While some high-profile Republicans are looking for ways to increase their support among Latino voters, a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies calls for the Republican Party to basically give up on Latinos for the time being, while sticking to its anti-immigrant guns.
The report begins with the less-than-astounding discovery that the declining electoral fortunes of the Republican Party are inextricably linked to the demographic and political rise of the Latino population in the United States. However, rather than calling for any ideological readjustment on the part of Republican candidates who are so often perceived by Latinos as being hostile towards Latino issues, the report calls for Republicans to redouble their anti-immigration stance? Why? Because, only by reducing the flow of new Latino immigrants, who tend to have low incomes and little education and to therefore vote Democratic, will Latinos who are already here achieve the upward socio-economic mobility over time which is needed to become Republican. In other words, the CIS report offers not only a grim view of Republican political prospects, but a stereotypical and insulting portrayal of Latino voters who are perceived as too poor and ignorant to vote Republican, and who should therefore be ignored by Republican political strategists until they grow out of their Democratic phase.
The report, entitled Immigration, Political Realignment, and the Demise of Republican Political Prospects, was authored by James G. Gimpel, a professor of government at the University of Maryland, College Park, and occasional contributor to the white supremacist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant journal known as The Social Contract Press. (One of Social Contract’s more prominent publications is an edition of the 1973 racist French novel The Camp of the Saints, in which Western civilization is destroyed by dark-skinned immigrants from India.) Gimpel expends an inexplicable amount of effort demonstrating statistically the already well-known fact that the growth in the Latino electorate has yielded few votes for Republicans. He then explains that the only “hope for Republican success with immigrant voters lies mainly with the upward mobility and prosperity of Latinos, Asians, and others, something that will occur only with great difficulty given current levels of low-skill, wage-corrosive immigration.” That is, new immigrants will never become Republicans, so forget about them and focus instead on those Latinos and Asians who have become more “assimilated” and, therefore – presumably – more likely to vote Republican.
The report concludes that the Republican “party’s elites have failed to deliver a clear message that they want a pro-immigrant policy of reduced immigration and that these two goals are complementary. Such a policy would also prove to be the best means for moving immigrants toward the middle and upper income status that will promote their geographic and political mobility.” Put differently, Republicans must persuade wealthier and more established Latinos and Asians to turn against their more recently arrived family members, co-workers, and neighbors, who “concentrate in areas monopolized by Democratic Party politics into which they are easily socialized.” Apparently, an immigrant has not really become fully part of American society until he or she fervently supports a Republican Party that officially looks down upon immigrants.
Photo by Dom Dada.
FILED UNDER: undocumented immigration
