Reporter Pilar Marrero, a columnist for La Opinión newspaper in Los Angeles and Feet In 2 Worlds contributor, appeared yesterday on PRI’s nationally-syndicated radio show The World. She spoke with anchor Lisa Mullin about the impact of first-time Latino immigrant voters on the outcome of the presidential election.

Marrero reported –among other data– that Latino turnout held constant and that the Latino vote in Florida is shifting away from the Republicans.

You can listen to the segment here or you can visit the show’s website:

Eduardo A. de Oliveira, a Brazilian-born reporter for New England Ethnic News and a Feet in 2 Worlds contributor, appeared this morning on The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, New York Public Radio, to describe the scene in the battleground state of New Hampshire.

You can listen to that segment of the show here.

Feet In 2 Worlds senior producer Jocelyn Gonzales wraps up her video series on first-generation voters with an interview with Andrea Moya, who was born in Puerto Rico in 1986 and moved to New York four years ago to attend college.

Moya, who is originally from Guaynabo, works in film development in New York. In the video, she explains the particular relationship Puerto Ricans have with U.S. politics –“a weird dichotomy,” she calls it–, since only those who live in one of the fifty states are allowed to vote in American elections.

While Andrea’s family in the islands is interested in the U.S. elections, they cannot participate. At the same time, she is not voting in Puerto Rico’s gubernatorial election, but she plans to cast a vote for Barack Obama Tuesday. This will be the second presidential election she has participated in.

Feet in 2 Worlds senior producer Jocelyn Gonzales is interviewing first-time, first-generation voters — youngsters born to immigrant families who this year will formally take part in their first election.

In this new video, Jocelyn talks to Avinash Ramsadeen, a recent college grad from New York now working for Fox News online. His parents are originally from Guyana, a tiny South American country that, according to the CIA’s World Factbook “achieved independence from the UK in 1966, and since then … has been ruled mostly by socialist-oriented governments.” Although it’s neighbors with Venezuela and Brazil, Guyana is not considered a Latin American nation since it was colonized by the Dutch and British. The main population groups are of black African and Indian heritage.

Ramsadeen, who grew up in Jamaica, Queens, says those earlier leftist Guyanese governments strongly influenced his parents into more conservative views, many of which he shares. Here, he talks about his and his parents’ involvement in U.S. elections, and about the issues that influenced his decision to support Republican candidate John McCain.

First-time voters are getting lots of attention this year — both foreign-born Americans who have recently become naturalized citizens and American-born young people who’ve just reached voting age. Patrick Ng falls into the latter group, but he also comes from an immigrant background: he’s a first-time voter and a first-generation American.

Born in 1987 to parents who immigrated from Myanmar in the 1970s, Patrick is a filmmaker and a third-year student at New York University. He says he’s the one who brings an American influence into his family’s home, and that his parents -who are now U.S. citizens- don’t seem overly concerned with the political process in general and this election in particular. Watch him talk about this and more in this video by Feet in 2 Worlds‘ Jocelyn Gonzales:

As voters, Asian Americans don’t get paid the same attention as other ethnic groups. This is partly because they are underrepresented on the voter rolls. But they could be more important than ever this election year for one key reason: they tend to be an independent-minded voting population, without a clear, long-standing affiliation to either of the parties. Asian American voters could have a potentially pivotal role in states like Virginia and Nevada.

A “groundbreaking” national survey of Asian American voters released last week showed that a majority of them intend to vote for Barack Obama, but that also there are still very significant numbers of undecided among them. The figures were: 41% for Obama, 24% for John McCain, and 34% undecided. This contrasts with the eight percent considered undecided among the general population. [To get the National Asian American Survey, visit this site.]

Asian-Americans’ preference for Obama seems clear. Columnist Jeff Yang went as far as to ask whether Barack Obama could “be the first Asian American president?”

Patrick Ng’s heightened interest in the presidential campaign is not unusual for first-generation Asian Americans this year. It was young activists who created “Asian Americans for” websites in support of both Obama and McCain. And, across the country, young Asian American organizations are trying to build political muscle and get others involved.

Still, some wonder if Asian American young people will turn out in large enough numbers to make a difference. “Who is the Asian American vote? ” asks Glenn Magpantay, a staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York. “I’m actually not sure that it’s young people,” he observes.

Speaking at a recent Feet in Two Worlds forum, Magpantay said, “Young people, especially on four-year college campuses have played a tremendous role in these elections. But for Asian Americans we actually find that 18 to 29 year olds have the lowest voter participation rates. It tends to be those over 50, it’s our parents. And so the family lacks a history of voting. The parents don’t vote because they are not citizens, the kids don’t vote either because no one has approached them about what to do. And for some political parties Asian Americans are not a reliable voting bloc.”

There are at least 3.5 million Americans of Arab descent. Those who are following the presidential race cannot be happy with the latest news from the McCain campaign.

In a scene that will be replayed on YouTube and cable news through the weekend, Gayle Quinnell, an elderly female Republican supporter at a rally in Lakeville, Minnesota, tells John McCain that Barack Obama is “an Arab” when questioning the Democrat’s fitness to lead the country.

McCain, as you can see in the video, snatches the microphone from her hand and counters: “No ma’am, no ma’am, he’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about. He’s not. Thank you.”

The video also includes a post-rally interview with Quinnell. According to The Uptake.org, the reporters present were Noah Kunin, The UpTake’s senior political correspondent, Adam Aigner of NBC News and Dana Bash of CNN. [The interview was taped with a cellphone camera in a noisy place, but a full transcript is available at The Uptake link above.]

Quinnell, who’s 75 years old, said she obtained information on Obama from the Shakopee, Minn., local library and from another Republican volunteer at a McCain campaign office. She added she’s sent out 400 copies of a letter containing that information to local people so they can decide “if they would want Obama.”

When asked why she thinks Obama is Arab, Quinnell answers “because his dad is.” When CNN’s Dana Bash interjects that Barack Obama’s father was in fact a Muslim, Quinnell seems a bit confused about the terms. She finally says, “Yeah, but he’s still got Muslim in him. So that’s still part of him. I got all the stuff from the library and I could send you all kinds of stuff on him.”

(more…)

If the presidential primaries are any indication, voter turnout on November 4 will be very heavy. Some electoral analysts believe this will be especially true in key ethnic communities, including among Latinos, who appear set to turn out in record numbers. At a recent Feet in Two Worlds town hall forum on “Deconstructing the Immigrant Vote,” political organizers and ethnic media journalists agreed that anger is among the most important factors motivating immigrant voters this year.

Journalist Pilar Marrero speaks at the forum on Deconstructing the Immigrant Vote at the New School. Josh Hoyt, Executive Director, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and journalist Aswini Anburajan were also on the panel.

“When an electorate gets angry they go out and vote,” said Feet in Two Worlds journalist Aswini Anburajan. “And it’s starting to mobilize people.”

According to Arturo Vargas, Executive Director of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), anti-immigrant laws and rhetoric have been “the driving force” pushing a growing number of Latino immigrants to become naturalized citizens. “It’s out of anger, it’s out of fear, and it’s out of the sense that if they become a citizen and vote it’s an act of self defense,” he said.

Arturo Vargas, Executive Director of NALEO responds to a story by Pilar Marrero on Latino ‘s who are becoming citizens so they can vote in this year’s election.

Speaking to an audience at The New School, where the forum was held, Vargas said Congress’ failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform is also motivating Latino voters. “We saw it in 2006 when millions of people took to the streets of America demanding … immigration reform.” Vargas noted that many of the protesters in ’06 were teenagers who have since reached voting age. “We have now a new generation of Latino youth who have reached the age of 18 in a very politicized environment where their consciousness has been raised,” Vargas said. “They told us two years ago, ‘Today we march, tomorrow we vote.’ Well, tomorrow has arrived.”

It’s not just Hispanics who may vote out of anger. Asian American outrage over a racially charged remark by U.S. Senator George Allen of Virginia played a key role in his razor-thin loss to Democrat Jim Webb in 2006. Webb’s victory gave the Democrats control of the Senate for the first time since 1994. (more…)

Feet In Two Worlds reporter Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska recently produced a feature story for WNYC News. Her radio piece about New York Poles returning to Poland aired locally during NPR’s All Things Considered.

From WNYC News:

The troubling economic times here are making some immigrants think about going home. Nineteen years after the collapse of communism and four years after joining the European Union, Poland is booming and young Poles in the United States want to profit from these changes.

They’re following the example of Irish immigrants who have been lured home by the Irish economic miracle. For undocumented immigrants the decision to return is sped up by anti-immigrant sentiment that is forcing out foreign workers from many parts of the world. As part of our occasional series, Feet in Two Worlds, Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, of the Polish Daily News has this report.

You can listen to Ewa’s story here.

Just after the Republican National Convention ended, the party’s nominee Sen. John McCain sat down for an interview with a major American network. It wasn’t ABC, NBC or CBS: he was interviewed by Jorge Ramos, Univision‘s lead anchor and the host of the show Al Punto which focuses on politics. The network’s web site summed up the interview saying McCain, “skirted questions about his vote in favor of the border wall.”

In fact, McCain seemed to tell Ramos he did not vote for construction of the border fence between the U.S. and Mexico. (He did not finish the sentence twice, however.) [This video has been removed from YouTube.]
Here’s a transcript of the original exchange in English, as published by Univision:

Ramos: You voted for the construction of the wall between Mexico and the United States. However, the Mexican Government has just confirmed that every year, at least half a million Mexicans come to the United States. How exactly are you planning to secure that border? Every single minute there is an immigrant coming into the United States illegally.

McCain: I didn’t vote for, I am not sure what you are talking about, but we can secure…

Ramos: …about 700 miles.

McCain: I say we can secure our borders with walls and/or fences in urban areas, and then virtual fences, vehicle barriers

Ramos: But, you did vote for the wall.

McCain: I didn’t vote for an…, I don’t know what you are exactly, what you are referring to. What my plan was, and what our proposal was, that we secure our borders, and we can secure it, not necessarily with walls and fences. Although that is important in populated areas, in the deserts of Arizona vehicle barriers, cameras, and sensors, all of those things, can be used.

Did McCain vote for the wall or not?

On Sept. 28, 2006, when the Secure Fence Act was passed that approved the construction of the border barrier, McCain voted “Yea,” Senate records show.

After that, there were several votes related to appropriations for the project, but it appears that McCain did not vote again on the matter. (Here’s Project Vote Smart’s compilation of recent McCain votes on immigration-related bills.)

Once he began campaigning for the presidency, McCain’s stance on immigration shifted away from his co-sponsorship of comprehensive immigration reform with Sen. Ted Kennedy. Early this year, in a Meet The Press interview with the late Tim Russert he practically gave up on that effort. When Russert asked him whether he would sign such a bill into law as President, McCain said, “it isn’t gonna come, it isn’t gonna come. The lesson is, they want the border secured first.”

NPR’s Jennifer Ludden mapped McCain’s trajectory on the issue in this story last June: his position now is that, as President, he would have governors certify that the border is secure before taking other immigration-related measures.

* * *

By the way, how’s that fence doing?

Not so well, The Washington Post reported this week: it’s unlikely that it will be completed on schedule, and construction costs are surging.

Barring action by Congress, “we’re out of money and operations will stop,” border protection Commissioner W. Ralph Basham told the House Homeland Security Committee.