Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution (19 page)

Despite the pronounced party affiliation deficit, a significant number of Hispanic Republicans are winning major elected offices. In 2010, for the first time ever, three Hispanic candidates won top statewide contests, and all were Republicans: New Mexico governor Susana Martinez, Nevada governor Brian Sandoval, and U.S. senator Marco Rubio from Florida.
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Two years later, Republican Ted Cruz was elected U.S. senator in Texas. This electoral success may reflect the Republican Party’s greater focus
on individual attributes rather than ethnic identity, which should appeal to Hispanics given their tremendous diversity.

We believe the GOP has far greater potential to attract Hispanic votes than it has realized so far. A 2006 survey by the nonpartisan Latino Coalition found that a plurality of Hispanic voters—34.2 percent—consider themselves conservative, compared to only 25.8 percent who call themselves liberals.
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The difference between the number of self-identified conservatives and the much smaller number of Hispanic Republicans represents a substantial opportunity gap for the GOP.

The conservative instinct reflects in Hispanic positions on a wide range of political and social issues. A sizable majority of Hispanic voters—53.6 percent to 39.5 percent—believe the Hispanic community should become more a part of American society than keeping its own culture. Given a choice between cutting taxes or raising government spending as the best way to grow the economy, 61.2 percent favored lower taxes while only 25.5 percent supported increased spending. More Hispanics (47.7 percent) would prefer to be covered by private health insurance than by a government-sponsored plan (39.8 percent). An outright majority (52.8 percent) consider themselves pro-life rather than pro-choice (39.8 percent).

The strong work ethic, devotion to family, and conservative social values prevalent among Hispanics should make large numbers of them natural Republicans—and many fewer of them Democrats. Most are devoutly religious. A minuscule 7.7 percent of Hispanic adults in the United States are divorced.
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The principal magnets attracting Hispanics to the United States are work and entrepreneurship. Fully 60 percent of Hispanic registered voters own their homes.

Moreover, Democrats typically pursue policies that are antithetical to the aspirations of Hispanics and other Americans, favoring increased taxes and regulations on small businesses and opposing school choice. They are leaving tremendous opportunities for Republicans to win the hearts and minds of Hispanic voters.

And yet many Republicans have proven themselves remarkably tone-deaf when it comes to courting Hispanic voters—to the extent they court them at all. Attracting Hispanic votes does not require abandoning conservative principles—quite the contrary. Rather, it means seeing Hispanic voters as individuals, most of whom fervently cherish our nation’s ideals. Much common ground exists, if there is a will to find it and good faith in championing it.

To win Hispanic votes—and those of immigrants generally—Republicans should play to their strengths while avoiding alienating rhetoric that makes them appear anti-immigrant. Ken Mehlman, a political strategist for President George W. Bush in 2004, advises that to “win Hispanic votes, the GOP must be the party of those who aspire to the American Dream.”
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Here are four concrete strategies to do just that.

For most Hispanic-Americans, immigration falls behind education, jobs, and health care as their top policy priorities.
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Surprisingly, many Hispanics support conservative positions on immigration. For instance, 47 percent of Hispanic voters in 2004 supported Arizona’s Proposition 204, which required proof of citizenship for government benefits.
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Two years later, 48 percent favored making English the official language.
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More than 70 percent of Hispanics support voter photo identification laws.
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What turns off Hispanic voters is the hostile tone of the debate
over immigration. When Republicans advocate fencing off the Mexican border or cutting off social benefits for illegal immigrants, they often overtly or implicitly associate Mexican immigrants with crime and welfare, a stereotype that creates understandable resentment even among people who might agree on the substance of the policy. Likewise, the toxic rhetoric of “self-deportation” suggests that certain groups are not wanted. Even though immigration typically is not a top priority among Hispanic voters, it is a gateway issue: if Republicans set a hostile tone and message on immigration, they will never make it through the gate, and other messages that would resonate among Hispanics will not be heard.

“The issue isn’t just immigration but the way the hard-liners’ stance has been so offensive, even to Latinos who agree with them about the need for a secure border,” observes Tamar Jacoby. “It’s about what kind of innuendo you use in making your case. It’s about whether or not you’re imagining a shared future, and how constructively you’re planning for it.”
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Pollster John Zogby agrees. “I found a considerable amount of agreement on social issues like abortion, gay marriage, and guns,” he says of a 2006 exit poll of Hispanic voters, “but also a strong reluctance to vote for a party that promoted the anti-immigration Proposition 187 in California.”
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Indeed, California shows what can happen when the Republican Party embraces a strong anti-immigration posture without reaching out in a positive way to Hispanics. The once-vibrant party that sent two Republican presidents to the White House in the second half of the twentieth century now is so moribund that it has not a single statewide elected official and is in danger of falling into third place behind independents among registered California voters. The party’s implosion traces back to the extremely divisive Proposition 187, which was enacted in 1994 just as the number of Hispanic voters in the state was surging. Now the party is in such a deep hole that it may be impossible to dig out. Indeed, California GOP chairman Tom Del Beccaro may be understating the case when he says that the “manner in which immigration is handled nationally presents a challenge to Republicans in California.”
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Arizona appears in danger of following California’s lead. Though it has been a mainly Republican state for the past few decades, Hispanic voters are growing in electoral strength and are not happy with the state party’s nativist tendencies. In 2008, Arizona Hispanics gave 56 percent of their votes to presidential candidate Barack Obama, but a healthy 41 percent to Republican senator John McCain, who had championed comprehensive
immigration reform (a position from which he backtracked two years later during a tough primary battle for his Senate seat). In 2012—following emotionally charged debate over Arizona S.B. 1070 and highly publicized immigration sweeps by Sheriff Joe Arpaio—Arizona Hispanics favored President Obama over Mitt Romney by a whopping 80–14 percent margin. Unlike Hispanics nationally, Arizona Hispanics had come to consider immigration policy more important than even jobs and the economy.
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It is illuminating to compare the California and Arizona experiences with Texas and Florida. Both of those states have large Hispanic populations with flourishing Republican parties and large numbers of Hispanic Republican elected officials. Some would characterize Florida as an aberration because most of its Hispanic population is Cuban, a community that tends to be more politically conservative. But younger Cuban-Americans are one or two generations removed from the conditions that led their parents and grandparents to the Republican Party; and Florida also has lots of Hispanics from other Latin American countries. Most of Texas’s Hispanic population is Mexican-American, and illegal immigration is a serious statewide concern.

But unlike in Arizona and California, Republicans in Florida and Texas have treated immigration issues with great sensitivity,
and have reached out to Hispanic voters on issues of common ground such as education and enterprise. Indeed, at the same time as the national party was adopting a hard-line immigration platform at the 2012 Republican National Convention, the Texas GOP platform dropped previous hard-line language and for the first time called for a national guest-worker program.
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“I challenged the committee to say, ‘What would a conservative solution to immigration look like?’ ” explained Art Martinez de Vara, the Hispanic Republican mayor of Von Ormy, Texas. “Rather than restating problems, we decided to propose an actual conservative solution.”
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Little wonder, given their parties’ aggressive outreach and emphasis on shared values, that both states elected Hispanic Republicans to the U.S. Senate: Cruz in Texas and Rubio in Florida (and Mel Martinez before him).

Even though Republicans in Texas and Florida do better than their counterparts in other states, they still have not won over Hispanic voters to the extent necessary to consider them Republican states over the long term. Indeed, Florida Hispanics abandoned Romney in the 2012 presidential election, helping deliver a rich electoral prize to President Obama. Similarly, Texas demographics will make that state purple rather than red unless Republicans do better among Hispanics. In other words, though
Florida and Texas Republicans have better track records than Republicans in other states, the party needs to do a much better job everywhere.

The bottom line is that in addition to the national imperative for comprehensive immigration reform, the Republican Party has a strong institutional interest in putting the emotionally charged rancor behind us and resolving immigration issues for the long term. At the same time, it is critical that Republicans do not compromise the core values necessary for an immigration policy that works for America. Our policy recommendations demonstrate that Republicans can champion immigration reform in ways that are fully consistent with their ideals. By doing so, they will remove a barrier that prevents Republicans from credibly reaching out to Hispanics and other immigrants on other issues on which they share strong core values.

Like most immigrants, Hispanics are tremendously entrepreneurial and create a vast number of small, family-owned businesses. Economic conditions and federal tax and regulatory policies over
the past four years have not been kind to small businesses. Republicans should bring their message of low taxes and moderate regulatory policies to Hispanic communities whose economic future depends on such policies.

In particular, licensing regulations often disproportionately hamper Hispanic businesses that tend to operate informally. Republicans should champion enterprise zones, deregulation of entry into occupations and businesses that require few skills and little capital, and lower business taxes. More important, they should engage Hispanic business and community leaders in identifying and eradicating barriers to enterprise. As Democrats continue compounding the inherent risks of small businesses by piling on taxes and regulations at every level of government, Republicans should be seen as ardent defenders of small businesses.

No issue resonates more strongly among Hispanics than education. No wonder: nearly half of all Hispanics—more than any other ethnic group—have children in school or on their way.
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Hispanics, especially in low-income households, are disproportionately consigned to poor-performing public schools. As a result, Hispanics are active participants in school choice programs.

Although public school choice is increasingly a bipartisan
issue and a handful of Democrats have supported some forms of private school choice, teacher unions are such a powerful force in the Democratic Party that many elected officials, including those who represent constituents who desperately need expanded educational opportunities, are unwilling to support school choice and other systemic education reforms. This is an albatross around the neck of many Democratic candidates and elected officials. Both as a matter of moral imperative and political opportunity, Republicans should strongly promote school choice and bring their message into Hispanic communities.

Public opinion polls consistently show that education is a high-priority issue for Hispanic voters, and that Hispanics support school choice more strongly than do other groups. A 2012 survey for the American Federation for Children and the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options found that two-thirds of Hispanics believe that school choice is a positive force in education.
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Hispanic support extends to all forms of school choice, including school vouchers (69 percent support versus 29 percent opposed), special-needs scholarships (80 to 16 percent), tax credits for private school scholarships (71 to 26 percent), education savings accounts (70 to 26 percent), and charter schools (62 to
25 percent).
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Support is even greater among Hispanic parents, who favor school vouchers by a 77–22 percent margin.
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An earlier survey found that the issue has great political salience for Hispanic voters, given that three-quarters of Hispanic parents would be interested in participating in a school choice program.
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Not surprisingly, then, nearly two-thirds of Hispanics said they would be more likely—and one-third much more likely—to vote for a candidate for elective office who supports school choice.
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On the flip side, 59 percent of Hispanic Democrats, 62 percent of Republicans, and a remarkable 74 percent of independents would oppose a candidate who was against school choice.
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Most significant for Republicans, Hispanic voters by a 70–20 percent margin said they would cross party lines to vote against an anti–school choice candidate.
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Reaching out to Hispanic voters on enterprise and education is not pandering. It is making common cause on core issues that Republicans and Hispanics share in common. Good policy makes for good politics. Democrats will never be as pro-enterprise and pro–school choice as Republicans. Forming an alliance increases the odds of success on those important issues and demonstrates that Republicans care about issues of great concern to Hispanics. It is a winning combination.