Arizona law "misguided,"

Rumors circulate of an immigration raid at Cinco de Mayo festivities. Markets normally bustling with customers preparing for the celebration are quiet. Family picnics are scaled back.Many Hispanics in Arizona are increasingly anxious about being targeted under the state’s tough anti-illegal immigration law. Some are afraid to leave their homes, even on the day when the nation celebrates Hispanic heritage.

“They don’t want to go to the park or clubs to celebrate because they’re scared,” said George Cortez, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen from Mesa, as he took a break from sweeping hair clippings at Eagle’s barbershop in the Phoenix suburb.The law’s passage unleashed a torrent of criticism against the state. Some fear the law, which requires police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they’re in the country illegally, could lead to racial profiling.

The National Council of La Raza, United Food and Commercial Workers and others scheduled a news conference in Washington today to urge a boycott of Arizona.Immigrant rights activists say the law is racist. Supporters deny those claims, noting that the law says race can’t be a sole reason for questioning people. They say the law is forcing the nation to confront a longstanding problem.

But some comments have unnerved Hispanics. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., for example, said he’d support deporting U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. He added “it takes more than walking across the border to be an American citizen.The debate has also played out in professional sports. The Phoenix Suns basketball team wore “Los Suns” jerseys in their playoff game Wednesday night, a show of support for the Hispanic community on Cinco de Mayo.

Obama on immigration

A White House Cinco de Mayo celebration erupted in applause when President Barack Obama, who has called the Arizona law “misguided,” acknowledged the Phoenix Suns’ action.Obama said Wednesday he wants to begin work this year on legislation overhauling the nation’s immigration system, but he offered no timetable to push for the actual passage of such legislation.”The way to fix our broken immigration system is through common-sense comprehensive immigration reform,” the president said. “I want to begin work this year, and I want Democrats and Republicans to work with me.”

Border security concern.In Washington, federal and state law enforcement officials told a Senate panel Wednesday that more federal funding is needed to help combat crimes linked to Mexico-based drug cartels.Donald Reay of the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition said more federal funding is needed to help states”The answer for border sheriffs is not to send more money to Mexico but augment the needs of our local law enforcement to contain that violence at the border,” Reay told the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has filed a $300 million bill that would provide grants to local law enforcement agencies to hire personnel, pay overtime or buy equipment necessary to fight crime at the border. It also would create more federal judgeships for Southwest border states to step up prosecution of crimes.”We’ve asked for National Guard,” said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. “We need manpower, we need help.”

President Barack Obama's major priorities dropped from the agenda of an election-year Congress facing voter disillusionment

WASHINGTON Immigration reform has become the first of President Barack Obama’s major priorities dropped from the agenda of an election-year Congress facing voter disillusionment. Sounding the death knell was Obama himself.The president noted that lawmakers may lack the “appetite” to take on immigration while many of them are up for re-election and while another big legislative issue – climate change – is already on their plate.

“I don’t want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn’t solve the problem,” Obama told reporters Wednesday night aboard Air Force One.Immigration reform was an issue Obama promised Latino groups that he would take up in his first year in office. But several hard realities – a tanked economy, a crowded agenda, election-year politics and lack of political will – led to so much foot-dragging in Congress that, ultimately, Obama decided to set the issue aside.

With that move, the president calculated that an immigration bill would not prove as costly to his party two years from now, when he seeks re-election, than it would today, even though some immigration reformers warned that a delay could so discourage Democratic-leaning Latino voters that they would stay home from the polls in November.Some Democrats thought pushing a bill through now might help their party. If it failed, they could blame Republican resistance, though in reality many Democrats didn’t want to deal with an immigration bill this year either.

Perhaps seeing the handwriting on the wall, top Senate Democrats released a legislative framework for immigration reforms anyway. The draft proposal, obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, called for, among other things, meeting border security benchmarks before anyone in the country illegally can become a legal permanent U.S. resident.By Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered little hope that the issue was still alive on Capitol Hill.”If there is going to be any movement in this regard, it will require presidential leadership, as well as an appetite, is that the word? … as well as a willingness to move forward in the Congress,” she said.House Republican leader John Boehner was more blunt. “There is not a chance that immigration is going to move through the Congress,” he said Tuesday.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the Democrats’ leading advocate for immigration reform, has said he voted for health care reform on the understanding that Obama and congressional Democrats would move a major immigration bill.Even though he would like to see Latinos turn out to vote for Democrats in 2010, Gutierrez said “many will probably decide to stay home.” However, he added, a strict, new immigration law in Arizona may change that dynamic. The law requires law enforcement officers to question anyone they suspect is in the country illegally.”On one hand you are not going to vote because you don’t believe people you voted for are doing a good enough job,” Gutierrez said. “Then you say, ‘I got to vote, because the enemy is so mean and vindictive, I got to get out there.'”The Hispanic vote is growing, largely because of Latinos’ increasing population. The 9.7 million Latinos who cast ballots in 2008 made up about 7.4 percent of the electorate, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center study.

Hispanic voters helped flip the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico from Republican to Democratic in the 2008 presidential election.But even though Latinos’ numbers have been increasing, in some parts of the country their portions of voting populations are not large enough to affect election outcomes.

Democrats hold a 254-177 majority in the House, with four vacancies. But 48 are in districts where Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain did better than Obama in the 2008 elections.Matt Angle, a Democratic political strategist focused on Texas, said it would be worse for Democrats to propose a bill that has no hope of passing or getting Republican support. Doing so would allow Republicans to cherry-pick parts of the bill to use against Democratic candidates, he said.

The Senate also has a number of competitive races, some in states with significant numbers of Hispanic voters, such as in Nevada, the home state of Majority Leader Harry Reid. Latinos are about 12-15 percent of likely voters there.”For Democrats it is critical they can deliver if they want to continue nurturing the support they want from this community,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, National Council of La Raza immigration and national campaigns director.(AP)