But data released today by the Pew Hispanic Center paints a clearer picture of the community and finds that most Latino kids in the United States are born to immigrant parents, bucking previous trends that favored older and more established generations that resided in the country.

Approximately 52 percent of the nation’s 16 million Latino children are now “second generation” residents born in the United States to foreign parents according to federal census data analyzed by Pew.

Compare that to 1980, when only 30 percent of the demographic were considered “second generation” and when 57 percent were “third-generation” residents whose parents were born in the United States.

It’s estimated by the federal census bureau that almost three-in-ten children in the United States will be of Latino ancestry by 2025.

During the 2008 election Colorado Latinos turned out in record numbers, increasing their voting presence by an estimated 17 percent since 2004. The Latino population in Colorado currently makes up 20 percent of the population census data shows.

Pew also recently reported that our state unauthorized immigrant population appears to be quite young. A study released in April revealed that in Colorado, California, Nevada, Arizona and Texas, at least one-in-10 primary and secondary school students are children of undocumented parents.

The Obama Administration is moving forward with plans to eliminate the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, a federal plan that provides a partial subsidy to local jails and state prisons for the cost of incarcerating inmates who happen to be undocumented. The termination of the program is planned for the 2010 fiscal year.

Documents from the Department of Justice show Colorado netted $3.1 million from the program last year, and $3.3 million in 2007.

The elimination of the $400 million federal program is not good news for Colorado, where state lawmakers toiled during this year’s legislative session to fix a $1.4 billion two-year budget shortfall.

While the Obama White House says that it recognizes “the financial burden that the current immigration system places on states and localities,” those resources “can be better used to enhance federal enforcement efforts.”

The termination of the program is not a new idea. The Bush Administration tried to end the program multiple times only to be thwarted by protests from state and local law enforcement officials who convinced Congress to restore the funding.

A last gasp effort to lobby the congressional budget reconciliation committee could yet again bail out the states from the unforeseen expense for a federal immigration law mandate to jail undocumented people.

Stay tuned.

(Photo/Eric Brandt, Flickr)

Although Colorado is home to some of the strictest immigration laws in the country, state lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled legislature are now supporting efforts to give local law enforcement more resources to crack down on undocumented immigrants. The plan is causing concern for immigrant-rights advocates, who fear discrimination and racial profiling.

A non-binding Joint Memorial introduced in the Senate Monday would request that the federal government train more local police forces to identify, arrest and detain immigrants who have been charged with crimes in the state. The formal request to Congress would also allow the state to use biometric identification — like DNA tracking — and federal databases to create an enforcement dragnet.

SJM 09-009 is a response to recommendations from the Colorado Immigration/Public Safety Working Group — a state task force created after three vehicle-related deaths allegedly caused by undocumented driver Francis Hernandez last fall in Aurora. It was introduced by Colorado Springs lawmakers Sen. John Morse, a Democrat, and Republicans Sen. Dave Schulteis and Rep. Kent Lambert, and Littleton Republican Rep. Jim Kerr. All but Lambert sat on the immigration and law enforcement task force panel.

The measure would take Colorado’s latest crack-down on undocumented immigrants to the federal level. If the proposal is accepted by the legislature, published copies will be sent to President Barack Obama and Colorado’s Congressional delegation urging action on the issue.

“The [proposed] policy is really talking about better capacity to deputize local and state law enforcement to do immigration work, along with an expansion of different kinds of policing measures, like biometrics technology,” said Chandra Russo, an organizer with the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, which represents dozens of advocacy organizations.

“Not only does it result in these draconian and inhumane tactics, but you’re also not fixing our broken immigration system,” Russo said. “It erodes community trust and drains public resources.”

Among the task force’s recommendations is the use of DNA tracking to identify possible undocumented immigrants, including ID cards that contain genetic ‘fingerprints.’

Lance Clem, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, which oversaw the immigration panel, said the key benefit of the proposal would be giving local law enforcement the ability to use federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement databases that will “tell local officials right away if someone was undocumented.”

“Being illegal in not in itself a criminal act,” said Clem, who noted that local police in Colorado do not have the power to arrest an individual simply because he or she is undocumented. The individual must commit a crime or infraction first.

Currently, a special state patrol unit with two dozen members specifically focuses on conducting immigration enforcement through traffic stops.

The Hernandez incident kindled a media firestorm when it was learned that the Guatemalan immigrant was able to continue driving after being arrested no less than 16 times for mostly misdemeanor offenses. Within days of the accident, Gov. Bill Ritter called for the creation of an immigration task force.

The 31-member Colorado Immigration/Public Safety Working Group met over the course of a month and eventually concluded in December that it was impossible for local law enforcement officers to verify the immigration status of the vast majority of individuals they encountered, and that it was ultimately the federal government’s role to enforce immigration laws.

The working group consisted mainly of law enforcement and state agency representatives. An immigrant-rights activist who was on the committee criticized the task force’s findingson concerns about unfunded mandates, civil and human rights issues, and the inefficacy of previous law enforcement activities to stem smuggling in the minority view section of the final report.

The Colorado police chiefs and sheriffs associations will soon be making recommendations to the Public Safety Department on which communities want to take part in the tougher immigration enforcement measures.

The updated demographic figures have wide-ranging implications for future political debates on local economies, labor trends, public education and health care in Colorado which has some of the toughest immigration laws in the nation.

According to the March 2008 data, Colorado’s undocumented population has remained at roughly 240,000, or approximately 5 percent of the state’s population of 4 million.

Nationally, the total undocumented population has also stabilized to 11.9 million since 2005.

More from Pew:

Unauthorized immigrants are 30% of the nation’s foreign-born population of more than 39 million people. In 29 states, they are a higher share of immigrants and in eight of them the unauthorized immigrant population is about half or more of all immigrants.

The states where unauthorized immigrants are an above-average share of all immigrants tend to be relatively new immigrant destinations, such as Colorado, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina.

Colorado ranks 12th in the nation in undocumented populations, far below the top-population states California (2.7 million) and Texas (1.45 million).

Yet, our state unauthorized immigrant population appears to be quite young. The data reveals that in Colorado, California, Nevada, Arizona and Texas, at least one-in-10 primary and secondary school students are children of undocumented parents.

Concerns by both groups about growing incarceration rates and flagging confidence in the legal system are highlighted in a new national study released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

According to Hispanics and the Criminal Justice System: Low Confidence, High Exposure (PDF):

In recent decades, Hispanics’ exposure to all parts of the criminal justice system has risen even faster than their rising share of the U.S. adult population. In state, federal and local prisons and jails, the share of inmates who were Hispanic increased from 16% in 2000 to 20% in 2008 During this period, the share of Hispanics in the adult U.S. population rose from 11% to 13%.

More than one-in-ten Latinos claim that they or someone in their immediate family served time in jail or prison in the past five years, continuing a growing trend of racial disproportions in corrections. A 2008 Pew Center on the States study “1 in 100:Behind Bars in America” reported much higher rates of incarceration for blacks than whites.

The report also found that native-born Latinos, particularly the young, were more affected by the prison system than immigrants of Latino descent.
While Pew estimates that four percent of all Latinos in the United States were under some kind of corrections control in 2007, more than four times that number (17 percent) in the study said that they or their family had been in prison system.

Native-born individuals were twice as likely as immigrants to say they or members of their household had been incarcerated. Two-in-ten Latino youths aged 18 to 29 reported higher levels of incarceration.

In Colorado, the most current information released by the Department of Corrections shows that Latinos make up 30 percent of the state inmate population, but 17 percent of the state population.

Graduation Day at CU Denver. (Photo/sea turtle, Flickr)

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet is voicing his approval of federal legislation that would give undocumented high school students in the United States a legal avenue to attend college.

The proposal — introduced in Congress two weeks ago as the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, Act — would permit undocumented individuals who entered the United States before turning 15 years old to obtain conditional permanent residency in order to attend college or a trade school or to serve in the military.

Before being given the tentative residency, participants in the program must graduate from high school, live in the United States for five consecutive years, have a clean criminal record and show good moral character.

Like his Democratic predecessor, Ken Salazar, who voted for the same legislation in 2007 when it was up for consideration, Bennet wants Colorado students who were children when they entered the country to have a shot at higher education, according to Michael Amodeo, spokesman for the senator.

“Michael (Bennet) believes that students with long-standing ties to the U.S., who have graduated from our high schools, demonstrate good moral character, and exhibit great potential and ambition, should be given the opportunity to pursue a college education or enlist in our Armed Forces,” said Amodeo when asked about Bennet’s support for the legislation.

The senator’s support of the DREAM Act points to his past dealing with issues facing immigrant students in Denver, according to advocates who worked with Bennet when he was superintendent of Denver Public Schools, his job before Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter picked him to fill Salazar’s term in the Senate in January.

“In the past Bennet understood the importance of immigrant students’ being able to achieve their full capacity,” said Marco Nuñez, a community organizer with Padres y Jovenes Unidos (Parents and Youths United), a nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of the undocumented in the Denver public schools, where 55 percent of students are Latino and the graduation rate is 52 percent.

Bennet’s position on the measure is good news for supporters of the DREAM Act, who have been trying to get versions of the proposal approved since 2001.

In 2007 the legislation came eight votes shy of the 60 needed to prevent Senate filibuster. During that time, then-Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado, a Republican, voted against the measure. His seat is now occupied by Sen. Mark Udall, the Eldorado Springs Democrat who co-sponsored the legislation when he was serving in the House.

Rep. Jared Polis, the Boulder Democrat who now sits in Udall’s old 2nd Congressional District seat, is co-sponsoring the the DREAM Act legislation in the House. In a recent press statement, Polis, who once served on the Colorado Board of Education, said, “These kids are as American as anyone else, but for too long they have had their dreams shattered by an education system that ignores their good grades and hard work.”

Said Nuñez of Padres y Jovenes Unidos: “This is about giving talented, bright students and opportunity to contribute to their communities.” He also noted that more students in higher education would boost state revenue. “Immigrants that due arrive at an early age, they go though entire public education here in Colorado. It’s not pragmatic to expect they go back to Mexico and apply to a university. That’s just not the reality.”

If the DREAM Act makes it through the House and Senate and President Obama signs it, students applying for temporary residency status under the legislation will be given six years to complete either two years of military service or two years at a college or trade school. If they don’t, their residency will be taken away and they could be deported.

But if participants do complete their obligation in the time period, they will also be given a chance to apply for citizenship in the United States where none existed before, making the DREAM Act the first major immigration reform measure to be considered by Democratically controlled Congress since Obama took office.

“We believe the measure isn’t a substitute for broad immigration reform, but this is definitely a key component of it,” said Laura Anduze, a spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza, a national advocacy group that has lobbied for the DREAM Act by bringing undocumented students to Washington, D.C., to talk with lawmakers.

“A lot of these students came here as infants, and they don’t know anything other than United States culture. When you meet a lot of the students, they’re the most American kids you’ll ever meet,” Anduze said. “They participate in a lot of community groups, and they’re valedictorians in their classes. They’re amazing. … Really their only difference is that when they were children, their parents chose to come to the United States We shouldn’t punish an innocent child for something that is out of their control.”

While the DREAM Act may not see legislative action until the fall, organizations like La Raza and Padres y Jovenes Unidos will be working to spread the word about the proposal and encouraging supporters of the measure to contact their congressional representatives.

On a conference call Wednesday hosted by the national Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), speakers detailed numerous problems that could occur with the 2010 census, a decennial count that determines the distribution of political power by establishing federal spending guidelines per state and congressional districts for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Arturo Vargas, executive director of the education fund of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), noted that increased immigration enforcement in the last decade has made Latinos — both documented and undocumented — wary of census-takers and government workers.

There are also individuals “living in non-traditional circumstances,” according to Wade Henderson of the LCCR. “You have group quarters, you’ve got migrant farm workers that are living in dormitories.”

Part of the solution will lie in the largest civic campaign to date to incorporate Latinos into the political process, according to Vargas. The campaign, entitled “Ya es hora! Hagase contar!” (“It’s time! Make yourself count!”) has already featured Spanish-language ads on Univision and Telemundo TV stations in Colorado. Spots are being sponsored through a partnership between Spanish media companies and groups like NALEO.

In the 2000 census, 12.5 percent of Latinos were reported to have made up the nation’s population. The number in Colorado was 17 percent at that time.

'Card check' ballots to determine union representation. (Photo/Old Sarge, Flcikr)

Glenn Spencer, executive director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and former chief of staff at the U.S. Labor Department under the Bush administration, spoke at the offices of the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry and warned of the “most radical rewrite of labor law in 70 years.”

At issue is a measure called the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers the ability to choose how to organize a union, either by a secret election ballot or by a majority of the work force signing union cards. Currently, employers are the only ones who get to decide how a union is formed, usually opting for an election process where there is enough time before the vote to hire new employees or implement union busting tactics.

“Congress is actually planning on passing this law, and they will unless the public makes their voices heard to their public officials, specifically in the Senate,” said Spencer, adding that “we’ll probably put at least 10 million into it, maybe more if we have to.”

Trying to pressure congressional members is not a new tactic for the chamber. During the 2008 elections the group spent approximately $100 million running ads against Democratic Senate candidates, including U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, for supporting the EFCA in the past. Because the ads were financed through nonprofit groups, the chamber was not required to disclose information on its contributors.

Another tactic being used to combat the possible passage of the EFCA is changing state law to force secret ballot elections. An organization called the Save Our Secret Ballot coalition, which includes a variety of businesses and local politicians, has been leading the way to initiate such change on a state-to-state basis. Bills have been proposed in the South Carolina Legislature, among others.

The EFCA does not get rid of the secret ballot. Instead it allows the work force to choose whether they want to hold an election to form a union. It is also doubtful that state laws would actually be able to override the federal legislation, which is set to be debated in Congress this year.

“Certainly I think those are good efforts,” said Spencer. “Whether those efforts would in fact stand up to the federal preemption issue I don’t know. Certainly we encourage states to continue passing those bills.”

Although no changes to Colorado law are in the works at this time, Chuck Berry, a former Republican state lawmaker and president of the state commerce association, said his organization would lead the charge against the measure.

“Colorado is indeed the battleground on this issue,” Berry said, noting that it will be important to pressure the U.S. Senate to deny the required 60-vote cloture for the proposal to pass — a number that the Democrats don’t have, despite a current majority of 56 members — in order to kill what he called an “anti-business agenda by organized labor.”

The most recent federal laws specifically regulating union organization are the Taft-Hartley Act and National Labor Relations Act. Both were enacted more than 60 years ago.

While I was covering this year’s Democratic National Convention in my home city of Denver, the irrelevancy of print was made dramatically clear. The city’s dailies dutifully recounted convention events, but even the headlines that marked the newspaper kiosks each day seemed horribly dated by mid-morning; any breaking news during the event had been dutifully covered and rehashed on the Web hours before. Minute by minute, our online audience was consuming new information about the street protests. Breaking stories were immediately posted on the Web and simultaneously sent to hundreds of readers who subscribed to our news feed.

On the first night of the convention I watched as police pepper-sprayed a group of innocent bystanders, hitting several people and nearly missing me. I talked to a thirty-three-year-old Denver native who was simply trying to catch a bus when he was maced. At the same time I was also relaying all of this information via cell phone and text message to one of our editors, who were always stationed in a position to instantly update the site with breaking news. The story was out before the police issued an official statement. In the end, the immediacy of the Web led to better-informed, more engaging protest coverage.

There are plenty of other examples to cite, but I specifically remember this one: when a young video journalist from Colorado was accosted by police during the Republican National Convention while providing live video coverage for an online news site, Internet viewers watched in real time as she was forced to her knees, somehow gripping the camera while simultaneously obeying police orders to raise her hands.

Journalism is becoming a more egalitarian profession — and that’s a good thing. Although many media outlets will remain the property of a small bloc of parent corporations, more and more members of the public who may not be traditionally considered journalists are becoming involved with news coverage. A dramatic power shift has obviously occurred in the way the public produces and consumes news when an unemployed nineteen-year-old using free blogging software can report on the results of a controversial city council vote restructuring Denver’s election bureau and scoop a weathered professional before he even makes it back to the newsroom.

Perhaps counterintuitively, this power shift can actually end up helping established reporters — if they let it. At the online publication where I worked, readers were allowed to freely comment on stories, provided they followed a basic commenting policy designed to avoid spam, libel and personal attacks. I can’t even count the number of times I have gained valuable news tips from commenters, some of them leading to award-winning material. It’s true that many online comments can be worthless, but smart reporters will mine them for information and respond to the readers, perhaps using the eyes and ears of their audience to snag stories that would otherwise have eluded them.

Awhile back, when I was writing regularly about prisons, many of the commenters who followed my corrections coverage worked for the Federal Bureau of Prisons as guards in Colorado penitentiaries and risked losing their jobs if they talked to the media on the record. I would initiate conversations with them off-site, and ended up building an impressive Rolodex of informants inside the prisons. These invaluable sources served me well when I traveled to the small town of Florence to write a feature on the nation’s only federal super maximum security prison, exposing massive staffing cuts leading to dangerous working conditions and inmate neglect.

When a riot involving more than 200 inmates broke out on the outdoor recreation yard of a high-security penitentiary in southern Colorado during April I utilized my corrections sources and commenters to follow the breaking story. Even though I was more than a hundred miles away from the scene in Denver, our news site was the first to correctly report that two inmates had been killed by guard rifle fire during the melee, and that the guards had emptied more than 500 rounds of live ammo from the prison’s towers. I would again use these corrections sources when I was the first to report that the warden of the same prison received an annual award for prison excellence from the bureau in July, despite two additional inmate deaths since that time.

This new kind of journalism, based on old-fashioned reporting but propelled by public participation and rooted in the inclusive nature of the Web, will continue to thrive as newsmakers begin to see information as less of a commodity and more of a continuing dialog with their audiences. Of course, those working as journalists online should continue to use the fundamental ethical principles invoked by their predecessors — bylines, ethics policies, disclosing possible conflicts of interest, and publicly correcting their errors. With a new media ethos that encourages public participation and empowerment, it is my hope that the newest generation of reporters will succeed in rekindling the idea of journalism as public service. That’s what I want to do.

Erin Rosa is a freelance writer currently living in Denver. Rosa’s work has been featured in a variety of news outlets, including the Huffington Post, The Colorado Independent, and Democracy Now! This commentary was originally published at the Columbia Journalism Review.

A pro-Latino voter plackard reads 'Our voice is our vote, we are the political force.' (Photo/Erin Rosa)

Latino voters turned out in record numbers in Colorado this year, more than doubling their turnout since 2004, according to recent polling data.

More than 330,000 Latinos voted in the state last week, compared with 165,000 in 2004, based on exit polling from media outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Voto Latino, a national nonprofit organization that organized Latino voting drives in the state.

The data also shows that the share of Latino voters in Colorado has increased by 9 points to 17 percent since 2004. Nationally Latinos increased their share of the vote from 8 percent in 2004 to 9 percent in 2008, according to The Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization.

Experts say the record turnout in Colorado was spurred by countless hours spent on organizing Spanish-speaking populations to vote.

Voto Latino, championed by celluloid celebrities including Rosario Dawson, was among groups mounting large voter registration and outreach efforts in Colorado. The group signed up nearly 30,000 young Latinos in key battleground states from January through the end of the primaries in June.

The biggest boost in turnout came from Latino voters in Colorado, according to Joelle Martinez, an adviser to Voto Latino who assisted with organizing efforts in the state.

“The increase can be attributed to an aggressive voter registration effort and get-out-the-vote activities, which included early and absentee voting,” Martinez said.

On Election Day, Voto Latino focused its efforts specifically on Latino turnout in the Denver area, Pueblo and Weld counties, because those areas have Latino populations higher than 25 percent, according to federal census figures from 2006. Voto Latino partnered with organizations such as the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 and Latina Initiative.

Maria Teresa Petersen, founding executive director of Voto Latino, claims the Latino vote is changing the country’s electorate.

“On a national level we have witnessed a literal shift in the electoral map that corresponds to the larger demographic changes in this country since the last presidential election in 2004,” Petersen said.

The Pew Center reported that the Latino vote was significantly more Democratic this year than in 2004, a year when President George W. Bush snagged an estimated 40 percent of the voting demographic, which ranges in diversity from Mexican-Americans in the southwestern states to Cuban-Americans in Florida and Puerto Ricans in New York.

Petersen notes it would be wrong to take the demographic for granted and assume that Latinos will vote blue.

“The significance of this election demonstrates a potential for the Democratic Party to solidify the Latino vote, but is not necessarily a done deal for Democrats,” said Petersen. “For Republicans to succeed in realigning and galvanizing Latino support in the future, however, [would require] an immediate re-look at the immigration issues that have proved divisive, or a risk of losing this significant electorate for good.”

“The Latino vote was motivated both by Barack Obama’s campaign and growing economic concerns,” Martinez said. “The record increase in Latino voter turnout also had a direct impact on the down ticket, which resulted in victory for both [congressional Democrats] Sen. Mark Udall and Rep. Betsy Markey.”

In Colorado the polls reported that Latinos supported Democrat Obama and running mate Joe Biden over Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin by a ratio of more than 2-1, with 73 percent backing Obama and 27 percent supporting McCain.

Nationally, Latinos preferred Obama by a margin of 67 percent to 31 percent, according to the Pew center.

Growing influence

Along with Voto Latino, organizations such as Mi Familia Vota and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials implemented a three-point strategy to turn out Latino voters on Election Day in Denver, Weld and Pueblo counties.

The plan included distributing door hangers and canvassing door to door in Latino neighborhoods, reminding individuals to vote. The organizations also provided Spanish-language assistance to voters with poll questions.

Latinos accounted for half the population growth in the United States since 2000, with five Colorado counties reporting dramatic increases of 41 percent or more, according to another study released from the Pew center in October.

Five counties — Denver, Douglas, Arapahoe, Garfield and Eagle — all had Hispanic populations increase by more than 41 percent, a statistic that indicates “fast growth,” according to the study, which examined federal census data.

The same counties in the state also reported steady “fast growth” in the 1990s.

Federal estimates peg Colorado’s Latino population at 20 percent of the state’s total population, and the number has shown no signs of declining in the past 10 years.

Despite protests in some corners of an “invasion” of Spanish-speakers to the United States, overall Latino population is just 15 percent of the nation’s total population, and no Colorado county was listed in either the top 25 Latino population centers or highest-growth regions in the country.

For census purposes, the Pew center uses the term “Hispanic”— referring to persons who come from 19 predominantly Spanish-speaking countries or who consider themselves of Spanish heritage from Central and South America, the Caribbean or Spain.