La Fiesta de los Vaqueros kicks off

On Saturday, La Fiesta de los Vaqueros, also known as the Tucson Rodeo, kicked off. I originally went to the Rodeo for ideas for a special project. I didn't expect to be even moderately interested in anything at the rodeo, being a Southern California beach bum, but I left on Sunday with a newfound appreciation for life as a cowboy.

I was a little offended when the rodeo announcer joked that in California, the natives pronounced the word "rodeo" as if they were speaking Spanish, but I eventually got past it and learned a lot about life as a cowboy in Tucson near the border.

Not only were the big things, like the bullriding, one of the most interesting spectacles I've witnessed in person, but the smaller things on the outside of the venue proved to be one of the more interesting things I've done in Tucson in my three years here.

The various collection of artwork from the Tucson natives really impressed me, so much to the point where I considered buying a piece of art.

There was a man, John D. Bowman, who takes photos of interesting people or things and then replicates the picture with a pencil. The results are usually pretty outstanding.

Huckabee's 9-point plan

As long as Mike Huckabee still is in the presidential election, I thought it would be interesting to talk about his views on border security. What I found, was something particularly interesting because he may have the most elaborate stance on protecting the nation's border.

Even though Huckabee will not will the 2008 presidential election, he does stand a chance of being selected as a vice president for any republican nominee. Huckabee has a specific "9-point strategy for" immigration enforcement and border security. His first step is to build a fence. Not many candidates are all for building a fence that goes all the way along the border, but Huckabee lists this as his first strategy. He hopes to also have an interlocking surveillance camera system installed in the border by July 1, 2010.

His second plan is to increase the number of border patrol agents. The third strategy, although partially coincided with the second plan is to prevent amnesty, and to propose to provide all illegal immigrants a 120-day window to register with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services and leave the country.

The fourth strategy is when it starts to get interesting. Huckabee wants to enforce the law on employers and impose steep fines and penalties on employers that violate the law and institute a universal, mandaory citizenship verification system in every hiring process.

The fifth rule is establishing an economic border and start the move toward the passage of FairTax, which provides an extra layer of security by creating an economic disincentive. The sixth rule is to empower local authorities to encourage immigration-law training for police.

Huckabee also encourages to ensure document security and to reject Mexico's "matricula consular" card, which is an illegal-immigrant identification card. On the other side, Huckabee discourages dual citizenship and to inform foreign governments when their former citizens become naturalized U.S. citizens.

His final plan, although broad, is to modernize the process of legal immigration, specifically by increasing visas for highly-skilled and highly-educated applicants. His final statement is that he would rather live in a country that people are trying to break into, not out of, which is kind of a very odd statement to make on an official website.

I was surprised how elaborate his plan is to stabilize the border. Of all the candidates still running for office, Huckabee is by far the most staunch supporter of building a fence and even had enough in him to come up with nine reasons he should protect the border.

Obama, McCain and La Opinión

I originally said last week that I would focus my next blog on specifically the republican party and John McCain, Arizona's senator who is one of the main front runners in the 2008 Presidential Election. I will focus this somewhat on McCain, but also on Barack Obama, who could be going head-to-head with McCain as the leading democrat in the election.

On Saturday, both McCain and Obama received an endorsement from www.laopinion.com La Opinion, a Spanish newspaper out of Los Angeles that claims to have the biggest Hispanic readership in the United States at a daily readership of over a half a million people.

The newspaper is essentially all about the United States, but is written in Spanish for Hispanics to understand. Besides the obvious question (should newspapers be endorsing presidential candidates?), it's interesting that the paper would choose to endorse candidates from both parties.

Nevertheless, Obama and McCain both received endorsements. The paper cites Obama's "work on immigration legislation in the Illinois and U.S. senates, his commitment to reform immigration in his first year of office, and his support for drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants." This is a far cry so far from Hillary Clinton's stance, which I talked about last week, as well as from George W. Bush, who essentially believes illegal immigrants don't belong in the U.S. anyway.

As far as McCain goes, the paper, after translation, cited his "work on comprehensive immigration reform" and called him "the voice of reason and common sense."

With Super Tuesday just being a day away, part of the way the voting goes in the western states like Arizona and California may be decided by candidates' views on immigration reform. While it may be clear that Mexican immigrants may not even have a vote in tomorrow's primary, the ones that do may be swayed by such a strong endorsement from a Spanish-language editorial newspaper.