The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which tries to style itself as the moderate think tank of the anti-immigrant movement, has undermined this image by embracing the theory, first put forward by a white nationalist thinker , that the Republican Party shouldn’t bother trying to win back Latino voters and should instead focus exclusively on turning out white voters. Not only is this strategy doomed to failure, its implicit assumption is that Republicans should turn out white voters by stirring up racial resentment against Latinos.
This has emerged as a popular message among anti-immigrant activists and politicians. Phyllis Schlafly and Michele Bachmann have both argued that Republicans should drop Latino outreach efforts because, in their minds, Latino immigrants are inherently unable to understand the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. CIS figures have likewise claimed that Latino immigrants have an inherent antipathy to the Republican Party because they lack “strong family values” and have large numbers of “illegitimate” children .
CIS research director Steven Camarota repeated this theme in an interview yesterday on the Chuck Morse Speaks radio program, where he said that Democrats are “the party of minorities” and are backing immigration reform because they “would like all these folks to stay because they want votes once they become citizens.”
On the Democratic side, it’s coalition politics. The Democratic Party is the party that tends to draw a lot of support from Hispanics and Asians now as well, so they’re the party of minorities. And so, since a very large fraction – you know, about 80 percent of illegal immigrants, in particular – would be Hispanic, based on government statistics, and probably another ten, 12 percent are Asian, so the party would like all these folks to stay because they want votes once they become citizens. But just in the existing citizen population of people of recent immigrant origin, they’re hoping to draw a lot of support. So there’s a political reason there. So, if you had to sum it up in a bumper sticker, the Democrats are looking for votes and the Republicans are looking for cheap labor.
