Latinos and the Politics of Cynicism

While the politicians, pundits, media personalities, and others continue to dissect Wednesday’s Presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, I continue to digest the news announced early this week of the record number Latinos eligible to vote in this year’s election.  As announced by the Pew Hispanic Center, upwards to 24 million Latino voters could go to the polls this November.  The lingering question remains, however, how many actually will vote?  Despite their growing numbers, the Pew report states, “the turnout rate of eligible Latino voters has historically lagged that of whites and blacks by substantial margins.  In 2008, for example, 50% of eligible Latino voters cast ballots, compared with 65% of blacks and 66% of whites.”  As such, getting more Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican-origin voters to the polls could tip the election for one candidate or the other, which is why the presidential candidates continue courting these ever-increasingly important populations.

As widely reported earlier this week, both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney made overtures to Latino and Hispanic voters in the run-up to their debate.  The President announced plans for a César Chávez memorial, while the former Massachusetts Governor visited a Chipotle restaurant and declared he would maintain the current administration’s halting of deporting younger undocumented immigrants.  (For the record, I have long admired César Chávez, and had the pleasure of meeting him twice when he visited my alma mater during the late 1980s and early 1990s.  A national monument to his memory is long overdue.)

While having Hispanics and Latinos playing a more prominent role in national politics is undoubtedly a good thing, the ploys both candidates used this week bother me on a couple of levels, and I am not sure what bothers me more.  For one, the candidates seemingly think that cynical moves like these will persuade Hispanic and Latino voters to vote for them.  Moreover, these kinds of cynical moves might actually work.  Politicians would not make such overtures unless there was some evidence that they did.  And if these cynical political moves do ultimately persuade those Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other voting-eligible populations to cast their ballots for one candidate over the other, than can we legitimately ask to be taken seriously as a political constituency?  I fear the answer may be “no.”

Immigration Reform and the Presidential Race

There has been much ado about President Obama's announcement last week that he would use his executive privilege to use discretion regarding dealings with unauthorized immigrants who meet certain criteria. This discretion is focused on Dreamers, the self-named group of young people whose parents brought them to the United States illegally when they were very young, who attended and completed their schooling in the U.S., have no criminal background, and/or have served in the military. Obama has said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will now use discretion with regards to this group, halting their deportation if they meet certain criteria, and even granting them temporary 2-year work permits. 

Initially, there was elation from immigration reform advocates, especially the Dreamers, but upon further examination that excitement was tempered. 

First, they had to respond to critics that this executive order was unconstitutional and sidestepped the legislative process and Congress. This was despite an open letter to Obama sent by a large group of legal scholars and lawyers  two weeks prior to the President's announcement, criticizing the President for not using executive powers around immigration. They argued that historical actions by other presidents and legal precedent would allow Obama to exercise his authority to halt deportations and grant temporary legal status to some immigrants. 

A second point, was the issue of political pandering by Obama. Some argued that Obama's decision to defer action on the deportation of some unauthorized immigrants was reacting to this pressure and the pressure from Dreamers who were occupying some of his campaign offices. They suggested that Obama's act was purely political, but pragmatically for them it was a step in the right direction. 

This raised a third area of doubt, because the order did not represent any sort of permanent change. Obama had a longstanding position that discretion should be used with regards to unauthorized immigrants who had no criminal records. Despite that he still holds the dubious distinction of deporting record numbers of unauthorized immigrants compared to other administrations. Actually, some wondered if anything changed at all because his current announcement is really just "old wine in a new wineskin." 

These previous points relate to the issue of the President's commitment to immigration reform and  Latinos more generally. Despite promises of comprehensive immigration reform that would occur in his first year in office, he did nothing to move the issue forward. When the less comprehensive DREAM Act reached Congress for a vote, he expended very little, if any political capital to get it passed. When called out by immigration reform advocates regarding his lack of support, Obama has proven "testy" and even "hostile." An extended Washington Post piece cites numerous examples of Obama's defensiveness around immigration issues, and a seeming overall unwillingness to change his actions, leading some to question where he really stands on the issue.

Romeny's political reaction was muted at first, but he finally proposed some potential reforms to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) yesterday. Ironically, despite calling the president's immigration policy unconstitutional, he proposed very similar unilateral executive policies as part of his immigration stance. Overall, though, he presented little of substance in the way of immigration reform, perhaps showing that he still stands on his simplistic "self-deport" platform.

Perhaps Romney believes that his immigration and Latino trump card is Marco Rubio. An article by African American writer Earl Ofari Hutchinson seems to suggest this might be true. In this article I think that Mr. Hutchinson's lens is clouded by the Black-White binary paradigm that pervades American thinking. Latinos are really diverse and complex. While there are some trends such as being opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage, IN GENERAL, when you look at Latino sub-groups, such as generational status, age, specific country of origin, these overall trends disappear; One trend that does seem to trump that complexity and gives Latinos something to stand together on is immigration; we are all still pretty closely tied to our immigrant roots AND many people (using the Black-White paradigm) assume that Latino is synonymous with immigrant. Because we realize that having our nativity questioned is a big source of bias, we tend toward favoring immigration reform that might remove that stigma. We would probably be much more likely to vote on that issue alone, as the Obama bump in the last week shows. That is much more a reason for us to vote as a bloc than whether someone with a Spanish surname was on the ticket of either party. While Rubio may offer some moderate views that are agreeable to Latinos, especially given his Democratic past and love of hip-hop (sarcasm), he too has been pretty much in the background in terms of his immigration stance, with the public still awaiting the immigration reform legislation that he said he would be putting forward a while ago. 

All of this is to say that immigration will certainly be a big deal this election. And, with the Census releasing more evidence of the ever-growing Latino population, it really is time that politicians of both parties stop talking and start acting.