Assemblywoman Quirk-Silva

The Trust Act made its way once more through the California Assembly yesterday by a final vote of 44-22. The legislation was vetoed late last year when it reached the desk of Democratic Governor Jerry Brown. Supporters say the bill authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano will limit deportations fueled by the fingerprint-sharing federal Secure Communities program while restoring confidence between law enforcement and largely immigrant, Latino communities. It heads to the Senate next.

Locally, our ostensibly Democrat assemblymembers joined the state's troglodytic GOP in not supporting the bill. Assemblyman Tom Daly, whose 69th District is the most heavily Latino in Orange County, unsurprisingly voted against it. Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, who edged out Republican Chris Norby last year thanks in no small part to the demographics and boundaries of the newly drawn 65th District, abstained.

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On Tuesday, May 14, the ASUCI DREAMer community and other concerned UCI Anteaters will hold an immigration rally at UCI's Student Center Terrace at noon.

The Student Center Terrace will serve as a platform for students, professors, and activists to voice their reasonable angst over the inaction towards a more comprehensive system of immigration reform that would service the needs of the more than 11 million undocumented citizens in the country; at the very least, issues such as lack of worker benefits for immigrants, denial of educational rights for students, the fucked-up militarization of the nation's borders and staggering numbers of imprisoned undocumented immigrants have yet to be addressed. What the rally will strive for is to spark community awareness through dialogue and discussion of past experiences and knowledge of immigration reform.

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Currently on Capitol Hill, there's a raging debate over what kind of amnesty will America get shoved down its throat (or, conversely, up its tucchus). But you know you're starting to enter the silly season when a U.S. senator starts hailing Disney's entry system for its theme parks as a model on which to create a better United States border and port of entry system for immigrants and visitors.

That's what John Cornyn, Republican senator from Texas just proposed at a hearing on the subject. Telling a packed house of onlookers, he noted, "If biometric systems are good enough for the Magic Kingdom, they're good enough for the USA." He's referring, of course, to Disneyland's recently instituted efforts to take pictures of parkgoers to ensure that people don't pass along tickets among each other.

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International Workers' Day in Orange County will be marked by not one, but two marches in two cities. Starting off this morning, the Orange County Labor Federation will assemble at 11 a.m. outside Anaheim City Hall; from there, a march is to go to a rally in La Palma Park. Later today in SanTana, the Orange County May Day Coalition will host its annual May Day event at 2 p.m. The initial gathering spot, as always, is Sasscer Park on the corner Fourth and Ross streets, with a march and rally will follow.

"The city of Anaheim has gone through a lot, not only with social unrest and civil rights cases but also some of the worst employers are here," says Julio Perez, political director of the OC Labor Federation, of the
chosen location for their mobilization.

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At least you can say this about Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach): He's no Ken Calvert, the House Republican out of Riverside who says he might consider some kind of legal status for members of the undocumented class who jump through hoops, but not full citizenship. Rohrabacher, meanwhile, is among House hardliners reacting to the Senate's 844-page, "Gang of Eight" immigration-reform bill with one of their own that would force people in this country illegally to plead guilty to a crime before applying for citizenship.

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You'll remember earlier this month my story about how Kenton Beshore of Mariners Church in Irvine has become an Aztlanista, much to the concern of his super-wealthy flock. With the amnesty talks in Congress currently backed up due to the Boston bombings, it'll be interesting if Beshore and his other OC evangelical leaders will continue to fight as hard for immigration reform as they did before.

That was the subject of my latest "Orange County Line" commentary for KCRW-FM 89.9.

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Last month, I wrote about how the family of longtime Stanton and Santa Ana police officer Jose Vargas was asking for letters to lift their papi's spirit. This past Friday, unfortunately, I got a new message from the family: God had called Vargas, after a long battle with Parkinson's. Services are pending but will no doubt bring out all the brass of OC's various police departments, who to this day still try to follow in the kind-yet-tough footsteps of Vargas' approach to the Latino community from where he came.

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The American public must be let in on what's going on behind closed doors regarding the federal government's attempts to preserve the full force of its controversial Secure Communities immigration enforcement program, a UC Irvine law professor argues.

"There's a public right to know about issues surrounding pending legislation," Jessica Karp, an adjunct faculty member at UCI, has reportedly said of "secret" meetings on "S-Comm."

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The cover to Nick Schou's 2000 cover story on El Cargadero

Early last week, the New York Times did a so-so story about how there's so few Mexicans left in rural Mexico that any amnesty would probably not motivate more of them to migrate to the United States. I say "so-so" not just because I think the reporter, Damien Cave, is an apologist for the Mexican elite, but because the story was better reported by Los Angeles Times reporter Sam Quinones about 15 years ago, as documented in his awesome True Tales from Another Mexico.

But if the Gray Lady did a middling job, then the Orange County Register just fucked up the story royally, and proved yet again that you can throw all the money you want on a laughable publication--and it'll still be a laughable publication if you don't solve the problem that makes it a laughable story in the first place. See, the Reg republished the Times' piece, only adding a flourish noting that a lot of OC residents came from the region mentioned in the article: Zacatecas.

Um, no shit.

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