A pro-Obama political action committee (PAC) just released a raft of television ads in New Mexico,a critical battleground state where one-in-three voters is Latino.

As Feet in 2 Worlds’ Martina Guzmán reported in her recent news feature on WNYC New York Public Radio, the campaigns are increasingly targeting their multimillion dollar Latino voter outreach efforts to ever-smaller slivers of the electorate. Martina’s piece noted that the McCain campaign is wooing older Latino votes, while the Obama campaign is focusing on young Latino voters via social networking sites like Facebook and Mi Gente and ads aired on YouTube and the Spanish-language broadcast giant Univisión.

The latest ad, produced in identical English and Spanish versions, focuses on establishing a connection between the spectrum of mostly young people featured on the screen and Obama, noting, “For Barack Obama, it doesn’t matter if your name is hard to pronounce, or where you’re from… what’s important is working hard and getting a good education….”

The Obama campaign ad running in New Mexico also responds to market research (albeit most of it done by Univisión or its partner Nielsen Media Research) that found 77% of KMEX (Los Angeles’ Univisión outlet) and WXTV (the Univisión outlet in the New York metropolitan area) viewers are bilingual.

Young or old, Univisión clearly feels its viewers are hungry for more election-related information: the network announced yesterday that it will ‘deliver the most extensive multiplatform election coverage in the network’s history’, with special election-related segments and live daily reports from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

“Millions of Latino voters…are being targeted like never before on the Web, in radio, television and print. Campaigns are hiring strategists, media consultants and recruiting Latinos for the ground war.”

Eleven million Latinos are expected to vote in this year’s presidential election (60% more than in the 2004 elections), and 3 million of them are young voters.

Many media outlets have focused on the emerging Latino vote; but most news coverage has lumped Latino voters of all ages and types together into one category.

In her radio feature that aired on August 18 on WNYC in New York, Feet in 2 Worlds journalist Martina Guzmán examines how the Presidential campaigns are increasingly tailoring their outreach to subsets of Latino voters: a large and diverse electorate that has displayed a spectrum of responses to the candidates’ multi-million dollar ad campaigns.

The Obama campaign has been heavily targeting young Latinos through social networking sites like MiGente – the Latino equivalent of FaceBook. One of the most popular links is a to a video called Podemos Con Obama.  According to the William C. Velasquez institute, 50 thousand young eligible Latinos turn 18 every month, and from 2000 to 2004 Latino youth turnout increased by 13 percent.

Although the numbers are high, some consultants argue that the youth vote is unreliable. “This country is changing and young Latino voters are very excited but historically we don’t know if they turnout,” said Republican strategists Leslie Sanchez. Meanwhile the McCain campaign is reaching out to other segments of the Hispanic community such as Latino military families. They are running a television ad called God’s Children in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada. That ad pays homage to Latino veterans and soldiers who are currently fighting in Iraq.

Guzmán reports on how the presidential candidates are crafting sophisticated messaging toward Latinos in the 2008 presidential election. Her story aired this morning during Morning Edition on WNYC, New York Public Radio. Click here to listen online.

In an interesting update to the ongoing national debate over police officers enforcing immigration law (and to Feet in 2 Worlds’ reporting on the issue), Hartford, CT’s City Council voted unanimously Monday to prohibit all city workers, including police officers, from asking about residents’ immigration status except in criminal cases and from turning over undocumented immigrants to federal authorities solely due to their lack of legal status. The local ordinance, which must still be approved by Mayor Eddie Perez, also bars city employees from asking residents about their immigration status as they access city services.

Perez says he supports the idea behind the resolution, but it’s still not clear if he will approve it: in the past he‘s cited a policy (issued by Hartford Chief of Police Daryl Roberts in March 2008 that allows officers to only inquire about the immigration status of those involved in a criminal investigation) as enough to encourage city residents to cooperate with police.

The new resolution expands upon the existing policy by prohibiting city workers from asking about immigration status based on the rationale that immigration law is a federal issue and therefore not under the jurisdiction of local police, which are only responsible for enforcing criminal laws.

The vote comes after a public firestorm engulfed Hartford last month during public hearings where dozens of residents argued for the resolution, and means Hartford could join the ranks of several other cities including New York, Los Angeles, Newark, and its Connecticut neighbor New Haven, which have all enacted similar ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ city policies protecting residents’ immigration status. Metropolitan police chiefs such as New York’s Ray Kelly and Los Angeles’ Bill Bratton have argued in favor of such policies in the name of community policing and to encourage immigrant witnesses and crime victims to come forward to cooperate with law enforcement officials. Feet in 2 Worlds reported on the controversy in Connecticut last month as often emotional and heated public hearings raged on the issue.

Hartford’s pending decision to grant its residents confidentiality of their immigration status comes as the federal government seeks more ways to enforce the nation’s immigration laws and deport undocumented immigrants to their home countries via a menu of programs; an approach widely excoriated by immigrant rights advocates.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration laws, announced last month that it had deported over 270,000 undocumented immigrants in 2007 – an agency record. In May, criminal defense attorneys and immigrant rights advocates alike denounced the nation’s largest immigration raid in history at the now-infamous Agriprocessors plant in Postville, IA; over 300 undocumented workers were put into fast-track deportation proceedings and whisked out of the country amid questions of whether they were granted due process.

And last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced a new ‘self-deportation’ pilot program, ‘Operation Scheduled Departure’, which invites undocumented residents to volunteer to deport themselves by coming forward to immigration authorities. In return, they are not put in detention facilities and are given 90 days to wind up their affairs in the US before returning to their home countries. As of last week, only one individual had volunteered to leave the country through the program.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent, is actively seeking to enroll local police departments in partnership programs that train local law enforcement officers as immigration agents. Dubbed 287(g) programs for the section of federal immigration law they reference, several cities and counties nationwide have entered into such agreements– notably Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes metropolitan Phoenix.

Despite growing signs the practice is extremely expensive (a recent investigation by Arizona’s East Valley Tribune found Maricopa County’s participation in the program resulted in a $1.3 million deficit; had a negative impact on arrest rates (they plunged by 75% between 2005 and 2007); and slowed response times (two-thirds of patrol cars responding to the most serious 911 calls arrived late), counties and cities nationwide continue to sign up for the program, particularly given the continued federal legislative vacuum on the issue. Feet in 2 Worlds’ Diego Graglia’s recent dispatches from Manassas, VA illustrate the arguments and heightened emotions behind both sides’ views on the issue.

Though Connecticut is a small state, Hartford’s neighbor Danbury (less than 50 miles away) has taken a dramatically different approach to its undocumented residents and signed a 287(g) agreement with federal authorities. Meanwhile, local domestic violence and immigrant groups joined a new statewide task force convened by the Speaker of the State House of Representativesthat hopes to determine why many of the city’s immigrant women and other victims of domestic abuse are not reporting crimes and serving as witnesses in criminal investigations.

Diego Graglia is documenting the lives of Latinos during this presidential election year as he travels from New York City to Mexico City. For more on La Ruta del Voto Latino-The Road to the Latino Vote, visit www.newyorktomexico.com.

Last week, Diego visited small towns in North Carolina to find out what Latinos in rural areas think about the presidential elections and what issues affect them the most. In the South, some of these towns have been changed radically by the arrival of Mexicans and Central Americans -from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador- who work in agriculture, manufacturing and construction.

In Siler City, North Carolina, Diego spoke with Marcia Espínola, associate director of El Vínculo Hispano-The Hispanic Liaison. She talked about what happened in that rural county after a poultry processing plant closed in June and left over 800 people out of a job. Listen to their conversation in this podcast:

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To see photos of Diego Graglia’s road trip, visit the NY-DF Flickr page, and visit his web-page at www.newyorktomexico.com.

It looks like the ethnic media’s role and importance only continues to grow – not only for immigrants, but for immigration enforcement agencies as well.

Federal immigration authorities are enlisting ethnic media in their efforts to encourage the nation’s eligible undocumented immigrants to come forward to deport themselves via a new pilot program, ‘Operation Scheduled Departure’, which Feet in 2 Worlds first reported last week.

The Associated Press reported today that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration law, is placing ads via ethnic media in many of the five major cities where the program is being piloted: Santa Ana and San Diego, CA; Phoenix; Charlotte, NC; and Chicago. The media outlets running these paid advertisements include major newspapers including La Prensa Hispana in Phoenix. Popular Spanish- and Polish-language radio stations such as WPNA 1490 AM in Chicago were also contacted by ICE to run the ads.

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Feet in Two Worlds reporter Martina Guzmán profiled Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American candidate running for state representative in a primarily Latino district in southwest Detroit, for WDET, Detroit Public Radio.

Martina’s story aired yesterday. You can listen to it by pressing play here:

[audio:http://wdet.org/audio/articles/Tlaib.mp3]

This is the first collaboration between Feet in Two Worlds and WDET, our newest radio partner.

At last Sunday’s Ecuadoran Independence Day Parade in Queens, NY representatives of Ecuadoran political parties drew lots of attention, not all of it positive. But at least one community leader at the parade was trying to get people to focus on the US presidential election. As part of our special series La Ruta del Voto Latino – The Road to the Latino Vote, journalist Diego Graglia spoke to Francisco Moya, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. In fact, he’s the first Ecuadoran to be a delegate to a major party convention in the US. In this Podcast, Moya talks about the challenge of getting Ecuadoran immigrants, including those who a US citizens, to pay attention to US politics.

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Ecuadorans are one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the New York area. The city’s Department of City Planning says Ecuador is third among the, “largest sources of the foreign-born,” in the borough of Queens, and it is second in The Bronx. There are also large Ecuadoran communities in Somerset and Essex counties in New Jersey and Westchester, NY. Despite their numbers Ecuadorans don’t have much political power, compared to other immigrant groups that have been in New York for decades, like Puerto Ricans and Dominicans.

Diego Graglia is on the road from New York City to Mexico City, talking to Latinos about the issues and the candidates in this year’s presidential election.

To see photos of the parade and Diego Graglia’s road trip, visit the NY-DF Flickr page, and visit his web-page at http://www.newyorktomexico.com/.

Michigan’s 12th House District is predominantly Latino, but the district borders the largest concentrated Middle Eastern community in the United States. Arab American, Rashida Tlaib, grew up on the Latino side of the district. She is running for state representative in today’s Democratic primary in one of Detroit’s most contested elections, and is the front-runner in a race that has 9 candidates vying for the seat.

Tlaib’s campaign strategy is simple, walk the entire district twice and knock on the doors of more than eight thousand voters. Her approach seems to be working. Residents call her by her first name, and her unassuming demeanor and easy smile can disarm residents of some of the toughest Detroit neighborhoods.

Her grassroots approach has also inspired a core group of college-age Arabic and Latina women to faithfully volunteer on her campaign. The young women walk the district along with the candidate, make phone calls in Arabic and Spanish, put up signs and organize fundraisers.

Although Tlaib has inspired a faithful following, not everyone in the Latino stronghold is excited about the young Palestinian attorney running for office. Local resident and community activist, Elena Herrada says the district is predominantly Mexican, and a Latina like former State Representative Belda Garza should hold that seat. Garza was the first Latina elected to the Michigan legislature in 1998 and served two terms before losing to current State Representative Steve Tobocman in 2002. Garza is running again in this election.

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