Rep. Luis Gutierrez is calling for a massive demonstration next month in Washington to demand that President Obama push Congress to move on immigration reform.

In a Monday visit to Los Angeles, where he made an appearance on a nationwide Spanish-language radio program and met with local leaders and AFL-CIO Executive Secretary-Treasurer Maria Elena Durazo, Gutierrez expressed frustration that President Obama gave scant attention to immigration last week in his State of the Union Address. Read more...

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Eliseo Medina of the Service Employees International Union say the are still hopeful for an immigration reform bill this year and are calling for public efforts to push Congress to move ahead with that effort. In interviews broadcast on Sunday's Al Punto program on the Spanish-language Univision network, they told newsman Jorge Ramos that they are convinced that President Obama remains committed to the reform, even though he gave scant attention to the issue in last week's State of the Union Address. Read more...

Under the pressure of constant questioning from the Spanish-language media, the White House continues to insist that it wants to move quickly on "comprehensive immigration reform," even as congressional Democrats indicate that they have no desire to deal with the issue this year.

"This is something we take very seriously," Obama aide Cecilia Munoz told Univision newsman Jorge Ramos on Sunday's Al Punto program. "His commitment is there." Read more...

One of the reasons I came to work at CIS a year ago was that I wanted to oppose the effort by some who favor increased immigration to stifle debate by impugning the motives of those, including CIS, who make a case for reduced immigration. That smear campaign, led by the National Council of La Raza and their allies at the Southern Poverty Law Center, seeks to present us as part of an "anti-immigrant" cabal whose claims to be concerned about the economic, environmental, and social consequences of immigration are merely a mask that seeks to cover our bigotry and xenophobia. Read more...

The opinion pages of the Mexico City daily Reforma are often bubbling with ideas. Three year-end essays struck me as particularly interesting because of their reflections on the future of our southern neighbor. Read more...

Rep. Luis Gutierrez offered a curious set of responses to a question about how the high unemployment rate among U.S, workers affects his newly presented legislation (HR 4321) to legalize all illegal immigrants who entered the country before December 15. Read more...

Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who was lead pollster for John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, surveyed the political terrain this morning in a discussion with Charlie Cook of the National Journal, Democratic pollster Fred Yang, and Hotline editor Amy Walter. McInturff predicted that congressional Democrats, exhausted with the Obama agenda, will have little enthusiasm for immigration reform bills in the near future. Read more...

The Nieman Foundation at Harvard has just published a sharp-edged attack on the press for failing to cover the rise of poverty in the United States. Written by investigative reporter John Hanrahan, it is available at the foundation's website.

The report begins with this introduction: Read more...

You wouldn't know it from much of the news coverage, but the "comprehensive" immigration reforms favored by many immigration advocates would do far more than provide legal status to the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

Two other giant programs would offer a path to citizenship to many more newcomers who, like most of the illegal immigrant population, tend to be unskilled and poorly educated. This means that the demographic effect of "comprehensive" reforms would be an enormous increase in the population of the working poor. Read more...

Those who are concerned about economic development in Mexico and the country's ability to provide job opportunities to keep its people at home will find a sobering analysis by Mexican political scientist Denise Dresser in the current edition of the Mexican magazine Proceso. Read more...

A spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza says supporters of "comprehensive" immigration reform will need to apply the same kinds of pressure on Congress that reform opponents used in 2007 to defeat the bill in the Senate. Read more...

The Mexico City newspaper El Universal trumpets the story in a double-deck headline across the top of its front page today: "U.S. Acknowledges that Narco Has Corrupted Its Border."

The source of the story, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, told the newspaper about a new threat posed by the ability of drug traffickers to corrupt Americans with their cash. Read more...

Longtime Phoenix immigration attorney Roxana Bacon has been appointed Chief Counsel of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, effective today. In her new position, Bacon will have the job not only of supervising the agency's several hundred lawyers but also of helping to draft immigration reform legislation for the Obama administration. Read more...

The word is going out from Rep. Luis Gutierrez and his business allies that they must mobilize to push comprehensive immigration reform through a narrow window of opportunity early next year.

"The room for doing this is very small," Gutierrez said Sunday on the Spanish-language Univision program, "Al Punto." "We have to do it in February or early March of next year." Read more...

Barbara Ehrenreich gave a fascinating interview on this morning's "Democracy Now" radio program, as she rolls out her new book, "Bright-Sided." In this book Ehrenreich, also author of "Nickel and Dimed," which was a remarkable journey into the land of the working poor, guides readers on a tour of the world of relentlessly positive thinking.

Ehrenreich is not writing about immigration. But she describes a mentality familiar to those of us whose concerns about immigration are met with admonishments to overcome our grim negativity. The thought-police at the Southern Poverty Law Center and their allies at such organizations at the National Council of La Raza even suggest that such concerns are often built on an ugly foundation of hatred. Read more...

Readers of this blog may recall a July 16 post that reported on the abuses suffered by Central Americans at the hands of Mexican officials on their way to the United States as illegal immigrants. The post told the story of Miguel Angel, who left his $300-a-month job as a policeman in Salvador, made a miserable journey to the Rio Grande, crossed in a raft to the United States and joined friends in Maryland. There he worked in construction for about a year before returning home. Read more...

In visits to the communities around six Swift meat packing communities for a CIS report published earlier this year, I was struck at how often I heard workers and former workers use similar language to express their bitterness about safety conditions. They would say, "This plant doesn’t just kill animals. It kills people, too."

Now comes a report from Nebraska Appleseed, a non-profit legal organization, on the results of its survey of 455 workers in five meat-packing communities across the state. Read more...

Mexican government officials complain bitterly about the wall that the U.S. has constructed along sections of the southern border to discourage illegal immigration. Today, writing in the Mexican newspaper El Universal about the brutal social and economic inequalities that propel much illegal immigration, columnist Ricardo Rocha notes the construction of "stately versions of Chinese walls so the poor don't bother the rich" in the city of Monterrey.

Here are some of Rocha's other metrics of inequality in his country: Read more...

As someone who lived in Arizona in the 1990s, when a large influx of illegal immigrants were met with a backlash that continues today, I agree with the warning from recently retired GOP Sen. Mel Martinez in today's Washington Post. It comes in a column from Michael Gerson, who writes of the electoral risks to Republicans if they are associated with virulent criticism of illegal immigrants. Read more...

The debate among advocates of illegal immigrants about participation in next year's census received pointed commentary on the Sunday morning Univision program, "Al Punto." The Spanish-language program also included an interview with the star of a new feature film about illegal immigrants that presents the same trajectory of triumph as Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky." Read more...

David Weigel is a talented young reporter who has written for The American Conservative and Reason magazine and is now with the Washington Independent. But his interview last week on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air" with host Terry Gross revealed gaping holes in his understanding of the politics of immigration. Read more...

It was bound to be interesting when Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos, in an interview with President Obama that was broadcast Sunday on Univision, asked why the president had used the term "illegal immigrants" when discussing his health plan in a speech two weeks ago to a joint session of Congress. It was the president's statement that illegal immigrants would not be covered that provoked the infamous "You lied!" charge from South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson. Read more...

As President Obama makes the rounds of this Sunday's talks shows, he will record an interview for the Univision program "Al Punto," with Jorge Ramos. There will likely be an interesting discussion of the president's plans to reform both health care and immigration policy. Read more...

On "60 Minutes" last Sunday, President Obama said Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst was an example of the "coarsening of our political dialogue that I've been running against since I got into politics."

Last night's Univision newscast provided more intemperate outbursts for the president's consideration. They came in the form of condemnations of the "Hold Their Feet to the Fire 2009 Radio-thon" that wraps up today on Capitol Hill. Read more...

The role of immigration as the leading source of population growth is a divisive issue among U.S. environmentalists. The Sierra Club, which once called for immigration policies aimed at stabilizing the population, has backed away from the issue. Others (see here, for instance) make the case that curtailment of immigration is essential to efforts to safeguard the environment. Read more...

Elected officials in Mexico often buy radio and TV time or use the Internet to distribute spots in which they describe their efforts to build a better future for their people. President Felipe Calderon has been particularly active with such efforts, including one on education that was released at the end of August and is posted on Youtube here. Read more...

The story Astronaut Jose Hernandez, the flight engineer on the Space Shuttle Discovery's ongoing mission, is being told two ways in Mexico: one of pride in the accomplishments of the son of poor immigrants and one of pain because of the lack of opportunities in Mexico. Read more...

Hurricane Jimena, now closing in on Baja California, is only the most dramatic of the threats confronting Mexico. Deepening unemployment and poverty, the brutal war between the government and drug cartels, and even looming water shortages all have ratcheted up the country's anxiety and social tension.

Today's edition of the respected El Universal newspaper includes a warning from Mexico City's Human Rights Commission that there are signs that the water shortage there will create "spirals of violence." Read more...

Jorge Ramos, the influential Miami-based co-anchor of the nightly newscast on the Spanish-language network Univision, has been broadcasting his disappointment with President Obama for not fulfilling a promise to deliver immigration reform during his first year of office.

The problem is that Obama never made such a promise. Read more...

Is it possible to play tough cop and nice cop at the same time? That's roughly the assignment facing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. In addition to leading the agencies responsible for enforcing immigration law, she has been designated by President Obama to work with Congress to forge "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation that would legalize millions of people who have broken the law. Read more...