Latinos Swing Hard for Obama and the Democrats

Let us now put to rest the nasty canard that Latinos will not vote for a black candidate. This election season, Democratic Presidential candidate, Barak Obama, stands to gain several Western states on the strength of the Latino vote. Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and perhaps Arizona are all in play for Obama. Never mind that the Latino vote in the state of California forms a Democratic firewall guaranteeing a Blue status to this very large state. Despite some rank racist statements by various Hispanic Republican leaders, the Latino community is strongly behind the African-American Democratic candidate and come election day the overwhelming majority will be punching the Democratic ticket.

I do not want to discount the fact of racism in the Latino community anymore than I would in the Anglo community. But anti-black sentiment is no more pronounced in the Hispanic community than it is in the larger majoritarian community. Whatsmore, Latinos have come to see their interests as largely consistent with those of the African-American community. Like African-Americans, Latinos feel that their ethnicity and national origin are keeping them from getting jobs and that receive unfair treatment by the criminal justice system. As well, the heavy handed tactics of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) have cast a siege mentality amongst Latinos.

Polls have consistently demonstrated overwhelming support of Latinos for Barack Obama. The media narrative going into the presidential election posited that Latinos would split their vote for John McCain, who had sponsored legislation for comprehensive immigration reform. As McCain backed away from his prior stance, and embraced the pro-enforcement policies of the Bush administration, Latinos saw little reason to back a Republican candidate who towed the Bush Party line. This was all the more evident when one considers the demoralizing effect that the harsh ICE enforcement tactics of the Bush administration were and are having on the Latino community. As articulated by the Pew Hispanic Center:

Half (50%) of all Latinos say that the situation of Latinos in this country is worse now than it was a year ago, according to a new nationwide survey of 2,015 Hispanic adults conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center.

This pessimism is especially prevalent among immigrants, who account for 54% of all Hispanic adults in the United States. Fully 63% of these Latino immigrants say that the situation of Latinos has worsened over the past year. In 2007, just 42% of all adult Hispanic immigrants--and just 33% of all Hispanic adults--said the same thing.

Some Latinos are experiencing other difficulties because of their ethnicity. One-in-seven (15%) say that they have had trouble in the past year finding or keeping a job because they are Latino. One-in-ten (10%) report the same about finding or keeping housing.

Not surprisingly, worries about deportation and perceptions of discrimination in jobs or housing because of Hispanic ethnicity correlate with the view that Latinos' situation has worsened in the past year. Two-thirds (68%) of Latinos who worry a lot that they or someone close to them may be deported say that Latinos' situation in the country today is worse than it was a year ago, as do 63% of Latinos who have experienced job difficulties because of their ethnicity and 71% of Latinos who report housing difficulties because of their ethnicity.

Naturally, Latinos are very unhappy with the status quo, which translates to a toxic environment for Republican candidates (of any stripe). On a personal level, I live in an area with a heavy Latino population and the concerns set forth in the Pew survey are very real to this community. One Chilean friend who had a grocery store that catered to Latinos closed shop because he said fear of ICE and law enforcement in general was keeping many Latinos close to home. Fear of law enforcement is not confined to undocumented Latinos. There is now a pervasive fear of the police amongst Latinos, who are see the criminal justice system as discriminating against all Latinos.

I have heard many personal stories of people being accosted and treated rudely because they are Latino. The anger is palpable both as a community and on a personal level. And that anger is being translated into strong support for Barack Obama. Senator Obama, who is viewed as championing changes to the harsh immigration policies of the Bush administration, as well as shifting economic priorities, is clearly benefitting. Economic concerns play an important role in this allegiance. Although McCain’s inept campaign has not helped his cause amongst Latinos.

The choice of Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, as McCain’s running mate did nothing for the presidential candidates standing in the Latino community. Unlike Texas governor, George Bush, who hails from a border state, Alaska has virtually no cross-border issues of significance for the Hispanic community. (Although a substantial percentage of the Alaska fishing work-force is now Latino.) And although a significant portion of the Latino community identifies itself as evangelical Christians, this alone is not significant to undo the political realignment brought about by the Bush Administration’s policies.

Eristic ragemail has previously written how Republican designs on the Hispanic vote were being undermined by a misguided and inept enforcement-only immigration policy. What I see now, is a wholesale shift away from the Republican Party in all its manifestations. Whatever conservative cultural factors may have once aligned a segment of the Latino community to the Republicans has given way to more pragmatic concerns. As with the larger community, it appears that Latinos are more strongly shifting their allegiance to the Democratic Party. This shift by Latinos to the Democratic Party is, in my estimation, permanent.

Immigration: The Myth of the Third Rail of Politics

Now that the last three presidential candidates still standing are all in favor of comprehensive immigration reform it is becoming clear to most astute observers that immigration is not the third rail of politics. The conventional wisdom is that any serious political candidate dare not articulate a pro-immigrant platform lest they get burned by the charged rail of American politics. In fact, the most likely Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, marched with the thousands who protested in the summer of 2006 supporting immigrant rights. As New York Times reporter, David Leonhart notes in the March 2, 2008 issue of the New York Times:

Mr. McCain will all but clinch the Republican nomination on Tuesday with victories in the Ohio and Texas primaries. In the Texas campaign, except for a couple of obligatory questions about a border fence during a Democratic debate, immigration has been the dog that didn’t bark. The candidates who would have made an issue of it exited the race long ago.

The Border and the Ballot Box by David Leonhart, (New York Times, Mar 2, 2008)

(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/weekinreview/02leonhardt.html?ref=politics)

Leonhart gives some historical perspective and notes that although the issue has always attracted a wave of xenophobia it has rarely impacted national elections. Given the Nativist laws that have been passed in prior eras, it is still a stretch to say that the immigration issue has little currency. The truth is that in economically challenging times, American workers will often focus their anger on the jobs allegedly lost to immigrants. Combine this with a pernicious racism and you still have a combustible political mixture.

Nonetheless, those of us who favor a humanist policy towards immigrants, especially those immigrants who live underground lives, can take comfort in seeing the likes of Tom Tancredo and his ilk go down in flames. The Nativist appeal clearly resonates with a portion of the American electorate but it does not carry the day as a wedge issue. Nativists do their cause ill by aligning themselves with the racists, like Michelle Malkin and the VDare folks who spew irrational hatred. We, at least, have reason on our side.

The task for progressives, as stated by Abe Lincoln, is to appeal to the better angels of our nature.

We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

I harbor no illusions that we will easily overcome cultural resistance to the immigrant population and more broadly to the Latino community within our midst. But having been raised in Texas, with its Hispanic roots going back five centuries, I have seen some amazing melding of cultures. Surely, an appeal to simple humanity and perhaps a modicum of self-interest, we can find a way to move the issue of comprehensive immigration reform in a direction that finds some resonance in the humanity that is the American people.

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Viva Barack Obama!!

Floor Statement of Senator Barack Obama on Immigration Reform

Monday, April 3, 2006

Printable Format

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to enter the debate on comprehensive immigration reform. It is a debate that will touch on the basic questions of morality, the law, and what it means to be an American.

I know that this debate evokes strong passions on all sides. The recent peaceful but passionate protests that we saw all across the country--500,000 in Los Angeles and 100,000 in my hometown of Chicago--are a testament to this fact, as are the concerns of millions of Americans about the security of our borders.

But I believe we can work together to pass immigration reform in a way that unites the people in this country, not in a way that divides us by playing on our worst instincts and fears.

Like millions of Americans, the immigrant story is also my story. My father came here from Kenya, and I represent a State where vibrant immigrant communities ranging from Mexican to Polish to Irish enrich our cities and neighborhoods. So I understand the allure of freedom and opportunity that fuels the dream of a life in the United States. But I also understand the need to fix a broken system.

When Congress last addressed this issue comprehensively in 1986, there were approximately 4 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. That number had grown substantially when Congress again addressed the issue in 1996. Today, it is estimated that there are more than 11 million undocumented aliens living in our country.

The American people are a welcoming and generous people. But those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws.

The bill the Judiciary Committee has passed would clearly strengthen enforcement. I will repeat that, because those arguing against the Judiciary Committee bill contrast that bill with a strong enforcement bill. The bill the Judiciary Committee passed clearly strengthens enforcement.

To begin with, the agencies charged with border security would receive new technology, new facilities, and more people to stop, process, and deport illegal immigrants.
But while security might start at our borders, it doesn't end there. Millions of undocumented immigrants live and work here without our knowing their identity or their background. We need to strike a workable bargain with them. They have to acknowledge that breaking our immigration laws was wrong. They must pay a penalty, and abide by all of our laws going forward. They must earn the right to stay over a 6-year period, and then they must wait another 5 years as legal permanent residents before they become citizens.

But in exchange for accepting those penalties, we must allow undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows and step on a path toward full participation in our society. In fact, I will not support any bill that does not provide this earned path to citizenship for the undocumented population--not just for humanitarian reasons; not just because these people, having broken the law, did so for the best of motives, to try and provide a better life for their children and their grandchildren; but also because this is the only practical way we can get a handle on the population that is within our borders right now.

To keep from having to go through this difficult process again in the future, we must also replace the flow of undocumented immigrants coming to work here with a new flow of guestworkers. Illegal immigration is bad for illegal immigrants and bad for the workers against whom they compete.

Replacing the flood of illegals with a regulated stream of legal immigrants who enter the United States after background checks and who are provided labor rights would enhance our security, raise wages, and improve working conditions for all Americans.

But I fully appreciate that we cannot create a new guestworker program without making it as close to impossible as we can for illegal workers to find employment. We do not need new guestworkers plus future undocumented immigrants. We need guestworkers instead of undocumented immigrants.

Toward that end, American employers need to take responsibility. Too often illegal immigrants are lured here with a promise of a job, only to receive unconscionably low wages. In the interest of cheap labor, unscrupulous employers look the other way when employees provide fraudulent U.S. citizenship documents. Some actually call and place orders for undocumented workers because they don't want to pay minimum wages to American workers in surrounding communities. These acts hurt both American workers and immigrants whose sole aim is to work hard and get ahead. That is why we need a simple, foolproof, and mandatory mechanism for all employers to check the legal status of new hires. Such a mechanism is in the Judiciary Committee bill.

And before any guestworker is hired, the job must be made available to Americans at a decent wage with benefits. Employers then need to show that there are no Americans to take these jobs. I am not willing to take it on faith that there are jobs that Americans will not take. There has to be a showing. If this guestworker program is to succeed, it must be properly calibrated to make certain that these are jobs that cannot be filled by Americans, or that the guestworkers provide particular skills we can't find in this country.

I know that dealing with the undocumented population is difficult, for practical and political reasons. But we simply cannot claim to have dealt with the problems of illegal immigration if we ignore the illegal resident population or pretend they will leave voluntarily. Some of the proposed ideas in Congress provide a temporary legal status and call for deportation, but fail to answer how the government would deport 11 million people. I don't know how it would be done. I don't know how we would line up all the buses and trains and airplanes and send 11 million people back to their countries of origin. I don't know why it is that we expect they would voluntarily leave after having taken the risk of coming to this country without proper documentation.

I don't know many police officers across the country who would go along with the bill that came out of the House, a bill that would, if enacted, charge undocumented immigrants with felonies, and arrest priests who are providing meals to hungry immigrants, or people who are running shelters for women who have been subject to domestic abuse. I cannot imagine that we would be serious about making illegal immigrants into felons, and going after those who would aid such persons.

That approach is not serious. That is symbolism, that is demagoguery. It is important that if we are going to deal with this problem, we deal with it in a practical, commonsense way. If temporary legal status is granted but the policy says these immigrants are never good enough to become Americans, then the policy that makes little sense.

I believe successful, comprehensive immigration reform can be achieved by building on the work of the Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee bill combines some of the strongest elements of Senator Hagel's border security proposals with the realistic workplace and earned-citizenship program proposed by Senators McCain and Kennedy.

Mr. President, I will come to the floor over the next week to offer some amendments of my own, and to support amendments my colleagues will offer. I will also come to the floor to argue against amendments that contradict our tradition as a nation of immigrants and as a nation of laws.

As FDR reminded the Nation at the 50th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, those who landed at Ellis Island ``were the men and women who had the supreme courage to strike out for themselves, to abandon language and relatives, to start at the bottom without influence, without money, and without knowledge of life in a very young civilization.''

It behooves us to remember that not every single immigrant who came into the United States through Ellis Island had proper documentation. Not every one of our grandparents or great-grandparents would have necessarily qualified for legal immigration. But they came here in search of a dream, in search of hope. Americans understand that, and they are willing to give an opportunity to those who are already here, as long as we get serious about making sure that our borders actually mean something.

Today's immigrants seek to follow in the same tradition of immigration that has built this country. We do ourselves and them a disservice if we do not recognize the contributions of these individuals. And we fail to protect our Nation if we do not regain control over our immigration system immediately.