California, Latino | featured news

California's elected Republicans have long had a simple approach to illegal immigration: Those who broke the law coming here should leave. But the confluence of politics and personal threat have now put many Republican legislators in Washington and Sacramento in a very different place: eager to embrace an overhaul of immigration laws and willing to consider legal status for some of the country's nearly 12 million illegal immigrants, 3 million of whom live in California.

President Obama is poised to make a bit of history when he visits this Tehachapi Mountain hamlet Monday to dedicate the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument, the nation's first such site to honor a contemporary Mexican American.

The Democratic mayor of Los Angeles says Republican efforts to use Latino speakers at the GOP national convention to win over Latino voters won't work. Antonio Villaraigosa (vee-yah-ry-GOH'-sah) told reporters Tuesday that the GOP "can't just trot out a brown face or a Spanish surname" and expect Latinos to vote Republican. He called that window dressing.

The Anaheim City Council heard public comments for over three hours Wednesday from residents who want voting districts they say will increase Latino representation. But the council rejected the proposal on a 3-2 vote.

Anaheim residents on Thursday told City Council members that they blamed “outsiders” for the violence that welled up during last week’s street protests and warned that the city could be at “grave risk” of another riotous incident.

In a city best known for Disneyland, the Angels and the Ducks, the fatal police shootings of two Latino men over the weekend have uncorked days of furious, sometimes violent protests. The unrest has exposed long-simmering divisions in Anaheim between the glitz of Disney and professional sports and the struggles in some of the less prosperous Latino neighborhoods in Orange County's largest city.