On Latinos, listen to the Gipper
Ronald Reagan understood Latinos.
They “demonstrate the importance of real work,” Reagan used to say, “producing things of real value, building communities of shared values that enrich America and keep us strong and free.”
I don’t know a better description of what the Latino community is all about.
Reagan was right: Latinos are hardworking. Those who migrate to the United States have made a difficult decision to leave their homeland in search of the opportunities and freedoms that our system offers. They are determined to succeed here and don’t expect handouts.
That’s why Latino-owned businesses are growing three times faster than the national average. And that’s why Latino immigrants and their children have high employment levels.
In fact, Latinos usually come here because they are frustrated with the limitations and failures of the big government in their homelands. They are fed up with an intrusive state apparatus that breeds corruption and imposes heavy tax burdens in return for deficient state-run services.
These immigrants don’t come to America to seek more government. They want less.
Reagan was also right about the values of the Latino community. Latinos, like so many others, are defined by faith and family. That’s why a majority say abortion should be illegal and that marriage is between a man and a woman.
When you think about it, Latinos’ values sound like conservative values.
Reagan realized this better than anyone. “Hispanics are conservative,” he liked to say. “They just don’t know it.”
He knew one reason they didn’t was that Republicans had failed to knock on their doors and ask for their support. But he knew that the Latino community was a natural constituency for the Republican Party, and he sought to reach out to them to gain their trust and votes.
Thirty years have elapsed since the Reagan revolution began, but many Republicans seem to have forgotten Reagan’s views. Arizona Republicans’ passage last week of a law that criminalizes undocumented immigrants and allows for the profiling of Latinos is the most recent example of this.
The fact is that, beginning in 2006, a small but loud group of GOP members of Congress, strongly supported by an anti-population-growth restrictionist lobby (when did these folks become conservative?), began a campaign to oppose any effort to reform our immigration system.
Sadly, many also started using incendiary anti-immigrant rhetoric — which offended most Latino voters.
This contributed significantly to the Republican loss of the House and Senate in 2006. It also contributed to Sen. John McCain, long an unquestioned supporter of immigration reform and a friend of the Latino community, receiving only 31 percent of the Latino vote in the 2008 presidential election. This was 13 percent less than George W. Bush’s Latino support four years earlier.
Even more frustrating was that Republican leaders, most of whom actually support immigration, remained silent — apparently afraid of the anti-immigration advocacy groups.
Needless to say, the appearance of an anti-immigrant “know nothing” faction in the GOP is counterproductive if we consider that the political weight of Latinos keeps growing as their numbers have swelled dramatically.
Today, they are the nation’s largest minority group — 45 million and growing, or almost 10 percent of the electorate.
How can anyone seriously think that the conservative agenda can be advanced and the Republican Party be viable nationally without increased Latino support?
But, politics aside, it is ironic that some in the GOP would want to advocate restrictionist policies when the Republican Party has been committed to immigration under its six most recent presidents. Reagan certainly believed in immigration.
To those fiercely critical of undocumented immigrants, Reagan once quipped “it makes one wonder about the illegal alien fuss. Are great numbers of our unemployed really victims of the illegal alien invasion, or are those illegal tourists actually doing work our own people won’t do? One thing is certain in this hungry world: No regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of harvesters.”
The time is ripe for Republicans to reclaim the immigration issue and rebuild support in the Latino community.
A true conservative plan would not be the “Obama plan” or “amnesty,” as immigration foes like to label any proposal to effectively deal with the immigration problem.
Our solution would be a market-based immigration plan recognizing that the key to resolving this complex issue is easing the legal flows of the temporary workers our economy needs to keep growing.
It would include a “legalization with a penalty” component, stronger border security and domestic enforcement, and a reinvigorated tradition of patriotic assimilation.
What should give us, as conservatives, peace of mind is that to ask for the Latino vote we don’t have to give up our principles.
On the contrary, we just have to continue defending our traditional conservative values — with which so many immigrants identify — and support a plan that is consistent with our belief in the free market and the rule of law.
Republicans should follow Reagan’s example — and show the leadership and courage needed to build a broad multi-ethnic conservative coalition.
Alfonso Aguilar is executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles and former chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship during George W. Bush’s administration.
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