Congressional Republicans are sticking to their guns on immigration policy, even though it could prove detrimental to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. McCain has opposed most of his party's hardest stands on illegal-immigration law, and is well-regarded by many Latinos, the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority, and a key swing voting bloc. However, that respect could be tested.

Industrial output fell in February by the biggest amount in four months, providing yet another gloomy assessment of the economy's health. The Federal Reserve said Monday that output at the nation's factories, mines and utilities dropped by 0.5 percent in February, the biggest decline since a 0.6 percent fall last October.

US bank JPMorgan Chase will buy investment firm Bear Stearns for just 2 dollars per share after bailing out the company days earlier, the companies announced Sunday.

According to estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, at least 28 percent of workers in construction and mining in 2006 were foreign born. The report doesn't estimate how many were undocumented. A March 2007 report from the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 29.9 percent of all recently arrived foreign-born Hispanics worked in construction in 2006.

The geographic dispersion of the U.S. Hispanic population continues. States with small Hispanic populations have shown the greatest growth in the last decade — with seven of the 10 fastest-growing states in the South.

Advertisers' efforts to reach Hispanic consumers are becoming more targeted, and language is a major factor. Advertisers spent more than $3.3 billion to market products to U.S. Hispanics in 2005, a 6.8 percent increase from 2004.

Most people are charitable -- it's human nature to help if you have the means. But how do you account for your generosity, literally? With so many different types of donations and an even broader spectrum of taxable implications, it's not a bad idea to explore the basics of charitable gifts. How do you determine if something's deductible?

Sooner or later entrepreneurs will need business capital, and while private equity is one of the most coveted forms of funding, it remains the most elusive. This is especially true for minority-owned enterprises. While Hispanics and African Americans make up 28 percent of the U.S. population, only 1 percent of venture capital is going to minority communities. This troubling statistic is what drove led to the creation of The Marathon Club--an organization whose primary focus is to increase the flow of capital to minority entrepreneurs.