The Latinx Voter Surge and What it Means for the Two Frontrunners on Immigration

In the three days between the South Carolina Primary and Super Tuesday, the Presidential race quickly coalesced from a wide web of uncertainty to two overwhelming frontrunners. The two biggest prizes were California to Sanders and Texas to Biden. The growing influence of Latinx voters (and the importance they place on immigration) is essential to understanding the divergent results in these states and the future of immigration policy after the general election. The following is a brief recap of how the Latinx voting block has influenced the presidential race and how the immigration landscape may change if either frontrunner is elected this November.

California and Texas have by far the largest number of Latinx voters, surpassing 40% of the entire population in each and expected to be the majority in the coming years. Despite Biden’s edge in the Texas race, Latinx voters still prefer Sanders in this state. It’s not a stretch to suggest that the reason California and Texas diverged was largely because California has a higher percentage of young, Latinx voters.

Many pundits have compared the Biden-Bernie match-up to Bernie’s 2016 race with Hillary Clinton. Though there are clear similarities on other issues, the arena could not be more different with Latinx voters, specifically when it comes to immigration. In contrast to the current race, Clinton comfortably beat Sanders in California, and her success was largely due to her ability to cast herself as more pro-immigrant than Sanders. This campaign message was not unfounded. Sanders’ historic focus on labor made him antagonistic to liberal immigration policies. Bowing to pressure from allies like the AFL-CIO, he rejected the 2007 immigration reform bill, voicing fears that increased foreign labor would lower wages and take jobs from American workers (ironically, a similar position adopted by Trump and his anti-immigrant mastermind, Stephen Miller). Although Sanders voted in favor of a similar reform bill in 2013, his mixed past on immigration allowed for the Clinton campaign to heavily attack him on this issue, including in a debate right before the Nevada Caucus that she won.

In 2020, Bernie clearly has the edge over the more conservative Biden on immigration. This is shown by not only the wins in Nevada and California but events like the recent interruption of Biden during the February debate by protestors from the Raices legal support group. Sanders’ success among Latinx voters is attributable to a strong grassroots effort to win over this base, incorporating many of their proposals into his immigration plan. Biden has also had trouble shaking criticism of the Obama Administration’s immigration policy that deported over 3 million people.

Regardless of how the next few weeks unfold, there is a high likelihood that one of these two will be the nominee. Given the increasing strains on the economy and the fact that Trump is the only President in history to never exceed a 50% approval rating, there is also a fair probability that one of the two Democrats will be the next president. The following is a brief discussion of each candidate on the issues and how the Trump administration’s immigration policy would change if he is dethroned.

Both candidates support a reinstatement of the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”), a policy enacted by the Obama Administration. DACA affects over 600,000 persons brought to the United States as minors. If they meet certain qualifications, the program offers them a two-year renewable delay of deportation and the ability to apply for work authorization. Although DACA was an executive action that could not legally extend to offering recipients a pathway to citizenship, it provided many young people with some brief relief to study, work, and hope that Congress came around to a more permanent solution.

After Trump initially suggested that he would keep DACA, he first punted the issue to Congress and then completely reversed course under heavy influence from Stephen Miller. For a comprehensive discussion on Miller’s substantial influence on Trump’s immigration policy, check out the recent New Yorker article available here.

Trump’s re-election would be a great tragedy for DACA recipients, who would have two choices: (1) live in hiding for at least another four years instead of studying, working, or starting businesses; or (2) move back to their birth countries and hope they are able to find work in those struggling economies.

The fate of DACA is now with the United States Supreme Court, which is expected to rule on the issue in the coming months. As a licensed attorney with some immigration experience, this author is not optimistic that DACA will survive given the great amount of leeway and discretion the executive branch enjoys in matters of immigration and national security.

If a Democrat is elected, DACA would likely be reinstated, but this would still be a temporary solution that would not offer a pathway to citizenship. Both candidates support a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship for the 11 million undocumented persons in the United States. Whether a comprehensive solution can pass Congress would largely turn on what party controls each house.

Some key differences between the two candidates are that Sanders would make unauthorized border entry a civil rather than criminal offense, reorganize the Department of Homeland Security to “abolish ICE”, and place a moratorium on deportations.

As a reminder, Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that separated families on the border was the result of criminalizing every illegal entry, jailing the parent, and indefinite incarceration. Sanders’ plan would immediately end this practice. Although Biden would not decriminalize crossings, he would end extended detention and family separation.

Sanders also proposes to abolish ICE and redistribute its current duties to the Departments of State and Treasury, which handled deportations before the Department of Homeland Security was consolidated under George W. Bush. Abolishing ICE is largely a symbolic proposal, as the current administration would have still had the legal authority to implement its aggressive immigration policy even without this agency.

Biden’s plan would expand access to work visas in areas of economic need and boost the annual U.S. refugee admissions cap to 125,000 from the current 18,000. His plan would also invest $4 billion in Central America to stem violence, spur economic development, and target corruption in an effort to get to the underlying causes of the mass exodus from this region. The plan for Central America is a response to Trump’s threat to cut off aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to punish them for not doing enough to stop the flow of migrants.

In line with Sanders’ larger labor proposals for the country at large, his immigration plan also contains significant labor protections for immigrants that are absent from Biden’s plan. This includes a proposed “whistleblower visa” to encourage immigrant workers to speak out against exploitative behavior by employers without fear of retaliation. He would also seek to end workplace raids targeting undocumented workers. In addition, Sanders would push for protections and bargaining power for farm and domestic workers, including by requiring a $15 per hour minimum wage, regardless of immigration status.

Despite the criticisms against Biden in the Latinx community, there is no doubt that even his more modest proposal would be a much more sensical approach to the immigration problem than the current administration. Trump’s entire approach to immigration is a clumsy solution in search of a problem. He made the issue of immigration central to his campaign at a time when illegal immigration had steadily declined for 10 years. He criticized Obama’s “open borders” policy when Obama deported far more people than Trump did in his first term. His proposed border wall is what former candidate Julian Castro accurately called a “19th Century Solution to a 21st Century Problem.”

Regardless of who wins the election, neither Trump, Biden, nor Sanders is capable of solving the immigration crisis on their own. Finding a permanent and comprehensive solution for 11 million undocumented persons would require an act of Congress. The 1986 immigration reform signed by Reagan that granted mass amnesty would provide a good template, but Reagan’s party has shifted so far in the other direction that a sensical solution will likely not come from the current GOP. Congress seemed on the verge of comprehensive reform in 2013, with fourteen Republican Senators crossing the aisle to support the reform, a scenario unthinkable in 2020. Unfortunately, the 2013 effort was thwarted by a misleading xenophic campaign by people like Stephen Miller and the growing influx of unaccompanied minors from Central America.

Aside from the moral need to find a humane solution for millions of desperate working people, many of whom were brought here without a choice, comprehensive immigration reform is necessary for our economy and labor force. When Arizona attempted to crack down on illegal immigration through SB 1070, the primary challenger in court was not a refugee from Honduras, but the United States Chamber of Commerce. An open letter signed by 1,470 economists argued that America would experience a labor shortage in the coming years due to retiring Baby Boomers and the shrinking pool of young labor. The letter further argued that “the benefits of immigration farr outweigh their costs, and smart immigration policy could better maximize the benefits of immigration while reducing the costs.”

Comprehensive immigration reform will be a long shot. However, just as the political climate has gyrated so violently in every direction in the last few years, it is not impossible for it to change back to at least the business-friendly approach of the 80’s, when Republic Ronald Reagan acknowledged the benefits of a good relationship with Latin America and the mutual benefits of absorbing its labor surplus. Perhaps when Trump no longer has the ability to silence both friends and foes into submission with a single Tweet, the alleged Good Ol’ Party of business will wake up and cross the aisle on this issue.

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