Washington D.C. - Today, the Senate failed to muster the 60 votes needed to move forward the Defense authorization bill, including the DREAM Act amendment. Today, the immigration reform movement and immigrant youth were stymied by an obstinate Republican minority more interested in scoring political points than in delivering for the American people. Republicans in the Senate caved - again - to partisan pressure from their leadership to block progress on a bill that is not only vital to our national security, but that provided a vehicle for other important measures, specifically the DREAM Act. This Congress has been one Republican filibuster after another, but the American people have grown very tired of this story. Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) deserve enormous credit for having the political courage to introduce the DREAM Act as part of the Department of Defense Authorization bill. Their courage on this bill is in stark contrast to the Republic...

Por Armando García Tenemos malas noticias, ya es un hecho que en materia migratoria este año no va a haber una legalización para unos 11 millones de indocumentados. La última esperanza se perdió esta semana cuando el Senado del país no aprobó considerar la propuesta del Dream Act que hubiera beneficiado a miles de jóvenes indocumentados conseguir su residencia legal en este país. La votación en el Senado fue de 56 votos a favor 43 en contra. Se necesitaban 60 votos mínimo para que la pieza legislativa, que estaba dentro de las propuestas de apropiaciones para el Departamento de Defensa, se moviera para su aprobación. El ambiente político en Washington, no es el apropiado, ni para una reforma integral, ni tampoco para reconocer las vidas de miles de estudiantes, que están dispuestos a servir y defender al país en las fuerzas armadas, ni tampoco para legalizar aquellos que son estudiantes ejemplares que al poder llegar a la universidad y titularse, se hubieran convertido en perso...

MIAMI - Following an investigation led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Gilberto Jordan, 54, a former Guatemalan special forces soldier, was sentenced today to 120 months in prison and revocation of his U.S. citizenship for unlawfully procuring his U.S. citizenship by lying about his participation in a 1982 massacre at a Guatemalan village known as Dos Erres. Jordan, of Delray Beach, Fla., pleaded guilty on July 7 to the federal charge before U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch in the Southern District of Florida, where he was also sentenced today by Judge Zloch. After Jordan completes his criminal sentence he will be remanded to ICE custody and placed into removal proceedings. ICE Director John Morton said, “Today’s sentence sends a message to those human rights violators worldwide. We will not turn a blind eye on the perpetrators of such egregious crimes. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations a...

Por Armando García A 200 años de la Gesta de Independencia de la República Mexicana para liberarse del yugo de la Corona de España, vale la pena reflexionar un poco la importancia histórica que esta lucha tiene para el México moderno y también para Latinoamérica. La independencia de México se conquistó en los campos de batalla, una guerra de guerrillas, con focos de insurrección en gran parte del territorio. Similar situación ocurrió en otros puntos del continente americano donde la genialidad política y militar de algunos que combatieron contra el imperialismo de esa época, fueron los primeros presidentes de las nuevas naciones. La esencia real de la gesta histórica de hace dos siglos, se olvida en las celebraciones oficiales, en los comentarios demagógicos sobre los héroes patrios que se tiende a mitificarla en palabras, con narraciones de recuerdos vagos y adornos florales y banderas tricolores en estatuas de los héroes de la Independencia. Hoy la imposici...

The annual inflow of unauthorized immigrants to the United States was nearly two-thirds smaller in the March 2007 to March 2009 period than it had been from March 2000 to March 2005, according to new estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. This sharp decline has contributed to an overall reduction of 8% in the number of unauthorized immigrants currently living in the U.S. -to 11.1 million in March 2009 from a peak of 12 million in March 2007, according to the estimates. The decrease represents the first significant reversal in the growth of this population over the past two decades. These new Pew Hispanic Center estimates rely on data mainly from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and decennial census. The unauthorized immigrant population is estimated using the widely accepted residual method, in which a demographic estimate of the legal foreign-born population is subtracted from the total foreign-born population...