The youngest of six children, four sisters and two brothers, Santos was raised by a suddenly single woman who struggled to maintain a family in the tough Los Angeles County city of Compton. The older brother “headed for the streets and I followed,” is how Santos describes his youthful years. “(Gang life) is what we saw. That’s what we did. There comes a point when you have to change your life, and that is what I did,” says a survivor who is now approaching the early stages of middle age.

The Republican Party emerged from the partial government shutdown with record low approval ratings. Now, some analysts say the key to their survival could be their leadership on immigration reform. The strategy House Republicans decide to take on this issue could determine their viability in the next election. But while it’s unclear what their next move will be, news reports indicate they may be less at a standstill than we thought.

While immigration reform advances in the Senate, advocates say the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is a different story.The House -- which like the Senate has its own Gang of Eight, a group of four Democrats and four Republicans -- appears to be making progress toward its own comprehensive bill that includes a pathway to legislation. The sticking point in the House now is whether to mandate health insurance for the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are waiting to begin the citizenship process. 

As Congress begins to discuss immigration reform, immigrant rights groups, DREAMers and their supporters marched in many U.S. cities, begging the question: Do these marches help achieve the goal of legislation beneficial to immigrants or are they counterproductive? "It is ironic that we are asking this question today, May 1, which commemorates an 1886 march of the emerging labor movement in Chicago demanding an eight-hour work day. That march was attacked by police, its leaders were eventually executed, and it was quashed immediately. 

About 60 percent of the 17 million Asian-Americans in the United States are foreign-born. Ninety percent of Asian immigrants come to the United States through family-based immigration visas, so backlogs in the system affect their everyday lives. In fact, nearly half of the 4.3 million people in the family backlog worldwide are in Asia. “What people often…frame as a Latino issue, it’s just not true,” Moua said. One in 11 undocumented immigrants in the United States is Asian-American; and one in 10 Dreamers is Asian-American.

It’s good news that Cuban-American Rubio is accepting his party’s leadership role on immigration. Or is it? The idea that we need increased border security and enforcement ignores reality. His timetable for citizenship for the undocumented is problematic. And there are legitimate reasons to be skeptical of his conversion from immigration hardliner to immigration reformer. Now his Tea Party base and Hispanics are supposed to welcome his new position on immigration? Not too likely. Instead, people may realize that Marco Rubio’s only core conviction is Marco Rubio. 

They may well be the future of their parties — Rubio, the Cuban-American Republican, is 41; Castro, the Mexican-American Democrat, 37. In their speeches — hyped relentlessly before and after the fact — they drew on stories of their immigrant families. This is the reality of the magic act we saw: Both parties are trying to claim the hearts of Latino voters. This is the deception behind the magic: Both parties are breaking Latino hearts when it comes to immigration.

From New America Media: President Barack Obama asserted his commitment to achieving comprehensive immigration reform should he be re-elected in 2012. “I will make this a prominent part of my campaign and I’ll talk about it extensively,” Obama vowed. In a recent White House meeting with media reaching the Latino community, he stressed, “It’s going to be hard to have a more clear contrast between what the Republicans stand for on a whole range of issues and what I stand for and Democrats stand for.”