It has been about a year since the last time I made my last entry and it was precisely about the mediocrity of the so-called pro immigrant activism. Now I am going to update that entry with the very telling results from Virginia.
The last time I wrote about pro-immigrant activism I mentioned the Group of Eight and its list of 121 names of members of Congress that could make the vote of the bill possible. I said then that targeting a number of those districts of Establishment Republicans with significant Hispanic population of voting age should be the strategy to embrace at that moment because, even considering the Gerrymandering to which those districts have been submitted, making a difference was possible and, if not possible, at least a significant increase in Hispanic turnout in primaries, precisely when both Establishment and Tea Party Republicans took for granted Hispanics were not going to show up, would send a powerful message to those Establishment Republicans: They would not be safe for the general elections and much less after 2020 if they adopted the bigotry of their challengers. Even if the Gerrymandering had made their defeat not very difficult but impossible, a surge in Hispanic turnout during midterms and special elections would definitely make their political lives very hard after the redistricting due after the new census.
I also mentioned that even though new enemies had entered the scene, like the private prisons lobby (which, from ALEC pushed for the infamous Arizonan 1070), new friends also have. The PAC of Carlos Gutierrez (the second in history, after Immigrants List. Yes, after a decade of so called pro-immigrant activism, that was the second PAC) was seeking to expand the Republican Party to Hispanic constituencies and even though I do not believe Republican policies are in the best interest of the Hispanic community one common ground was definitely possible: to help the Republican Party get rid of the influence of the Tea Party.
Thus, imagine that Hispanic leaders would have worked tirelessly, as Hispanic leaders like Hector Perez Garcia and Cesar Chavez did in the past (not to mention the union leaders of the late XIX and early XX century, so do not come to me with the excuse that you would need hundreds of thousands of dollars. You would not need that much if you do it as a sustained long-term effort instead of running in panic in all directions a couple of months before every general election, although that and the GOTV effort required by that endeavor would have to be the theme of another entry), and engaged in a seven year plan (to, in the worst case-scenario deal with the problem of Gerrymandering). And the right short-term tactic would have been to register Hispanics in the Republican primaries (what may be an obstacle to let them participate in the Democratic primaries, in which they do not participate anyway, but not to vote for a Democrat or an Independent on elections day). As I am going to show, no serious effort in that direction was made. Instead, in a disappointing turn of events, the Dreamers joined La Raza and Casa de Maryland and, while the old leaders danced with flags, the young ones danced with gowns and engaged the public with ethnic stories because everybody knows that to defeat the terrible effects of the Gerrymandering that protects those small bigot constituencies, to thaw their hardened hearts, all you have to do is to tell them ethnic stories. Many of these clowns even tried to convince enough people that if we called Obama to the White House, he was going to be forced to "pass the reforma", apparently oblivious to the counterproductive consequences of such silly calls to show the "immigrant muscle" if the frustration with the results and the obvious confusion about who should be the real target led to increased apathy. And if the poor turnouts on elections day show something, it is that we have enough apathy already.
To that we have to add the mediocrity of Emmy Ruiz chapter of Organizing for Action for immigration reform, which was always ready to remind us that if we call Boehner or Cantor repeated times, they were going to finally turn their backs on the unforgiving Tea Party and say "Oh! Okay! Their food is muy rico! Their dances, so cute! What the hell! Let them stay!" Boehner and Cantor were not even willing to do that for the Republican Establishment which, of course, does not want to lose another general election but, of course, touched by those colorful choreographies and ethnic stories, they would let the Senate bill have a vote in the House.
And to all that you have to add the actions of those who, disappointed with their own mediocrity, have decided that what they have to do is temper tantrums when Obama is giving a speech or in front of the ICE buses taking the deportees to the border, as if that were going to dissuade them from the deportation procedures or as if that was the only way and moment they could execute such procedures. By the way, the Senate bill considered the possibility of filing petitions for immigrants who had been deported and had not criminal records but these groups had already decided that they were not going to fight for that. They would forget the main target of the xenophobic right, self-deportation, and they would ignore the Senate bill because the power of the temper tantrum has, in their irresponsible imagination, no rival.
Now, there were many wrongs and ticking bombs in the Senate bill but to correct those wrongs you had to be willing to revise your own lines of action when they give such poor results and to learn from others who are more successful than you. That way you would have made sure you would have had the power to amend the Senate bill during the next decade and correct those wrongs. And that is exactly the opposite of what these charlatans, charlatans who are playing with the lives of eleven million people, have done so far.
That time I also mentioned that the excuse of "winning the hearts and minds, one at a time" was unacceptable precisely because of those terrible results. The first reasons for that are the influence of Gerrymandering and the Tea Party in the House. National polls, Virginia polls, express wide support for immigration reform, even among Republicans. But if the Establishment candidate has a weak angle (as, different form Lindsay Graham, Cantor high disapproval among the average Republicans of his district), he will win embracing the Tea Party bigotry (Mitch McConnell) or a bigot yelling "amnesty!" as a war cry could be enough to move enough bigots, enough motivated bigots, and make possible a victory like that of Dave Brat. And such a move can create panic among the Establishment and remind other Establishment Republicans how unforgiving and determined the Tea Party is. And no matter how colorful or cute your ethnic stories are, you are not going to convince those people to give immigrants a chance. Worse, the demographic movements of the Hispanics population (that increase the phobias of most members of the Tea Party) and changes in the labor market (that will increasingly put more native born competing for jobs with immigrants, especially low-paying jobs) makes of every attempt at reform, even a serious attempt, an uphill battle after 2017.
Also consider, something I also mentioned in that entry, that if your messaging were at least acceptable, so many people, even among Democrats, would not be repeating idiotic, false statements like "If we have immigration reform, illegal immigrants are going to pay taxes;" "It is true that they have jumped the line but we cannot deport 11 million immigrants;" or "We should not blame the children of illegal immigrants for the crime of their parents." Take into account that even when The Heritage Foundation came with its hysterical estimation of the cost of the Senate Bill, it was not you nor the Urban Institute or the Center for American Progress which came publicly to crash those numbers: It was the Cato Institute. Why? For the same reason that you have been unable to set the record straight every time you have had a microphone or a camera in front of you.
Also, the Hispanic press and the Catholic Church, which should have keep those leaders honest, have not make their job. Instead of asking those leaders what do they need to realize that their circus numbers do not work, they have pandered to their mediocrity, turning immigration reform into an "Hispanic Issue": and issue for which we all have to feel pity but, different from contraception or gay rights, not do anything serious.
The consequences are the result of the causes and if the people who made the decisions are mediocre, you cannot expect different results. And that is why even the possibility of using the mechanism of discharge petition is now an opium dream.
WARNING: If the customary idiots who pose as anti-immigrant liberals just because they are in losing end of the conservative status quo and like to hide their bigotry behind the black population, the environment, the grow of population, the flag, Jesus Christ, Santa Claus, etc, etc, show up in this entry, I might not ignore them this time. So just save yourselves some embarrassment and read the book by Aviva Chomsky "Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal" (Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts) or at least come with some more imaginative make-up.
Virginia Gubernatorial Race 2013
By 2012, Virginia White population was 77.1% of the total while the Black population was 19.7%, the Asian population 6% and the Hispanic population was 8.4%, 632,000 people (http://www.washingtonpost.com/...).
Sending a remarkable message, the Black vote (according to NBC News/First Read/Exit Polls) represented 20% of the vote in both 2012 and 2013, the year of the gubernatorial race. And this was basically the effect of black turnout: while the white vote for the republican candidate decreased 11% and increased in 4% for McAuliffe with respect to 2009, the black support for the republican candidate decreased in only 1% for the Republican candidate and remained at 90% for the Democratic candidate. (Also: http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/...).
On the other hand, the Hispanic vote represented only 4% of the total vote and this, of course, was duly noticed in Tea Party circles (http://stevedeace.com/...). And it should have been noticed in pro-immigrant circles too. It was not a secret. Not in vain the Pew Research titled the paragraphs dedicated to Hispanic turnout: "Hispanics continue to punch below their weight" (http://www.pewresearch.org/...). From 259,800 registered Hispanic voters, only 103,000 showed up: 4%.
But if you prefer complacency and self-deception, you can content yourself with the report from the Center for American Progress, which only present the numbers that will make you happy (http://americanprogress.org/...) and keep you guessing what dark forces from other worlds are preventing immigration reform from happening.
Just let me quote Reid Wilson in his report from May 9, 2013 (http://www.nationaljournal.com/...):
But the nation's fastest-growing minority group isn't experiencing the kind of explosive growth of political power that other ethnic groups have felt.
And that means Democrats could be leaving millions of votes on the table.
Less than half of all eligible Hispanics turned out to vote in 2012, according to the data. Hispanic voters in swing states were more likely to show up at the polls, but the slow pace of growth as a portion of the overall electorate shows Hispanics have yet to flex their political muscle.
Almost 11.2 million Hispanics voted in 2012, the data show. That amounts to just 48 percent of all U.S. citizens of Hispanic origin, a rate far below participation levels of other ethnic groups. More than 2.5 million Hispanics who were registered to vote failed to turn up at the polls on Election Day.
And do not come to me with the lame excuse that "
Casa de Maryland is now working to register voters in Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina" because the results show then that it is just a sporadically unfunded, perpetual pilot program or that it has failed miserably on their hands.
If you are the Republican candidate from the establishment, would you turn your back to the unforgiving Tea Party just because Emmy Ruiz got people calling your office from Maryland or because the choreographies of Casa de Maryland and the Dreamers are so cute and colorful? At the end, your constituents are affected by multiple issues besides immigration and even if you are an honest Republican, you will for sure be persuaded to sacrifice immigration in your platform.
Republican Primary (Virginia 7th district)
First let me say that I have no personal sympathy for Eric Cantor, who for years made a name for himself bashing immigrants in Virginia and now has been bitten by his own rattlesnake. Now, let me share some numbers about Cantors district. Its voting age population is 543,429 people (http://www.washingtonpost.com/...), of which 270,000 are Republicans. On the other hand, the turnout the day of the primaries was 65,022, of which 36,110 voted for Dave Brat. (For more detailed, county by county, numbers, you can go to http://electionresults.virginia.gov/.... This means that Cantor would have needed 7,199 more votes to win.
Then we have to take into account other two facts: CantorâÂÂs district is 80% white and only 2% Hispanic (http://latino.foxnews.com/...).
Now, let us ignore for a moment the Asian vote and let us assume that we can project that 2% of the Hispanic population to the number of voting age population (10,869 = 2%*543,429) or even of registered voters (9,494 = 2%*474,714), cases in which you would have required a turnout of 66.2% or 75.8% respectively to reverse Brats victory: something very difficult but not impossible with the right work behind that endeavor if we consider the black turnout in Virginia of 2013. And even if we had fallen short of that goal, the message we would have sent to other candidates of the Establishment would have been really powerful. Of course, if you consider the number of permanent residents eligible for citizenship and the kind of marketing required to move the reluctant Hispanic voters to the voting place (which was the theme of a past entry), I have to agree that this is a long-term task; not the task for leaders who want to dance with flags and gowns, tell ethnic stories and only rush to register voters the day before the elections.
But if all this work had been done, very probably Cantor would have turned to the other side and let a discharge petition take place in the House, what would have put the Senate bill to a vote.
Instead of that, we have what we have. Can anybody be seriously surprised?