Luke Skywalker
Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump invites Colombian-born Myriam Witcher, 35, on the stage during a campaign rally at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino on Oct. 8, 2015, in Las Vegas.(Photo: Isaac Brekken)
MIAMI — As immigration has returned to the top of the Republican presidential campaign, front-runner Donald Trump has used the opportunity to move even<span style="color: Red;">*</span>further right on the issue.
He started his campaign calling immigrants from Mexico drug dealers and rapists. He upped the ante by calling for the mass deportation of all 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country.
Last week, he kept going, endorsing a 1950s enforcement operation that was so inhumane it was called "Operation Wetback," an incredibly offensive term to the Hispanic community. And on Monday, he responded to the terrorist attacks in Paris by saying Syrian refugees trying to flee to the U.S. represented a "Trojan horse" for Islamic State militants.
Despite that constant flow of anti-immigrant rhetoric, Trump remains firmly entrenched atop the GOP field. As campaign experts, Republican operatives and other GOP candidates fret that such rhetoric hurts the party and hurts the GOP's chances in the 2016 general election, his increasingly-caustic stance has done little to knock him off the GOP perch.
How is<span style="color: Red;">*</span>that possible?
I asked a pollster who specializes in the Hispanic community and the answer left both of us stunned.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>When Fernand Amandi's firm, Bendixen & Amandi International,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>asked 1,400 Hispanics in July<span style="color: Red;">*</span>whether Trump's comments about immigrants were offensive, only 59% of the Republicans said "yes."
"I thought that would be 100%," Amandi said.
At the time, 36% of Hispanic registered Republicans said they had a favorable view of the billionaire TV star. More recent polling shows that Trump maintains that level of support among Hispanic Republicans, which begs a repeat of the question: how is that possible?
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The answer lies in the way immigrants assimilate into the United States and change their views once they're here. The country's history has shown a never-ending cycle of immigrants arriving, overcoming adversity, establishing themselves and then trying to close the door behind them.
That's even happened within immigrant populations coming from the same country. Italians who arrived in the late 1800s didn't exactly embrace the waves of Italians who came after the turn of the century. I see that playing out almost every day in Miami, as Cubans who arrived in the 1950s and '60s look down on more recent arrivals — the "new Cubans" as they often refer to them.
Amandi says he constantly sees that dynamic playing out in his polls. An immigrant who has completely assimilated into the U.S., speaks fluent<span style="color: Red;">*</span>English and has lived in the country for decades has a very different view of immigration policy than other immigrants.
"That individual's reality is much more likely to be divorced from someone who's been in the country for a smaller amount of time," he said. "Their visceral and direct ties to the issue are likely to be less."
That helps explain why Trump can continue pushing for mass deportations and not pay any price in Republican polls. It's why neurosurgeon Ben Carson can suggest that the Border Patrol should use drone strikes to stop would-be immigrants<span style="color: Red;">*</span>along the border and continue rising in the polls.
It's why Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the son of a Cuban immigrant, can bash<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"amnesty" for undocumented immigrants and continue moving<span style="color: Red;">*</span>closer to the center of the stage during the debates. It's why Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., another son of Cuban immigrants, can denounce his own Senate bill that would have granted citizenship to undocumented immigrants and keep inching closer to the front-runners.
And it's why more than a dozen Republican governors and several GOP presidential candidates can demand that we shut the door to Syrian refugees in the wake of the Paris attack.
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But all of that ignores what so many in the Republican Party have been arguing since the last<span style="color: Red;">*</span>election — that such anti-immigrant stances will backfire once the primaries are over.
Mitt Romney learned that the hard way. During the 2012 GOP primaries,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>he was pushed to the right on immigration,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>adopted a policy of making life so difficult on undocumented immigrants that they would choose to "self-deport" and ended up garnering just 27% of the Hispanic vote, sealing his fate against President Obama.
While Amandi's numbers show that there's a group of Hispanic Republicans who agree with Trump this time around, they represent only a small fraction of the total Hispanic electorate. Sixty-three percent of registered Hispanic voters<span style="color: Red;">*</span>identify with, or lean toward, the Democratic Party, compared with<span style="color: Red;">*</span>just 27% siding with Republicans, according to the Pew Research Center.
So expect to hear more immigrant-bashing in the months to come as primary season kicks off in Iowa and New Hampshire. As Trump has shown, it can't hurt — not yet.
Gomez is a Miami-based reporter for USA TODAY<span style="color: Red;">*</span>who covers immigration.
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