I didn’t pay much attention to Saturday’s elections, since there was nothing on the ballot for me and there were few races of interest around the state. One place where there were races worth watching was in Farmers Branch, and the news from there was excellent. Ana Reyes became the first Hispanic to win a [...]
Posts Tagged ‘immigration’
Drivers licenses for all – maybe
Not quite drivers licenses, exactly, but close enough. A Dallas Democrat has teamed up with two powerful Republicans to craft a compromise version of a bill that would give immigrants here illegally the ability to drive legally in Texas and obtain insurance – but only after they submit to a criminal background check, fingerprinting and [...]
The 2013 Houston Area Survey
The 2013 Houston Area Survey shows that tolerance is prevalent in our region. The results, according to institute co-director Stephen Klineberg, may reflect the region’s growing ethnic diversity, younger residents’ acceptance of change and the emergence of live-and-let-live “tolerant traditionalists.” Part of a larger survey of attitudes in the 10-county Houston metropolitan region, the 32nd [...]
Some things can’t be rebranded
Louie Gohmert, ladies and gentlemen. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) warned Wednesday that “radical Islamists” are being “trained to act like Hispanic[s]” and cross the U.S.-Mexico border. “We know Al Qaeda has camps over with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border,” he said Wednesday on C-Span. “We know that people that [...]
Keeping the push for immigration reform
From the Texas House: Democratic Texas House members [have] filed an immigration resolution that could serve as a litmus test for Republican support for reforms being suggested at the national level. House Concurrent Resolution 44, which urges the U.S. Congress to “swiftly enact and fund comprehensive immigration reform that creates a road map to citizenship,” [...]
Sidelining themselves on immigration reform
I don’t know what’s going to happen with the comprehensive immigration reform proposals that are out there now. It’s long overdue, and the political stars all seem to be aligned for it, but we said the same things about health care reform back in 2009, and look how close that came to be scuppered. In [...]
A look ahead to the 2013 Lege
The Trib previews the biennial hijinks of the 2013 Texas Legislature. The last time Texas lawmakers convened in Austin, they were absorbed with numbers and boundaries: how to make ends meet with a deflated state budget and draw new district maps the courts would approve. But with improving fiscal conditions and redistricting mostly in the [...]
The dog that hasn’t barked yet
The most dispensible member of the Harris County legislative caucus hasn’t done what she normally does yet. Camping out in the Texas Capitol to ensure a prime designation for your legislation on illegal immigration? That’s so 2011. State Rep. Debbie Riddle braved a cold, creepy-noise-filled Capitol two years ago in part to obtain a priority [...]
How’s that GOP Latino outreach going?
There are issues. On Election Day, it became clearer than ever how important Hispanics, as the fastest growing portion of the U.S. population, are to national political success. Republican Mitt Romney earned only 27 percent of Latinos’ support in his failed bid for the presidency. Now, as Republicans in Texas examine Romney’s loss, they are [...]
Fifth Circuit will re-hear the Farmers Branch lawsuit again
I have an uneasy feeling about this. Farmers Branch was sued four years ago after it passed an ordinance allowing the city building inspector to evict any illegal immigrant renters. Its case will now go before the full membership of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with 10 judges appointed by Republican presidents and [...]
The ballot propositions we won’t have
Today is the 78th day before the November 6 election. That makes it the statutory deadline for ordering an election, as noted by the Secretary of State. They cite Sec. 201.054 of the Elections Code for this, which seems wrong to me; Sec. 201.051 appears to be more on point, though that still doesn’t specifically [...]
On hedging one’s bets
Writing in the Trib, Mustafa Tameez tells Republicans that there such a thing as too much of a good thing for them. If Republicans win in SD-10, there will only be 11 Democrats in the Texas Senate. That means that in order for the majority to pass anything it wants, all they need to do [...]
Rey Guerra: Latinos in Houston 2012
The following is from a series of guest posts that I will be presenting over the next few weeks. White, Black, Asian, or other, if you live in Houston, you’ve more than likely adopted aspects of Latino culture into your own, it’s inevitable. In statistically the most diverse city in the United States, Latinos are [...]
Fifth Circuit rules against Farmers Branch
I almost missed this. A federal appeals court has upheld the ruling that struck down a Farmers Branch renters ordinance aimed at banning illegal immigrants from rental housing in the city. The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday upholds the federal government’s right to control immigration laws through the Constitution’s supremacy [...]
Jose Luis Zelaya
Jose Luis Zelaya is running for student body president at Texas A&M. He’s also an “illegal immigrant”. Here’s his story. Zelaya first started working in the streets in Honduras at age 7, washing car windows and begging on buses. His mother left for the U.S. when he was 13, unable to take the beatings from [...]
Dis-Harmony
Interesting story about the Harmony charter schools, which are right up there with KIPP and YES Prep among the top charters. They seem to attract a fair amount of criticism, more than their peers, for how they do their business, which is explored in the story. Based on what is detailed, I have to agree [...]
Election results elsewhere
Results of interest from elsewhere in Texas and the country… – Three of the ten Constitutional amendments were defeated, with Prop 4 losing by nearly 20 points. It drew strong opposition from anti-toll road activists, and I daresay that was the reason for the lopsided loss. The other two, Props 7 and 8, were pretty [...]
Today’s Republican Party is too radical even for Rick Perry
Mark Jones states a few facts about the Texas version of the DREAM Act that Rick Perry signed in 2001, and what it says about the Republican Party now. In 2001 the Republican Party enjoyed a narrow majority over the Democratic Party in the Texas Senate (16 to 15), and was in its last session [...]
DPS loses lawsuit over drivers license rules
This happened the week before last, but I’m not sure it will matter at this point. On [July 29], Judge Orlinda Naranjo ruled against the Texas Department of Public Safety and said that the agency could no longer require those here on temporary visas to prove they are in the country legally in order to [...]
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the GOP to fix immigration
I confess that I only glanced at this op-ed by local immigration attorney Charles Foster about how the Republican Party can lead the way on immigration reform, but thankfully Greg was there to do a little deconstruction. I just want to add that if anyone is going to wait for this to happen, I’d advise [...]
The consolation prize
The Republicans couldn’t get their act together enough to pass the “sanctuary cities” bill, but they did manage to do this. A provision in the approved Senate Bill 1, the special session’s must-pass school finance bill, will require people to prove U.S. citizenship or legal residence before they can renew or get a Texas driver’s [...]
Sine Die, take two
The House followed the Senate out the door yesterday, leaving a bit of unfinished business behind. The Senate’s version of a bill to criminalize intrusive pat-downs by federal agents with the Transportation Security Administration has died in the House, after the chamber couldn’t get the four-fifths vote needed to suspend the rules. The 96-26 vote [...]
House passes budget after brief meltdown
For a few brief moments, it looked like we were heading to double overtime, as Republicans voted down their own budget in the House. The Texas House, in a surprise turn of events late Tuesday afternoon, tentatively voted down a must-pass bill that distributes the pain of school-funding cuts and uses accounting tricks to help [...]
How much time will the Lege waste this week on a stunt?
House Speaker Joe Straus got a little frustrated on Friday. Texas House Speaker Joe Straus unleashed a rare verbal assault Friday on an effort to criminalize invasive searches at airports, assailing legislation supported by Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and most of the House. “The bill — without some serious revisions — appears [...]
Down to the wire for “sanctuary cities”
There’s an 11th hour lobbying effort to stop the “sanctuary cities” bill as it is. As two of Texas’ most politically-involved business leaders emerged as opponents, a bill banning “sanctuary cities” lost crucial momentum Friday, raising the possibility the measure will be killed or substantially weakened before the special session of the Texas Legislature ends [...]
The perils of being a single-issue voter
A new voice is heard against the “sanctuary cities” bill. Several Hispanic, conservative evangelical pastors from around the state spoke out in opposition of the bill. One of them, Gilberto Avila, a pastor from Tyler, testified against the measure on behalf of his conservative Restoration Christian Center and a group of 30 other Texas pastors [...]
MLB needs to stand by all of its players
A brief history of baseball’s other color line. There is no Latin American Jackie Robinson, no single Hispanic ballplayer who lifted his people onto his back and crashed through baseball’s racist barricades. But there always has to be a first, and many of the game’s historians point to two Cubans, Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans, [...]
“Sanctuary cities” bill passes the Senate
Once it was added to the call, this became inevitable. Senate Republicans finally passed a priority issue for their party early Wednesday morning when they outmuscled their Democratic colleagues on an immigration-related bill intended to make it easier for law enforcement to corral illegal immigrants. At its core, SB 9 allows law enforcement officers to [...]
The reason why some anti-immigration legislation didn’t pass this session
According to teabagger Rebecca Frost, the problem was too many Hispanic legislators. This is what she had to say at a rally in Austin yesterday: There’s a lot of wind noise that makes it hard to hear exactly what she’s saying, but here’s a transcript, provided by the Texas Democratic Party, which presumably had someone [...]
Same schism, next verse
I’m not surprised that there exist other GOP activists besides the usual Bob Perry/Bill Hammond/business interests types that aren’t happy with their party’s recent anti-immigrant/anti-Hispanic fixation. Nor am I surprised that like their business-oriented counterparts they haven’t figured out what to do about it. A series of email exchanges between Republican Party boosters and the [...]
Perry adds “sanctuary cities” to the special session
I wasn’t sure if this would happen or not. I guess you can never pander to the base too much. Gov. Rick Perry has added controversial immigration and homeland security measures to the agenda for the special legislative session that began last week. Perry added abolishing “sanctuary cities,” the common term for entities that prohibit [...]
Chron profile of Rep. Hernandez Luna
Good story. State Rep. Ana Hernandez Luna stood before the House on the afternoon of May 9, hours after lawmakers passed the controversial “sanctuary city” bill, and started reading from a prepared statement, her eyes downcast. “I know House Bill 12 already passed, and in the long run there is nothing that could have been [...]