POLITICS
04/27/2010 The Reactionary Republic of Arizona (Make Sure To Take Your Passport)
Just when you think the Democrats are in trouble with Latino voters, when their failure to keep their promises to reform our immigration system have them cornered and against the ropes, out come the self-destructive Republicans with new and even more ...
04/20/2010 Say Adios to Harry
Put Sen. Harry Reid in a baseball uniform, and picture him caught in a rundown between bases, shuffling back and forth between Nevada and Washington, seconds away from being tagged out. That's the image that came to mind as the Senate majority ...
04/13/2010 The Lone Republican Ranger
He is doing more for the Republican Party than anyone can imagine, perhaps saving the GOP from complete alienation in Latino and other immigrant communities. And yet, for supporting comprehensive immigration reform, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has ...
11/10/2009 The Lesser of Two Evils
Just when we think going further to the right would drive conservative Republicans over a cliff, they go ahead and take another giant step into an abyss. Oops, adios! At least that's the way they are seen by many U.S. Latinos — ...
08/11/2009 Repelling Latino Voters
The feeling is hard to explain. Ethnic pride is like intense love — something you just can't put into words. You have to feel it to understand it. This is why, in the U.S. Hispanic community — in ways that are incomprehensible to ..
01/19/2010 Politicizing Haiti
The U.S. response to the disaster in Haiti made us proud to be Americans. As we watched the pain and suffering of the Haitian people on television, most of us were not only compelled to donate to relief efforts but also happy to see President Barack ....
07/28/2009 The Giant Still Is Sleeping
For U.S. politicians who may be weighing the significance of the Hispanic vote in future elections, the writing is on the wall: Although Latinos clearly swung several key states for Barack Obama in 2008, you haven't seen nada yet. ...
06/02/2009 Who's on Trial, Sotomayor or Republicans?
When I dared to suggest that Sonia Sotomayor could be a shoo-in for a Supreme Court nomination — three weeks before President Barack Obama actually picked her — some people told me I had gone too far out on a limb. "Está...
05/12/2009 Southern Hostility
Remember the days when people, especially in the South, felt they had a perfect right to discriminate? Remember the time when skin color determined whether you would be treated like a human being? Well, that litmus test has changed! Now humane ...
03/03/2009 Our Leaders Have No Shame
Just when we thought congressional earmarks were becoming an abomination, after a presidential campaign that led us to believe that pork spending would be abolished soon, at a time when Americans are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great ...
02/03/2009 Real Change or GOP Cosmetology?
They keep claiming that their party needs to change, yet Republicans keep making only cosmetic changes. Some predict that the GOP is on the verge of becoming only a regional party instead of staying a national one, yet all they give us is cheap talk ...
11/25/2008 Looking for Brown Faces
As President-elect Barack Obama takes his time to make his first Hispanic appointment, the Latino leaders who supported him are beginning to squirm — not because they all expect job offers, but because they fear they could end up with egg on ...
11/18/2008 Blacks and Latinos: Natural Allies
When Barack Obama was losing the Hispanic vote to Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries, some people automatically assumed that racial discrimination had something to do with it. There was widespread speculation that Hispanics wouldn't vote ...
11/11/2008 The Punching Bag Strikes Back
Latinos flipped the vote in four battleground states and gave Barack Obama free passage to the White House. But did Obama earn the Hispanic vote, or did he win it by default? More importantly, will President-elect Obama repay his debt to ...
10/28/2008 'Locos' About Obama?
He never has traveled to Latin America. He opposes free trade with Colombia, turning his back on one of the only U.S. allies in the region. He wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. He insists on meeting &...
10/21/2008 In an Act of Desperation, McCain Tries To Connect With Latinos
It took him a long time, but Sen. John McCain finally said what he needed to say to score some points with Latino voters. In last Wednesday's presidential debate, McCain brought up immigration, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the pending free ...
09/30/2008 Beating Around the Bush Bailout
With leaders such as Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, what's there to worry about? Did you see them in their highly anticipated first debate? Didn't you feel reassured that the nation's financial crisis soon will be in good hands? Not!...
09/09/2008 McCain Hits, Stays on 1st Base
When it became John McCain's turn to bat in the contest to win the Hispanic vote, the senator from Arizona took a good swing at the "bola." But he got a base hit when he needed a home run. "We believe everyone has something to ...
09/02/2008 The 'Bola' Is in McCain's Court
When they come to the barrios to seek the Hispanic vote, Democratic Party leaders tell us anything we want to hear, especially about their plans to fix our broken immigration system and to grant some kind of amnesty to the 12 million illegal ...
08/26/2008 Your Party or Your People?
When they begin their journeys, their intentions are usually good and genuine: They seek personal political empowerment so they can help their people. But something happens to many Hispanic community activists on their way to gaining that power....
07/15/2008 Obama and McCain Are Making Me Punch Myself!
Sen. Barack Obama challenges America to learn how to speak Spanish, and Sen. John McCain challenges Obama to deal with Latin America -- and my dual national personalities, Miguel and Michael, are fighting again. I'm at war with myself! As a Cuban-...
06/10/2008 Latinos Will Select Our New 'Presidente'
With Sen. Hillary Clinton out of the presidential race after having won most of the Hispanic vote in the primaries, Latinos and their issues are about to receive unprecedented attention from Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. After all, neither of ...
06/03/2008 The Clinton Spin Cycle
We have to grant it to them: When it comes to spinning the arguments — bordering on dishonesty — nobody does it better than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her band of professional spinners. For months, they have been telling us the ...
05/20/2008 VP Pick Could Swing the Latino Vote
As the Clinton campaign finally begins to read the writing on the wall — "Get Out" — and the race for president turns to vice presidential picks, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama should try to avoid selecting running mates who ...
04/29/2008 From a Primaries Marathon to a General Election Sprint
The more they try to be different the more they sound the same. Now that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have convinced us that they are almost equal on every issue, now that petty attacks have taken over political discourse in this country,...
02/19/2008 Texas Latinos Will Pick the Democratic Nominee
After all the unforeseen twists and turns of the Democratic race for president this year, after all the times we thought one particular primary or interest group would be the one that would prop one candidate above all others, it is Latino voters in ...
01/29/2008 Bashers Face Backlash
As candidates keep dropping out, or getting trounced, in the race for president, the walls are caving in for those seeking to elect an anti-immigrant zealot. After all, those candidates who have practiced the politics of xenophobia are not doing too ...
11/13/2007 Hasta La Vista, Hillary!
Think of it this way: From now on, whenever politicians want to avoid taking a position on illegal immigration, all they have to do is say they agree with Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. Whenever they want to appear as if they are saying a lot ...
10/30/2007 The Congress of Broken American Dreams
When we can't even forgive the children of illegal immigrants, when we insist on penalizing them for decisions made by their parents, there's something wrong with us. On the scale that measures our compassion as a nation, we must be at an all-...
10/02/2007 The Latin American Axis of Evil
They are a new and emerging team of anti-American players — Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Bolivia's Evo Morales, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Ecuador's Rafael Correa. They call themselves socialists of the 21st century. And their team manager is the ...
09/18/2007 Our Undemocratic Primaries
It's not likely to happen in the foreseeable future because, to many politicians, tradition is more important than logic. But we need a national primary system that levels the playing field for all American voters. How long will we allow the ...
09/11/2007 Winning the Hispanic Vote -- By Default
Republicans give us their back, and Democrats give us demagoguery. That's what Latinos are getting from the presidential candidates, and nowhere was that more evident than in the debate hosted by the Spanish-language Univision TV network Sunday night ...
08/28/2007 Running for President -- of Flip-Floppers
Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are not only competing to see who takes the hardest line on immigration, but who can be the biggest hypocrite. The two leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination are trying so hard to please the ...
08/07/2007 For GOP, Immigration Reform Is About Self-Preservation
We knew it all along: Self-preservation was always the main reason why so many Republicans were opposed to giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. But if we had any doubts, a new proposal by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., confirms the main ...
07/24/2007 Courting Latinos, Without Shame
He spends much of his campaign time feeding the flames of hatred against illegal immigrants, yet Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has the gall to go courting Hispanic voters. There is a Spanish word to describe that kind of person, &...
7/17/2007 As McCain Slips, Latinos Lose Leverage
The unfortunate demise of the presidential candidacy of Sen. John McCain is taking away Latino leverage with Democratic candidates. Until now, whenever Democrats began to take Latino voters for granted, we could still threaten them with McCain ...
07/10/2007 A Narrowing Field of Candidatos
For Latino voters, especially those fed up with the anti-immigrant climate that has created storms of intolerance across the nation, the field of presidential candidates is rapidly shrinking. As they appeal to the worst xenophobic instincts of ...
07/03/2007 Only Elections Will Fix Immigration
When pro-immigrant activists somehow learn to be as driven and aggressive as the anti-immigrant zealots, that's when comprehensive immigration reform will become a reality in this country — and when the broken immigration system will finally be ...
06/26/2007 From Punching Bags to Voters
Let's face it, they have us playing defense. Those of us seeking fair and comprehensive immigration reform are barely holding the line against those who promote anti-immigrant sentiments. Immigration restrictionists, conservative radio ...
05/22/2007 A Huge Leap Backward
He was a key negotiator in the closed-door Senate meetings that produced an immigration reform agreement with the White House last week. But in the end, in good conscience, he could not go along with it. And that makes me proud to say, I voted ...
05/15/2007 Grand Bargain or Huge Rip-Off?
Betraying America's commitment to a family-based immigration system, a group of key U.S. senators and White House officials are reportedly negotiating a "grand bargain" immigration reform package that would shift the primary basis for legal ...
04/17/2007 A Lesson in Latino vs. Black Power
For weeks before Don Imus was fired for making racist and sexist remarks on the radio, two other shock jocks were already targeted for protests and boycotts for making insensitive remarks on New Jersey's 101.5 FM. The two jocks, known as "...
04/10/2007 A Platform Based on Fear and Hatred
We know they have a constituency, but is it bigger than the voting bloc they are alienating? Can conservative Republicans continue to offend Latinos and not pay a price on Election Day? Apparently, some of them still think so. They believe ......
04/03/2007 The Hidden Anti-Latino Agenda
At a time when immigration reform proposals have been moved so far to the right that even conservative Republicans could support them, out comes the White House with its own remarkably hawkish set of ideas. For a president who supposedly wants ...
03/27/2007 Vigilante Radio Stoops to New Low
Just when we thought American xenophobes couldn't stoop any lower, when their mean-spirited behavior couldn't be any more repulsive, two New Jersey radio shock jocks are seeking to reach a new low. The two jocks, knows as "The Jersey Guys,&...
03/20/2007 Gonzalez Must Tell the Truth or Say Adios
The lynch mob is out to get U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and his survival may depend on whether he can tell the truth — the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If he had something to do with the politically motivated ...
01/23/2007 Faked Fear of Persecution is Asylum Fraud
Immigrants who obtained green cards after entering the United States through political asylum now run the risk of losing that privilege if they return to the countries where they claimed they were persecuted, according to a warning posted on a federal ...
12/26/2006 Back From Cuba, With Nada
A U.S. congressional delegation just went to Cuba, got absolutely no concessions from the Castro communist dictatorship, and still they had the gall to come back and tell us that the next move is up to Washington. Excuse me? Why? Did the ...
12/19/2006 Romney For President -- Of Hypocrites
On the list of opportunistic Republican politicians who pick on immigrants just to pander to the conservative extremists in their party, add the name of Mitt Romney. The outgoing governor of Massachusetts, who is thinking of making a bid for ...
E-Mail: miguelperez@miguelperez.com
