Maybe not unprecedented like the Chicago Tribune‘s nor unexpected like Colin Powell‘s, but there were two other important endorsements for Barack Obama in the last few days.

Los Angeles’ La Opinión and New York’s El Diario/La Prensa, two of the nation’s oldest Spanish-language dailies, made public their endorsements of the Democratic candidate on Friday.

Both newspapers are owned by ImpreMedia which bills itself as, “The No. 1 Hispanic News and Information Company in the U.S. in Online and Print.” [In the interest of full disclosure, Feet in Two Worlds has worked with editors and reporters at both papers.] The two dailies carry considerable weight in the Hispanic communities in Los Angeles and New York, and beyond.

El Diario ran its endorsement on the cover, under the headline: “Necessary Change. A vote for Obama.” [The full text is available in Spanish and English.]

“Our country is perched on the edge of a cliff,” the newspaper said. “We are staring down a growing economic crisis.”

It added the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have “no end in sight,” and in the U.S., families have suffered from “stagnant wages, and the rising costs of everything from gasoline to food to health care.

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As Republicans get ready to wrap up their convention in St. Paul, Minnesota on Thursday, across the river in Minneapolis Feet in Two Worlds and the New York Community Media Alliance will host a discussion about immigrant and ethnic voters in this year’s election. “Deconstructing the Ethnic Vote,” a conversation with ethnic media reporters from New York, Los Angeles and the Twin Cities, will be held in the Shepherd Room at the Weisman Art Museum, as part of the American Politics Sideshow on Thursday, September 4th starting at 1 PM.

Journalists will discuss how and if ethnic voters connect to John McCain, and analyze the messages that immigrant and ethnic communities are hearing from candidates of both parties.

Participants include:

Pilar Marrero – reporter and columnist, La Opinión, Los Angeles
Wameng Moua – Editor, Hmong Today, St. Paul, MN
Tomasz Deptula – columnist/editor, Nowy Dziennik/Polish Daily News, New York
Lotus Chau – Chief Reporter, Sing Tao Daily, New York
Zyphus Lebrun – Supervising Producer, “Independent Sources” CUNY TV, New York
Ari Kagan – Senior Editor, Vecherniy New York
Sharon Toomer – Founder and Managing Editor, BlackandBrownNews.com, New York
Ka Chan – Communications Director, New York Community Media Alliance

The conversation will be moderated by John Rudolph, Executive Producer of Feet in Two Worlds.

This event is free and open to the public. For information on parking and directions visit http://www.weisman.umn.edu/visiting/map.html.

In a landmark announcement Tuesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared that all 100 city agencies that serve the general public are now required to translate key documents and provide interpretation for the city’s millions of immigrant residents in the top six languages spoken by New Yorkers.

The new policy, outlined in Executive Order 120, reflects the linguistic diversity of New York, where half of city residents speak a language other than English at home. Now communicating to residents in Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Italian, and French Creole will be given the same priority as English. The new citywide policy is expected to assist the nearly 1 in 4 New Yorkers who have a limited ability to read, write or speak English with accessing city services.

What’s more, the announcement of Executive Order 120 spins the government requirements as a matter of customer service and government accountability. The new policy mandates the creation of a new Customer Service Group, housed within the Mayor’s Office of Operations, to help city agencies figure out how to make sure their services and programs are reaching immigrant New Yorkers.

The announcement establishes New York City at the forefront of policymaking efforts to encourage immigrants to access government services. It also provides a stark contrast to the reinvigorated local initiatives that seek to declare English the sole language for signs and services. Many cities and states are also increasingly opposed to policies that help immigrants access government services, even if they are legally eligible for them.

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The front page of last Sunday’s New York Times Metro section made much of the emergence of immigrants as an increasingly important voting bloc in New York City electoral politics, particularly with a view toward next year’s municipal elections.

The acknowlegment of immigrant voting power flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which has long said immigrants are not as engaged in US politics as those of their home countries.

According to the New Americans Exit Poll Project (conducted by Columbia University) and a recent analysis by CUNY’s Center for Urban Research, the number of immigrant voters is on the rise in New York City. What’s more, immigrants are responsible for much of the expansion of the city’s electorate.The CUNY study found at least a third of new voters added to the city’s voter rolls since 2004 were Russian, Chinese, Korean, or Muslim.  These new faces and ethnicities in the city’s electorate join the roughly one million immigrants already registered to vote in New York.

According to the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), a nonpartisan immigrant advocacy group that registers new citizens to vote, over 265,000 immigrants have been added to the city’s voter rolls since 1996.In a city where City Council races are won and lost by a margin of 5,000 votes, this infusion of new voters puts a distinctly New York spin on the nation’s growing realization that immigrant voters are crucial to political races.

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Feet in 2 Worlds reporter Aswini Anburajan’s story, Feet in Two Worlds: Indian Immigrants aired on May 31, 2007, on WNYC, New York Public Radio.

The story, where she explores some of the challenges faced by South Asian information technology professionals managing transnational work lives, quickly moved to the #8 spot on WNYC.org’s most emailed list. Here’s WNYC’s introduction:

“Many immigrants dream of returning to their home country after they’ve made their fortune in the US. But, for a growing number of highly educated Indian immigrants, the scales of opportunity have shifted. They’re leaving the US and going back to India to make their fortune.”

Press play below to listen to the story.