Election 2008: What’s At Stake?

Gov. Janet Napolitano, likely the next homeland security secretary. (Wikipedia photo)
Under a new, more liberal administration, ICE will presumably tone down the raids, and the website for the presidential transition says as much:
Immigration raids are ineffective: Despite a sevenfold increase in recent years, immigration raids only netted 3,600 arrests in 2006 and have placed [...]

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Former ICE head Julie Myers. (Wikipedia photo)
Since its creation in 2003 as part of the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has earned a reputation for controversy. It is perhaps best-known by the news-consuming public for the series of high-profile raids on employers, the most infamous of which was the Postville, Iowa raid [...]

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Long Island-based Newsday has been following the Marcelo Lucero murder in great detail, even sending a reporter to Ecuador to interview his friends and family. But some see coverage of this case, which involves a group of American youths who allegedly attacked and killed an immigrant, as too positive about immigration.
One Newsday reporter was thrown [...]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x58A6o2NEBs

Seven Long Island teenagers have been charged with hate crimes for the murder of an Ecuadorian immigrant earlier this month. The high school students were indicted today for an attack that ended with one of them stabbing Marcelo Lucero.
In a case that tops last summer’s murder of Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pa., [...]

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A report released by the Brookings Institution in September asserts that the media’s framing of the immigration debate is to blame for the failure of comprehensive immigration reform in 2006 and 2007. The media’s narrative about immigration is one of “illegality, crisis, controversy and government failure,” the report states, and this narrative is open to [...]

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Mexico is setting up a call center in Tuscon, Ariz., to help Mexican citizens who run into immigration problems. Mexican officials say the center is designed to help illegal workers, and that it was prompted by an increase in anti-immigrant sentiment in Arizona. The center, which will have a toll-free number and be staffed 24 [...]

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We’ve looked at the Asian vote and the Latino vote as important demographics. Neither of these groups is monolithic, and immigrants of different national origins voted differently.
But exit polls show that non-white voters, taken as a group, are increasingly powerful. Their overwhelming support for Obama helped the Democrat overcome a 12 point deficit among [...]

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A poll published in October, which billed itself as the first multi-ethnic survey of Asian voters, showed a third of Asian voter were undecided, with 41 percent going for Obama and 24 percent for McCain. Now, a CNN exit poll shows Asian voters, who made up 2 percent of the national electorate, went for Obama [...]

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Schenectady, N.Y. (Photo by Elephi Pelephi, via Flickr)
An article on reversing urban blight in the Cleveland Plain Dealer uncovered an interesting story in the once-dying city of Schenectady, N.Y. In a bid to save itself from a shrinking population and economic base after General Electric Co. moved out, Schenectady, near Albany, recruited immigrants from a [...]

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The race for Pennsylvania’s 11th congressional seat was one of the most closely watched this past election cycle. Lou Barletta, the mayor of Hazleton, was ahead in a number of polls right up to election day. He was predicted to defeat long-time incumbent Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a result that would have made Barletta one of [...]

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