More bad news for the Republican Party. The Times is reporting that the rise in citizenship fees, which is coming on Monday, is prompting thousands of immigrants to file their citizenship papers.
“Nationally, the total number of pending citizenship applications reached 811,810 in June, up 67% compared with the same month last year, according to government figures. Applications in Southern California numbered 24,320 just in May, more than twice what was received in May 2006.”
“In Santa Ana, where more than half the population is foreign born, immigrants filed into the office of Catholic Charities, a nonprofit group that provides immigration assistance. Attendance at its weekly citizenship classes has doubled in recent months, to about 80, and requests for assistance with citizenship applications have tripled in the last two weeks, to about 75 a day.”
There is NO WAY that the majority of these immigrants will become Republicans – not when the GOP has become the anti-immigrant party.
Here is what one immigrant had to say, “I think I want to have a voice, to be able to choose those who are governing us.”
This rush to citizenship could have a profound affect on the upcoming elections. Things were already looking bad for the GOP, but now they figure to get even worse.
The Van Tran cabal has been crowing at Red County/OC Blog about their recent prowess in signing up a few hundred new voters in Santa Ana. Well, get ready…there are thousands more on the way. Most are Latinos, and they won’t be filing as Republicans.
Now more than ever I believe that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson will be the Democratic choice for Vice President. Latinos will be a huge force in the next election, and his presence on the Democratic ticket will ensure that the Democrats will dominate the Latino vote.
The only hope the GOP has lies in Rudy Giuliani…but their base can’t stand him. They better get ready to kiss the White House bye bye.
That’s good news for central county residents looking for representation, including Hispanics
I agree with you that Van Tran and other candidates, who played the race-card against Hispanics will regret their own mistakes. Yet, I cannot understand why you haven’t held Janet Nguyen to the same standard as you have held other “race baiting” politicians.
She came out with the “Vietnamese who hate Mexicans” campaign literature and it is this garbage that leads to a recent LA Times Article quoting one of the editors of a major Vietnamese magazine stating that ” most Vietnamese hold low regard for Hispanics”, which leads to comments to my 3rd grade daughter’s Vietnamese friend that “vietnamese don’t like Mexicans” about two months ago. As a parent I believe I handled this sitution as best as I could by example but I can not understand why this community has such racist feelings against Hispanics.
While I understand that instinctly, most humans have this tribe mentality. That is Mexicans feel more comfortable with Mexicans, Vietnamese with Vietnamese, and Whites with Whites. I cannot recall Hispanic leaders spilling out the type of racist garbage as by many of influential Vietnameses.
Art, with the information you aforementioned and the fact that in the US a Hispanic child is born every 26 seconds they (the Vietnamese) want to chill out on the race baiting because Hispanics unlike what many Vietnamese may believe are smart and have a good memory.
Jose,
I spoke out against that mailer, here on my blog. I also slammed her consultant for coming up with such a gross strategy.
I also have written extensively about the rising tension between Latinos in the OC and their Vietnamese counterparts. I agree that this is something we all need to work on.
And I agree with your final conclusion. But it is a two way street. Somos una gente. We all need to put aside the tribal BS and be Americans together.
One more thing, I have known Supervisor Nguyen for a long time. She is a decent person. She is not anti Latino. She belongs to a party that is full of anti Latinos, but she is not that way herself.
In fact, Nguyen put her neck on the line by appointing me to a County Commission, even though her fellow Republicans, for the most part, despise me. And I have given her a long list of other qualified Latinos whom I hope will also be appointed to other commissions.
Don’t forget – we had a Latino Supervisor, but Correa cut and ran. And his Democrats ran a carpetbagger white guy, Tom Umberg, without even bothering to look for a Latino candidate.
Now the Democrats are going to do this again when they run Joe Dunn against Supervisor Nguyen. They still have NO CLUE… Even though Dunn lost the State Controller race to another Asian candidate!
As an OC Asian American, I have watched Janet’s rise and am not surprised. To Van’s chagrin, Janet has been very adept at working the mainstream market. But folks need to realize that she owe’s her Vietnamese support, believed to be in the 40 plus percentile range in the Sup’s election, more to anti-Van than pro Jan. As a city council member, Janet did virtually nothing to build a base with Vietnamese constituents. Her Vietnamese is weak and she generally had poor PR working for her. Van has however, reached a ceiling in how much he can rely on VN votes and it seems that ceiling is about to drop based on Janet’s recent attention to the community (along with the decision to place a field office in LS). She understands that to survive a re-election bid, she will have to earn VN support. Most of the VN who voted for her were Dems (Tom had no presence at all with VN), DTS and anti-Van Reps. Regarding that support, and unlike Loretta and Lou who worked hard to develop more than photo op relationships with VN community folks, Joe has a big problem. He has been virtually nonexistant since the communist flag “carnival” back in what-2000. Since the next election is in June, and not, to my understanding, February with the presidential primary, the June turn-out will probably be low (although not nearly as bad as a special election.) The VN vote will again be important and a major battleground for sup. Regarding the comments about Janet being anti-Latino. All politicians should be accountable for their mailers. It is a poor excuse to blame it on consultants. I saw her anti-Latino mailers and they were pretty bad. But I can say this, that if Trung were elected, Latinos would be scapegoated for every problem, as he (and the Vannies) have done on VN radio, playing the race card with Rovian glee.
I find it funny that you say Rep’s are anti immiigration when our very President is a Rep and is trying to get an amnesty bill through. I am a rep and I am anti ILLEGAL immigration not immigration/immigrants. I also find it funny that you say the Rep base can not stand gulianni…..again I am a rep, and I will be voting for him.