Truck selling Salvadoran pupusas in Washington D.C. (Photo: FutureAtlas.com/Flickr)

After two decades of growth spurred by a civil war, natural disasters and rural poverty, the Salvadorn-born population in the United States has reached about 1.1 million people, making it the sixth largest immigrant community in the nation, a new study by the Migration Policy Institute says.

The number of immigrants from one of the smallest countries in Latin America now almost equals the immigrant population from China, which has 200 times as many people and about 500 times as much territory as El Salvador, according to author Aaron Terrazas. About one of every five Salvadorans now lives in the U.S.

The five biggest immigrant communities, according to MPI, are: Mexican, Filipino, Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese.

The study shows that the largest Salvadoran community, with over 270,000 people, is in Los Angeles. New York and Washington D.C. have over 100.000 Salvadoran residents, and other important population centers are Riverside and San Francisco in California, Houston and Dallas in Texas, Miami and Boston. (See map in pdf.)

California and Texas host over half of all immigrants from the Central American nation. But the growth has occurred in many parts of the country: 10 states saw their Salvadoran population increase by more than 10,000 people between 2000 and 2008.

Here’s how Terrazas narrates the evolution of the Salvadoran migration to the U.S. in the last three decades:

As civil wars engulfed several Central American countries in the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans fled their country and came to the United States.

Between 1980 and 1990, the Salvadoran immigrant population in the United States increased nearly fivefold from 94,000 to 465,000. The number of Salvadoran immigrants in the United States continued to grow in the 1990s and 2000s as a result of family reunification and new arrivals fleeing a series of natural disasters that hit El Salvador, including earthquakes and hurricanes.

By 2008, there were about 1.1 million Salvadoran immigrants in the United States.

The report also says that Salvadoran workers are heavily concentrated in the construction and services industries and they tend to have “higher rates of participation in the civilian labor force than immigrant men overall.”

The sheriff, known for his aggressive tactics against undocumented immigrants in and around Phoenix, happily chatted with reporters — even the citizen reporters that were part of a protest against him –at an event on Thursday in Anaheim, Orange County before heading to Mission Bay, San Diego, for a second fundraiser.

The self-described “toughest sheriff in the country” came to California to support an underdog sheriff´s candidate: Bill Hunt in Orange County. On Friday, he did the same for Jay La Sur in San Diego County in a move that is certain to bring the immigration issue to the fore in those races, both to be decided next year.

Watch Pilar Marrero’s video of Sheriff Arpaio’s visit to Anaheim, California.

At first, Arpaio seemed irritated by the protests that awaited him as he arrived at the event in Anaheim. But then he seemed to relish the opportunity to face the cameras in California as he often does in Arizona. “Why are they always following me? When I went to the O’Brien show and the Colbert show in New York they were there too,” he said to puzzled reporters who were asking him about his controversial law enforcement policies.

Pro-immigrant groups organized protests and showed up at the events carrying signs that read “We are human” and chanted anti-Arpaio slogans. “Arriba el pueblo, abajo Arpaio,” (“Up with the people, down with Arpaio”) they repeated, as some played instruments and banged on drums and a Native American burned sweetgrass to chase away bad energy.

Reporters at the event, mostly from Spanish-language media, asked him about his immigration arrests, accusations of racial profiling and the recent report that he is being investigated by the FBI for going after political enemies. “They can say whatever they want, I know we are doing the right thing. I represent the people and the people like what I am doing,” said Arpaio.

Arpaio has been elected five times by his constituents in Arizona. But the federal government (Department of Justice, civil rights division) has its eyes on the sheriff and is investigating his department for allegedly using racial profiling and denying adequate health care to inmates in the county jails. Two separate investigations could lead to a civil lawsuit or a consent decree similar to the one the Los Angeles Police Department was under for several years until sufficient reforms were instituted to pass muster under federal civil rights laws.

Local political observers in California pointed out that Arpaio’s support will help bring in anti-immigrant campaign funds for sheriff’s candidates who are not particularly favored to win, but whose campaigns could help push local law enforcement towards a more active role than they currently have in enforcing immigration law.

“This sounds like something the tea party people can put their money on,” said political analyst and USC professor Sherry Bebitch Jeffe. “By next year, he could become part of the conservative movement that split the Republicans in upstate New York in the recent congressional election,” she added.

Both Orange and San Diego Counties have 287 (g) agreements with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that authorize local officials to enforce federal immigration laws. But those agreements only allow the counties to carry out this function in local jails. It’s similar to the agreement between Sheriff Arpaio’s department and the federal government.

Recently federal authorities revoked an agreement that allowed Arpaio’s deputies to carry out immigration enforcement on the street as well.

Arpaio told the media this week that the Department of Homeland Security’s actions were insignificant. “You know what I did the day after (Homeland Security secretary) Janet Napolitano, whom I have known for many years, did that? I went out and arrested 100 more. We don’t need the federal government, we have state laws and we can enforce federal laws,” Arpaio said before heading into the fundraiser where for $150 attendees could have their photo taken with the Arizona lawman.

“We will try to apply immigration laws in a tough, smart and thoughtful manner,” said Morton to a small group of reporters invited to meet him last week as part of his tour of Southern California.

He said that if people expected ICE to stop doing its job, they would be disappointed. “That is not the point”, said Morton, who is a career prosecutor.

Some changes have been announced by the Obama administration: a change of emphasis from worker raids to desk raids, where the employer’s documentation is audited and employees lose their jobs but aren’t deported, is a major difference.

But some of the announced changes will, in fact, put more pressure on immigrants. The administration announced a larger investment in a program started under the Bush Administration called Secure Communities, that offers resources to allow jails to check the fingerprints of those arrested and scan them for any immigration holds, pending deportation orders or lack of documentation that would make them deportable.

The Obama administration wants to make the program widespread and aims to have it in every jail, including local ones, by 2011.

Morton said that making it “more even” would reduce the accusations of racial profiling.

“We will use technology to check every person that gets arrested against immigration records,” said Morton. “If I was arrested, it would happen to me, that way nobody can say we are focusing on immigrants or certain races”.

That change is not likely to make activists happy because it could transform Secure Communities from a program that aims to deport criminal aliens into a massive deportation tool applied to anyone arrested on any charge, regardless of their guilt or innocence.

Recent studies have shown that this is already happening: according to Human Rights Watch, only 13% of the undocumented immigrants caught by the program were criminals.

Morton also said that he got rid of the arrest quotas formerly set for agents in the field. “That is not the right way to apply the law,” he said.

On another topic, the new leader of ICE said that his office is evaluating immigrant detention facilities to determine their adequacy to hold different kinds of people. For example, ICE recently announced that families would no longer be held at the much-criticized T. Don Hutto facility in Texas.

“We detain all kinds of people,” Morton said. “We have more than 350 contracts with public and private jails to hold our detainees, and we might have to revise some, or build new, more adequate facilities.”

This will be good news for the Corrections Corporation of America, the private company that manages many of the private detention centers for ICE.

Morton said he was bothered by the fact that another ICE program, 287 (g), which trains local police to act as immigration agents, is misinterpreted as a tool for racial profiling. “Most people who request this training are bothered by a gang problem in their neighborhood caused by people who are illegally in the country,” he said.

When it was pointed out to him that one reason 287 (g) has a bad name was its use by Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is under investigation by the Justice Department for potential civil rights abuses, he refused to condemn the sheriff.

“He is being investigated, and he also has a chance to review the new contracts and decide if he wants to stay in the program, like all the others,” Morton said, referring to a recent decision by the Obama administration to review existing 287 (g) agreements.

“We don’t force this on anybody, it’s voluntary,” Morton said. “Also, people have to understand this is a statutory program. We didn’t create it. It’s in the law.”

The first of the marches in Downtown Los Angeles today - Photo: j.r.mchale.

In Los Angeles, there were at least five major organized marches pushing for immigration reform on May Day, three of which started from the same point in the heart of downtown: Broadway and Olympic.

Different groups and local organizations had different routes in mind: the first one started with about 1,500 people and followed a route similar to the mega-march of March 25, 2006.

Another demonstration started later, towards Temple and Alameda, somewhat to the east of the first one. Approximately 1,000 people participated. A third march in the same area during the afternoon gathered only a few hundred people.

Two other groups were marching in the afternoon in Downtown and Echo Park, a neighborhood just west of Dodger Stadium.

Groups of students were to march separately in the southeast area of Los Angeles County in support of the DREAM Act, which would allow undocumented students to regularize their immigration status and gain access to higher education.

The fragmentation of groups dissappointed a local activist, who had hoped for a unified contingent. “It’s too bad, the groups look very small by themselves. I participated in the first one and now I’m in the second one. They don’t take more than a block and a little more each”, said Ricardo Moreno, an immigrant rights activist in Los Angeles. “The groups are divided and to me, ’cause I know all the organizers, it’s about egos.”

California has a high rate of foreclosures. (Photo: La Opinión)

LOS ANGELES — Activists have a pet name for Hope for Homeowners (H4H), the government initiative that’s supposed to help struggling mortgage holders keep their homes: they call it “hoho”.

“It’s a sad kind of humor, but it reflects a reality,” says Kathleen Day of the Center for Responsible Lending, a homeowners advocacy group. “We have yet to see a significant effect of these programs for most people.”

Many people across the country who are –or expect soon to be– unable to continue payments on their mortgages have placed their hopes on H4H, otherwise known as “the Obama plan”. Latinos have been experiencing foreclosures at a higher rate than the rest of the U.S. poulation,  following a decade-long push to increase minority ownership. Figures released this week show that, instead of diminishing, foreclosures are rising quickly.

“I want to know, how much can my mortgage payment be reduced?” asks Norma Ochoa, a woman from Los Angeles that has been keeping up with her payments so far despite losing one of her two cleaning jobs.

Many, like Ochoa, are still waiting for an answer.

“The bank says they can not yet help me. That I need to wait,” she says, at the offices of a local organization that helps people negotiate with banks. “I don’t think I’m gonna be able to continue paying for long.”

RealtyTrac’s latest foreclosure report, released Wednesday, shows that during the first quarter of this year, foreclosure filings increased 13% compared to the previous 3 months.

California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada and Illinois account for almost 60% of all the foreclosure activity in this period. California saw a 35% jump.

The Obama Administration has been proudly touting a recent increase in refinancing, after offering $75 billion in incentive programs and working with the Federal Reserve to drive down interest rates.

Banks that receive help from TARP (the Troubled Assets Relief Program), better known as the bailout, are required to participate in the mortgage refinancing and modification programs. But many homeowners in California and other states have a hard time qualifying. This is because they have lost their jobs or had their homes devalued more than 5 percent below the value of the mortgage, which is the maximum allowed under the federal plan.

Angélica Díaz, an activist who leads homeowner clinics at the East L.A. Community Corporation in Boyle Heights, says that the Hope for Homeowners plan has yet to help the people that need it the most.

“Many people here don’t qualify because in this area homes have lost too much value and the rules don’t allow them to qualify for the modifications,” Díaz says. “Also, if you are current but want to refinance, which is the other option they would have, many can’t qualify because they’ve lost their jobs.”

Many banks accepted a temporary moratorium on mortgages while the Obama Administration presented details of the H4H plan. They have now rescinded most of the moratorium and foreclosures are up sharply.

Activists have to constantly warn homeowners that Obama’s plan is not really a law that forces the banks to do anything, but a series of guidelines and incentives that are mostly voluntary. They hope to help between 6 and 9 million people hold on to their homes. But activists say the foreclosure numbers reflect that banks aren’t going out of their way to participate.

Day, of the Center for Responsible Lending, says that what’s really needed is reductions in the principal of many mortgages, reflecting the decline in property values. Instead of further recapitializing banks through TARP bailouts, she says, the government could take over a percentage of the mortgage debt. This may slow the rise in foreclosures.

In the meantime, many immigrants are falling prey to scam artists who claim they can negotiate with banks to modify mortgages or save their homes. Many have paid thousands of dollars in fees and received nothing in return from these would-be intermediaries, who cannot deliver on decisions that are the banks to make.

Rosario Marín. (Photo: Los Angeles Times)

For years, California politician Rosario Marín, a model Latina conservative, was a rising star in the Republican Party.

Last week, though, after she resigned her state cabinet position due to an investigation into her outside income, Marín saw the state’s Republican-led administration quickly distance itself from her.

As California’s Fair Political Practices Commission investigates whether she improperly pocketed tens of thousands of dollars for giving speeches to companies who had business with her agency, Marín optimistically waits, saying she has done nothing wrong.

“I am at peace with myself, thank God,” she told me the day after her resignation. “I can sleep well every night.”

As an immigrant –she was born in Mexico– with working class beginnings, Marín is one of the few prominent Latina Republican politicians, probably the most well-known in the western United States. She was often controversial, going against the grain of what most Latinos believed politically –for example, working for Pete Wilson, the former California governor who spearheaded anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994. But she kept close to Latino media, she was accessible, gregarious, and easy to talk to (in perfect Spanish), which made her a favorite of the U.S. ethnic and Mexican media.

She often spoke for Republican causes and candidates, was a huge fan of George W. Bush (who she always said was one of her idols), and campaigned for John McCain. She spoke at several Republican National Conventions. In 2000, she was profiled at the convention in Philadelphia as a model Latina Republican, mother of a son with Downs Syndrome, and tireless advocate for people with disabilities.

Republicans –at least the Bush-Rove type– loved her, because she represented a segment of the population they needed to attract to remain politically viable. She had that going for her big time.

There were not many Mexican-born elected officials in the GOP. That’s probably even truer now than when she started, since the party has lost favor with a growing segment of the Latino community as many in its ranks turned to anti-immigrant fervor as a way of life.

For a couple of years, she was the highest ranking Latina in the Bush administration, holding the position of U.S. Treasurer. Although this is a mainly ceremonial post, it’s a long way from city councilwoman of poverty-stricken Huntington Park, Calif. to having your signature printed on dollar bills.

In 2004, she competed in the Republican primary against former Secretary of State Bill Jones for a chance to challenge Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California. Many stories were written about her ability to get over 40% of the Latino vote and take the Senate seat away from the Democrats. But she didn’t even get the support of her former boss Pete Wilson, or her just-elected future boss, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went with Jones, a staple of the good old boy network. She didn’t make it to the general election.

In 2006 though, Arnold gave her a cabinet position as head of the State and Consumer Services Agency, an agency that, according to the official description “oversees the state’s civil rights enforcement, consumer protection and licensing of 2.4 million Californians in more than 255 different professions and also handles the procurement of more than $9 billion worth of goods and services”, among other things.

But last week, Marín quit the position under the weight of investigations for pocketing tens of thousands of dollars by giving speeches, some to companies including Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission is investigating whether she violated state laws, which she has denied.

The governor’s office did not defend her. On the contrary, the next day, a Schwarzenegger press release said the governor “holds his appointees to a much higher standard than even state law requires and the vast majority of everyone in the administration abides by the rules.” They basically dropped her like a hot potato.

But Marín was unfazed. With her characteristic optimism and familiarity, she spoke about feeling distraught that anybody could think she had done anything wrong “after I have been in public services for over 20 years.”

I had spoken to Marín dozens of times, maybe hundreds, through the years, and this was the first time I found her sad and alarmed at the suspicions against her. She denied doing anything wrong and said that she filed the necessary paperwork every year, which was reviewed by many attorneys and that her nominations by the governor and confirmations by the State Legislature proved she was innocent. If there had been something askew in her filings they would have told her, wouldn’t they?

Some time ago, Marín wrote a book, Leading Between Two Worlds: Lessons from the First Mexican-Born Treasurer of the United States. When the Spanish version of the book, Una líder entre dos mundos, came out last year, she toured Mexico to adoring media reviews and interviews.

Her successful career is now on hold, waiting for the findings of the investigation by the California FPPC.

* You can read more from this author at PilarMarrero.com.

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Marrero, who is also from Venezuela, went to see “the Dude” in action with some L.A. youngsters.

You can see more at Studio 360‘s website or you can listen to the piece here.

[Visit post to listen to audio]

Social worker Lourdes Cienfuegos, at right, talks to an Imperial Valley resident. (Photo: La Opinión)

Sara Espinosa chose to sleep on the street rather than leave her 12-year-old son to spend the night alone at a men-only homeless shelter. As a consequence, Sara, her son and her two daughters have been sleeping in her car.

Espinosa is one of hundreds of people in conditions of extreme poverty in Imperial Valley, one of the poorest counties in California and the nation, La Opinión reporter Claudia Nuñez wrote Wednesday.

Here, the unemployment rate has already passed 24 percent, almost four times the national average, and one out of every 18 families has lost their home.

While Imperial Valley is an extreme case, a report released last week by the Pew Hispanic Center shows the economic recession “is having an especially severe impact on employment prospects for immigrant Hispanics,” according to Rakesh Kochhar, the center’s associate director for research.

The unemployment rate for foreign-born Hispanics increased from 5.1 percent to 8 percent, or by 2.9 percentage points, from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008. During this same time period, the unemployment rate for all persons in the labor market increased from 4.6 percent to 6.6 percent, or by 2 percentage points.

Hispanics born in the U.S. are not doing much better, and the same can be said of blacks, the report said.

“Blacks are currently the only major racial and ethnic group whose unemployment rate is in double digits, 11.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008,” Kochhar wrote. “Native-born Hispanics had the second highest rate of unemployment (9.5 percent) in the fourth quarter of 2008. However, changes in the employment rate and other indicators of labor market activity during the recession have been less severe for them than for foreign-born Hispanics.”

Unemployment is affecting foreign-born Hispanics more than the rest of the population.

La Opinión reported that this ethnically-differentiated effect of the recession is also affecting Californians in particular: while 7 percent of white workers in the state are unemployed, 11.5 percent of blacks and 9.4 percent of Hispanics are without a job. (It is important to note that unemployment rates don’t include people who are no longer actively seeking work and are not considered participants in the labor force).

“Unfortunately, the less education immigrants have, the fewer opportunities they have of getting another job if they are fired,” said Jorge Mario Cabrera, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “We’re seeing some women go out on the street to sell products, to try and help with the family income.”

In this dismal context, an Obama ally, former energy secretary Federico Peña, said the stimulus plan signed into law by the president will benefit Latinos greatly.

Peña told Spanish wire service Agencia EFE Latinos may benefit from tax refunds of $400 for most workers ($800 for couples,) from measures intended to spur consumption, additional funding for education, and provisions to extend health coverage and other supports to those who lose their jobs.

In New York and Los Angeles, the effects of the economic slowdown are hitting hard in one important sector of immigrant communities: small business owners.

Ramon Murphy in his Red Apple Grocery in Manhattan. (Photo: Daily News)

A fixture of many New York neighborhoods, the bodega, is fast disappearing from many corners. The president of the Bodega Association of the United States claims that “every day, two or three bodegas close in New York.” High rents and leases that force them into rent hikes are their main enemy.

In L.A., vendors at the Grand Central Market — many of them Latino — are facing a similar situation. Business is down, way down, and they can’t meet rent payments.

A vendor at the Grand Central Market in Los Angeles. (Photo: La Opinión)

A survey done by the USA Latin Chambers of Commerce said rent hikes and increasing operational costs threatens to put 61% of New York City bodegas out of business, according to a recent article in El Diario/La Prensa.

One example is Luis Sánchez, a bodeguero on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan who says his rent goes up 7% every year. He started paying $2,940 a month three years ago and now his rent is at $3,400 — he’s even had to fire his own brother recently.

Sánchez told El Diario:

If the landlord doesn’t want to negotiate a new lease, with the next increase I’m going to get to the extreme of not being able to generate enough to pay the bodega’s expenses.

According to the article, there are 16,500 bodegas in the city and 85% have Latino owners; Latinos own between 42% and 45% of the 185,000 small businesses in New York.

The Daily News’ Albor Ruiz wrote,

Lost in the din about hundreds of billions to bail out banks, the auto industry and financial institutions is the fact that the 9,000 New York bodegas are becoming a dying breed. If something is not done, it won’t be long before they become extinct, leaving thousands without a means of support.

The disappearance of bodegas is the economic crisis hitting at the most basic level, and its impact in human terms is very real. After all, since the mid-1980s, small businesses have been the creators of the majority of new jobs in the city.

Ruiz interviewed Ramón Murphy, the president of the Bodega Association, who said that every time a bodega closes, “two or three families suffer.”

“Last year, 137 of them went down only along Broadway from 230th St. to 197th St.,” Murphy said. “Hundreds of bodegueros are throwing in the towel. Every day, two or three bodegas close in New York.”

[In addition to rent and cost increases, Gov. David Patterson proposed in his budget plan a higher tax on soft drinks and their containers which would have impacted bodegas, whose owners protested Thursday at City Hall. Patterson quickly admitted his idea wasn't likely to pass in the State Legislature.]

In L.A.’s Grand Central Market, in the meantime, the era of taquerías full of customers and heavy traffic in front of the fruit and vegetable stands is over, La Opinión reported.

“We’re almost working for free,” vendor Jerónimo Reyes told the newspaper. He spends almost $10,000 a month on the rent for two stands.

With sales down by 50%, over 30 of the market’s vendors decided not to pay their February rent to try to force the landlord into renegotiating their leases. Some have received eviction notices as a consequence. Armando Ramos, another vendor, threatened,

Everyone knows we signed a contract and we have to fulfill it. What we want is to reach an agreement with the owner (Anne Peaks, owner of The Yellin Company), for her to tell us when she wants her market empty so we leave it for her like that.

“If we had an income,” Jerónimo Reyes added, “there would be no problem in making our payments. But the current situation is difficult.”

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The delay in Congresswoman Hilda Solís’ confirmation as secretary of labor hasn’t kept two ambitious politicians from racing hard to replace Solís as the U.S. representative from California’s 32nd District in Los Angeles.

Gil Cedillo.

There is no official election date yet –it has to be set by the governor after the seat is vacated–, but there has already been some drama and controversy behind the scenes between State Sen. Gil Cedillo and Board of Equalization Vice Chair Judy Chu.

First, the potential candidacy of another Latina, State Sen. Gloria Romero, spurred talk of a division in the vote that would cause the loss of a seat that a Latino has held for about 25 years.

But Romero decided instead to focus her ambitions on an obscure race for School Superintendent of California that she had planned beforehand.

Some suggested there had been pressure to get Romero not to run for this seat, and that Hilda Solís herself was behind the effort to get her long-time political ally Judy Chu to succeed her. Solís has not officially endorsed anyone, but it’s widely known that Chu and her have been tight and have supported each other’s campaigns for many years.

Richard Polanco, the godfather of state Latino politics, long retired from political life and now a lobbyist, is pushing hard on behalf of Cedillo, most famously known for his unsuccessful push, year after year, in favor of driver’s licenses for the undocumented.

Judy Chu.

“I am an effective leader with a proven record,” said Cedillo. “I’m used to fighting and I think I’ll have the (support of) the majority of the Latino community.”

Cedillo has the support of a majority of the state Latino caucus, with the exception of Kevin de Leon and Ed Hernandez, State Assembly members who represent portions of the area that is part of C.D. 32. They are with Chu.

Cedillo’s senate district borders the Congressional district, but is not in it. He also has the support of several of California Latino Congress members, but it’s unclear how that can help him at the local level.

Some, like Antonio Gonzalez, of the William C. Velasquez Institute, argue that this is a Latino seat, and that it should probably stay that way. C.D. 32 is a working class district that is 62% Latino.

“Traditionally, Latinos have elected candidates of their choice to this seat since 1982,” Gonzalez said.

Both candidates will fight hard and get plenty of money to run, he added, “but the district is Latino, is full of immigrants and Cedillo has quite a name among them, the activists love him, la raza no se va a dejar… (la raza won’t allow it.)”

But Judy Chu, who was mayor of Monterey Park, the city with the highest concentration of Chinese immigrants in the country and former assemblywoman from the area, has a lot of local support.

“There is no one that knows the people of the district better than I do. I taught students at East L.A. College and I was elected nine times in the area in the last 23 years,” said Chu. “Besides, I have the endorsement of 70 local elected officials.”

Last week, she got one of the most powerful endorsements in Los Angeles County: that of the king-making county AFL-CIO. Many speculate that the labor federation wouldn’t dare go against the wishes –or the close friends– of the person nominated by President Obama to be secretary of labor.

In any case, if Solís is confirmed to Obama’s cabinet, the race is certainly on.

Los Angeles’ La Opinión and New York’s El Diario/La Prensa, two of the nation’s oldest Spanish-language dailies, made public their endorsements of the Democratic candidate on Friday.

Both newspapers are owned by ImpreMedia which bills itself as, “The No. 1 Hispanic News and Information Company in the U.S. in Online and Print.” [In the interest of full disclosure, Feet in Two Worlds has worked with editors and reporters at both papers.] The two dailies carry considerable weight in the Hispanic communities in Los Angeles and New York, and beyond.

El Diario ran its endorsement on the cover, under the headline: “Necessary Change. A vote for Obama.” [The full text is available in Spanish and English.]

“Our country is perched on the edge of a cliff,” the newspaper said. “We are staring down a growing economic crisis.”

It added the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have “no end in sight,” and in the U.S., families have suffered from “stagnant wages, and the rising costs of everything from gasoline to food to health care.

Today, there are more children living in poverty in this country than there were a decade ago. And on principles of fairness and humanity, we have gone backwards.

Our next president must have the capacity, judgment and vision to restore confidence, both here and abroad. El Diario/La Prensa endorses Senator Barack Obama as the leader ready to redirect the United States of America towards its promise.

La Opinión, in turn, said the U.S. needs “a different vision and a new focus to the problems that have been dragging on for decades. Barack Obama is the right person to begin a new cycle of renewal as President of the United States.” [Here's the full text, in Spanish and English.]

Obama personifies the change this country needs. He has demonstrated that he is a different kind of Democrat, one with a profound social conscience, one who values the role of the individual as agent of change. Obama’s platform is practical, recognizing that there are no magical solutions, and that we will need the commitment and efforts of all of us.

As for John McCain, the newspapers were pretty harsh with him. The Angeleno daily called him “a disappointment,” while the New York paper said the Republican “can’t see the forest for the trees” on Iraq and Afghanistan and “has run an angry and divisive campaign.”

“We supported him during the primaries last February as the most attractive Republican candidate,” La Opinión said of McCain, “but he is not the same today as he used to be. He has replaced his moderation with a rigid ideological orientation to please his party’s conservative base.”

Pointing to the issues most of their readers care about, the newspapers reflected on the candidates’ positions on the economy, education, the foreign wars, healthcare, and –of course– immigration.

“Both candidates have a decent record in this matter,” La Opinión acknowledged, “although we feel that, in the present political climate, Obama would have the better chance to get comprehensive immigration passed.”

El Diario said, “While Senator John McCain once appeared as a reasonable interlocutor on immigration reform, he gradually pandered to Republican ultra conservatives by promoting a two-step process emphasizing border enforcement. Senator Obama clearly outlines a far superior plan that will take a smarter approach to immigration, including bringing undocumented immigrants out of the shadows.”

Obama appeared first, on Sunday, and McCain the next day. They were both well received but not with the same fervor: Obama got a bigger crowd, strongest applause, and two times more press.

By the time McCain came around on Monday, the press corps was diminished greatly, many activists didn’t show up for lunch –the overflow room that was full on Sunday was virtually empty on Monday- and the excitement level had noticeably dropped.

It’s completely anecdotal evidence, of course, but it shows that the Latino groups and activist crowd that usually attend the NCLR conferences support what the polls are saying. The latest Gallup Poll of Latinos shows a 30 point difference in support between Obama and McCain. Obama is getting close to 60 percent and McCain has about 29 percent.

That is a big advantage, but probably not enough to assure that a strong McCain push won’t take him closer to the famed 40% that President Bush got twice, and a chance to win in western states that could prove crucial to him.

In the current environment, where the Republican brand is “damaged” – this was the word used by a McCain person on a panel on Tuesday – a 60% latino vote for Obama is not impressive. He should get closer to the 78% of Latinos that voted Democratic in the primary to really show he’s got them, and to approach what Bill Clinton got in ‘96.

That’s why, behind closed doors, campaign operatives for Barack Obama were meeting with activists and other Latino leaders who were previously close to Hillary Clinton to set the scene for the upcoming general election campaign.

Many are already on board, including pollster Sergio Bendixen, who was famous for uttering the phrase, “Latinos have not shown an inclination for supporting Black candidates in the past,” when he was working for Hillary. Bendixen is now going to be doing strategy and focus groups with prospective Latino voters to fine tune the Obama message and get those not-so-inclined Latinos that he mentioned before to vote for Obama after all.

On the Republican side, former Bush Latino advertising guru Lionel Sosa is now with the campaign. Sosa was so upset about the tone of the Republican primary campaign –where all were trying to out-Tancredo Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo and his anti-immigrant fervor- that he crossed over to the Democratic side to work with New Mexico Governor – and one time presidential candidate - Bill Richardson.  He is now back in the Republican fold doing Spanish-language ads and strategy for McCain.

McCain is walking a tightrope on the issue of immigration. After taking the lead in 2006 to try and pass immigration reform, and taking a step back in 2007, still supporting the issue but not really involved in any negotiations, McCain took a different view during the primaries and in particular, during one Republican debate at the Simi Valley Reagan Library.

In that debate, McCain was asked about his support and sponsorship of immigration reform and if he would support it were it to come back. He said that it wouldn’t come back and that, in any case he wouldn’t support it because the American people didn’t want it.

On Monday, and in recent weeks, he has been talking about ensuring the security of the border first, creating a temporary worker program –the original Bush plan- and dealing humanely with the 12-million undocumented, who he calls “God’s creatures” in a recent ad.

At the NCLR conference he took some questions – Obama didn’t – and was confronted with displeasure about federal immigration raids, requests for assurance that he will support immigration reform once again, and other immigration-related questions. He said he was committed to reform but after ensuring the border is secure.

Many activists believe that without dealing with the whole problem there is no way the border can be secured and are not happy with this answer.

On Obama’s side, there are still some activists, particularly women, who have a hard time believing that the senator from Illinois can be as worthy a nominee for Latinos as the much loved Hillary Clinton.

On the first day of the conference, farm worker union legend Dolores Huerta told me that she would support Obama, “because we can do nothing else.” But she still looked pained by the idea of having to cast a vote for the guy who took it away from the first woman president-to-be. Huerta was a vocal and active surrogate for Clinton during the primaries, appearing on stage with her in front of Latino audiences throughout California.

Things are likely to get more intense in the following weeks as McCain’s campaign tries to organize Latino Republicans and evangelical voters to join his side, and Obama’s deploys hundreds of Latino organizers to do voter registration and put the word out about their man.

That famed “sleeping giant” – a term often applied to Latino voters – is probably gonna hear a big alarm clock ringing incessantly from now till November.

Pilar Marrero is the political editor and a columnist for La Opinión, and a reporter with Feet in Two Worlds.

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