I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Hundreds are expected to attend a march Saturday in Santa Fe to protest Arizona’s new immigration law, an immigrants’ rights group said Wednesday.
The Arizona statute, signed into law last week, would empower police in Arizona to stop people they suspect are illegal immigrants and demand proof of citizenship. The law has flared up another vociferous discussion in the ongoing national debate over immigration. But it also has provoked a sense of concern, and even fear, among local immigrants – and others — living in New Mexico, said Marcella Diaz, executive director of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, the organizer of Saturday’s march.
“We have been receiving calls from folks asking, ‘How is this going to affect us? Should we not travel into Arizona?’” Diaz told the Independent. “One message was from a mother. She said ‘My daughter is a student at the University of New Mexico and she is traveling into Arizona. What does she need to take? What documentation?’ I don’t know whether this person was undocumented or not.”
The organization hopes that upwards of 500 people attend Saturday’s march, which begins on the corner of N. Guadalupe St. and Paseo de Peralta and will end at the Plaza with a rally and interfaith ceremony.
Among the speakers scheduled after the march will be individuals from Arizona, Diaz said.
Arizona’s new statute, which is the nation’s strictest anti-immigration law, has produced the usual battle lines, with some critics predicting that it would lead to “racial profiling” while some supporters saying it’s Arizona’s response to a failed national immigration policy.
The law, and the debate it galvanized, has led some in Congress to push for a debate on overhauling the country’s immigration laws sooner rather than later while also provoking questions as to whether the law would stand up to judicial review.
In New Mexico, the law has generated a discussion as well, with Gov. Bill Richardson very publicly counseling Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last week to veto the law. She signed it Friday.
Meanwhile, gubernatorial candidates from both political parties in New Mexico have come out with positions on the law.
