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While Senator Obama is making his Middle Eastern and European trip many questions still remain about where exactly he is on issues with Latin America and also Hispanics. Many local businesses in the Rio Grande Valley were concerned when Senator Obama made the statements early in his primary campaign that NAFTA was “devastating” and “big mistake” and that he would unilaterally opt out of NAFTA. Subsequently he stated in Fortune magazine that “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified” and suggested that he would not abandon NAFTA.

The Miami Herald reports that Obama’s lead Hispanic advisor is Cuauhtemoc ”Temo” Figueroa, a Mexican American with a labor-union background, as head of its national Hispanic vote-getting effort in Obama’s Chicago headquarters. Figueroa, whose parents were farm-worker organizers, was a top official of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Recently the well respected former Democratic Hispanic Mayor of Miami, Maurice Ferrer, has been critical of Obama’s opinions and has suggested that other Hispanic influences beside the narrow minded one currently involved with the Obama campaign need to be heard. He further criticized that Obama’s foreign policy advisors have never shown any interest in Latin America. According to the Miami Herald very few Hispanics in the Democratic Party have any access to Obama.

In fact it is interesting that when I went to the official Obama website I found that the blog for Cuauhtemoc ”Temo” Figueroa was completely empty and had only 22 “friends” which in MySpace terms is “lame”. Mr. Figueroa apparently has had very little contact with Hispanic Congressional leaders and did not hold any meetings with them until June of 2008 where he was warned that Obama was in trouble with Hispanics according the Hill.com According to the Press-Enterprise Mr. Figueroa grew up in California and then became a long time Chicago political union figure. His plan for recruiting Hispanics was to “hire” 400 paid Hispanics for major cities in the United States. After the meeting with the Hispanic caucus in June only Representative Loretta Sanchez from California made a public statement for Obama.

Obama has never made any particular policy statements about Latin America or Hispanics. Most recently when he spoke at the La Raza conference he specifically refused to answer questions from Hispanic leaders or the audience in a public forum. He has adopted a scripted only format in dealing with issues.

Hispanic voters and Rio Grande Valley voters are appropriately concerned about where is Mr. Obama on free trade, the border (He voted for the Border Wall), immigration and many other relevant issues. Maybe it is time for Mr. Obama to come home and start answering questions.

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The controversial Congressional bill HR 4088 otherwise known as the Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act of 2007 or SAVE Act of 2007 is coming closer to becoming law. It now has 154 sponsors and there is currently a petition in place that would skip the normal review by various Congressional committees and bring the issue up for direct vote on the House floor. There is likely to be at least 200 votes for the bill so far based upon the petition’s progress.

The most controversial portions of the bill are that it requires: (1) employer/employee notification of social security number mismatches and multiple uses, and related information sharing with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); and (2) establishment of electronic birth and death registration systems which before had only been voluntary. Amends the Internal Revenue Code to: (1) penalize specified employers for failure to correct information returns; and (2) prohibit employers from deducting from gross income wages paid to unauthorized aliens, with an exception for an employer participating in the basic employment eligibility confirmation program whereas before empolyers were not liable for employees errors.

To help enforce the law it provides for: (1) increased alien detention facilities; (2) additional district court judgeships; and (3) a media campaign to inform the public of changes made by this Act including a multilingual media campaign explaining noncompliance penalties.

On the surface after reading this you would think that this bill would stop illegal immigration by dealing with the problem of illegal employment and help the nation’s economy right?Well let’s examine the evidence:

On April 8,2008 the Congressional Budget Office reported that this HR 4008 if passed would actually result in a DECREASE of Federal revenues of 17.3 BILLION dollars from 2009 to 2018 because employers who now report and deduct Federal wages on illegal aliens would stop doing so. In addition the cost of just hiring more Federal judges just to deal with enforcement of the this particular law would add 30 million dollars to the Federal budget.

State and local governments will need to spend an additional 68 Million dollars in the first year alone to comply with Federal mandates.

The cost to private business in just the first year to comply with this law if passed would exceed 136 million dollars.

The enforcement of the law will be undertaken by both local and Federal authorities but not through the Social Security Administration. Federal planners say that this will require Federal grants to local agencies (police agencies, courts, jails,etc). Policeman in border regions will need to spend considerable time investigating and processing illegal aliens diverting them from their tradition roles.

Taking into consideration of the above it has been estimated that this law will not result in lower taxes or improved employment for legal workers, and will in fact require additional taxes from the average family of at least $74 per year.

The Social Security Administration admits that there are at least 12 million to 18 million records which are incorrect. Errors in records will result in the instant job loss and possible arrest perhaps even deportation of American citizens with Hispanic last names because there is no immediate appeal process. At the best even if no arrest occurs it will be illegal for a person found to have a Social Security error to work until it is cleared up.

Although some have said that record problems can be easily fixed lets examine another area of record errors in Social Security. Every day about 35 people nationwide are reported to be dead by Social Security who in fact are live and well. Overall there are thousands of people who are currently fighting with Federal government to prove that they are alive. Because they are “dead” they cannot receive Medicare, disability payments or tax refunds, or even vote. Even when the problem has supposedly been corrected they can still be shown as dead as late as eight years later and have to repeat the process all over again.

Anyone who provides aid to an illegal alien such as priest or doctor could potentially be charged with assisting in illegal alien smuggling. Lawyers, doctors, priests and others will have to inquire the status of anyone Hispanic they come in professional contact with because they will be liable for not reporting illegal aliens. There is only a narrow exception for some religious workers. The consequences of this for churches and hospital emergency rooms are severe. So called Good Samaritan laws which require people to report accidents or render reasonable aid to victims are specifically rendered inactive by the overriding Federal law. All a person would have to do to say they left the scene of an accident or ignored a person in need was to say “I thought he/she was an illegal alien.” Even a gas station could refuse to sell gasoline to anyone they suspected of being an illegal alien because they would be “helping them in the smuggling process.”

Finally the law takes away any recognition of children as having any rights. They will have to no right to counsel or objective agencies over seeing them but instead be treated as property to be deported.

This law will not only be wasteful and detrimental to our economy but will also encourage and create a government sponsored discrimination program. Lawful residents and citizens of the United States who look different or sound different will be denied services and fearful of government authorities. Illegal immigrants will only be driven further underground. The idea of passing such a measure without passing a complete immigration package is only making the problem worse.

Our local Congressmen Cuellar and Hinojosa are not sponsoring this bill. Ciro Rodriquez of San Antonio who is a co-sponsor needs to change his mind or likely will face significant opposition in the next election. Although McCain and Obama have both indicated they do not support this legislation, Senator Obama is in a unique position to influence his Democratic colleague Heath Shuler (D-NC) who is the bill’s writer and main sponsor. So far he has taken no action in this regard.

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An interesting phenomenon or perhaps more correctly phenomena has been occurring in the McAllen area lately which points to a cultural change. I know of several instances where clubs that play music are leaning away from either Tejano music or even Norteño music to play Reggaetón. Now don’t get me wrong, I think Reggaetón is a great addition to Latino culture as long as they respect women and avoid slang words but the content of it is not the issue. What interests me is whether it is a symptom of the “globalization of Latin culture”.

Today I was reading a political blog in the Washington Post by Marcela Sanchez who basically lumps all Hispanics into a homogenous group who will vote as a monolith. When you watch television in Spanish anywhere in the world more often than not everyone on it will be trying to speak Spanish like a Chilango which means like someone from Mexico City. If you search the internet, you will find lamentations about Tejano music losing airplay and radio stations to more popular Latino music. Are Mexican-Americans and other Latin groups losing their cultural identity to a “Unified Hispanic Culture”?

Certainly the history of Hispanic culture has always been a dynamic one. Before coming to the New World we were influenced by Arabic Tatars, Hebrews, Visigoths,Kelts,Germanics, Romans, Gypsies, and maybe even some Mongolians. Trade from Asia gave us a taste for spices and pasta. When we entered the New World we absorbed the native people’s genes, food, and culture into our own. The distance from our “native culture” made communication difficult so language and culture varied in each local by varying degrees. The Castillian “th” for ci sound is heard in Argentina and Spain but almost no where else for example. It is interesting and good in my opinion that an official Spanish language academy like the French have was never agreed upon.

As a young adult I lived in Miami for awhile and quickly learned that some words have very different meanings to Cubans and Mexicans such as the word in Spanish which means “to get”. For Cubans the word in slang can mean to “have sex with” so I quickly learned not to use it.

However, when I was growing up in the Rio Grande Valley we not just exposed to Mexican-American Hispanic culture alone. Although Tejano music developed in South Texas, it was influenced by East European immigrants teaching Hispanics their rhythms and instruments which they combined with traditional Spanish/Flamenco teachings. Cumbias, a popular Latin beat for dancing, for example had long before come to Mexico from South America. At that time there was not the international networks of major Spanish media that exist today so we were still somewhat isolated.

My children are Mexican-Cuban Americans which is another form of cultural unification that is inevitable. Maybe all this is Much Adoo About Nothing and we should just accept this globalization. However, at the same time, we need to keep the greater American community as well as our peers aware that we are a diverse group. Lumping all Hispanics together can lead to discriminatory stereotyping. Perhaps even more important is that we not lose our recognition of various parts of that culture that have come and gone along the way because they are a part of who we are. Lets not forget the contributions that South Texas has brought to the world like musica tejano.

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