For years now, there has been discussion about fixing our badly broken immigration system. Both Republicans and Democrats admit something must be done to fix our immigration laws, and in the past, some Republicans and Democrats have agreed on some broad outlines of a plan. But that was before the Republican leaders in Congress decided to oppose everything the president does (even to fix serious problems facing the nation). They have blocked efforts to fix the economy, stop job outsourcing, create new jobs, make the tax system fairer -- and yes, to fix our broken immigration system. They don't want the president to get credit for doing anything. But this could easily backfire on them when it comes to immigration.
The last time a Republican was elected president, George W. Bush got slightly more than 40% of the Hispanic vote. This is important because Hispanics are a growing portion of the voting population -- and the white percentage of the voting population shrinks with each presidential election. It may work for the GOP to just depend on the white vote in an off-year election (like 2010 and 2014), but that will no longer work in a presidential election (when all kinds of voters turn out in much larger numbers). In 2012, Mitt Romney got only about 23% of the Hispanic vote falling far short of what he needed.
A few national party leaders understand that they need to get their percentage of the Hispanic vote back over 40% (as far over as possible) to stand a chance of returning their candidate to the White House. But their pleas are falling on deaf ears. Their congressional officials are more afraid of the teabaggers in their home districts than electing a GOP president -- and those teabaggers don't want immigration reform.
After years of watching these Republicans please their teabagger constituents and block efforts at immigration reform, President Obama finally took unilateral action by issuing an executive order to prevent the deportation of many undocumented immigrants (especially those with family in this country). But the Republicans have gone basaltic over the president's action -- and they have threatened to sue the president, defund immigration programs, shut down the government, or even attempt to impeach the president.
While this GOP temper tantrum is music to the ears of teabaggers, it is certainly not what the growing population of Hispanic voters wants to hear. According to a new Latino Decisions Poll (taken between November 20th and 22nd of 405 randomly selected national registered to vote Hispanics, with a margin of error of 4.9 points), most Hispanics consider immigration reform to be a very important issue. Most of them blame the Republicans for blocking that reform, and a huge majority support the president's decision to act by executive order. And nearly three out of four would support the president taking further action by executive order if Congress fails to act on immigration reform. (see the charts above)
And this is not just a segment of the Hispanic population. As the two charts below show, Hispanics of all kinds support the president and oppose GOP efforts to block the president (even Hispanic Republicans). If the Republicans continue down their current path, they could do so poorly among Hispanics in 2016 that Romney's 23% would look like a large number.
Hispanics have shown in the past that they can vote in fairly substantial numbers for a Republican candidate. But they are not stupid. They know who is trying to help them and who is trying to hurt them (and the issues they hold dear) -- and if the Republicans continue to block immigration reform, they will pay a substantial price for that in 2016.
