benefits after only 18 months of employment in the U.S., further burdening a system on the brink of collapse. Surveys have shown that more Americans believe in the existence of unidentified flying objects than in the promise that they'll ever get back what they've put into the Social Security system. It also is against current law for employers knowingly to hire individuals who are in this country illegally. So it must be somewhat disconcerting for them to find out that about to become law is...

Man died after collision blamed on undocumented driver PALMDALE - More than 50 people carrying American flags and signs that read "Stop illegal immigration" demonstrated Saturday at an intersection where a young Palmdale man was fatally injured in a crash blamed on an unlicensed, uninsured undocumented immigrant who tried to walk away after the collision.

As the population of the United States passes 300 million, will the nation’s policy makers come to their senses and pause for a moment and think about where the country is headed? Our population was just over 200 million in the 1970 Census and the rate of population increase of about one percent per year indicates that with no change we may add another 300 million residents over the next 70 years. A continuation of the current trend means that most of the future U.S. population increase will result from immigration. Yet immigration is a discretionary policy — it can...

As soon as the House and Senate GOP have their leadership teams in place, and soon after the lame duck session ends, the 250 House and Senate members should repair to a conference center somewhere for a long conversation on illegal immigration leading to a consensus position. Certainly there will be outliers, but an ongoing bloodletting over the issue is the only major obstacle in the path to return to majority status. An ongoing focus on the issue is found at Powerline, and though I am unwilling to simply credit Tamar Jacoby's take on the subject, she is generally correct...

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff visited with the editorial board on a recent stop in Dallas. Here are excerpts from the discussion, beginning with the secretary laying out immigration enforcement plans for his agency: We are going to go after systematic, willful violators with heavy criminal cases, where people face real jail time, losing businesses, paying millions and millions of dollars in fines. Because that is the only way you will start to change the behavior that has driven a lot of this activity in. Now, we're going to get a lot of squawking from business, whose basic argument will...

Who’s Fueling The Racial Hatred? -- Tan Nguyen speech, Oct. 28, Garden Grove California I don’t know for sure who’s behind the hysteria…who’s fueling the racial hatred…who’s dividing the community…but Ms. Sanchez’s fingerprints are all over this. I don’t know if my opponent had a hand in urging the raid on my office. But, on October 20, the O.C. Register reported that Ms. Sanchez had PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of the Attorney General’s intention to seek arrests. I don’t know for sure whether that newspaper article was correct. However, I do know that Ms. Sanchez speaks Spanish. Ms. Sanchez must have known...

DMV - Oregon accepts documents from foreigners but will not accept proof from out-of-state tribes It's easier for illegal immigrants to get a driver's license in Oregon than it is for Native Americans who show up at DMV counters with identification from out-of-state tribes. About half the states in the nation allow some form of tribal documentation to secure a driver's license or identification card. Some want federal proof, some require tribal proof and some will accept either. Of those 28 states, two -- Oregon and New York -- restrict that to documents from in-state tribes only, according to information...

Mexico's foreign secretary said Monday the country may take a dispute over U.S. plans to build a fence on the Mexican border to the United Nations. Luis Ernesto Derbez told reporters in Paris, his first stop on a European tour, that a legal investigation was under way to determine whether Mexico has a case. The Mexican government last week sent a diplomatic note to Washington criticizing the plan for 700 miles of new fencing along the border. President-elect Felipe Calderon also denounced the plan, but said it was a bilateral issue that should not be put before the international community....