Thread: Understanding the Latino voting power

Understanding the Voting Power of Hispanics

Univision releases CD-ROM with detailed information about the powerful Hispanic electorate


Los Angeles, CA -- The rapidly growing Hispanic voter-base is becoming a powerful constituency in the U.S. political landscape, greatly influencing pivotal races around the country. According to the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute, out of 40 million Hispanics in the U.S., 16 million Hispanic citizens are eligible to vote in the upcoming 2004 Presidential election and 8.8 million of those are projected to be registered by Election Day.

To demystify the U.S. Hispanic population and this community’s growing political influence, Univision Communications Inc. (NYSE:UVN), the nation’s leading Spanish-language media company, today announced the release of an interactive CD-Rom providing insight into the U.S. Hispanic Voting behavior. The CD-Rom, entitled “The Hispanic Vote Tool Kit” is designed to inform politicians and media advisors about the growing Hispanic electorate and its significance. The CD-Rom is part of Univision’s campaign to aid political candidates in their pursuit of Hispanic votes and ensure that candidates and issue advertisers communicate with their Hispanic constituencies. The discs will be distributed beginning April 13.

The Hispanic Vote Tool Kit provides detailed information about the influential Hispanic electorate and its voting trends. For instance, Hispanics are less partisan than non-Hispanics and tend to align more with a specific candidate than with a particular political party. In addition, Hispanic turnout rates have historically paralleled those of non-Hispanics as illustrated in the 2000 Presidential election during which 79% of registered Hispanics turned out to vote as compared to 86% of non-Hispanics (U.S. Census Bureau).

“As candidates increasingly recognize that Hispanics are often a critical swing vote, they are eager to reach out to this important constituency,” said Michael D. Wortsman, President, Univision Television Group. “The Hispanic Vote Tool Kit offers them the information necessary to successfully target the nation’s largest minority group by understanding and addressing the issues they care about in the most effective way. Univision is thrilled to play a role facilitating the political community’s recognition of the voting power of U.S. Hispanics.”
Latinos, who have been in the state since Puerto Ricans began arriving 50 years ago, are making their presence felt in this year's Democratic gubernatorial primary campaign between New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and Malloy with unprecedented intensity. Citing the community's growing numbers and increasingly sophisticated political organizing efforts, Latino leaders say their community could play a crucial role in determining whether DeStefano or Malloy wins the Democratic nomination and whether the winner of the nomination can get enough votes to unseat incumbent Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

But Latino leaders must convince the politicians that they can produce the votes to back up their endorsements. Neither campaign expects a high turnout in the primary, which is being held in August for the first time, and the state's Latino population historically has low turnout rates, particularly when compared with wealthier Connecticut suburbs. Those suburbs sometimes swing Republican, though, and the candidates need to tap into discontent with a governor who continues to hold nearly 80 percent approval ratings. Successful mobilization of the state's Latino population could make one smart Democratic alcalde into one lucky Democratic gobernador.



Times a-changin'

Though the potential power of Latino voters gained widespread media attention only recently with massive marches against the House bill that would have criminalized illegal immigrants, the Padillas were ahead of the curve.

Frances Padilla and her husband, John, are among the founders of the Progreso Latino Fund, a part of the Greater New Haven Community Foundation that supports the Latino community in the New Haven area. Through the fund, which the Padillas say is nonpartisan, the two have organized a series of debates and panel discussions. And civic engagement, along with voter turnout, were at the top of their list of important issues to hold debates on, Frances Padilla said.

"This seems to be an idea whose time has come," she said. "Our community has grown. … It's grown in numbers and in its ability to affect what is happening in the community."Between 1990 and 2000, Connecticut's population grew by only 3.6 percent, or by 118,449 residents, according to a study by the Mauricio Gaston Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, which conducts research on the Latino population in America. The number of Latinos in the state, though, grew by 50.3 percent, or 107,207 residents. Latinos now outnumber blacks as the largest minority in Connecticut, by more than 20,000.

"What you're seeing in the Latino community is what you see in every other group in history," said Jorge Perez, a former president of the New Haven Board of Aldermen whose family immigrated from Cuba when he was 8. "As they grow in numbers and in economic power, they'll be more sought-after."
When the Progreso Latino Fund invited the two gubernatorial candidates to debate at one of its events, the audience of Latino voters filled the ballroom at the North Haven Holiday Inn where the event was held.

The North Haven debate was actually the candidates' second opportunity to face off at a Latino forum. In January, the two mayors addressed the Connecticut Democratic Hispanic Caucus, a group formed two years ago by 25 politicians from across the state, in an effort to win its endorsement.

"It was important to make sure that the message is sent that we're all working together," Yolanda Castillo, the group's president and a former city councilwoman in Hartford, said. "We want to make sure that whatever town we're from, we'll organize in our communities."

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and his challenger, Ned Lamont, have also called the CDHC to seek a meeting with them, Castillo said. The tough part, she said, has been mobilizing voters, not politicians.

"We're going out there registering voters, and besides registering them, we're really educating them about the candidates and the issues," she said. "People need to feel like they belong to the process, and we don't often talk about the issues in a way that hits home."



Potential still unrealized

The everyday drama of urban life, though crucial to John DeStefano the mayor, is becoming less relevant to DeStefano the gubernatorial candidate.

In early campaign appearances -- DeStefano has been campaigning since 2004 -- the candidate would describe his background as a New Haven mayor in part by telling anecdotes of urban life, including one about attending the funeral of a 6-month-old baby who had been shot and killed weeks after he became mayor. But today, DeStefano's campaign is that of a persistent optimist. At the campaign's official kick-off at City Hall this winter, the refrain of DeStefano's speech was "Aim Higher," and his recently-unveiled plan for universal health care in the state is named "Connecticut Cover All Now," or "Connecticut CAN."

"If you're in a rural town, they see a big city mayor and they want to know that you understand them," DeStefano said. "Stories of urban violence may not be particularly relevant to them."

With a new slate of policy proposals, including ones addressing universal health care and economic development, the mayor has put forth a vision for the state designed to energize those voters who are not sufficiently inspired by stories of DeStefano's success working with a poor city whose challenges differ significantly from those of the state's suburban and rural towns, DeStefano campaign communications director Derek Slap said.

Michele Jacklin, DeStefano's campaign director of policy and research, who worked for 28 years at the Hartford Courant as a reporter and political columnist and has covered six gubernatorial campaigns, broke down the turnout numbers, explaining why any successful candidate cannot rest on his big city laurels.

"The places with the highest voter turnout on election day are suburban towns," she said. "Turnout in the cities is usually very low."

Suburbs like her hometown of Glastonbury, Jacklin said, regularly have campaign turnouts of over 70 percent.
In contrast, turnout of Latino voters, three out of four of whom live in the state's biggest urban areas, and who make up 6.7 percent of the state's eligible voting population, has historically been very low in state-wide elections, according to data collected by the Progreso Latino Fund. In 2002, 44 percent of all eligible voters turned out -- approximately 1,134,000 citizens -- but that figure included only 28.5 percent of all eligible Latino voters, about 50,000 citizens. The percent of Latinos registered to vote in Connecticut is also lower than that of the general population: 65 percent of all eligible voters are registered, but only 56 percent of eligible Latino voters.

"Latinos simply do not vote and participate in electoral politics significantly, and certainly not commensurately with their numbers," Frances Padilla said. "The progress of the Latino community depends on its ability to influence the political structures, and we need to take on the challenge of increasing that participation."The uncertain outcome of that challenge ensures that both politicians' strategies, for now, remain centered on the traditionally reliable voting populace, as demonstrated by DeStefano's move away from accounts of city crime. That focus on traditional voters explains in part why Malloy's primary campaign is sticking to what could seem to be an odd message for a Democrat: Because Republicans approve of Malloy, his campaign manager said, he would not lose dramatically in his home county.

Malloy is from Fairfield County, the state's Republican stronghold, and the "electability" message of the Malloy campaign centers on his ability to undermine support for the Republican Rell in Fairfield and carry the state.

"That is a message he uses in every audience he speaks to," said Jacklin, who works for the DeStefano campaign.

Chris Cooney, Malloy's campaign manager, explained that in 1994, former Republican Gov. John Rowland defeated Democrat Bill Curry with a margin of 40,000 votes -- and 27,000 of those votes for Rowland came from Fairfield County, which he carried over Curry, 81,000 to 54,000.
"A Democrat just needs to be able to take a big enough bite out of the base here to deprive the Republican of carrying the rest of the state," Cooney said.

The ultimate importance of Fairfield County in November's general election against Rell remains unknown, of course, as does the importance of Malloy's alleged strength in an area that, Jacklin said, has low primary turnout rates because residents there identify strongly with New York City and tend not to follow Hartford politics.

And, as the census numbers show, Rowland's 40,000-vote margin is more than overshadowed by the 175,000 potential Latino voters in the state.



The courtship

Sitting on stage at the Progreso Latino debate, Malloy made a confession.

He is part illegal.

His brother, drawing up a family tree, had found that two of his ancestors had come to the United States from Ireland through Canada, meaning, Malloy said, that they probably crossed a border without proper papers.

But, DeStefano countered, he had been the one to promote New Haven Police Chief Francisco Ortiz, the first Latino police chief in the state.

"There are 500 Latinos in our city government, people who are prepared to step up again and again," DeStefano said.

With August's turnout expected to be low -- the Malloy campaign estimates it will be around 200,000 -- the mayors are crisscrossing the state hunting for every vote they can get, and the boom in the state's Latino population has not escaped their notice, even if it has yet to capture their focus.

"They are a force to be reckoned with, and that force is going to continue to grow as we go on," Cooney said. "Their impact in the 2006 election has already been history-making in terms of their involvement really early on."
The two candidates have appeared together before Latino audiences three times already: before the state Democratic Hispanic Caucus, whose endorsement Malloy received; at the debate hosted by the Progreso Latino Fund; and, most recently, at a debate in Hartford sponsored by the Puerto Rican Affairs Commission's Toastmasters Club. Malloy has also solicited the endorsements of a number of prominent Latino politicians, while DeStefano's campaign has formed a group named Amigos de DeStefano, whose first house party at the home of Kica Matos, the director of New Haven's JUNTA for Progressive Action, drew 90 guests.
"I've been in politics for 18 years, and this is the first time that I've seen any candidate for governor debate in front of three different groups," Perez said.

At the Progreso Latino debate, the candidates showed their ability to frame their responses in terms of Latino issues, for example, by presenting their plans for complete or partial health care coverage in the state while reminding audiences that Latinos represent 40 percent of those without health insurance, but only 10 percent of Connecticut's population. When Malloy talked about putting drug offenders into rehab, he said that 90 percent of those who serve time on drug-related charges are minorities, and that if China's prisoner population were equally racially imbalanced, the United States would call it a human rights violation. DeStefano, for his part, discussed his office's efforts to help illegal immigrants in New Haven and his role in mediating the dispute over the Yale-New Haven Hospital Cancer Center, which will be built in the Hill, a heavily Latino neighborhood.

"I believe in creating outcomes that benefit everyone, even if it is difficult sometimes," DeStefano said. "It reflects respect for our neighborhoods where this community lives."

If, as Castillo said, the Latino community's failure to turn out at a rate equivalent to that of the suburbs is due to candidates' failure to make Latino voters feel relevant, this year's election could be a turning point. Both candidates are big-city mayors already adept at discussing the issues of importance to urban residents, including most of the state's Latino population, and both candidates have made pointed efforts to highlight their respective cities' work on improving social services and the quality of public schools.

"When you talk about any statistic that [is] a negative statistic," Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez said, "disproportionately the Latino community is represented in the negative statistic."



'A bad taste'

Ask DeStefano's campaign about the mayor's record on Latino issues, and his response is concrete: The mayor is pioneering an effort to get municipal ID cards for illegal immigrants; he's the only candidate to propose a plan to provide health insurance for every state resident; as the husband of a kindergarten teacher and an alumnus of Connecticut public schools, he understands the need to improve that system; and so forth.

Ask Malloy's campaign about his record, and the response is, likewise, concrete: the support and advice of Jorge Perez, Eddie Perez, Castillo and so forth.

Starting with the CDHC, which voted 24-1 to endorse Malloy, Stamford's mayor has received more endorsements from established Latino politicians than DeStefano. The reason, some say, is DeStefano's support for Board of Aldermen President Carl Goldfield, who unseated Jorge Perez from the board presidency this January.
"That kind of left a bad taste," Castillo said. "We don't have a lot of Latino leaders in really good positions, and when we have them there, we want to keep them there."

Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez said the perception that DeStefano had not supported Jorge Perez had been "a factor" in the decision, though he said the deciding factor was Malloy's grasp of the community's diversity and his perceived willingness to involve the Latino community in decision-making after the election. Speculations have been circulating that Eddie Perez could be named Malloy's lieutenant governor, though Perez in an interview denied having discussed that possibility with Malloy.

"In order for us to continue to grow, we need to support people who are already breaking barriers and have already cut their teeth," Eddie Perez said. "We need to be in power to be contributing members of society."But Paul Nunez, a legislative assistant to DeStefano in New Haven's City Hall and the only member of the Hispanic caucus to vote against endorsing Malloy, said the endorsement debate was thin.

"Nobody really brought up points of the merits of either candidate of programs they had initiated, of track records, of vision -- none of that," he said. "As much as people claim that the Jorge Perez thing wasn't going to be the basis of a decision, it was kind of evident that it did turn out that way."

The effectiveness of these endorsements remains unclear, however, because the relative newness of the 2-year-old CDHC means its ability to mobilize the diverse Latino community towards one candidate over the other remains untested.

"Because people like the mayor of Hartford or Jorge Perez endorse a candidate doesn't necessary mean that other people know about them or are in tune with all of that," John Padilla said.

On the flip side, Slap of DeStefano's campaign said, are the endorsements DeStefano has garnered from 30 labor unions representing 100,000 workers. Slap said union members have a track record of serving as effective "foot soldiers" in any campaign.

And although Malloy can tout more endorsements than DeStefano, 8,000 more Latinos live in New Haven than in Stamford, and the DeStefano-led City Hall is generally considered responsive to the needs of the city's Latino population, Yale professor Alicia Schmidt Camacho said. Camacho, who teaches in the American Studies Department, also serves on the board of Junta, a local Latino service agency.

"New Haven has been a place of tremendous innovation," she said. "Malloy is being asked to show that he has the depth of experience … that DeStefano claims."

Camacho said her colleagues at Junta appreciate that the mayor is working on a plan to give municipal identification cards to all city residents. New Haven also launched "Hablamos Espanol" last year, a program that translates city documents into Spanish.

Camacho said the increased focus on Latino immigrants likely represents not just the immediate strategy of winning in August, but a larger attempt by the Democratic Party to gain voters in the long run by catering to a community whose numbers are increasing rapidly.

"People are certainly looking ahead and forecasting what it means for their parties to be confronted with a growing Latino presence," she said. "If we are to give the millions [of illegal immigrants] legal status, we are putting them on the path to citizenship, so the big hope of the unions, of the Democratic folk … is we're building a new block of voters."

washingtonpost.com Latino Power? It Will Take Time for the Population Boom to Translate By Roberto Suro Post Sunday, June 26, 2005; B01 Politicians and the news media seem entranced by Latino voters. The chairmen of both national parties addressed the annual convention of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, which wrapped up its annual convention in Puerto Rico yesterday. President Bush appeared before the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast earlier this month, and much of the buzz about the next Supreme Court nomination centers on whether a name with a lot of vowels will get sent up. Meanwhile the Democratic National Committee has produced a 60-second radio ad in Spanish trying to mobilize Latino voters against Bush's proposed changes in Social Security. "Call your member of Congress and tell him or her not to privatize Social Security and threaten the future of Hispanic retirees and their families," the ad says. The White House, for its part, has dispatched Anna Escobedo Cabral, a Mexican American who is the treasurer of the United States, to tout the administration's Social Security ideas. All this public wooing, and a good deal of behind-the-scenes strategizing, stems from a simple fact: The number of Latino votes in last November's election jumped 23 percent over those cast in the 2000 balloting. That was more than twice the growth rate for non-Hispanic whites, even though the election was marked by higher-than-normal turnout in a polarized white electorate. Moreover, all the trend lines point to continued growth in the Latino population in the future. Normally, in an article of this sort, this would be the place to deploy the "sleeping giant" metaphor, hailing the rise of a powerful new voting bloc that's changing the American political landscape. But the Latino population isn't a cliche; it can't be so easily characterized. The rapid increase in its size has not produced a corresponding growth in its political clout -- and won't for some time to come. Consider these contrasting pieces of information. The census report that made headlines a few weeks ago showed that Hispanics (that's the Census Bureau's official term) accounted for half of all the population growth in the United States over the past four years. But another, less heralded, census document showed that Hispanics accounted for only one-tenth of the increase in all votes cast in 2004 compared with the 2000 election. The growth of the Latino population as a whole may be gigantic, but only one out of every four Latinos added to the U.S. population is an added voter. That's why in close elections, politicians tend to focus their ardor on traditional partners -- unions, churches, ethnic groups -- that have shown they can effectively bring voters to the polls. Cultivating a solid Hispanic constituency will require a lengthy courtship.
True, Latinos have made gains in elected positions, but the advances have been relatively modest. Two Hispanic U.S. senators were elected last year, and the number of Hispanics in the House edged up to 27. But the Latinos who gain national prominence still tend to be the ones who have it bestowed upon them by white political patrons, such as President Bush's Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or President Bill Clinton's cabinet officers Henry Cisneros and Bill Richardson. There are two reasons why Latino population growth hasn't translated directly into political clout, according to a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization where I work. First, a lot of Latinos aren't U.S. citizens. A third of the Latino population increase between 2000 and 2004 came from an influx of adult immigrants who cannot vote here. Under current law, most never will. About two-thirds of the new arrivals have come here illegally. The rest, who are legal immigrants, are facing backlogs and processing delays that have slowed the pace of naturalizations since 9/11. The other big source of population increases for Latinos comes from new births. Nearly a third of the Hispanic population growth since 2000 consists of people not eligible to vote because they are under 18 years of age. The vast majority of these individuals are native-born U.S. citizens, but it will be a long time before they are old enough to vote. About 80 percent of them will still be too young in 2008. The impact of these two demographic factors becomes evident when you compare how black and Hispanic population numbers translate into numbers of voters. In 2004, Hispanics outnumbered blacks by nearly 5 million in the population count, but blacks had nearly 7.5 million more eligible voters. To put it another way, eligible voters made up 39 percent of the Hispanic population compared with 64 percent of blacks. This demographic calculus calls for some caution when assessing the Latinopopulation's impact on American politics. Last month, when Antonio Villaraigosa became the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since 1872, commentators rushed to proclaim a new era. "Latino Power," declared the headline on Newsweek's May 30 cover story, complete with a sleeping giant metaphor. Villaraigosa was credited with generating a record turnout among Latinos, but given the low baseline, it wasn't hard. When it comes to counting people in almost any category, Latinos break their own records every day. Villaraigosa's victory does not signal the arrival of a new ethnic colossus striding across the political landscape. Rather, it was a measure of widespread voter dissatisfaction with the incumbent, James K. Hahn, and of Villaraigosa's ability to draw votes from a variety of non-Hispanic constituencies. Latinos produced a quarter of the vote, according to Los Angeles Times exit polling. Sure, that was a record and by taking 84 percent of those votes, Villaraigosa helped assure himself of a landslide. But, Hispanics make up half of the city's population. So, even when a popular Latino is running for office in a city where
Hispanics are well organized and have elected many representatives to other posts, low numbers of voters cut Latino power in half. Demographics aren't the only factors diluting the Hispanic presence at the polls. Last year, even though both major political parties, unions and nonpartisan groups all targeted Latinos with voter registration drives, Hispanics failed to fulfill their potential for political participation. Even among eligible voters, only 58 percent of Latinos were registered last year and that was significantly fewer than either whites (75 percent) or blacks (69 percent). Actual turnout in the 2004 presidential election also was lower for Hispanics than for other groups, albeit by a lesser margin. If Latinos had registered and voted at the same rate as whites of the same age, they would have cast an additional 2.7 million ballots, increasing their tally of 7.6 million votes by 36 percent. So part of the reason the metaphorical Latino giant is not a bigger player in the political game is because it is still half asleep. That's why fears among some Americans that Latinos are about to "take over" are overblown. The Latino presence is more and more visible on our streets and in our neighborhoods, but less visible in the political process. About half of all whites, even counting kids and immigrants, cast ballots last November, meaning it took two white residents to generate one voter. But because of a combination of lack of citizenship, a big youth population and voter apathy, only one-fifth of Hispanics went to the polls in 2004. In other words, it took five Latino residents to produce one voter. One side effect of this is that the average Latino voter doesn't have the same profile -- or the same interests and concerns -- as the average Latino resident. As with all racial and ethnic groups, registration and voting rates among Hispanics increase with age, education and income. But there is another factor unique to Hispanics; a higher share of voters were born here than in the Latino population as a whole. That means Hispanic voters and non-voters do not necessarily even speak the same language. In the general Hispanic population, the share of households where only Spanish is spoken is three times higher than among Hispanic voters. So it should come as no surprise that when it comes to matters of policy -- on immigration, trade or bilingual education -- Latino voters have a different point of departure than non-voting Latinos. Two recent issues exposed this divergence. Despite intense lobbying by the governments of several nations that have contributed millions of people to the U.S. Latino immigrant population, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus voted overwhelmingly in May to oppose the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The caucus, which is made up of Hispanic Democrats, opted for party loyalty and the perceived economic interests of the largely working-class Latino voters who put them in office over ethnic bonds to other countries.
Similarly, when Mexican President Vicente Fox made remarks widely viewed as disparaging to blacks a few weeks ago, one of the quickest condemnations came from the National Council of La Raza. The nation's largest Latino civil rights organization hewed to core principles and long-standing alliances with black groups rather than cover for the leader of a country that is by far the largest source of new immigrants. These are signs of Hispanic politics taking root here. Hispanic political power is growing, just not as fast as one might expect from the population numbers. Moreover, as Latinos become a more prominent political presence, what we hear from them may not be what people expect. Author's e-mail: info@pewhispanic.orgRoberto Suro is director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts.


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Hispanics do not necessarily support one party as they vote for a fellow Hispanic. This is very well known fact in cities where there a lot of them. The only ones that have somewhat sided with one party are the Cubans.
I was told by a female Hispanic professor that in order to be a judge in Miami you had to be Cuban. I found that offensive but it proves the point that they only vote for their own.
Politicians are so worried about their votes that they are catering to the Hispanics. In one instance there was a new proposed law in the legislature that was to have law enforcement officers notify ICE when an illegal was arrested or interrogated. This was never passed due to critics who relied on the Hispanic and liberal vote. The most vocal critic was from Maryland in an area that was infested with the MS 13 gang.

Hispanics do not necessarily support one party as they vote for a fellow Hispanic.

If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt it if you've witnessed it), then all that catering is for nothing because it won't save most current politicians their jobs.

Well, it's really too bad that 'latino power' hasn't seemed to help matters in Mexico. We watched with great awe as their election went into triple-overtime, and the losing candidate is still saying 'its not over'. Is this what we're going to be looking forward to in OUR country?

Well, let's consider some of the 'fun' that 'latino power' is going to bring:

1) amnesty. Of course. If enough latino(that's a really vague term, not definite like 'hispanic-american' or even better 'american-hispanic', which would denote persons of US nationality in either case, 'latino' is well, vague, like they're not quite suurrree) voters decide to 'step on the fence', then eventually what's going to happen is that about 50 million people or so will eventually find their way into the United States. FROM Mexico. We pause to note that several 'smart' companies are hitting the road, here...moving to places like China, can't say as that I blame em.

2) Mother Of All Welfare Programs. Poor people need stuff. Since exploiting our political system for financial gain has been raised to a high art, and not just by pro-illegals either, the 'majority' is able to live out Mark Twain's prediction: democracy lasts until people realize they can vote themselves money.

And, remember the whole pro-family and growth business. There's some crafty people out there who've got designs on all 50 states, and how they're going to 'grow' them without any consideration for the current residents or the impact all this grandiose planning might have on them.
Yes indeed, growth. Politicians like growth. Unfortunately, the only thing they seem to be able to grow these days is the amount of debt they're signing us all up for. With friends like these...

See, here's the gag: The United States has money. Mexico has a lot of people that don't have any money. The 'latino vote' aims to connect A and B. Meanwhile, our country seeks out new depths in national-debt land,
but the lid hasn't blown off....yet. However, absorbing Mexico's indigent population has already started to have the effect of diminishing the capacity for social services to be provided to ANYONE, and as our cities become more congested, there will be a Big Push outward to 'grow'.

Well, cancer grows, too, and while the latino expansion planners plot their next steps, more and more people are speaking up against it, and with good reason, I believe. Americans CAN do 'the jobs that americans won't do', and we certainly don't need millions and millions of people working their machinations to circumvent our immigration laws and whatever else they seem to feel is somehow inconvenient to them.

Finally, Mexico already owes the United States billions. For all the alleged economic benefit we're supposed to be getting from all the 'undocumented workers' etc., we're really not seeing a lot in terms of return on investment from all the aid money that annually gets sent to Mexico. In other words, Mexico's on economic life support from the United States, and due to their own shoddy planning, the majority of the people in that country continue to live in poverty despite the fact that they've got a trillion-dollar GDP nationally. Now, either we're getting lied to with some of these numbers(which is not an unreasonable assumption, given the circumstances), or someone's got a really really really nice house. At the expense of the american taxpayer. I, for one, elect to throw the 'bullsh..' flag at the entire mess, and ask that the 'latino vote' try to FIX Mexico so it's less of a net economic drain on the United States, maybe even make the place livable so people don't keep trying to cross the border at great personal peril and expense. They haven't printed the dollar bill that will satiate the appetite of out-and-out corruption, and taking the drug smuggling as one example, if we're going to get all on about civil rights and laws and stuff, then it's time for the 'latino vote' to rise up as a BODY and smash the drug trade flat as a pancake. When they stop acting as enablers, and instead turn their efforts toward fixing their country(which is STILL Mexico, for many), then livability and economic viability will start to return. But, until and unless they do that, america will continue to feed Mexico as has happened for decades....

They will never fix their country as it is too easy for them to come here and send money to relatives back home. It is like the Cubans. They come to Miami and scream bloody murder about Castro and have save Cuba stickers or magnets on their cars. This does absolutely nothing as the rest of us get sick hearing about. How many times can you listen to the sob stories that you hear about those from Mexica, Guatamala and the Honduras. I would like to tell them: "Go back home with guts and do something for your country after all you had guts enough to come here and work here illigally."

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See, here's the gag: The United States has money. Mexico has a lot of people that don't have any money. The 'latino vote' aims to connect A and B. Meanwhile, our country seeks out new depths in national-debt land,

Mexico has plenty of money and resources but ony a few benefit from it.
Money sent back to mexico from illegals here is the #2 biggest ecomony.

Promote the public trust by ensuring the responsible utilization, conservation, reclamation and safeguarding of land and resources affected by mining.
1. Abandoned Mine Land Program - works with grants from the federal government to identify, safeguard and reclaim (pre-1977) abandoned mines that present a public safety hazard or environmental detriment.
Coal Mine Reclamation Program - regulates, inspects and enforces on all coal mines not on Indian Reservations
Mining Act Reclamation Program - regulates, inspects and enforces on all hard rock or mineral mines from beryllium to zeolite

Mine Registration Program - collects production and employment data on active mining operations and conducts safeguarding inspections on all suspended mining operations.
Office of the Director - responsible for division resource development, policy, planning, administrative and fiscal management.
Mexico Natural resources
1. Home > Mexico > Geography > Natural resources
petroleum, silver, copper, gold, lead, zinc, natural gas, timber

SEARCH; MEXICO'S NATURAL RESOURCES.

They are also making a lot of money from American's as many Californians are currently purchasing properties near Tijauna. These people claim that there is more English spoken there than in California. The property is a lot cheaper there. An example would be a 2800 square foot ocean front home for $450,000. These properties are selling quickly according to the articles I read about it. There were small articles about this in both the Miami Herald and The Sun-Sentinel.