By Christie Thompson, ProPublica
Federal spending on border security is at an all-time high—and it would get even higher under the Gang of Eight’s new plan. The Senate immigration proposal, released last week, would allocate $4.5 billion in the next five years to tighten control of U.S. borders.
The U.S. spent nearly $18 billion dollars on immigration enforcement agencies last fiscal year, more than all other law enforcement agencies combined.

Where would another $4.5 billion go?… more

The “Gang of 8″ bipartisan group of Senators introduced immigration reform legislation last week that, after a time, would theoretically allow people without legal status in the U.S. to gain access to a path to citizenship that would take 13 years.
There are many caveats in the bill, as you can see from this infographic put together by Quartz. There are caveats if you committed crimes, what dates you arrived to the U.S. and more.
Check out this infographic from Quartz and let us know what you think about immigration reform.… more

By Lois Beckett, ProPublica
The Republicans have admitted it: They need to get serious about collecting and analyzing voter data.
Well, you can’t get much more serious than talking to Teradata, the “data warehousing” company that helps Wal-Mart, Apple and eBay store massive amounts of information about the behavior of their customers.

Teradata is just one of the major data outfits with which leading Republican strategists are talking in their declared effort to match Barack Obama’s big data campaign tactics, according to one person with knowledge of the strategy discussions.… more

Latinos and Latinas under the age of 35 benefitted the most from California’s online voter registration during the 2012 election cycle, according to a new study from the Center for Latino Policy Research at the University of California at Berkeley.
In a study, titled “Differences among Latina/o, Asian American, and White Online Registrants in California,” authors found that 22.6% of all of the 829,297 online voter registrants in California in 2012 were Latino, compared to 59.8% who were white and 11.1% who were Asian.… more

This post originally appeared in Latinopia.
A question that burns on every politico’s mind these days is how to engage more Latinos in the electoral process. Although we are 17% of the population, we were just 10% of the vote in the last election. What’s more, although 24 million Latinos are eligible to vote, only about half do so. Upping the ante even more is the fact that 50,000 Latinos turn 18 every month.
While there may not be a silver bullet solution, at least one tactic has shown some promise with young (read: Latino) potential voters: online voter registration.… more

A massive amount of data from the Pew Research Hispanic Center has been released for statistic junkies, dataphiles and anyone else to analyze. In this multi-article series, Más Wired takes a look at the Pew Center’s data and pulls out some of the more interesting bits.
“A Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States” contains a variety of statistics about the Hispanic population. Más Wired has taken the time to examine and analyze the statistics released, as well as mull over the meaning and repercussions of this data.… more

By Gretel A. Perera, Q Communications Group
As the Presidential elections come to a close, many of us are giving a sigh of relief. Now we can all move on with our lives without the constant barrage of election news coverage, no more enduring endless negative attack ads during our favorite TV shows and no more unfriending Friends on Facebook or Twitter because of their political rants.
But before we close this political chapter, it is important to take a look a closer look at the real winner in these elections.… more

Public Knowledge wrote an interesting post about what the election means for the future of the Internet. Specifically, the post looked at issues likely to come up during the next few years.
One important issue is copyright reform, according to the post:
1) there is unlikely to be a bill that strengthens copyright enforcement that moves through either house of Congress without a thorough debate; and 2) there are now more members and Senators looking at the possibility of rolling back some of the relentless march towards stronger and longer copyrights.… more

Less than 4% of itemized contributions — those above $200 — to the presidential campaigns came from Latino neighborhoods, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. However, this analysis only included donations of $200 or more, since the campaigns don’t have to disclose identifying information about contributions under that amount. The analysis also barely mentioned that communities of color have higher unemployment rates than whites, and defined “engagement” exclusively as donating money.… more

By Lois Beckett, ProPublica

If you’re a registered voter and surf the web, one of the sites you visit has almost certainly placed a tiny piece of data on your computer flagging your political preferences. That piece of data, called a cookie, marks you as a Democrat or Republican, when you last voted, and what contributions you’ve made. It also can include factors like your estimated income, what you do for a living, and what you’ve bought at the local mall.
Across the country, companies are using cookies to tailor the political ads you see online.… more