Posts tagged Immigration

If Repub­li­cans could choose a “Wel­come” mat to grace America’s doorstep, it would look a lot like the one on the right: con­fused, angry and totally con­flicted. On the one hand, Repub­li­cans know they need to find a bet­ter pol­icy on immi­gra­tion because, quite sim­ply, the issue is killing them at the polls. But as we have all learned to our sor­row at var­i­ous points in our lives, it can be really hard to make the heart accept what the brain is telling us to do.

First, let’s exam­ine the nature of the GOP’s immi­gra­tion immo­la­tion. In the recent elec­tion, Barack Obama won between 66 and 70 per­cent of the His­panic vote, accord­ing to Reuters/​Ipsos elec­tion day polling. This comes at a time when the Latino pop­u­la­tion is grow­ing rapidly in states such as Florida, one of eight or so polit­i­cally divided states that were cru­cial in the pres­i­den­tial race, and when high-​​profile Repub­li­cans like Jeb Bush are threat­en­ing that Texas could turn blue before the next pres­i­den­tial election.

“The non­white vote has been grow­ing — tick, tick, tick — slowly, steadily. Every four-​​year cycle the elec­torate gets a lit­tle bit more diverse. And it’s going to con­tinue,” says Paul Tay­lor, demo­graphic spe­cial­ist at the non­par­ti­san Pew Research Cen­ter, adding that the num­ber of white vot­ers is expected to con­tinue to decline a few points in each future elec­tion cycle. “This is a very pow­er­ful demo­graphic that’s chang­ing our pol­i­tics and our destiny.”

Com­pound­ing the prob­lem for Repub­li­cans is the fact that while they are mas­sively los­ing the Latino vote, they are not mak­ing off­set­ting gains with any other demo­graphic. The pres­i­den­tial elec­tion results high­lighted the polit­i­cal impact of this. About 80 per­cent of blacks, Lati­nos and other non­white vot­ers cast their bal­lots for Obama in Novem­ber com­pared with less than 17 per­cent for Rom­ney, accord­ing to the Reuters/​Ipsos polling ref­er­enced above. Obama also won about 63 per­cent of total vot­ers age 18 to 34.

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