On Monday, July 20th, outside of his childhood home, Mark Kirk announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by now President Barack Obama. His announcement has been long anticipated, many had expected that he was going to announce during his speech to the Chicago Club back in April.

His announcement went as expected, with some accusations of intimidation of the HCAN (Health Care for America Now) people by Police and Kirk staffers. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, along with Reform Immigration For America Campaign was also present sharing what we think and the vast majority of Americans think - we need REAL workable solutions to our broken immigration system.

(See Spanish Language Article)

As a Congressman, Kirk has proven to be completely out of step with the people of Illinois on immigration reform. Instead of offering real solutions he suggested sending condoms to Mexico as a fix to the immigration system. He voted in favor of many anti-immigrant bills proposed in Congress, including the infamous Sensenbrenner bill (HR-4437), that would have made criminal felons of priests, nuns, doctors, teachers, and even family members who helped undocumented immigrants. Oh, and he endorsed the idea of racially profiling young Arab men.

These are not the words of a moderate candidate, that Kirk claimed to be during his announcement. Senate President Harry Reid has stated (repeatedly) that Immigration is a top priority of the Senate. If Kirk wants to be a Senator how can he expect voters to overlook such an out of the mainstream position on such an important issue?

Kirk may want to consider the last time a republican won for Senate in 1998 with Fitzgerald beating Mosley-Braun with 50.3% of the vote.

Then he may want to consider:

• The number of foreign-born citizens in Illinois grew by 175,000 (30%) since 2000. This compares to growth among native-born citizens of only 200,000 (2.5%).
• Out of more than 8 million registered voters in Illinois, 556,468 (6.9%) are Latino and 135,626 (1.7%) are Asian American.
• In metro Chicago (home to 61% of all Illinois registered voters), Latinos make up 10.2% of registered voters, and Asians make up 2.4%. This compares with Kirk's own district, where Latinos are 5.9% of registered voters but Asians are 4.2%.
• (Read ICIRR's Political Almanac for more Stats)

No candidate can afford to alienate an increasing Latino and Immigrant vote. Somebody should tell Kirk.