Thread: For Hispanics, it’s not just about immigration - DREAM Act nightmare?

Miami Herald
By Marc Caputo
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com

The Republican experience has been even worse. The issue of immigration consumed the party in 2006, and helped push Hispanics in droves toward Democrats.

Talk about a possible DREAM Act nightmare.

The Republican who said he’d veto the pro-immigrant legislation as president, Mitt Romney, is winning the likely Hispanic vote by 16 percentage points in a theoretical matchup against President Barack Obama in our latest Florida poll.

Romney’s 53-37 percent Latino lead over Obama has emboldened Republicans, who gleefully play up the president’s relatively tepid support among Hispanics. Yet Romney might not have an edge at all due to the size of the poll’s margin of error.

Democrats said they doubted the poll’s finding, pointing to other surveys showing Obama would win Latinos in Florida by double-digit margins. Another survey shows Obama and Romney running neck-and-neck.

Questionable logic

Regardless, the fluctuations cast some doubt on the conventional logic of the political consulting class: Hispanics want open borders, most Republicans don’t — so Obama will win Latinos.

Nothing ruins a campaign’s political theory like an actual campaign. And Romney is campaigning, on Spanish radio and TV. Also, few states test campaigns like Florida, where the Hispanic vote is far from monolithic.

“Immigration plays differently down here because the bulk of our Hispanic population is Cuban and Puerto Rican,” said Brad Coker, the Jacksonville-based Mason Dixon Research & Associates pollster who conducted the survey for The Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times and others.

“Cubans have asylum. Puerto Ricans are citizens. They’re not worried about immigration authorities kicking down their door,” Coker said.

Employment is Job One

Overlooked amid the loud immigration debate: Every major poll shows Hispanics are most concerned about jobs. Latino unemployment is higher than the national and state averages of 8.5 percent and 9.9 percent, respectively.

“To quote Bill Clinton: It’s the economy, stupid,” said U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican and Romney backer.

Diaz-Balart is a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, first designed to help children who live illegally in this country. It also provides a pathway to citizenship for those who go to college or join the military.

Critics, namely Republicans, say the proposal goes too far, has too many loopholes and would provide too much amnesty.

Diaz-Balart said Obama promised comprehensive immigration reform, but nothing happened when Democrats controlled Congress for the first half of Obama’s term.

The GOP strategy

The Republican experience has been even worse. The issue of immigration consumed the party in 2006, and helped push Hispanics in droves toward Democrats.

Republicans don’t need to win Hispanic voters outright — just take enough from Obama to weaken his base. As it grows in size and influence, the Hispanic vote will only become more highly sought in the state and nation.

The immigration debate is about tone as well as policy. It takes nuance. Especially for Republicans. Lines like making “English the official language” prompt applause in North Florida, but triggers tough questions in Miami, where even loudspeakers in some grocery stores are all-Spanish, all the time.

Republicans have to explain themselves, sometimes literally in two languages as if they’re talking out of both corners of their mouths to court Miami-Dade GOP voters, 72 percent of whom are Hispanic.

Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush are urging the Republican candidates to be careful.

“There are those among us that have used rhetoric that is harsh and intolerable and inexcusable," Rubio cautioned last week at the Republican Hispanic Leadership Network, which released a poll showing Obama’s Latino support is slipping.

The Pew Hispanic Center has found a similar, downward trend nationwide.

But a Florida survey — Univision News/ABC/Latino Decisions — last week found Obama had a 10-percentage point lead over Romney. A Quinnipiac poll of registered voters — as opposed to likely voters — released days earlier showed Obama winning Hispanics compared to Romney by 54-35.

Earlier this month, Quinnipiac found Obama was essentially tied with Romney, 46-45.

Those surveys polled registered voters. The Miami Herald’s Mason-Dixon poll, which showed Romney doing well, surveyed self-described likely voters. But the 16-percentage point lead isn’t much, considering the 10 percent error margin for the sample of Hispanics (about the same for the Quinnipiac polls).

One reason Romney might be doing well is that he is advertising on Spanish-language television and radio. Obama isn’t right now.

But Obama is getting help from the unlikeliest of places: conservative Republicans like state Sen. Alan Hays of Umatilla, who recently complained that “there are many Hispanic-speaking people in Florida that are not legal.”

Romney avoids talk like that, but he supports “self-deportation,” which Democrats say is code for making life tougher for people who look or sound like immigrants. If they can make that case during the campaign, it would be a dream for Obama come November.

Source: For Hispanics, it’s not just about immigration - Opinion - MiamiHerald.com

Romney winning the Hispanic vote is only a nightmare to liberal print media reporters that have been lying to the public for years claiming that Hispanics have monolithic support Dream and Comprehensive Amnesty for illegal aliens. The truth is that most of America's LEGAL Hispanics oppose any form of amnesty and support our existing border and immigration laws instead according to numerous scientific certified polls and analysis of actual Hispanic voting behavior in states like Arizona. The only nightmare in the Romney poll numbers from Florida is for the illegal alien invasion supporting traitors that have been abusing their influence in mass media to create a racist and false impression by equating all or most Hispanics with support for mass invasion and criminality. Your game of trying to make Hispanics synonymous with Amnesty and illegal aliens has been debunked. Could you now please stop trying to continue the lie since you are exposed before all to see?

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

Romney winning the Hispanic vote is only a nightmare to liberal print media reporters that have been lying to the public for years claiming that Hispanics have monolithic support Dream and Comprehensive Amnesty for illegal aliens. The truth is that most of America's LEGAL Hispanics oppose any form of amnesty and support our existing border and immigration laws instead according to numerous scientific certified polls and analysis of actual Hispanic voting behavior in states like Arizona. The only nightmare in the Romney poll numbers from Florida is for the illegal alien invasion supporting traitors that have been abusing their influence in mass media to create a racist and false impression by equating all or most Hispanics with support for mass invasion and criminality. Your game of trying to make Hispanics synonymous with Amnesty and illegal aliens has been debunked. Could you now please stop trying to continue the lie since you are exposed before all to see?

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Very well said, W.

FF this to 5:30



Mexicans say Mexicans are changing their city for the worse

No matter how many times activist groups and illegal immigrants from Mexico like to include all Latino's in their Community, it just isn't so. Before this invasion there was no such thing as a Latino Community. Americans of Hispanic origin were our neighbors and our friends. We were one community, the American Community. We shared our cultures, we did not flaunt our cultures.

Originally Posted by MontereySherry

No matter how many times activist groups and illegal immigrants from Mexico like to include all Latino's in their Community, it just isn't so. Before this invasion there was no such thing as a Latino Community. Americans of Hispanic origin were our neighbors and our friends. We were one community, the American Community. We shared our cultures, we did not flaunt our cultures.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

balkanize

1. to divide (a country, territory, etc.) into small, quarrelsome, ineffectual states.

2. ( often lowercase ) to divide (groups, areas, etc.) into contending and usually ineffectual factions: a movement to balkanize minority voters.

Originally Posted by MontereySherry

No matter how many times activist groups and illegal immigrants from Mexico like to include all Latino's in their Community, it just isn't so. Before this invasion there was no such thing as a Latino Community. Americans of Hispanic origin were our neighbors and our friends. We were one community, the American Community. We shared our cultures, we did not flaunt our cultures.

Very well stated MontereySherry.

Originally Posted by MontereySherry

No matter how many times activist groups and illegal immigrants from Mexico like to include all Latino's in their Community, it just isn't so. Before this invasion there was no such thing as a Latino Community. Americans of Hispanic origin were our neighbors and our friends. We were one community, the American Community. We shared our cultures, we did not flaunt our cultures.

Very true but now too many of them get to live free....