Back in the fall, the pro-migrant grassroots advocacy achieved a big victory in getting Lou Dobbs to resign from his television show on CNN. If you remember, Lou's continual attacks on the immigrant, and by extension Latino community, had started to undermine CNN's credibility, and was contributing to a heated national discourse on the immigration issue.

Well, it turns out that Lou has returned. Since his departure from CNN, he has even indicated that he is now in support of amnesty for undocumented immigrants. Taking that a step further, Lou Dobbs has met with Senator Charles Schumer, who is working on unveiling the Senate version of the much awaited comprehensive immigration bill. Currently, Rep. Luis Gutierrez has introduced comprehensive immigration reform in the house. Last week, The Hill reported:

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is spearheading the Democrats’ effort to put together a comprehensive reform bill, met with Dobbs on Wednesday.
 
“We’re meeting with all different kinds of groups, trying to get everybody together to come out for one bill,” Schumer said.

In my view, this is not a good sign coming from Senator Schumer. At this point, Lou Dobbs has lost most of his credibility even before he left CNN, and he is not someone that those who are looking for humane and just immigration reform will turn to, even if he is softening his stance.

To further complicate things, Rep. Gutierrez is saying that people are angry and disillusioned with President Obama for not pushing immigration reform and for only mentioning it in passing in his State of the Union address last week.

What the Lou Dobbs meeting illustrates to me is just how out of touch the Senate may be on the comprehensive immigration reform issue. It will be hard to rally the grassroots around something that Lou Dobbs has been apart of, but we could send a message to Senator Schumer telling him that this is not the kind of change we would like to see. I'm all for more participation.

What is your take on Lou Dobbs' latest involvement in the immigration debate?

For the past few days, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has made the news for comments made during the 2008 presidential campaign about now President Obama saying that he would be successful because he was “light-skinned” and “spoke with no Negro dialect.” Now, I certainly think that Senator Reid could have used a better choice of words, but we have to look at where Harry Reid is coming from.

During the past week, there has been a lot of press coverage about a hotel owner in Taos, New Mexico who has asked his Spanish speaking employees to cease speaking Spanish at work and to Anglicize their names while at work. Larry Whitten came to Taos over the summer to revive an adobe-style hotel in this old Indian pueblo town, and he has angered his employees and community members with this request, which has been reflected in local pickets and letter writing.

Last week during President Obama’s address to Congress and the nation outlining his expectations for health care reform, the most emotional reaction came when the President stated that his reforms would not apply to illegal immigrants. On the side of the House that has expressed the most skepticism and distrust for most of Obama’s social policies, Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) became the poster boy for bad behavior and a lightening rod for Democratic fundraising with his shout, “You lie!” to the President. At the same time, some within the progressive Latino community felt that President Obama was trying to draw a hard line with the immigration issue, causing further cynicism about his efforts to make a break from the previous administration in handling the undocumented. Some even took offense to Obama’s use of the term “illegal immigrant.” I thought that I would break down the issue of illegal immigration within the health care debate.