Today Mayor Bloomberg will sign off on two hefty pieces of immigration legislation that will maintain New York's reputation as one of the most immigrant-friendly cities in the nation.

The two laws, which passed 40-7 in City Council at the end of February, are a reaction to Secure Communities, the highly controversial federal solution to immigration-enforcement that expanded to New York last May. Under that plan, the fingerprints of anybody passing through local or state jails are sent to the Department of Homeland Security and run through its database. If a match is found showing that a suspect is an illegal immigrant or is a non-citizen with a criminal record, a "detainer" will likely be issued, requesting that the police hold the person until he or she is handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

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The New York State Republican Party put out its post-election memo over the weekend and -- after blaming President Obama for the ills of the world (and the NYS GOP) -- Chairman Ed Cox echoed what political experts have been saying since Tuesday (and we've been saying for the last five years): Republicans need to embrace Hispanic voters.

For the most part, the memo is NYS GOP Chairman Ed Cox's campaigning to keep his job -- we got a copy, and Cox points to"some" local victories, but blames failures in local races on the large number of voters who turned out for President Obama. He makes no mention, however, of the party's unpopular positions on many social issues -- like abortion, immigration, and gay marriage -- that often make Republicans look like hateful, bible-beating dopes (ref: Todd Akin).

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www.hotmexchili.com

As we've chronicled, there is a war going on between the labor union that represents Central Park horse-carriage drivers and animal rights activists who think keeping horses in midtown Manhattan is dangerous and inhumane.

Now the activists are using illegal immigrants as PR ammo against the union.

The Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages sent us an e-mail this morning with the subject line "Illegals in Horse Carriage Trade." In the e-mail, the group outlines how the union employs illegal immigrants, one of whom "foolishly lied about an animal activist, Roxanne Delgado, attacking him at the hack line."

The group says another "illegal" was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers about six weeks prior. 

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Undocumented immigrants before being arrested outside the DNC.

Charlotte police arrested ten undocumented activists after they shut down an intersection just blocks from the Democratic National Convention in a coordinated act of civil disobedience.

The activists, all passengers on the Undocubus as part of the No Papers No Fear campaign that we wrote about earlier today, got off their bus at the corner of Fourth and Tryon in downtown Charlotte at 4pm, then led supporters and a substantial press entourage racing through the streets a few blocks northeast to the site of their action. Once in the intersection, they dropped a large banner and sat on it, holding up signs that read "Undocumented."

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Arlene Gottfried

A week since we reported on Maria Montealegre, an undocumented immigrant who faces eviction for making complaints against one of the worst landlords in Manhattan, she might be well on her way to becoming a legal immigrant.

The Washington Heights resident, along with Andres Mares Muro (from the Mirabal Center) visited the Mexican Consulate and were told that Montealegre qualifies for a "U visa," which would make it easier for her and her family to get into a shelter.

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The United States Supreme Court moments ago handed down a ruling on whether Arizona's controversial "breathing while brown" immigration law violates the Constitution.

Details of the Court's decision are unclear at the moment -- it literally just happened a few minutes ago -- but according various media reports, the court ruled 5-3 to uphold the most controversial portion of the law, which allows the state to check the immigration status of anyone stopped by police if there's "reasonable suspicion" that the person is in the country illegally. In other words, it gives local cops the power to act as immigration officers, despite the fact that immigration enforcement is currently the responsibility of the federal government -- regardless of whether the feds actually enforce it.

The court, however, struck down three other provisions of the law.

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Dharun Ravi faced deportation after bullying a Rutgers student into jumping off the George Washington Bridge. However, he's not going anywhere -- the feds gave him a pass.

Despite having bullied a gay college freshman into committing suicide, Rutgers spy-cam creep Dharun Ravi won't be deported, immigration officials say.

That, of course, is bullshit -- especially when you consider some of the other people (who didn't directly cause someone to kill himself) whom the feds have been quick to boot back across the border.

Ravi, 20, was released from jail this morning after completing 20 days of a 30-day jail sentence after getting convicted in March of multiple counts of second-degree bias for spying on his Rutgers University roommate Tyler Clementi, in September 2010. After Ravi broadcast over the Internet video of Clementi making out with a man, Clementi committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

Ravi, an Indian-born permanent resident of the United States, faced deportation after his conviction. However, the feds are letting him stay put. 

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Wikipedia

Congressman Blake Farenthold

President Barack Obama announced last week his plan to no longer deport children who were brought into the country illegally by their parents in a policy shift that the far-right is calling "backdoor amnesty."

The spirit of the president's new policy is to not punish the roughly 800,000 undocumented children who technically broke the law by illegally crossing the border, but did so by no fault of their own -- they did so at the directive of their parents.

Enter Texas Congressman Blake Farenthold, who opposes the president's plan because, well, children "have a say" in whether they cross the border illegally, which, of course, they don't -- they're fucking children.

His rationale is even more asinine than his claim.

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Steven Thrasher

Neil Munro, of The Daily Caller, interrupted Obama's immigration announcement

Update: Listen to the Voice's exclusive audio of what White House heckler Neil Munro actually said.

WASHINGTON -- President Obama's Rose Garden announcement of a kind of DREAM Act-like executive branch workaround was hijacked by a "journalist" named Neil Munro of the conservative website the Daily Caller. (You know, Tucker Carlson's totally legit publication, which recently took traffic trolling to the level of giving a real gun away every day.)

As Obama tried to talk about creating what he called a "stopgap" (pointedly neither "amnesty" nor a "pathway to citizenship") for the undocumented children of immigrants brought to the United States as young children, Obama was interrupted twice by Munro.

This was our first time to the White House and the first Voice appearance in awhile. Little did we know, as we stressed about adhering to White House press protocol, this guy was going to blow up next to us!

Without the exchange, Obama's news would have created enough fireworks on its own. As he acknowledged in his speech, the latest version of the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act has been stalled in Congress for the past couple of years. Its basic tenets -- that minors who have never broken the law and are undocumented by no fault of their own should have a way to stay legally in the United States, if they go to college or join the military -- have been supported at one time or another by politicians as varied as John McCain, George W. Bush, and the late Ted Kennedy. Still, more than a decade after it was first introduced by Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican Orin Hatch, it's always died in the Senate, despite being quite popular with voters and among the least controversial proposed immigration reforms.

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There has been the expected nuclear hay made by Republicans out of President Obama's decision to give temporary relief to the children of undocumented immigrants in lieu of the D.R.E.A.M. Act passing. We were in the Rose Garden to witness the first attack personally, as an Irish immigrant, of all people, wouldn't allow the president to even finish his statement on his planned immigrant executive order.

If there is one thing conservatives love more than tax breaks it's Ronald Reagan, and you can't look at Reagan's history without remembering the Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted the dreaded "a word" (amnesty, that is, something Obama pointedly said his plan will not do). But a lot of conservatives try to forget their beloved Reagan signed amnesty into law and said, "I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here, even though some time back they may have entered illegally."

Whatever happened to the three million people Reagan granted amnesty to a quarter century ago? Did they succeed in ripping the nation to shreds, destroying American industry, and murdering gringos left and right, much as Reagan's disciples predict would happen if such a bill would become law (or even Obama's much more tepid stopgap executive order) today?

Actually, quite the opposite.

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