23
Aug

Enforcement, Not Amnesty, May Be the Key in 2014 Elections

Published on August 23rd, 2013

By Joe Guzzardi
August 23, 2013

According to comprehensive immigration reform advocates, Republicans should support it or risk being perennially doomed to failure. To cite the phrase you’ve read a thousand times, unless the GOP courts “the crucial Hispanic vote,” the party might eventually vanish.

But Hispanic pandering is unlikely to make a difference in state or national elections for either party. A Center for Immigration Studies analysis found that although its population is growing rapidly, Hispanics still comprise only 8.9 percent of actual voters compared to non-Hispanic whites, 74 percent, and non-Hispanic blacks, 12 percent. Crunching the numbers further, CIS noted that by weight the national Hispanic vote equals slightly less than one percentage point of the non-Hispanic white vote. The study also reported that the 8.9 percent Hispanic share of voters is a smaller bloc than veterans who represent 12 percent of the electorate, families with incomes above $100,000, 18 percent, seniors 65 and older, 19 percent, married persons, 60 percent, and those who live in owner-occupied housing, 80 percent.

If Republicans want to do better, the votes they should be courting are middle class whites, veterans and seniors. All are not only a larger demographic but are also easier to win than Hispanics many of whom have historically preferred large government Democrats.

The question the GOP should be asking itself is whether an enforcement-oriented platform can win votes. My answer is yes, thousands of votes, assuming immigration issues are handled intelligently. Candidates would have to describe how amnesty and guest worker programs hurt American workers. They would have to detail how the DREAM Act makes it tougher for American high school kids to get into college. The case for enforcement can be sensitively made and convincingly defended.

Some Republicans learned their lesson the hard way. Former Senator Richard Lugar, who represented Indiana since 1977 and headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is an example of a Republican whose immigration advocacy made him an easy target in the 2012 primary. Lugar, whose repeated DREAM Act votes alienated party stalwarts, lost the primary by 22 points.

We’ll soon learn if history will repeat itself. In the 2014 primary, Tennessee House Representative Joe Carr will challenge incumbent Lamar Alexander, one of 14 Senate Republicans who voted for the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization act, S. 744. Carr promises to make Alexander’s Gang of 8 vote “one of the three critical issues in the campaign.” Two years ago, Carr played a leading role to mandate E-Verify in Tennessee as well as to block sanctuary cities and to impose stiff penalties for identity theft.

Saying that he had no idea why Alexander voted for a 1,100 page bill he had never read that grants amnesty to 11 million illegal aliens, Carr pledges to focus on getting Americans back to work.

In his Tennessean op-ed defending his record, Alexander pointed to several of his accomplishments including his desire to reduce runaway entitlement spending by $1 trillion.

But conspicuously missing from Alexander’s self-congratulatory editorial was any mention of his "yea" S. 744 vote. By purposely omitting S. 744 from his essay, Alexander acknowledged what everyone already knows—that the bill hurts American workers and leaves the border wide open. Alexander’s immigration advocacy, motivated in part by his desire to capture the mythical Hispanic vote, may come back to haunt him in his re-election effort.

 

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Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow whose columns have been syndicated since 1986. Contact him at [email protected].

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