On a press call last week, Rocio Sáenz of Service Employees International Union had a message for what she called "extremist Republicans" like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio: "We will remember—we will remember who stood in the way of families and who stood against."
The call—arranged to discuss the GOP-led legal challenge to President Obama's immigration orders—came the same week that Pew Research released a report projecting that the number of eligible Latino voters will be 40 percent higher in 2016 than it was in 2008.
The rapid growth in eligible voters has been fueled partly by young Latinos turning 18 and partly by naturalizations, which have been spurred by voter mobilization efforts in key swing states, reports Daniel Hernandez.
In what campaigners are calling a “naturalization blitz”, workshops are being hosted across the country to facilitate Hispanic immigrants who are legal, permanent residents and will only qualify to vote in the 2016 presidential election if they upgrade their immigration status.
Citizenship clinics will take place in Nevada, Colorado, Texas and California later this month, with other states expected to host classes in February and early March in order to make the citizenship deadline required to vote in November.
The Republicans, led by Donald Trump, only have themselves to thank for the urgency many immigrants now feel. Native Honduran and legal resident Maria Polanco, for instance, is finally pursuing citizenship after living 26 years in the U.S. Factors like the expensive and lengthy application process had discouraged her from completing the process in past, but the stakes are just too high now.
“Lots of people who for various reasons have not gotten their citizenship are now at the point where they will,” she added.
Like the five women Adrian Carrasquillo spoke to in Las Vegas.
The women are all Latina. They’re foreign-born. They’re members of the 53,000-strong Culinary Workers Union Local 226. They work as housekeepers (four of them at Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel).
And they’re all in the process of becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. [...]
“I have realized people have erroneous thoughts about all Latinos, they want to pigeonhole us into things we aren’t like rapists and drug dealers,” said Maria Mendoza, one of the five women, in Spanish. Mendoza was referring to Trump’s now infamous announcement speech, in which he said Mexico was sending rapists and criminals across the border.
Live by the sword, die by the sword, Trump. And no, that's not from "Two Corinthians."