From Facing South, the online magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies.

When Hispanics vote, most choose Democrats: In 2008, two out of three Latinos voted for Barack Obama over John McCain for president. And a Pew Hispanic Center survey released today finds that 65% plan to vote Democratic this November.

But the rapid growth of Latinos in Southern states will likely have the paradoxical effect of strengthening the political clout of Republicans over the next decade, as GOP-controlled state legislatures redraw state and Congressional political lines after the 2010 Census.

A quick recap: About every 10 years, states redo their political lines based on new Census data. When new boundaries are redrawn for the state legislature, it’s called redistricting. At the national level, it’s called reapportionment: Out of the 435 U.S. House seats, every state gets one, and the remaining 385 are divvied based on population.

As Facing South recently reported, new projections show the South will likely gain big from reapportionment: Four Southern states are expected to gain eight Congressional seats (and also Electoral College votes) after the 2010 Census data is released this December.

Each of the Southern states — Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas — can at least partially thank their burgeoning and Democratic-leaning Latino communities for their growing political clout. But in each of the states, decisions about redrawing Congressional lines are made in the state legislature — which are currently controlled by Republicans, a situation unlikely to change in this GOP-trending year.

That means the lines for all four fast-growing states will be shaped for at least a decade according to the partisan interests of Republicans, despite the source of rising clout. Here’s a chart showing how this will likely break down in 2011 and beyond.

In the long run, the growth of Latino communities in the South is part of a long-term demographic shift that will likely benefit Democrats. But when it comes to drawing the political lines after the 2010 Census, Republicans are likely to stay in control.

Chris Kromm is Publisher for Facing South/Southern Exposure and Director of the Institute for Southern Studies, where this story first appeared.

Staff Awards

 

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2010 AltWeekly Awards

First Place / Investigative Reporting Circulation under 50,000:

Dave Mann,  “Burn Patterns”

It was just past 1 a.m. on a Saturday night when the phone woke Curtis Severns. The security company was calling to say his gun shop was on fire. He roused himself, left his wife, Sue, and their newborn, and began the hour-long drive from the North Texas town of Sherman to his store in Plano. That was Aug. 21, 2004. His life hasn’t been the same since.  Read More…

Investigative reporting for this article was supported, in part, by a grant from the Open Society Institute.

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“What part of illegal don’t you understand?”

This question—usually launched by immigration restrictionists and aimed at immigration advocates—is a good one. The United States considers itself a country of laws, and letting people off the hook formajor legal transgressions isn’t (officially) tolerated or popular.

But in assessing the status of illegal immigrants and the penalties they deserve for unlawful action, it’s helpful to consider the severity of their transgressions. What should the penalty be for crossing the border unlawfully in order to sustain your family?

Furthermore, one needs to consider that laws change. Immigrants’ reasons for leaving home and traveling to the United States have remained remarkably constant. End-of-the-world hysteria opposing immigration is also old. What has changed most is immigration law and how we classify newcomers.

The earliest European immigrants to North America—mostly English arriving in Virginia and New England during the early 1600s—were considered settlers in an open continent. Immigration was encouraged and restrictions about who could migrate were minimal.

In a reversal of the contemporary dynamic, these early European colonial immigrants excluded the native culture from the incipient social order and defined the colonies on their own terms, largely as the domain of English Anglo-Saxon Protestant immigrants. Restrictionists have mythologized these early immigrants and contrasted them with later waves of less desirable newcomers. But the composition of the early settlers would have horrified today’s anti-immigrant activists.

Researchers estimate that England sent 50,000 convicts to America in the 18th century and a smaller number in the 17th century. Between half and two-thirds of all early immigrants to America were indentured servants. The earliest immigrants from northwest Europe included few high-born. Most were uneducated agricultural laborers. In spite of this, they were encouraged by the British government to travel to America to labor in the South’s growing plantation economy.

Even in New England, where English immigrants typically possessed more agricultural and artisanal skills, most were defined as “ordinary workmen with moderate to low social status.” Although higher socioeconomic status migrants followed later in the 17th century, the majority of immigrants continued to be drawn from the lower social classes.

In the post-Civil War era, new and large streams of immigrants began arriving from southern and eastern Europe. The Slavs, Italians, and Jews who arrived in the United States by the millions were seen as an existential threat to the country’s Anglo-Saxon Protestant core. Groups such as the Immigration Restriction League sought to reduce immigration to prevent those deemed “undesirable … or injurious to our national character.”

Today these groups are celebrated by anti-immigration activists as “model” immigrants who followed the rules in arriving in the United States legally, unlike Latin American border-jumpers. But at the time these immigrants were portrayed as Europe’s trash being dumped on America’s shores. Public depictions of immigrants as rats and snakes were not uncommon. Immigrants were seen as harbingers of organized crime and radical political ideologies.

But even as fear of immigration grew, legal restrictions against the entry of Europeans were minimal, even for the poor. Ellis Island immigrants were so successful at adhering to U.S. immigration law largely because it barely existed. Of the 12 million immigrants who passed through Ellis Island, only 2 percent were denied entry to the United States. Upon arrival, the vast majority of immigrants — most of them poor and uneducated — spent several hours at Ellis Island before they were legally admitted to America.

The legality threshold for 19th- and 18th-century European immigrants is incomparable to the gauntlet of restrictions facing contemporary immigrants. The immigration bureaucracy has increased so that today’s immigrants—perhaps more educated and skilled than Europeans arriving a century ago—face unprecedented barriers. It can take years for a immigrant with family already in the United States to gain legal entry.

So while restrictionists state “the law is the law,” the fact is that the laws facing newcomers have changed radically. The law turns immigrants into illegal aliens and aliens into national pioneers. If we were sticking with Ellis Island Rules, most Mexican immigrants would stop at the border for a few hours before they were permitted make their way in America with the government’s stamp of approval.

 

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The Texas Observer. The author is solely responsible for its content.

Perhaps nothing is as demoralizing as religious hypocrisy; it destroys not only perpetrators but witnesses. Every time a non-believer observes adherents acting in contradiction to the precepts of their faith, the non-believer is only strengthened in his resistance to God’s call. We are not talking about the usual human failings but outrageous, repugnant, destructive violations. The scandal of false Christianity forms an insurmountable stumbling block for some who are being called to conversion. For this reason I am exposing the hypocrisy of Tea Party members who claim they are defending Christianity–a way of life they don’t follow.

Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus exhort his followers to be nationalistic.  All that Jesus said regarding the political state was that we must pay our taxes.  Believers ought instead to be patriots of heaven, as Paul explains in Philippians 3: 20 “For our citizenship is in heaven…” Nor did Jesus instruct his followers to stem the tide of what the world considers progress by force, but to be set apart as pure examples of godliness. For the end times we are told only to prepare for Jesus’ return by keeping ourselves in fit spiritual condition. In fact, Jesus reserved his direst warnings for members of the church themselves, whom he warns against false teaching and ear-tickling; even love of country can be an idol or a kind of heresy if placed before love of God and fellow man.  

Jesus never delegated the authority to judge the nations to any of his followers.  Instead, he promised to come back and sort out sheep from goat. Jesus clearly states that only those of his children who do his will, that is: feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked and visit prisoners and the sick, will receive the reward of eternal life. The good news we are told to spread in the Great Commission is not the gospel of economic doctrine or political philosophy, but the message that we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ. Some of the fruits we can expect when we do God’s will include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. That sure doesn’t sound like the Tea Party rally to me! When we disobey God’s will in favor of our own however, the results can be anger, greed, division, strife, gossip, ugly speech, hatefulness, and every manner of uncleanness.  

We have seen some fruits of the Tea Party movement which many consider a dangerous faction exploiting tough economic times and the fears of suffering people to prosecute a political agenda. In seeking to control and manipulate a society they claim to be “saving”, they are only succeeding in tearing it apart. Individuals in the Tea Party who claim to be Christian have a lot of explaining to do, for biblical teaching is full of calls to submit to secular authority, trust in God, and to pay taxes. “Pay everyone what he is owed: if you owe the tax collector, pay your taxes; if you owe the revenue collector, pay revenue; if you owe someone respect, pay him respect; if you owe someone honor, pay him honor” (see Romans 13: 1-7).  No exceptions were allowed. Paul did not say to pay only as much as you feel is right.  He did not say you could feel sorry for yourself to the point of open rebellion. He did not say submit only to those authorities of whom you approve, but said to give respect where it is due. The president of the United States is owed the respect of all Americans.

If conservative Christians are concerned about a world which seems to be falling apart, their duty in obedience to Christ is to pray, fast, be holy, serve others and spread the Gospel. We are to begin with ourselves. We are to evangelize our own families, churches, workplaces and immediate communities. We are to pray the prayer of the humble tax-collector (reviled then as now) “O God! Have mercy on me, sinner that I am!” and not the prayer of the proud Pharisee, “O God! I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity–greedy, dishonest, immoral, or like this tax-collector!” (“Thank God I am not lazy like those people on welfare; that I am so hard-working and deserving of all my riches!”). Isn’t it ironic that early Christians under pagan Roman rule flourished in holiness and martyrdom, yet today some Christians manage to feel persecuted while living in the greatest democracy in history and enjoying material blessings undreamed of by their distant kin? Jesus warns them:  ”For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but everyone who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18: 10-14).

Katherine Dobay is a born again Christian and lives in Marble Falls.

The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The Texas Observer. The author is solely responsible for its content.