GOP House votes on
immigration bills last Friday is a gift to Democrats, ensuring high Hispanic
support for Democrats for years to come. In Colorado statewide races, the
Hispanic vote is significant. Over 485,000 Hispanics, 12% of the electorate,
are registered to vote. In 2012, President Obama got 75% of their vote.
Several other battleground states also have large numbers of Hispanic (or
Latino) voters, and they could determine the balance in the US
Senate.
Two Colorado Republican
congressmen bucked their party and voted no on the Republican bill. The impact
is to deprive Democrats of some campaign sound bites to rally greater turnout of
the Hispanic vote this November. It does not change Hispanic perception of the
general anti-Latino immigrant tone of the Republican Party.
Democrat incumbent Sen.
Mark Udall is facing Congressman Cory
Gardner. Former congressman Bob Beauprez (R) is challenging Gov. John
Hickenlooper (D), and Democrat Andrew Romanoff is taking on Republican
Congressman Mike Coffman in the 6th district. Coffman gained more Hispanic
voters in his Denver suburban district through redistricting so that he has had
to do some backtracking on his hard-line anti-immigrant positions. Gardner and
he were two of the few GOP House members
who voted against the Republican bills. Beauprez has yet to check in on
this year’s immigration issues.
There are three major
sore points between Hispanics and Republicans: “dreamers,” “pathway to
citizenship,” and deportation of children in the recent border crisis. Both
agree to secure borders, only the GOP makes it a condition of doing anything,
if anything, later. Hispanics want a
comprehensive package plan. “Dreamers” were brought to the US by their parents when
they were children. Frustrated by Republican opposition to support legislation
to allow them to work and study without fear of deportation, President Obama
used executive orders to give dreamers a two-year reprieve and has threatened
to extend and expand deferred deportation by executive order. One of the
Republican bills Friday would have stripped him from being able to use his
executive power of prosecutorial discretion, exposing half a million young people to deportation in the middle of their studies.
GOP anti-immigrant
rhetoric calls a pathway to citizenship “amnesty,” and Friday they killed a
bipartisan compromise the Senate had hammered out. Both Gardner and
Coffman have a history of opposing comprehensive immigration reform that would
give a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented and the dream acts.
The “crisis on the
border” with nearly sixty thousand, mostly children, flooding the US also got
the GOP anti-immigrant treatment. Their Friday bill slashed administration
requests for funds, and it gutted an anti-human trafficking law. Their action
would have allowed instant deportation regardless of any due process hearings
or humane considerations the law requires. It also would have reopened gates to
Central American traffickers.
Harry Reid, Senate
Majority leader, will allow no votes in the Senate on these House bills,
effectively killing them. The President now can only address the border
crisis and “dreamers” issues with his limited executive powers and
resources.
http://www.9news.com/story/news/politics/2014/08/01/reps-coffman-gardner-buck-party-on-immigration/13498889/
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