NewsTaco

By Silvia Manzano, Latinovations

The 113th Congress includes a record number of thirty-eight Latinos elected officials. These notable numbers have both policy and political implications for the future of Latino politics in the United States.  First though, some demographic facts about the 113th.

Demographic Profile

The House Representatives includes thirty-five Latino members, another three are members of the United States Senate. All three Latino senators share two traits, they are all Cuban American men: Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, Marco Rubio, R-Florida, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas. By contrast, only eight House members are Latinas. Democrats make up the majority of the Latino delegation, with twenty-seven in the House and one in the Senate. Republican Latinos number eight in the House and two in the Senate.

They hail from ten states and two territories, but California and Texas dominate the Latino congressional delegation (with thirteen and seven members from the respective states), which is not a surprise given the proportion of Latinos in those states as well as the large clusters of majority-minority regions with high concentrations of established Latino political talent.

Policy

In terms of policy representation, it is fair for the Latino electorate to expect co-ethnics in office to champion a specific policy agenda.  Most Latino elected officials represent large Latino constituencies; it is their job to support and advance voter preferences after all.

In the 2012 election over 70% of Latino voters supported Democratic House, Senate and Presidential candidates. Results from the impreMedia/Latino Decisions Election Eve Poll –the only study of the 2012 Latino electorate — demonstrate that Latino voters have a clear policy affinity with the Democratic party. The majority of Latinos side with Democrats on core, party-defining issues including: health care, where over 60% prefer to see Obamacare remain intact; deficit policy solutions, where 77% prefer an approach that includes higher taxes on the wealthy, andimmigration, where the President’s deferred action policy was met with strong enthusiasm from the Latino electorate and the Republican candidate’s self-deportation alternative was roundly rejected.

There remains a smaller but steadfast Republican and conservative policy-leaning share of the Latino electorate, just as there is a smaller GOP Latino delegation. Because Latino voter preferences are so clear, Latinos in Congress can confidently coalesce  around these issues to amplify their collective impact on legislation.

Politics

Latino members of Congress occupy an interesting political position in  this era of growing Latino political empowerment. Both parties have publicly articulated a desire and plan to strategically build their Latino share in the electorate as a means to their long-term viability. In this light, Latino members of Congress represent more than their specific districts on floor votes and constituent services. Rather, Latino members provide a bridge to an electorate that both parties are keen to improve.

For example, Senator Ted Cruz has taken on the role of communicating the value of Latino electorate to a clearly non-Latino targeted audience, going to far as to say the GOP’s future is doomed without increased Latino voter support. Most Latinos did not vote for Senator Cruz, but that is beside the point. His ethnicity affords him a certain credibility and standing to speak on outreach issues that is taken seriously in and outside of his party. Latino Democrats in the 113th are in more high-profile partisan roles than prior Congresses, which suggests the party understands the importance of developing Latino political talent within their ranks given the decisive impact Latino voters had in President Obama’s re-election. Both teams learned that taking Latino voters seriously is not just a novelty of the 2012 Obama win, it is the future of winning.

This article was first published in Latinovations.

Sylvia Manzano is a Senior Analyst at Latino Decisions, a research and consulting firm specializing in Latino politics and policy. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Arizona. Her research and analytical expertise focus on political demography, state politics, representation and immigration policy. She was a core designer and analyst on the 2012 impreMedia/Latino Decisions Latino National Election Eve Poll. She has been interviewed by numerous media outlets including NBC Latino, The New York Times, La Opinion, Fox News Latino, The Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio.

[Photo by Francisco Diez]

By Rafalca D. Portado, Pocho Ñews Service

Lalo Alcaraz AKA Daniel D. Portado invented Self Deportation as a joke in 1994, and now it’s part of Gov. Mitt Romney’s platform. Nancy Lopez interviewed the Jefe-in-Chief for Radioambulante.

This article was first published in Pocho.com.

Lalo Alcaraz is probably the most prolific Chicano artist in the nation, according to this bio. This award-winning joker has spent two decades chronicling the political ascendancy of Latinos in America and pushing the boundaries of Chicano art. He is the creator of the first nationally-syndicated, politically-themed Latino daily comic strip, “La Cucaracha,” he co-founded the political comedy troupe Chicano Secret Service and he co-hosts the infamous “Pocho Hour of Power” on KPFK in Los Angeles (90.7 FM).

By Antonio Matrtinez, Our Tiempo

Mary Steenburgen & George Lopez star in this hilarious video. We love the Morrissey poster in the SDS.

This article was first published in Our Tiempo.

Rumor has it, or at least Antonio Martinez will tell you, that he was the first Latino Love-child of a recent Governor of a west coast state. Even if it is not true, its gotten him backstage entrance into more concerts than most of us will see in a lifetime by the time he was 21. These days Tony is OurTiempo’s resident music aficionado. You can usually recognize him as the tall Mexican in the room hanging out with his Jack Russell Terrier. Why, we always ask? “Cause real men have small dogs” he tells us.

By Raul A. Reyes, OtherWords.org

I bet Mitt Romney has a sweatshirt that says I (heart) Florida. His victory in the Sunshine State revitalized his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. Florida also gave him an opportunity to explain his immigration policy.

Asked how he would deal with undocumented immigrants, Romney said during the Tampa debate that he believes in “self-deportation.” A crackdown on undocumented immigrants, he explained, would make “people decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here…because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here.”

Some spectators in the audience giggled at Romney’s answer. “Self-deportation,” however, is no joke. It amounts to laws that harm undocumented immigrants and Latinos. Let’s break it down and see why self-deportation defies reality, legality, and American values of dignity and human rights.

First of all, Romney’s idea of self-deportation overlooks the obvious. How do we think the estimated 11 million undocumented U.S. immigrants got here? They already “self-deported” themselves right out of their home countries in search of better lives and opportunity. And the fact is, they’re here to stay. In 2011 the Pew Center found that, despite a weak economy and increased enforcement measures, the undocumented population has remained stable. Although unauthorized entries have dropped, Pew reported that few undocumented immigrants are returning to their countries of origin.

It’s amazing that Romney, a successful businessman, doesn’t realize that if the undocumented were to leave, even gradually, it would cause our economy to contract. An exodus of this labor force would hit agriculture and the service sector very hard.

But wouldn’t American workers take these jobs? So far, it hasn’t worked out that way. In Alabama and Georgia, two states that passed strong, harsh immigration laws, farmers are facing severe labor shortages. Alabama has even considered using prisoners because farmers can’t find anyone willing to do backbreaking fieldwork.

Key components of the self-deportation strategy are state and local laws targeting “illegals.” Yet ironically, many of these laws have been found to be of questionable legality themselves. The Department of Justice has challenged many such statutes because they usurp federal authority over immigration and result in racial profiling of Hispanics. In Arizona’s Maricopa County, for instance, the department found that Latinos were up to nine times more likely to be pulled over for traffic violations than non-Hispanics. Its Civil Rights Division has received more than a thousand complaints about Alabama’s law.

Romney favors self-deportation over rounding up undocumented families and removing them from the country. Unfortunately, his solution is equally harsh and inhumane. Self-deportation means passing laws that make the daily lives of the undocumented miserable. It means measures that would bar them from finding work or renting a home and deny them basic services such as water and heat. It means questioning schoolchildren about their parents’ immigration status. These examples aren’t hypothetical. They’re all components of Alabama’s draconian immigration law.

It’s troubling that Romney endorses trampling on constitutional and human rights for the sake of winning his party’s nomination. His stance on immigration shows a lack of compassion from a man whose Mormon ancestors were persecuted across America before settling in Utah, and whose own family crossed the Mexican border a few times themselves. He would be well advised to learn from Ronald Reagan (who granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants in 1986) or even George W. Bush (who supported a path to legalization for the undocumented).

Romney might consider that his immigration stance is at odds with his faith. The Mormon Church actively promotes compassion towards all immigrants. Most of all, Romney needs to realize that Americans don’t want a long, slow purge of the undocumented. What we want is sensible, comprehensive immigration reform.

Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and columnist in New York City.

[Photo By Gage Skidmore]