Obama pushes jobs plan as help for Hispanics

WASHINGTON (AP) - Courting Hispanics while promoting his new jobs plan, President BarackObama on Wednesday told a black-tie Latino audience that his $447 billion package of tax cuts and public works spending would put more money in the pockets of Latino workers and business owners and increase opportunities for Hispanics.

The president made his pitch to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 34th Annual Awards Gala. The event is part of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Addressing an important constituency both in the voting population and in Congress, the president kept up his vigorous public relations campaign for his economic measures while also beseeching the crowd to help him pass his education and immigration agenda.

“Lift up your voices,” he told an audience that included Princess Cristina of Spain and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “Make yourselves heard.”

Obama’s economic plan, the administration’s top priority, received polite applause from the crowd. People saved their loudest approval for the president’s assurance that he remained determined to pass a rewrite the nation’s immigration laws to offer a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Blaming Republican resistance, he said: “It’s been a long and frustrating road for all of us”.

Obama said changes in immigration law are key to economic growth and would fulfill what he called “the idea of America.”

“No matter what you may hear, in this country there is no ‘us’ or ‘them.’ There is only ‘us.’ One nation, under God, indivisible,” he said. “And immigrants are part of that American family and a source of our strength.”

In advance of his remarks, the White House said the jobs proposal would lower payroll taxes for about 25 million Hispanic workers and about 250,000 Hispanic-owned businesses, statistics cited by the president to argue his case. Moreover, the White House said the legislation could help the 344,000 Hispanics no longer working as carpenters or as construction laborers because of the recession.

“You know how hard this recession has hit families, especially Latino families,” Obama said.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute also presented its 2011 Chairman’s Award to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar

Source Marcus Atkinson

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Posted in 2011 hispanic economy , barack obama , BarackObama , hispanic economy , illegal immigrants , Immigration Law , latin economy

Census Report: Almost 30% of U.S. Latinos Live in Poverty

More than one in four U.S. Latinos is living in poverty, according to 2010 U.S. Census bureau figures released this week. That’s nearly 27 percent of the country’s 50.5 million Latinos—13.2 million people—and an increase from 12.3 million in 2009.

And according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2011 Kids Count Data Book, 31 percent of Latino kids live in poverty.

The disturbing overall Latino figures are part of a larger report stating that more Americans—15.1 percent or 46.2 million—are living in poverty now than in the 52 years the Census Bureau has been collecting poverty data.

Though Hispanic household income slipped only slightly between 2009 and 2010, the povety figures reflect the larger reality that between 2005 and 2009 the median wealth among Latino households plummeted by 66 percent.

The new report, “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010,” highlights a sole area of improvement for Hispanics: Those of us without health insurance dropped from nearly 15.5 million, or 31.6 percent, in 2009 to 15.3 million, or 30.7 percent, in 2010.

Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard, told the New York Times that the report confirmed that “this is truly a lost decade,” he said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”

“We need to continue make sure that safety net is there for people who are falling into poverty,” says Leticia Miranda, Associate Director of the National Council of La Raza’s Economic Policy Project. “Things like tax credits, unemployment insurance and food stamps are really important while people still don’t have a job. But it’s still important to focus on job creation.”

Source Damarys Ocana

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Posted in Annie E. Casey Foundation , La Raza’s Economic Policy Project , latin economy , latino kids , Latinos poverty , New York Times