Some of you may remember former Brewster Mayor John Degnan. He was narrowly defeated last year in a three-way bid for Southeast supervisor by Michael Rights, who ran a fierce campaign on the hot button issue of illegal immigration.

Rights accused Degnan of being a slumlord, renting his village apartments to illegal immigrants. His claims were never proven. He also said Degnan was distributing identification cards to illegal aliens—untrue. Degnan had invited the Guatemalan consulate to the village to discuss it’s mobile ID card service that never came to fruition given the political climate in Brewster at the time.

Lastly, Rights claimed that Degnan was putting up a hiring site for Brewster’s day laborers. Team Brewster had considered those plans but they never materialized because they could not find a proper site.

State Assemblyman Greg Ball held a “Stop the Workstation,” rally last summer even though there were no plans to put one up. Now, Degnan will have another opportunity to go head-to-head with one of the area’s toughest anti-illegal immigration politicos.

The Southeast Republican Committee endorsed Degnan this week. No word from Degnan yet but some of his closest supporters say he’s in the race for state Assembly. Ball said he welcomes the challenge.

Speaking out tonight against Suffern’s immigration-enforcement plan, among others, was the police chief from just down the road. (Read the full story here.)

Ramapo Chief Peter Brower told a group of 200 at Tagaste Monastery that immigration enforcement was best left to the feds, so that local police can work effectively with all groups in the community. (Ramapo surrounds Suffern and several other incorporated villages in Rockland County.)

Brower said he was bringing a message from town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence: “We’re not going to apply for 287(g),” referring to the federal training program on immigration enforcement. “We’re local police. We have local problems. We’ll deal with the local problems.”

More on the meeting later.

Update: Suffern Police Chief Clarke Osborn has this to say (on Thursday).

“While the Town of Ramapo does not feel the need for this program we in Suffern have evaluated 287g and found that this program would be beneficial to the safety & welfare of our residents of the village. We have listened to all views on this issue and have received overwhelming support of this program from residents from both within and outside the Village of Suffern and while the Town of Ramapo does not feel that they need to file for this program to remove illegal CRIMINAL aliens, we in the Village of Suffern feel that we do. The Suffern Police Department will continue to research any available program that will assist us in protecting our residents.”

Latino advocates are planning a community forum tomorrow night on the plan to have local police trained on immigration enforcement under the federal 287(g) program. Organizer Biensy Rosa, who owns a business in town, said she wants to put pressure on local politicians to oppose Mayor John Keegan’s proposal. Rosa has been working with the group Community Power.

“Now we have to get political,” Rosa said today. She plans to work with Latino Democrats to help immigrants in Suffern register to vote and to obtain a tax identification number if they are eligible for one. Tomorrow’s forum begins at 7:30 p.m. at Tagaste Monastery. Among those attending is Damon Jones of Westchester Blacks In Law Enforcement.

Assemblyman Mike Spano, D-Yonkers, announced this week the appointment of Zach Thomas as his special advisor on South Asian affairs. Thomas is president of the Indian American Council of Yonkers and vice-president of the Indian National Congress USA. He is also a member of the St. Thomas Marthoma Church, the Lions Club and the Westchester Malayalee Association, a group for immigrants from the Indian state of Kerala.
“I look forward to working with Assemblyman Spano and acting as his liaison in the South Asian community,” said Thomas in a statement released by Spano’s office. “This partnership will prove to be extremely beneficial to Yonkers.”

A new batch of census data is out today showing population growth among race and ethnic groups across the country. Since 2000, the U.S. population has grown by less than 2 percent, but the Hispanic population has grown by 10 percent and the number of Asians has grown 21 percent. Hispanics now account for 15 percent of the nation’s population, and 16 percent of New York’s.

Here in NY, we’re getting older as a group. The median age, which was 36 in 2000, is now almost 38. Baby boomers are bringing higher numbers to the 45- to 69-year-old age bracket, and there’s a large increase in the number of New Yorkers who are 80 and older, reports Cathey O’Donnell of our data desk.
Meanwhile it’s not too early to talk about the Census Bureau’s decennial headcount in 2010. Two New Yorkers were added to the race and ethnic advisory committees that monitor the process: Angelo Falcón, president of the National Institute for Latino Policy, and Pyong Gap Min, a sociology professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. They will serve, respectively, on the Hispanic Advisory Committee and Asian Advisory Committee, each of which have nine members.

Those committees, scheduled to meet this week at the Census Bureau’s Maryland HQ, have a lot to talk about. The Hispanic Advisory Committee has already voiced concern on the need to get immigrants to participate in the 2010 count, despite what it called a climate of mistrust toward government and intolerance for diversity. And a scaled-back dress rehearsal is raising further concern that the count will miss immigrants, military members, college students and others.

Arizona’s governor has vetoed a bill similar to the one that Assemblyman Greg Ball has introduced in New York, seeking to have county and state police take on immigration duties.

Gov. Janet Napolitano said she opposed the bill because of the costs involved, though the outcry was similar to the one in New York. Opponents said that the move would alienate Hispanics and subject them to racial profiling. (About the costs: Immigration-enforcement training is funded by the feds, but Napolitano said the funding is extremely limited and the bill would require Arizona taxpayers to cover the rest.)

Greg Ball argues his case in favor of his bill (and against the newspaper) on today’s Opinion page.

Damon Jones of Westchester Blacks in Law Enforcement gave his side here.

(Photo: AP)

Cinco de Mayo festivities get started this weekend in White Plains and Yonkers. On Friday, Ballet Folklorico Espiritu de Mexico will perform regional folk dances, accompanied by Mariachi Solido de Mexico at the Westchester Arts Council’s Arts Exchange in White Plains. More details are here at westarts.com.

On Sunday is the tenth annual Alma de Mexico – Spirit of Mexico celebration in Yonkers, from 1 to 5 p.m. at Untermyer Park. On the bill are dance, music, a mole poblano cooking demo, and the Chinelos masked dancers of Yonkers “performing in the style of Tlayacapan, Morelos State, and depicting the invading ‘Dragoons’ of Emperor Maximilian in the 1863 battle of Puebla.” Here’s a video preview.

In New York City, the Mexican Parade will begin at 11 a.m. Sunday on 110th Street and Central Park West and will head south.

Hema Easley reports today on Chinese-American perspectives on the protests over China’s Olympic Games. She discovers a feeling among many that China’s potentially proud moment is being hijacked by political groups.

Franklin Chu, who heads the Chinese School in Scarsdale, says the mixing of politics with the Olympics has tapped into a certain “China-bashing sentiment” in the United States. Bryan Dai, a Harvard freshman from New City, sees a moment “where the world has finally become frightened of Chinese influence, and this backlash no doubt has gone to fuel some of the protests we’ve seen.”

In a New York Times story today, Chinese college students in the United States also describe what they see as an anti-Chinese bias here, along with blind support for Tibet.

Dai, who is American-born, gave Easley this assessment:

“The most egregious acts I’m seeing are protesters who have joined simply because it has become the ‘it’ issue of this year, and when the Beijing Olympics are over, I ask you to go back and see just how much attention Tibet and human rights in China will be getting then.”

May Day is also known as International Workers Day or labor day. On Thursday, a mass rally for the rights of immigrants and workers will kick off at noon with a gathering at Union Square in NYC, 14th Street and Broadway. The actual march and rally will start at 4 p.m. The event is put on by the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant and Workers Rights. Their purpose is to “stop the raids and deportations,” along with protesting the war in Iraq and calling to repeal NAFTA. For more information on their cause, go here.

Are you an immigrant hoping to become a U.S. citizen in time to vote for the next president? Your wait will likely vary a lot depending where you live.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services released a list of projected wait times at local offices for those who applied for citizenship last summer. In New York, the average wait should be 10 months. Those who applied just before the July 30 fee increase, therefore, should see their cases finished by next month.

The New York Immigration Coalition notes that these projected wait times apply to trouble-free applications — those that do not require additional documents, for example, or those that aren’t caught up in the FBI name-check process USCIS officials have taken criticism, and lawsuits, over the backlog of naturalization cases due to last summer’s surge.

The longest waits are more than 14 months, in cities including Los Angeles, Tuscon, Phoenix, Miami, Hartford, Conn., and Washington, D.C. The shortest wait, five months, is out in Helena, Montana.

Let us know how long your application is taking, particularly if you’re hoping to vote in November.