This week, we learned from a Justice Department report that the White House interfered in the hiring of immigration judges by politicizing the hires. In other words, if the candidates met the conservative criteria or were recommended by Republican members of Congress, they were hired. If they were determined to be liberal or Democrats, they were shown the door.

This month we learned from federal translator Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, who worked the Postville raid in May 2008, and who reported his eyewitness observations last week to Congress before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law, that there were some "irregularities" in the judicial system in Postville.

Among the most blatant were:

1. The court failed to maintain a physical separation and operational independence from the ICE prosecution.

2. There was inadequate access to legal counsel.

3. The court failed to provide a level playing field for the (centralized) prosecution and the (fragmented) defense.

4. At initial appearance there was no meaningful presumption of innocence.

5. Many defendants did not appear to understand their rights, particularly the meaning and consequences of waiving their right to be indicted by a grand jury.

6. There was no bail hearing, as bail was automatically denied pursuant to an immigration detainer.

7. The heavier charge of aggravated identity theft, used to leverage the Plea Agreement, was lacking in foundation and never underwent the judicial test of probable cause.

8. Many defendants did not appear to understand their charges or rights, insisting that they were in jail for being in the country illegally (and not for document fraud or identity theft), and insisting that they had no rights.

9. Many defendants did not know what a Social Security Number is or what purpose it serves. Because “intent” was an element of each of the charges, many were probably not guilty, but had no choice but to plead out.

10. The denial of bail, the inflated charge, and the leveraged Plea Agreement combined to create, for the many sole providers whose families were put in jeopardy, a situation of duress under which the pleas were obtained. Under these circumstances, the pleas, in many cases, may have been coerced.

11. At sentencing, the judges had no discretion to administer justice, as they were presented with a binding and coerced Plea Agreement.

And today, we learn that the irregularities that occurred in the Postville courts, to which Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas testified to before Congress, were premeditated and came complete — with a how-to manual.

A disturbing report was released this week by the Justice Department. In the 140-page document entitled An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General, it was uncovered that under Attorney General John Ashcroft and partially continuing under Alberto Gonzalez, the selection of Immigration Judges (IJ) was based on their political leanings.

According to a passage in the report:

An internal EOIR e-mail from an ACIJ to the CIJ, dated June 30, 2003, stated that Laura Baxter, a Senior Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General, had recently informed EOIR that “the Dept. is going to take a greater role in IJ hiring.” The e-mail noted further that Baxter “emphasized that she wanted us to know that this is coming from the AG [John Ashcroft].” Both EOIR Director Rooney and Deputy Director Ohlson told us that they were not aware of such an initiative at the time.

In October 2003, an exchange of e-mails between Baxter and Sampson, who had just left the White House Counsel’s Office to become a Counselor to Attorney General Ashcroft, showed that the White House
and the OAG had recently taken an interest in IJ hiring. For example, an October 8, 2003, e-mail from Sampson to Baxter stated that “the White House may recommend” two candidates for IJ positions, and that
Sampson wanted to send “folks in the White House” a document detailing a proposed new process for hiring IJs. Attached to the e-mail was a draft document, entitled “Appointment of Immigration Judges.”

The one line that says …"the White House and the OAG had recently taken an interest in IJ hiring…" taken with another revelation from the report that reads, "We also found that IJ candidates were provided by various Republican Members of Congress," serve as proof of how extreme conservatives have steadily and successfully been able to influence the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, along with, the immigration judicial system, by ensuring that only lawyers in solidarity with their political views would be hired to preside over immigration cases.

Given the anti-immigrant political rhetoric supported and continued by the Republican Party, and apologized for by Senator McCain, the increase in worksite raids, the railroading of illiterate immigrants through the immigration courts, the profitable contracts with for-profit companies to build and maintain immigration detention centers and the recent announcement by Assistant Homeland Secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Julie Myers of a soon-to-be implemented policy of self-deportation, leads to the highly probable conclusion that this Administration knowingly approved and has manufactured a strategy to deny undocumented immigrants the "rule of law."

This past Sunday, over 1,000 people marched the streets of Postville, Iowa to protest the nation's largest immigration raid. The protesters, men, women and children, joined together in crying out against the working conditions at the Agriprocessors plant, as well as, the detention/deportation of over 300 workers.

One Postville marcher declares his disapproval against the way immigration is enforced by the federal government.
(Source: The Iowa Independent: Lynda Waddington)

Yet, had it not been for the conscience-stricken federal interpreter who came forward to reveal how the federal government railroaded these undocumented workers into deportation, the height of the injustice of the system would not have been brought to light.

Nor would it have stirred the interests of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who visited with Postville immigrant families this past Saturday and will be holding a press conference tomorrow in Washington, D.C. to unveil the results of their fact-finding mission, and to voice a special request of Congress on behalf of the families left behind from the raid who are struggling on a daily basis to live.

The secretive and isolationist nature of how the federal government conducts deportations and immigrant detentions naturally lends itself to abuse of the system and the erosion of human rights. By failing to make the process transparent — from blocking out the windows on the buses transporting apprehended immigrants and denying due process of law, to depriving families of personal contact with detainees — the government is creating a hidden system.

It is precisely that concept of "A Hidden System" that is the title of a new video by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR). Documenting the practices and impact of this federal policy that is part of an overall broken immigration system, the video achieves in spotlighting a department of the government that critics of illegal immigration hail as working perfectly.

However, as the video shows, the impact of these enforcement practices creates an undue emotional and physical hardship on families and children that must be seen to be believed:

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Running for the presidency of the United States can make a person do some weird stuff — like changing positions on an issue which at one time was considered the right thing to do and suddenly is considered to be too sympathetic to a constituency under attack.

The latest example of "changing the course of political discourse" is Sen. McCain's stance on affirmative action. ABC News reports that Sen. McCain has reversed himself on the issue.

Senator John McCain

However, before he gets too comfortable in endorsing a bill that would eliminate race and gender considerations back in his home state of Arizona, he better seriously consider how this impacts not just Hispanics in civilian life, but in the one arena that he never passes up professing a great love for when appearing before a Latino audience — the military.

All too often, the human element is excluded from the debate on what to do about undocumented immigrants. Because of the rampant hostility manufactured by some self-interest groups, we are all supposed to believe that undocumented migrants will never amount to anything but a drain on our society.

The problem is, though we know that assumption to be false, there are not enough examples known to counteract it. So, whenever a success story is discovered, it deserves to be shared — to inspire the undocumented that there is still hope for their future and to enlighten those of us who have forgotten that the human spirit will overcome any obstacle placed in its way.

Dr. Quinoñes-Hinojosa journeyed from being an undocumented migrant farm worker to a respected brain surgeon.
(Source:Reader's Digest)

Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa's story comes to Latina Lista courtesy of a new interactive discussion site called Big Think.

Twenty years ago, Dr. Alfredo Quinoñes-Hinojosa hopped a border fence from Mexico into the United States and became a migrant farm worker, living in the fields in a broken-down camper he bought for $300.

When told he would probably be a farm worker for the rest of his life, he signed up for English classes at a community college, where one of his teachers encouraged him to apply to UC-Berkeley. There, he developed a passion for science, and showed remarkable aptitude. He went on to Harvard Medical School and graduated with honors, followed by a residency in neurosurgery at UC-San Francisco, where he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in developmental and stem cell biology.

He later received the American Association of Neurological Surgeons Ronald Bittner Award. Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa is now an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Oncology at Johns Hopkins and serves as the Director of the brain tumor program at the The Johns Hopkins Bayview campus. There, his focus is on the surgical treatment of primary and metastatic brain tumors, with an emphasis on motor and speech mapping during surgery.

News released this week shows that as of July 1, 2008, there are one million net new Latino voters added to the rolls for this next presidential election.

(Source: www.patrickruffini.com/ research)

The surge of voters is a result of the more than 500,000 new Latino voters who turned out in California and Texas during the primaries. These two states account for 50 percent of Latino voters nationwide, according to the data gathered by the William C. Velasquez Institute.

With these new figures, it's easier to see how the Latino vote really be classified as a swing vote in this election. After all, that's a million more votes that weren't anticipated to make a difference.

Yet, the results of a new Pew report show that when it comes the the Latino vote, the swing has already started swinging and may have just already swung to one side.

Today, the Obama campaign released a new Spanish-language ad entitled "Our Own Road." The ad strives to connect Obama's background with the life realities of most Latinos and, given his life story, it's not a hard stretch. From the time Obama made known his mixed race background and his childhood with a single mother, many young Latinos latched onto his candidacy.

(Source: dreamacttexas.blogspot.com)

Taking a lesson from McCain, Obama's ad also touches on another issue that the other half of the Latino electorate identifies with — military service. And of course, just for good measure, a reference to immigration reform is thrown in too.

On a conference call with Congressman Becerra and representatives of the Obama campaign, the congressman was asked what the difference was between Obama's ad and McCain's "God's children" ad.

Becerra said that McCain's ad spoke "to" Latinos whereas Obama's ad spoke "with" us.

Yet, in an ad that has to remind people that Latinos are also "God's children," that's not speaking to people, as much as, it is speaking at them.

And usually when somebody is speaking at a person, the lines of communication are only open one way.

The stories started trickling over the community listserve a few weeks ago. A woman whose mother was born in 1951 along the Texas-Mexico border by a midwife was having trouble getting a passport.

It seems passport officials didn't believe she was an American citizen even though the family supplied documents like records of her elementary school, certificate of Baptism, Death Certificates of both parents, and the property listed under the woman's father's name in Raymondville Texas. The officials said that the midwife listed on the birth certificate couldn't possibly have assisted in her birth (how they know, I'm not sure) but the family basically feels the government is accusing the mother of lying about being a citizen.

Mireya Salgado, a Porter High School teacher, looks at her birth certificate as she sits on a curb Friday on Shary Avenue, near where she was born more than five decades ago.
(Source: Brad Doherty/The Brownsville Herald)

So now, the family has to supply records of any brothers and sisters who attended schools, employment history of both parents (especially the woman's mother), between 1950-1951. The only trouble, and which was quite common in the 1950s, is that the woman's mother didn't work outside the house and her father was a laborer.

Before we could shake our heads in sympathy with this family for the extra 10 miles the government was making this family go just to prove citizenship, there surfaced yet more stories — all the same.

The government is discounting the midwife births of Mexican-American children born along the Texas-Mexico border.

Dolly is getting her act together and while that's usually a good thing for most of those with this name, it isn't for this Dolly — Tropical Storm Dolly, that is.

Proposed trajectory of Tropical Storm Dolly through Texas' Rio Grande Valley.
(Source: National Hurricane Center)

According to the latest advisory issued by the National Hurricane Center:

SATELLITE IMAGES INDICATE THAT DOLLY IS BECOMING BETTER ORGANIZED... ALTHOUGH THE MAXIMUM WINDS REMAIN NEAR NEAR 50 MPH...85 KM/HR... WITH HIGHER GUSTS. GRADUAL STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST...AND DOLLY IS EXPECTED TO BECOME A HURRICANE BEFORE REACHING THE WESTERN GULF OF MEXICO COAST.

The point of impact is calculated to be around Brownsville,Texas. There are reports that people are flocking to the Home Depot stores in the area and stocking up on supplies and materials to board their homes.

The city of Brownsville is giving out sandbags to every resident who brings a proof of residency and a shovel and a multi-agency coordination center is being set up in McAllen to smooth communications between different jurisdictions. The governor of Texas has also activated the National Guard to be on standby in case they're needed.

With all this activity, there is still "an elephant in the room" that no one has openly addressed yet — if evacuation becomes necessary, will the border patrol follow through on their threat of separating the undocumented from the general population?

When writing about immigrant communities, law enforcement and immigration enforcement, it's too easy to focus on everything that is not working.

Yet, there are programs in place that are working. Unfortunately, they don't get the notice they deserve.

In a new feature that will run periodically on Latina Lista, we will focus on those programs that are operating and proving to have a positive impact on the Latino communities.

Our first Spotlight feature focuses on what the Kansas City police department is trying to do to coexist with the local Latino community — they immerse themselves into the culture and language by taking an intensive 10-week training program that includes making them proficient enough to be considered bilingual and places them in the neighborhoods they police to get to know the people, the culture, the local leaders and most importantly, not just to protect them but talk with them.

“I think it's one of the most important things I've done since being with the department,” said Megan Laffoon, an officer for nearly three years and one of the first to finish the department's Spanish language and culture program. “I don't think you can fully serve a community if you can't speak their language.”

The program is in just its second year, and hard evidence of it's effect remains largely anecdotal. But advocates cite numerous examples in which the emerging trust between Hispanics and police has helped with investigations.

The intention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to criminalize all undocumented immigrants caught living in the United States illegally has reached a saturation point with courts in the southwest region of the country.

According to a Dallas Morning News article:

New immigration cases, many of them stemming from misdemeanor arrests, represented 58 percent of all new federal prosecutions in April, dwarfing the number of drug and white-collar crime cases, according to the data.

Even with these misdemeanor arrests, undocumented immigrants must spend time in jail or detention awaiting deportation. If the courts are overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, we can only imagine how the conditions at the detention facilities must be.

Well, thanks to a new report released this week, we know exactly how conditions are in the Pacific Northwest, one of the busiest regions of the country for immigrant deportations.

The report paints a less than rosy picture of detention conditions and it has Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the defensive.

The California Department of Education released a report detailing how the true(er) drop-out rate for California's high school students stands at 24 percent. What was not so interesting was the breakdown by ethnicities:

The new data revealed high dropout rates for minority students: 41.3 percent of black students, 31.3 percent of Native Americans, 30.3 percent of Hispanics, and 27.9 percent of Pacific Islanders. White students had a 15.2 percent dropout rate, while Asians had a 10.2 percent rate.

Uninteresting because it's the same story that's always heard. In fact, when the day comes that African Americans and Latino students surpassed their Anglo and Asian peers, that will be a big story.

Why?

Because somebody will finally see that the key to reversing this dismal tradition has to do with a simple word but a complex concept — expectations.

As the presidential candidates stumped their way across the country from LULAC to NCLR, delivering a slightly altered version of a speech they gave the week before, Latino voters, as all voters, are faced with an interesting dilemma.

The dilemma is trying to decide who is more sincere when delivering canned rhetoric. Though one of the candidates probably didn't see this coming, there is now an easy way to test one man's sincerity.

When it comes to immigration enforcement, outside of ICE or the Department of Homeland Security, only one other law enforcement department has become as synonymous with conducting hunts for undocumented immigrants — Arizona's Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, or the one name that embodies the infamous department, Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Sheriff Joe's "crime suppression" sweeps have catapulted this limelight-loving officer to the forefront of the illegal immigration debate where local politicians are afraid to challenge him in public and the sheriff himself has become so emboldened by his notoriety that he routinely issues press releases and holds court at press conferences to denounce those officials, state or local, who don't agree with him.

In fact, the sheriff considers himself such an authority on how to enforce immigration law, he's currently making the rounds of book stores to sign his latest book Joe's Law: America's Toughest Sheriff Takes on Illegal Immigration, Drugs and Everything Else That Threatens America.

From the title alone, it can be deduced that Sheriff Joe sees himself as a savior of sorts but there's no clearer sign that his perspective is delusional after reading an excellent five-part series on the sheriff and how his focus on immigration enforcement has not only promoted racial profiling by his officers but also has encouraged a climate of trumping up charges against people to justify traffic stops and ignoring the true criminals in his jurisdiction who, it's reported, have been granted carte blanche to committing crimes since Sheriff Joe and his team are too busy scouring the highways and area towns for anyone who looks like they're "illegal."

Juana Villegas DeLaPaz, a Nashville, Tennessee resident, should be happily tired these days since the recent birth of her fourth child. And Villegas DeLaPaz is tired but it's one derived of an emotional ordeal that has drained and depressed this 33-year-old mother — not because of her undocumented status, but because of what local law enforcement subjected her to as she was about to deliver her baby.

Juana Villegas DeLaPaz
(Source: wtvf)

Our thanks to Tim Chavez, publisher of Nashville-based Political Salsa who alerted Latina Lista to the fact that on July 3, 2008, Villegas DeLaPaz was pulled over by Berry Hill, TN police and, who during the course of being questioned, was found to not have a driver's license and was subsequently arrested.

Acting as operatives of ICE's 287(g) program, the Berry Hill police department is authorized to identify those persons who may be undocumented immigrants for deportation proceedings — AFTER they've been arrested.

Yet, in a review of what Berry Hill police did on the eve of our nation's Independence Day, it is clear that their actions violated the purpose of 287(g) and needlessly subjected Villegas DeLaPaz to such emotional terror that it caused her to go into labor and endure the next few days of unspeakable treatment at the hands of those entrusted to protect their communities.

A big part of politics, aside from the candidates stumping from city to city, are the campaign's television advertisements. In some cases, these advertisements outlast the candidates and the race itself.

Usually, the advertisements spotlight the candidates' interaction with the public and the issues of the day. The advertisements should be vehicles to move the campaign along.

Rio Grande Texan Navy veteran Virginia Torres died on July 4, 2008. She was given full military honors.
(Source: Rio Grande Guardian)

That's why, the latest advertisement by the McCain campaign entitled "God's Children" is a puzzlement and a sad commentary on the state of the Republican Party, not to mention, an offensive piece of footage to all Latinos, whether Republican, Democrat or Independent, who should demand for its immediate removal from the airwaves.

Depending on the source, recent headlines have touted Obama and McCain of either "pandering" for the Latino vote or "courting" it.

Given that both men have been or will be appearing at national Latino or Latino-participant events (NALEO, LULAC, NCLR, UNITY 08), it's obvious they both want to be seen as supporting Latino causes.

But do they really? Do they dare to make their true stands on the issues known before November 4, 2008?

Each claims that he has but while speeches touch on issues of interest to Latinos, in true political style, the issues are acknowledged but not explored. Talk with no substance.

How is a voter to know which candidate will act in her/his best interests if there is only vague reference to these issues.

That is what bothers many Latino voters and so a group of us Latino/a bloggers (CrossLeft, Culture Kitchen, Citizen Orange,Latino Politico, The Unapologetic Mexican, Migra Matters, Para Justicia y Libertad, Mamita Mala and Zuky) drafted a survey for the presidential candidates to fill out.

The survey would provide the substance lacking in the candidates' speeches that Latino voters are looking for. Yet, it may reveal too much substance.

To date, almost three weeks has passed, and neither candidate has acknowledged the survey, let alone, filled it out.

So, the survey is being sent to both campaigns again — in the hopes that each candidate will show his sincerity in addressing issues pertinent to the Latino electorate and deliver substance with the rhetoric.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE Department of Homeland Security has a lot of job responsibilities. According to their web site:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is responsible for eliminating vulnerabilities in the nation's border, and with economic, transportation and infrastructure security.

The ICE organization is composed of four law enforcement divisions and several support divisions. These divisions of ICE combine to form a new investigative approach with new resources to provide unparalleled investigation, interdiction and security services to the public and our law enforcement partners in the federal and local sectors.

However, they are best known for their raid sweeps where they either make dawn visits on unsuspecting families or roll in on buses for massive apprehensions like the one in Postville, Iowa.

To those of us who catch the images as we channel surf or scan the day's headlines, the real stories are never seen or heard because the news is so carefully controlled by ICE officials — and that has been the problem.

ICE or the Department of Homeland Security releases news of undocumented immigrants in such a biased way that, of course, there would be an unanimous chorus to deport these people. The number one accusation levied against undocumented workers caught up in work site raids is that they stole someone's Social Security number, in essence, their identity.

ICE officials purposely leave us with the impression that these workers do it in a malicious and purposeful manner so they can achieve their American Dream and wreak havoc on hard-working, patriotic citizens.

Well, now there finally comes an eyewitness account on how ICE conducts business which should leave us all shivering about the direction of this country, its commitment to human rights and the overshadowing role partisan politics plays in persecuting a group of people who thought that all they needed to get by in this country was hard work.

Part of the expectations of any niche group, that is lucky enough to snag a high-profile speaker, is that the speaker's remarks will be specifically tailored to the group and reveal, if not startling news, something to maintain a buzz after the applause dies down.

That certainly had to have been the esperanza (hope) today of those attending the 79th Annual League of United Latin American Citizens National Convention & Exposition (LULAC) in Washington, D.C. and who were sitting in the audience listening to the day's guest speakers — Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama.

Even though it is a presidential contest and both nominees are wary of alienating any small part of their supporter base by saying anything slightly deemed controversial, there was clearly one speech that didn't just speak directly regarding issues relevant to LULAC attendees but crossed the safety zone of election politics.

An article in The Dallas Morning News over the weekend reported that, according to the Mexican Consulate in Dallas, 400 immigrant families have or are in the process of returning to Mexico. The consulate knows this because these families have asked for transfer documents for their children to attend school in Mexico.

Nayelli (center) and Keila (right) wait outside of a closet while their sister and mother pack belongings of the family, who after 10 years are returning to Mexico due to economic adversity and the anti immigrant climate of the nation.
(Source: Roberto M. Sanchez/Al Dia)

The trend isn't isolated to only Dallas. Phoenix and Chicago are also registering increases in Mexican transfer requests too. There were anecdotal reports that the same was happening (people leaving) in Oklahoma when that state's immigration laws were enacted, and it will probably end up happening in Missouri too.

Today, the Governor of Missouri signed into law the latest state-enacted bill that targets undocumented immigrants. Though Missouri only has 1 percent of the estimated 12 million undocumented, it seemed to be strangely large enough for the Governor to declare:

Gov. Matt Blunt said the state could not wait for the federal government to respond to what has become a serious national problem.

However, the true problem may not be so much the citizenship status of these people but the lost revenue funneled through local economies because of their purchasing power.

An odd thing happened this morning in Mexico City where Sen. John McCain is "having talks" with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

McCain, his wife and entourage, descended upon the Basilica de Guadalupe, at 8 a.m. The Basilica is the Mexican version of Mecca for Catholics of Mexican descent. In fact, every Mexican American community in the United States has at least one church in their town named after the patron saint of Mexico.

John McCain and his wife Cindy listen to Monsignor Diego Monroy Ponce explain the miracle of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
(Source: El Universal)

It's a fact that should not be news to an Arizona native like Sen. McCain and for that reason, and because the Senator is Protestant, Mexican pundits were having a field day with McCain's visit to the Basilica. As one reporter who has covered many presidential campaigns said, "The Basilica is usually not on the list of presidential campaign stops."

However, when you're stumping for Mexican American votes it just might be.

Stratfor, a publisher of geopolitical intelligence, released their analysis of an incident that happened in Phoenix, Arizona but could and does happen every day in southwestern cities within a reasonable distance of the Mexican border.

Weapons commonly used by Mexican drug cartel hit squads.
(Source: abcnews)

A group of men outfitted to look like a Phoenix police SWAT team and firing over 100 rounds of ammunition into the home of a Jamaican drug dealer turned out to be not Phoenix police but a Mexican drug cartel hit squad coming to do their drug lord's bidding.

It's been known for sometime that the dire warnings of Mexico's violence spilling over to this side of the border has already started happening. As the Stratfor report details:

Traditionally, when violence has spiked in Mexico, cartel figures have used U.S. cities such as Laredo, El Paso and San Diego as rest and recreation spots, reasoning that the general umbrella of safety provided by U.S. law enforcement to those residing in the United States would protect them from assassination by their enemies.

As bolder Mexican cartel hit men have begun to carry out assassinations on the U.S. side of the border in places such as Laredo, Rio Bravo, and even Dallas, the cartel figures have begun to seek sanctuary deeper in the United States, thereby bringing the threat with them.

Is there any way to stop these criminals who bypass our border patrols and are able to track down their prey with military precision and then disappear back across the border into Mexico?

Yes.

By recognizing that these individuals are the true criminals who warrant apprehension and incarceration and by instituting an immigration policy that identifies those who want to work from those who just want to kill.

It's long been known that the rest of the world is anxiously watching our presidential campaign as if it were a primetime drama.

Now, it seems that both candidates want to include that global audience in their elections. Obama plans to go to the Mideast and Europe. McCain left for Latin America today.

A trip to Iraq is understandable and should be expected of both candidates. After all, the groundswell of US troops stationed there, who happen to be voters, makes sense.

But a trip to any other country at this stage of the game doesn't make sense and would seem to be a waste of campaign funds.

In fact, a trip to Latin America, at this point in time, serves more as a blatant attempt to pander for the Hispanic vote rather than any constructive trip to achieve results.