>On Behalf Of Tom Lehman
>
> What makes you think that because someone is a Latino, that makes
> them a labor
> left Democrat voter? Or even a voter at all?
Well, the politics are somewhat different state to state, with more traditional, often more conservative Hispanics (older more heavily Spanish blood) in Texas and New Mexico, but in California, latinos doubled their voting rates between 1994 and 1998 with overall non-white voters going from 20% of the voting population to 40% of the voting population.
As to being prolabor, latinos have been extremely solid labor votes. In 1998, latinos voted overwhelmingly against the anti-labor Prop 226 ("paycheck protection'); in fact, they voted against in higher numbers than their votes against the anti-bilingual education initiative on the same ballot. The speaker of the California state assembly is latino and a former labor official, so the links between the new latino political establishment and labor unions are extremely tight in the state.
> Btw, the INS hasn't been busting non-union building trades
> contractors who use
> illegal or under age illegal immigrants as scabs for some months now!
> Clinton/Sweeney policy?
The INS has been going through a full-scale review of their workplace raid policy, largely because of complaints that employers were using them to deport workers whenever unions began organizing. Instead of calling the INS, the unions should be calling the Labor Dept and hit them up under Fair Labor Standards Act. The whole thrust of the new AFL policy is to bust the employers, not the workers, immigrant or otherwise. We need to build labor solidarity across borders and busting workers here won't help that.
-- Nathan Newman