The National Council of La Raza

1111 19th Street NW – Suite 1000
Washington, DC
20036

Phone :202-785-1670

URL:

Website

• Largest Hispanic organization in the U.S.
• Lobbies for racial preferences, bilingual education, stricter hate crimes laws, mass immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens

Founded in 1968 as the Southwest Council of La Raza, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) is the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States. It works “to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans,” who are, in its estimation, an oppressed minority that suffers much injustice and discrimination in American society. Through its network of nearly 300 affiliated community-based organizations, NCLR is active in 41 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. To achieve its mission, NCLR conducts applied research, policy analysis, and advocacy, “providing a Latino perspective” in the following areas:

• Advocacy and Electoral Empowerment: In an effort “to reduce poverty and discrimination and improve life opportunities for Hispanics,” NCLR works for “increased Latino participation in the political process.”
• Civil Rights and Justice: “Discrimination severely limits the economic and social opportunities available to Hispanic Americans. NCLR [seeks] to promote and protect equality of opportunity in voting, justice issues, education, employment, housing, and health care for all Americans.”
• Community and Family Wealth-Building: Lamenting the Hispanic community’s “lack of access to capital,” this program aims “to measurably increase the level of … assets” held by that demographic. Toward that end, NCLR has initiated America’s largest Hispanic Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) to provide low-cost capital.
• Education: This program “focuses its investment in the areas of early childhood education and high-school reform, where the disparity between Latinos and other groups is greatest. NCLR [engages in] advocacy for policy outcomes that will make the nation’s public school system more responsive to the needs of Latino children.” NCLR also supports the DREAM Act, which is designed to allow illegal aliens to attend college at the reduced tuition rates normally reserved for in-state legal residents.
• Employment and Economic Opportunities: This initiative “seeks to advance the economic well-being of Latinos by focusing its program and policy work on closing the employment and skills gaps between Latinos and other Americans … [and] in increasing access to federally-funded job training services and opportunities for Latino workers.”
• Farmworkers: “NCLR conducts policy analyses and advocacy activities in this area in order to improve conditions and opportunities for the nation’s farmworkers. NCLR also works very closely with the Farmworker Justice Fund, Inc. a national advocacy group for migrant and seasonal workers [illegal aliens].”
• Health and Family Support: NCLR collaborates with a variety of organizations — state, local, and national — to promote “reform” that would give illegal immigrants full access to taxpayer-funded health care services.
• Immigration: NCLR strives “to encourage immigration policies that are fair and nondiscriminatory, to encourage family reunification, and to enact necessary reforms to the current immigration system.” In short, it favors amnesty for illegals already residing in the U.S., and open borders henceforth. In La Raza’s calculus, any restriction on the free movement of immigrants constitutes a violation of their civil rights, and any reduction in government assistance to illegal border-crossers is “ a disgrace to American values .” Thus La Raza supports continued mass Mexican immigration to the United States, and hopes to achieve, by the sheer weight of numbers, the re-partition of the American Southwest as a new state called Aztlan