They know illegals are voting by the thousands.
Posted on 07/09/2007 5:54:03 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
The goal was to work within the halls of Congress. Now, immigrant-rights groups want to replace the lawmakers who walk them.
Labor unions, immigrant advocates and Democratic activists have spent the two weeks since the Senate squashed a comprehensive immigration overhaul bill constructing the early framework of a political payback plan. Capitalizing on the Latino voting bloc and its disaffection with the Republican Party, the groups intend to use the recent debate as a rallying shriek in the 2008 election.
"We are the fastest-growing sector of the electorate, and we have shown a capacity to show up when we are good and angry," said Cecilia Munoz, senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza. "And we are good and angry."
The multipronged effort is still taking shape, but interviews with a half-dozen leading immigration proponents suggest a combination of targets.
Senators such as Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), who are up for reelection next year and opposed moving the bill to a final vote, will likely find themselves in the immigrant community's cross hairs. The whole Senate will be singled out this week as the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform places full-page ads in ethnic newspapers listing senators by name, party affiliation and their vote on the Senate bill.
Presidential candidates will be held to -- or dogged by -- their positions on the issue. And advocates plan to mount what some are calling an unprecedented effort to mobilize Hispanic voters and encourage legal immigrants to apply for citizenship and receive the right to participate in elections.
The Service Employees International Union is meeting this week with potential donors for a national campaign, said Eliseo Medina, the union's executive vice president. He declined to disclose a fundraising goal but said they "will raise enough money to have a program in every major city where immigrants are concentrated."
The push continues work that began after massive protests last year to a House bill by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) that would have resulted in the toughest crackdown on illegal immigration in a decade.
"The immigrant community has finally understood the connection between voting and social change, and they can only make that happen through their vote," Medina said.
Hispanics still turn out in relatively small numbers: 8 percent of all voters in 2006, up from 7 percent two years earlier, according to CNN exit polling. But as the country's fastest-growing minority -- swelling in the Western and Southwestern states that President Bush relied on for his wafer-thin victories -- this slice of the electorate will only rise in prominence, political strategists say.
Bush took about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, but that support dropped last year, as Republicans received only 30 percent.
Immigrant-rights advocates said they expect last month's immigration debate to be as galvanizing as California's Proposition 187, a 1994 measure that eliminated government benefits for illegal immigrants. It passed with 60 percent of the vote and propelled Republican Gov. Pete Wilson to a second term, but the backlash has since been cited as a key reason why California later turned Democratic.
Naturalization rates soared in California and nationwide from 1994 to 1996, immigrant-rights advocates said.
"We are entering a similar situation," said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, the New Democrat Network, a Washington group that has studied the politics of immigration.
His evidence: Like in 1994, immigrants feel as if they are under siege -- and have since the Sensenbrenner bill passed the House in 2005. The debate in recent months has been "manifestly out of bounds," Rosenberg said.
"When they are called criminals rather than workers, that is a very powerful message," Medina said.
Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposed the Senate bill, agrees that the electoral prospects for Republicans are grim, but for reasons that go beyond immigration.
"There may be a lot of anger among the illegal aliens (on immigration), but people try to conflate the interests and agenda of illegal aliens with the agenda of Hispanics in general," Mehlman said.
Hispanics are not single-issue voters, said Tracey Schmitt, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, which is headed by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), a Cuban immigrant who has cautioned against the party alienating these voters.
"We are confident that the GOP and the Hispanic community share priorities," Schmitt said.
It should be noted that opposition to the Senate bill was bipartisan: 15 Democrats and one independent joined 37 Republicans to vote against it. Thirty-three Democrats, one independent and 12 Republicans backed the measure.
Democratic strategists argue that the Republican brand has suffered far more damage. Still, Rosenberg said, Democrats can't simply play a blame game for the next 18 months.
"It would be a serious strategic mistake if we said, 'Republicans stopped immigration reform,'" Rosenberg said. "They took a big swing on comprehensive immigration reform and it failed. That's not a good way to go to the Hispanic electorate."
If some Americans of Hispanic descent stop voting for the party they perceive as having stopped the legalization of illegal-alien lawbreakers, then they weren’t really Americans to begin with.
Threatening us!
I am Hispanic and I am voting against every person who did not actively oppose amnesty.
Very nice plan Bush!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
“will likely find themselves in the immigrant community’s cross hairs”
Why? All legal immigrants I know, mostly hispanic, were against the bill.
They know illegals are voting by the thousands.
Polls showed majorities of Republicans, Democrats and Independents all opposed the Senate bill.
The only consituency in favor, the illegal foreigners, doesn't have the right to vote, yet they believe they have the power to replace American legislators. What is wrong with this picture?
It appears that you aren’t alone among Hispanic Americans.
Bring it on, La Raza.
Bcsco: ping
Thank God we have secret ballots, else Hispanic-American-Republicans might be intimidated against voting their conscience instead of their race (as La Raza wants them to do). The only honest way for the GOP to ‘court’ Hispanic-American voters (by definition LEGAL immigrants who WANT to be part of America) is to appeal to the conservatives among them... just like they would with any other group of Americans. Pandering in any form is just WRONG.
“Very nice plan Bush!”
I am 56 and very conservative and can say that Bush is the worst president I can remember.
How stupid to think that the hispanics will vote republican.
So...one the one hand, we have CAIR and their Wahabi masters, who are determined to turn the US into a muslim, sharia-law country, and on the other, the Latinos, who are attempting to take over the US so as to make it into an hispanic country. Very interesting.
“Now, immigrant-rights groups want to replace the lawmakers who walk them.”
Correction: “Now, illegal immigrant-rights groups want to replace the lawmakers who walk them.”
You’ve got that right. These groups are latino first. It’s getting very old. They don’t talk about being American. It’s latino latino latino latino latino.
Where’s the polls showing Hispanic support for the bill?
Crickets...all we get is an inside view of the mental zoo of white urban elites.
“I am Hispanic and I am voting against every person who did not actively oppose amnesty.”
B U M P
That's what pro-ILLEGAL immigrant / OBL folks never explain -- and it is exactly what I remember, Pete Wilson won on Prop 187.
Instead the meme is that Prop 187 virtually destroyed Republicans.
As a matter of fact, it helped destroy a Democrat governor, the recalled-governor Davis. Many of us remembered how Davis worked a deal with the opponents of Prop 187 to destroy it; and thus Davis refused to appeal a district court judge's (long-delayed, like about four years) decision. That ain't no meme that's a fact.
I suspect, nay know, that all the B.S. about the "Hispanic" vote is nothing more than spin.
Arizona's Prop 200 passed with about 50 percent of the vote of Americans of Hispanic origin. Prop 187 got around 35 percent if I remember correctly.
There is no such thing as "the Hispanic vote." There are millions of Americans who vote.
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