A poll by the University of Houston was released last week on the prospects for the March primary elections and the November general election in Texas. The poll unsurprisingly projected that Biden and Trump were headed to another showdown in November, and that Trump was leading Biden in that rematch by 9% in Texas. However, what I suspect the Biden campaign team found shocking was that Biden was losing to Trump with Latino voters by a 47-41 margin. Only 55% of Latino Democratic primary voters said they were committed to vote for Biden. The other 45% were undecided.
I have watched for years as pundits and political consultants from both parties, who were mostly white, have made assumptions about how Latino voters felt about issues and how they would likely vote. The near universal mistake these consultants and pundits have made for years was that immigration was the paramount issue for the Latino community and that they wanted more liberal immigration laws. Both assumptions were wrong.
First, there is no monolithic “Latino community.” Those of Mexican American heritage are the predominant group but there are also Americans from every other country in Central and South America. And they all have very different perspectives on just about every aspect of life, and especially on politics.
Even among those whose families originally immigrated from Mexico there are vast differences. I have a Latino friend who is a sixth-generation Texan. He joked with me one day that he didn’t know he was a “minority” until he went to college. I can assure you that his views on immigration are very different than a recent immigrant from Mexico who is trying to get the other family members into the country.
Also, immigration is hardly the only issue that Latinos are concerned about. I had dinner with some members of the Texas House of Representatives a couple of years ago about the prospect of starting a new party in Texas. The group was evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. All but one of the Democrat members were Latino.
I went around the room asking each one why they were dissatisfied with their existing party affiliation. One of the Latino members told me that his family were devout Catholics and opposed to abortion. He was tired of his party “looking down” on him because of his faith. Another said, “Defund the police my a#$, half my family works in law enforcement.” Another shared that his family was in the oilfield service business, and he was worried that Biden’s green energy agenda was going to hurt their family’s business and the economy of the area he represented. Immigration never came up during the dinner.
In a recent UT poll, 71% of Latinos supported “tightening U.S. border security and providing Border Patrol with increased technology, infrastructure, and personnel.” That was not far behind whites at 85% and African Americans at 81%. It seems clear that Biden’s lax border policies are hurting him in Texas across every demographic group, including Latinos.
But there is nuance in the polling. While Latinos generally feel about the same as their non-Latino neighbors regarding the state of the border, their views on other immigration issues vary significantly. For example, only 29% support the immediate deportation of immigrants here illegally, with 41% strongly opposed. That compares to 51% of whites who support immediate deportation. Similarly, 68% of Latinos support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants compared to 56% of whites. 61% of Latinos support harsher penalties for employers who hire workers here illegally compared to 82% of whites. Latinos also support a continuation of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, often referred to as Dreamers) at significantly higher levels than whites.
All of this suggests that a majority of Latinos, and at least a significant plurality of the rest of Americans, want the government to control the border but at the same time want a more rational system to process new immigrants and those who are already here. Biden could thread the needle on immigration but for some inexplicable reason has persisted in his lax border policies.
I do not subscribe to the theory that the president’s intention was to bring new Democratic voters into the country or the even nuttier “white replacement” conspiracy theories. Those of us who have worked in elections know that trying to register and get non-citizens to the polls is virtually impossible, at least at any scale that could affect the outcome of an election. When a third of American citizens are still not voting in presidential elections, it is much easier to get qualified voters to the polls. By the way, most of those who do not vote would likely favor Democratic candidates. Also, many of the Latino immigrants coming into the country have views on many issues, such as abortion, that are at odds with the Democratic platform.
This New York Times story attempted to put a noble face on Biden’s immigration political disaster. But even these Biden-friendly reporters struggled to concoct a rational explanation for his border policies. I think the simpler explanation is that every time party control of the White House changes, the new president feels the need to reverse all of his predecessor’s policies, whether they were working or not. Which is why we get little to nothing done. Trump was obsessed with repealing Obamacare, notwithstanding that it was supported by a growing majority of Americans throughout his presidency and most analyses showed that it slowed the increase in healthcare costs.
Biden came to the White House with the same mindset. Had he simply admitted that some of Trump’s border policies were working and then pressed to pass some badly needed reforms to the immigration system, he would not be in the mess he is now. But as Thomas Paine insightfully observed, “A man under the tyranny of party spirit is the greatest slave upon the earth, for none but himself can deprive him of the freedom of thought.”
Where is Thomas Paine when we need him?
Thanks for reminding me and every other Heritage American why we distrust and dislike “Latinos”, who are the plastic citizens on which the Democrat and Republican Parties base their future. They will NEVER be “American”. They are not law-abiding, do not honor or even understand what the country is or represents, fail at even pedestrian knowledge of language, culture, history and generally speaking don’t deserve to be here at all. Reagan did every true American a great disservice by signing Simpson Mazzoli, and now we’re stuck with these hybrids. Who cares what they think. Perhaps their education ought to include enough English to understand the word “assimilation”.
Author completes his insulting piece by calling those who see the dangers of mass, uncontrolled migration “nutty”. Fuck you buddy. You and your frijole-flipping abuela.
Contrary to the comment above most illegals came for a better life. As an architect in LA I work with a lot of illegals, and yes while some may be “plastic” Americans, most are not.
All that said the Republicans have a great opportunity to greatly increase their voting strength by convincing Latinos to vote Republican. Latinos are not woke and are not as brainwashed as many “white” Americans already.
Those newer “American” Latinos who can vote came to America to better their lives and not to be welfare queen deadbeats and as such they are very sensitive to economic issues .
Most of these new citizens are renters and renter’s according to some recent studies have the section of the populace most hurt by Bidenomics.
Unfortunately to my eyes the Republican attacks and explanation of the destructive power of Bidenomics have been terribly lame and not convincing at all to most voters. Republicans need to explain how the $9 Trillion dollar Quantitative Easing Money Print is the primary source of the devastating inflation that is really hitting low income voters hard but they are often too afraid to open their mouths.
Republicans need to educate the populace on basic monetary theory that when you print trillions of dollars the end result can only be a devastating inflation.
From there there can explain how incurring more Federal debt at the rate of $1 trillion dollars every 100 days because of rampant out of control spending that is only helping to push the Democrat agenda is a recipe for disaster.
Plus they need to explain how our out of control debt service that is now consuming one quarter of all federal revenue and growing rapidly may soon wreck the economy with horrific effects on the working poor because they are the most vulnerable to the economic collapse barreling down the tracks in the not too distant future all caused by runaway Uniparty spending.
Contrary to your statement, you have no evidence to prove that, and statistics bear out the truth that illegals soak the social welfare system, and degrade life for all American citizens. Of course your personal anecdotal experience may make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but that also proves nothing. What we can prove is the impact on American minorities wages and opportunities since the United States decided that cheap labor for Big Corporate was more important than protecting the rights of American citizens. Waving the amnesty wand hasn’t helped, only invited more chaos.
It’s ironic that I agree with all of you. I think we need to be careful about describing groups in broad brush strokes, if only to avoid falling into “whataboutism”. In any situation in life or public policy, you can find outliers; they don’t necessarily prove or disprove any statement-- that’s why they are outliers.
All that being said, I do believe that it is best for our country & our culture that people coming here have skin in the game. Legal immigration ensures that; allowing people to crash our border & be financially rewarded for it does not. I know a number of legal immigrants to this country & they are unanimously furious about what is happening now.
Please defend the need for any immigration at this point in our history. There is never any justification from those who insist that somehow immigration is a right or a duty that only free countries (strangely always majority white) have. From my perspective, there is absolutely no need whatsoever for any further legal immigration and there ought never to be any illegal alien present in this country or any country that claims it is governed by laws, not men. “Compassion” is not a governing principle here. It’s the kind of emotional claptrap one hears at Womyn’s group gatherings and in NGO offices.
I’ve been re-reading Russian history lately. What is disturbing about the revolution there is that first, it wasn’t unforeseeable. Rather, it unfolded over decades of not only autocratic, but incompetent and ineffectual leadership. Second, what we would consider small things resulted in complete destabilization, almost overnight. Lack of bread (because of high inflation rates and wages that failed to keep up with inflation) can be the match which lights a revolution. It can be the intransigence of the so-called “ruling” elites and lack of reform. Given that, what destabilization effect do tens of millions of legal immigrants, illegal aliens and foreign influence over government have on this country? I am deeply offended by those who insist that somehow immigrants “built” the U.S. It is nothing short of propaganda pushed by cheap labor lobbyists aka greedy bastards. We are at a point where one of five (soon to be one of four) residents are foreign-born. If that isn’t a cause for concern, it should be. Further, the blatant anti-white racism rampant throughout the West is nothing short of ruinous, all in service of collapsing the one country which used to uphold principles like equality before the law. Why is no one pointing fingers at the deeply racist Chinese in their country and demanding they allow tens of millions of the world’s poor to fill their country?
Here’s some migrant enrichment of a concrete type:
The Great Replacement Begins with Corporate Scum-Sucking Greedsters