Last week, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced his run for the presidency. If he wins the Republican primary, Gingrich will have to garner the votes of a sizable percentage of the Latino vote to make it all the way to the White House. It’s no coincidence that one of Gingrich’s first appearances as a presidential candidate was on one of the most popular Spanish-language programs, Unvision’s Al Punto.

Anchor Jorge Ramos grilled Gingrich on his immigration platform which will play a big role in how Latinos vote in 2012. While the immigration debate during the Republican primary leading up to the 2008 presidential election focused on which candidate could present himself as being the toughest on the issue, Gingrich clumsily staked out a middle ground, suggesting that it might be a good idea to set up local community panels that decide which immigrants get to stay and which don’t. Gingrich’s remarks were cut out of the final video clip on Univision’s website, but they were included in a transcript of the interview issued by the network:

RAMOS: Exactly what do you mean? What are you going to do with the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country? You are not for immigration reform, I mean, you will not favor legalizing 11 million people in this country.

GINGRICH: I would favor finding steps that determine who is clearly going to remain in the United States and I think you got to start from that point

RAMOS: But how can we do it?

GINGRICH: First, somebody who’s been here 20 years, somebody who’s been here 20 years and is married and has three kids and has been paying taxes and lived a totally peaceful life and is a citizen – but by the way they came here 20 years ago outside the law. We got to find the way to routinize and get them in the law without necessarily getting them on a path to citizenship. Now there ought to be a way to do that. And one of the things I’m looking at, and this may come as a surprise to you, is in World War II we had a selective service board where every local community could apply common sense to the draft process.

We may want to think about a citizen board that can actually look at things and decide, is this a person that came in two months ago and doesn’t nearly have any ties here? Or is this a person who clearly is integrated into the society but unfortunately has been undocumented, therefore, we have to rethink how we are approaching them.

Gingrich didn’t get the chance to flesh out his vision of “citizen boards,” but it sounds like Gingrich is essentially proposing local communities take up individual citizenship applications on a case-by-case basis. It’s hard to imagine that such boards would be either a fair of efficient way to deal with the nation’s broken immigration system. Yet, as long as a comprehensive legislative solution remains taboo within the GOP, Republican candidates who are smart enough to recognize the importance of the Latino vote will have to think creatively about how to address one of the most pressing issues facing the Latino community.

Gingrich’s new stance differs from the proposal he extensively laid out on Al Punto in 2009. Back then, Gingrich suggested that the best way to deal with the undocumented population would be to convince 11 million undocumented immigrants to leave their families and jobs in the U.S., go back to their home countries for two to three years, in exchange for a temporary guest-worker visa.

And although Gingrich worried in the past that American civilization will “decay” unless the government declares English the nation’s official language, he is now starting to learn some Spanish himself. At the end of his interview, Gingrich announced his candidacy in Spanish and awkwardly asked Ramos, “Do I get an A? Do I get an A, B or C on that?” Ramos replied, “I guess, let’s wait for the voters to decide.”

Watch the interview (in Spanish):
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For the past several months, almost every time Univision’s Al Punto anchor Jorge Ramos appears on air, he reminds his viewers of “la promesa de Obama,” or, “Obama’s promise.” What Ramos is referring to is the promise the candidate Barack Obama made to Latino voters back in 2008 that the nation would have a comprehensive immigration reform bill that he would back within his first year in office. The truth is, thus far, Obama over-promised and under-delivered. Rather than fixing the broken immigration system and overseeing the legalization of 11.5 million undocumented immigrants, the Obama administration has been responsible for a record-setting number of deportations, more 287(g) partnerships, and beefed up border enforcement. The Latino community is rightfully furious that their families continue to be ripped apart and they are understandably frustrated with Obama’s failure to provide the change and relief he once promised. However, Ramos has turned “la promesa de Obama” into a rallying cry that distracts attention from the real villians of this year’s immigration debate.

While “la promesa de Obama” certainly speaks to many of the mistakes the President has made on immigration — an initial lack of presidential leadership during the first year of his presidency coupled with stepped-up enforcement measures — it also fails to capture the political limitations in which the Obama administration has been working. In his January 2010 piece entitled, “La promesa de Obama,” Ramos mentions Republicans once. Politico reports that, overall, Spanish-language media “say they never expected much from the GOP.” Maybe they should expect more.

Perhaps the confusion begins with a fundamental misunderstanding of the President’s responsibilities. When Ramos was asked by Politico what he would do if he were President, Ramos responded “immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for 11 million people” in the form of an executive decision. However, though a President can take a strong leadership role in crafting and pushing legislation, it’s ultimately Congress’ job to introduce and pass any bill — and, regardless of what you “expect” from them, that involves Republican cooperation. Obama could pursue administrative relief by legalizing 11.5 undocumented immigrants on his own, however, besides being a political disaster, it’s an interim solution that could be easily undone and isn’t really what Obama promised in the first place.

Obama always made clear that immigration reform stood in a line with health care reform, energy legislation, and financial regulatory changes. Republicans, meanwhile, have pursued a strategy of dragging out almost every single piece of legislation that Democrats put before them. And the harder the White House has pushed its legislative agenda, the more united the right has pushed back. To add insult to injury, following the passage of health care reform, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — the only Republican planning on co-sponsoring an immigration bill — pulled out, saying the “well has been poisoned.” Since then, Republicans in Congress have shifted their focus to things like border security and overturning the 14th amendment to deny the American-born children of undocumented immigrants citizenship. Meanwhile, the country didn’t get financial regulatory reform until July and it’s still waiting on climate change legislation in addition to immigration reform. In a nutshell, Obama could’ve kept his promise and helped Democrats draft and introduce immigration reform in Congress — though it wouldn’t have gone very far. In the absence of Republican support, it basically would’ve boiled down to cheap political symbolism that wouldn’t have brought Latinos much closer to the solutions they demand and need.

During this critical pre-election season, “la promesa de Obama” has turned into a political slogan that has troubling implications for the Latino vote. You don’t need an expert to tell you that Republicans won’t be picking up too many new Latino voters this November. However, those experts are also saying that “President Barack Obama will have a hard time getting out the Hispanic vote he badly needs in November to keep his party’s control of Congress.” While it’s certainly important to keep the pressure on Democrats, Spanish language media may want to dedicate at least as much energy to reminding its audience of what a Republican-controlled Congress means for “la promesa de Obama.” For that matter, so should Democrats. In 2010, it’s hard for Latinos to find a political champion in either party. If they don’t vote, it’ll be even harder to find one in 2011. It’s time for the “Walter Cronkite of Spanish-language media” to look towards the future as much as he reminds Obama of the past.

Yesterday, former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs appeared on Univision’s Al Punto with Jorge Ramos. Throughout the interview, Ramos sought to hold Dobbs accountable for the misinformation about immigrants that he promoted on his show while it was still on the air. As he has done in a series of interviews since leaving CNN, Dobbs defiantly refused to admit to any factual inaccuracies or misleading reporting on his behalf. Quite the contrary, Dobbs lashed out at Ramos for dwelling on the past and accused him of spreading propaganda:

DOBBS: Why are you invested in seven years ago rather than the present or the future?

RAMOS: Because many of the things that you said —

DOBBS: — Why aren’t you interested in what I’m saying now? [...] You know those things. Why aren’t you talking about that aspect of what I’ve been saying? Why are you trying to carry out some sort of propagandist culdesac here. [...] I don’t see the point, I don’t see the point, you see…Please please listen to me Jorge please, please, please…You want to debate, I want to have a conversation, do you want to debate about something that matters?…I want to talk to Jorge Ramos, I don’t need you to be a mouthpiece for other points of views. I didn’t bring other points of views here to you, I bring you mine, bring me yours.

RAMOS: These are my questions.

Watch it:

However, for the most part, Ramos raised valid issues. Ramos confronted Dobbs about a report in which Dobbs claimed that immigrants are “clogging up the federal prison system,” which Ramos interpreted as a suggestion that undocumented immigrants “were increasing the crime rate.” Dobbs blasted Ramos for making an “interesting logical connection” and affirmed that, at the time, one-third, or 27 percent, of prison inmates were non-citizens. Yet Dobbs’ claim was debunked long ago by Justice Department figures which show that about 6 percent of the state and federal prison population are non-citizens. Dobbs also boasted to Ramos that, this past summer, he pledged never to refer to undocumented immigrants as “illegal aliens” ever again. He didn’t mention that just two months later he employed the term “illegal alien” while decrying the “Latinization” of the country.

To Dobbs credit, he did admit that he made in error in reporting that immigrants were responsible for 7,000 new cases of leprosy in the U.S. Ramos and Dobbs also spent an extended period of time arguing about whether there are 10.8 million or 20 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Though most studies show the figure is closer to the estimates Ramos cited — 10.8 to 12 million — in 2005, Bear Stearns analysts suggested that the number is closer to 20 million, as Dobbs maintained.

Nonetheless, Dobbs seems to miss the point that, for the millions of Latinos who were in some way affected by his slanderous reporting, the past matters a lot. It matters because Dobbs helped foster the xenophobic and isolationist instincts that fueled successful opposition to two immigration reform bills which contained provisions very similar to the solutions he now claims to support. It also matters because Dobbs’ “shrill anti-immigration reform commentaries” have been found to “correlate closely with the increase in hate crimes against Hispanics.”

Ramos informed Dobbs that he is probably “one of the most hated people within the Hispanic community.” Dobbs responded that that’s because the “Hispanic community doesn’t know me.” “Thanks to your efforts, they’re gonna get to know me,” Dobbs confidently told Ramos after having responded to most of Ramos’ questions with hostility and personal attacks towards one of the Latino community’s most revered reporters. Ramos also happens to be an eight-time Emmy Award winner and an immigrant from Mexico.