Category: Uncategorized

“Rounding up the requested number of agents in such a short period of time will be a challenge, officials say. They’ve started the push with job fairs and TV ads, especially in Northern and Midwest markets.”

The quote is from Claire Cummings’ report in the Dallas Morning News. She visited the border patrol training campus at Artesia, NM where they are building a 400-student dorm.

“We have no doubt that we can train all of the trainees that will be sent our way,” said acting Chief Patrol Agent Charles Whitmire.

Several hundred more instructors will be needed to serve the influx, he said, adding that he hopes an increase in permanent staff and rehires will keep more people in the field.

The Court rules that the voters of Laredo were divided from each other in order to empower a Republican encumbent.

“…changes to District 23 served the dual goals of increasing Republican seats and protecting the incumbent Republi-can against an increasingly powerful Latino population that threat-ened to oust him, with the additional political nuance that he wouldbe reelected in a district that had a Latino majority as to voting age population, though not a Latino majority as to citizen voting age population or an effective Latino voting majority. The District 23 changes required adjustments elsewhere, so the State created new District 25 to avoid retrogression…”
Justice Kennedy Leads the Majority

“After the 2002 election, it became apparent that District 23 as then drawn had an increasingly powerful Latino population that threatened to oust the incumbent Republi-can, Henry Bonilla. Before the 2003 redistricting, the Latino share of the citizen voting-age population was 57.5%, and Bonilla’s support among Latinos had dropped with each successive election since 1996. Session, 298 F. Supp. 2d, at 488–489. In 2002, Bonilla captured only 8% of the Latino vote, ibid., and 51.5% of the overall vote. Faced with this loss of voter support, the legislature acted to protect Bonilla’s incumbency by changing the lines—and hence the population mix—of the district. To begin with, the new plan divided Webb County and the city ofLaredo, on the Mexican border, that formed the county’s population base. Webb County, which is 94% Latino, had previously rested entirely within District 23; under the new plan, nearly 100,000 people were shifted into neighboring District 28. Id., at 489. The rest of the county, approximately 93,000 people, remained in District 23. To replace the numbers District 23 lost, the State added voters in counties comprising a largely Anglo, Republican area in central Texas. Id., at 488. In the newly drawn district, the Latino share of the citizen voting-agepopulation dropped to 46%, though the Latino share of the total voting-age population remained just over 50%.”

“Against this background, the Latinos’ diminishing electoral support for Bonilla indicates their belief he was “unresponsive to the particularized needs of the members of the minority group.” Ibid. (same). In essence the State took away the Latinos’ opportunity because Latinos were about to exercise it. This bears the mark of intentional discrimination that could give rise to an equal protection violation. Even if we accept the District Court’s findingthat the State’s action was taken primarily for political, not racial, reasons, Session, supra, at 508, the redrawing of the district lines was damaging to the Latinos in District 23. The State not only made fruitless the Latinos’ mobilization efforts but also acted against those Latinos who were becoming most politically active, dividing them with a district line through the middle of Laredo.”

Dissent by the New Chief Justice

“What is blushingly ironic is that the district preferred by the majority—former District 23—suffers from the same “flaw” the majority ascribes to District 25, except to a greater degree. While the majority decries District 25 because the Latino communities there are separated by“enormous geographical distance,” ante, at 29, and are “hundreds of miles apart,” ante, at 35, Latino communities joined to form the voting majority in old District 23 are nearly twice as far apart. Old District 23 runs “from El Paso, over 500 miles, into San Antonio and down into Laredo. It covers a much longer distance than . . . the 300miles from Travis to McAllen [in District 25].” App. 292 (testimony of T. Giberson); see id., at 314 (report of T. Gib-erson) (“[D]istrict 23 in any recent Congressional plan ex-tends from the outskirts of El Paso down to Laredo, dipping into San Antonio and spanning 540 miles”). So much for the significance of “enormous geographical distance.” Or perhaps the majority is willing to “assume” that Latinos aroundSan Antonio have common interests with those on the Rio Grande rather than those around Austin, even though San Antonio and Austin are a good bit closer to each other (less than 80 miles apart) than either is to the Rio Grande.*

–From today’s Supreme Court decision in LULAC vs. Perry. Get the decision in pdf from The Court

Any one of the plans put forth by the three major candidates for Mexico’s presidency would help to move Mexico in a progressive direction. So whoever wins should be greeted with patience and respect by the USA. In other words, Obrador is no Chavez.

In terms of the hyped up climate over immigration politics, it is time for the USA, its leaders, and its people to face the facts: the USA relationship to Mexican immigration can only be addressed with a long view of social change.
I think this sums up Pamela K. Starr’s helpful preview of the Mexican election coming up July 2. Maybe it should be subtitled: “waiting for Obrador.”

Starr’s tone of patience, and her reminders of complex context read like antidotes to an environmental anxiety that has been deliberately fomented around the immigration issue. It is especially helpful to be reminded how Mexicans perceive NAFTA as a national trauma. The crash of the Peso in 1995 also looks in retrospect like an effect of Mexico’s fall to “dollar hegemony” after NAFTA (although I take this point from recent work of Henry Liu at Asia Times, not from Starr or the CFR.)

The only scary thing about Starr’s report is that it recommends a set of behaviors that the USA is unlikely to exhibit during our own heated election season. Will the Republican Party let the steam out of the immigration issue by Labor Day? Or will we witness neo-con redux at the Rio Grande? Will high-powered business councils keep a respectful distance from structural reform? Or will the clamor for competitiveness be amplified into loud-talking pressure from the Bush juggernaut? We can’t help but think about that scorpion who offered to give somebody a ride across the river.

We asked again, just to be sure, but the Governor’s Office says it has on file no plans or approvals for Operation Jump Start.

On June 30, the Governor announced that Operation Jump Start was on schedule, so we asked the Governor’s Office for a copy of the schedule. But there isn’t one, came the reply from his office.
Neither is there a record of the Governor’s pre-approval of the mission, although such pre-approval is required by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) posted over the Governor’s signature at his official website.

It’s the strangest thing. We don’t know what to make of it. If there’s a simple explanation, nobody’s offering one yet.

If the Governor is not getting his bearings from documents on file in his office, then how does he know the mission is on schedule? If the Governor’s Office doesn’t keep copies of the Governor’s approvals for military operations in Texas, then who does?

Surely, it can’t be the case that no plan exists or that the Governor hasn’t enforced his own MOU?

Maybe the Governor is splitting his identity as Commander-in-Chief and keeping all his military records on federal property. But then we’d have to ask the metaphysical question: why is the Commander-in-Chief of the Texas National Guard issuing “on schedule” press releases from the website of the Governor’s Office?

Frankly, we’re stumped.