For many Latino voters, whether or not their cousins, parents or grandparents are being deported is often the only question they care about come election time. Compared with concerns about the economy, jobs, education and the environment, however, undocumented immigration has fallen by the wayside almost across the board. Americans who have ranked it as a top priority, according to the Pew Research Center, have fallen from 55 percent in 2007, to a recent low of 39 percent currently. The same study also found that the Tea Party Republican base was at 52 percent wanting only border security increases, 10 percent wanting only to create a pathway towards citizenship, and 36 percent wanting both. This will put Republicans in an awkward position: they both have to court the Republican base AND bring in new Latino voters, while not exposing themselves to attacks from Obama or conservative leaders later on an immigration stance which is seen as extremely pro or anti-Latino enough to lose votes.
For Romney, who has been accused of flip-flopping from conservatives, he’s already painted himself into a corner by promising the veto and is now trapped. Gingrich has run an ad openly slamming him as anti-immigrant. Romney feigned outrage at the next debate, and whipped out the fact that he had at least one Latino friend, Marco Rubio, who says he isn’t anti-immigrant. Unfortunately for Mitt, his only Latino friend, Marco Rubio, is a notorious “Tio Taco,” that is, a Latino sellout, who has been universally blasted across the Cuban radio stations in Miami. Gingrich isn’t doing particularly better on this issue with Latinos, saying that he would “work toward a signable version” in a Florida debate. Both of them, as well as other Republicans, have seen a glimmer of light, however, in the Latino voter abyss they’ve created: granting residency to military DREAMers.
HR 3823 is the resulting mess of a bill that has been a sophisticated waffling attempt between a somewhat anti-immigrant base and a growing, important Latino vote. It has the right wing staples in it, namely the military, however, it is not adequate relief for undocumented immigrants. The conditional non-immigrant residency status which is being offered through the bill are the smallest crumbs that could possibly be tossed to a soldier, so much so it’s insulting that they sell it as an adequate reward for putting oneself in line to sacrifice so much for their nation.
Read the language and you’d see this bill would go so far as to deny qualifying immigrants even this much if they’re busted for a few grams of pot. Also hidden inside the complex, indirect language is the fact that hardly anyone will qualify for the bill with all the hoops you need to jump through, and that it sets a 9 month limit for enlistment after the Department of Homeland Security approves someone’s conditional status and begins the process. If the military isn’t hiring at the moment (such as when they’re withdrawing soldiers), this means that a DREAMer who wishes to enlist and is completely supported by their community (and presumptively the people who wrote this bill) and otherwise qualifies may have to wait years and apply to enlist several times before they get an opportunity to serve, if they ever do.
According to a recent Univision poll (available at http://univisionnews.tumblr.com/...), fifty-nine percent of Latino voters said they would be less likely to support a Republican candidate who declared there could be no "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants, even if they believed the candidate held better views on the economy. Since the Latino vote is predicted to nearly double, this vote is becoming increasingly important, steadily being the fastest-growing voting demographic for several election cycles. Although Romney will pander politically to try to break off a chunk of the Latino demographic, he won’t offer any sort of relief that would actually benefit the Latino community. This is because he feels he’d risk further alienating the Republican base, which he can’t quite seem to win over anyway. The fact that he backs guys like Kris Kobach, one of the authors of SB 1070 (a notoriously harsh anti-immigrant bill that encourages racial profiling) and brags about his endorsement isn’t helping.
This all happens against a backdrop of Obama’s inaction. In 2008, Obama said “One thing we can do immediately is to pass the Dream Act.” When it came time for him to back up his words through executive action like administrative relief, a solution which would come from the executive branch of government, however, he allowed the deportations to flow. So far, President Obama has been to the right of former President Bush on this issue: in 2011 alone his administration deported nearly 400,000 immigrants, which is more than any administration before.
It seems as though whomever Republicans are going to put forth after the primary will be pandering to Latinos through “DREAM-ish” Acts that don’t address the problem, but are enough of a band-aid that they can say they tried and are less anti-immigrant than the competition. With the serious speculation on Newt as Romney’s only real competition, he talks about not allowing the deportation of grandmothers, and has a sort of basic, practical sense, but still falls short of offering real relief. This is less about ideology, and more about the practical concerns of the politics of the country moving further away from the traditional “deport them all” mentality, much like how moderate Republican voters have largely accepted gay marriage and an end to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. A good benchmark is how these have also become less important, yet were also key issues alongside immigration for George W. Bush’s election.
The Latino vote is doubling since the last election cycle, and is going to be even more important. Romney, Gingrich and the rest of the Republican party are completely missing the mark on this demographic: SB 1070 (along with a host of other anti-immigrant bills), the filibuster of the DREAM Act, deportations, a National English language, English-only schooling, that’s all Republican rhetoric and it’s poisonous to the Latino demographic. Unfortunately, the Democrat reality is not fighting hard enough for it’s base. The Democrat party, while it was filibustered by a unified Republican party and stopped cold when it actually tried to pass the DREAM Act, has been unwilling to stand up to Republicans, go over their stubborn heads and offer administrative relief on the level that it would actually make a difference to immigrant communities.
With Obama carrying an estimated 2/3 of the Latino vote, this is still a voting block which is up for grabs. Both Gingrich and Romney have been encouraging conservatives to back off Latino issues, lest the facts and reality make them look anti-immigrant. So far, while Obama looks vaguely better, there still is not a party which watches after the interest of Latino voters with mixed-status families who are still one traffic stop away from being separated into foster care at taxpayer expense and, ultimately, deported back to countries which they often fled from the violence of.