By Ann Coulter
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Don't anyone tell Marco Rubio, John McCain or Jeff Flake
that nearly 80 percent of Hindus voted for Obama, or who knows what they'll
come up with.
I understand the interest of business lobbies in getting
cheap, unskilled labor through amnesty, but why do Republican officeholders
want to create up to 20 million more Democratic voters, especially if it
involves flouting the law? Are the campaign donations from the soulless rich
more important than actual voters?
Without citing any evidence, the Rubio Republicans simply
assert that granting 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens amnesty will make
Hispanics warm to the GOP. Yes, that's worked like a charm since Reagan signed
an amnesty bill in 1986!
True, Romney lost the Hispanic vote, but so did John
McCain, the original Rubio. (McCain lost Hispanics by 67 percent compared to 71
percent who voted against Romney.)
President George H.W. Bush created "diversity
visas," massively increased legal immigration and eliminated the English
requirement on the naturalization test. In the 1992 election, he won 25 percent
of the Hispanic vote -- less than what Romney got.
Although Hispanic politicians, spokesmen and TV networks
benefit from Rubio's mass legalization scheme, there's no evidence that Hispanic
voters care very much about it.
Amnesty never shows up in polls as a top concern of
Hispanics. It's a top concern of employers, not workers -- which isn't going to
do much to help Republicans shed that "Party of the Rich" image.
After Reagan signed an amnesty bill in 1986, unemployment among Hispanics
skyrocketed when, suddenly, there was increased competition for low-skill jobs.
That's precisely why businesses want amnesty, not because of their deep concern
for the plight of the underclass.
How's this for an idea: Why don't Republicans remind
Hispanic voters that the more low-skilled immigrants who are admitted, the
lower their wages will be? That at least has the virtue of being untried.
Whatever it is that makes Hispanics love Obama, it's not
amnesty. He double-crossed Hispanics on amnesty; in the words of Univision's
Jorge Ramos, "You promised (amnesty), and a promise is a promise and with
all due respect, you didn't keep that promise." Obama still won 71 percent
of their vote.
Indeed, almost alone among demographic groups, the
Hispanic vote increased for Obama from 2008 to 2012. Protestants, Catholics,
Evangelicals, Jews, men, whites, white women -- even single women -- all voted
in larger percentages for Romney than they had for McCain.
Only Hispanics and Asians increased their vote for Obama.
Coincidentally, these have been our two largest immigrant groups over the last
several decades. (It's sort of touching that Democrats couldn't get Americans
to vote for them, so they had to bring in new voters from other countries to
start winning elections again. Immigrants really are doing the job Americans
just won't do.)
The canard about Hispanics being "natural
conservatives" comes from the same cliche machine that gave us the one
about blacks being "natural conservatives." At least blacks really
are social conservatives -- they just vote Democratic, anyway.
As Charles Murray has pointed out, Hispanics are less
likely to go to church or be employed than non-Hispanics. They are less opposed
to gay marriage than everyone else -- 44 percent compared to 50 percent. (By
contrast, 55 percent of African-Americans oppose gay marriage, according to a
2012 Washington Post/ABC poll -- even more, according to how they vote.)
Nor, unfortunately, do Hispanic immigrants become more
Republican the longer they've been here, as some Republicans claim without
bothering to see if it's true.
To the contrary, they get more liberal. Cubans used to
vote Republican nearly as reliably as Mormons. In 2012, 49 percent of Cubans
voted for Obama.
Will amnesty win the Cubans back? I don't think so: They
already get amnesty under the Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act. Same with Puerto
Ricans, who are automatic American citizens.
Trying to appeal to Hispanics with amnesty would be like
trying to win over baseball fans by shouting "Go Yankees!" at a Mets
game. Except that would at least capture some baseball fans.
It's not clear that amnesty wins any Hispanics, apart
from the ones who can't vote (because they're illegal) and their ethnic
"spokesmen," whose power increases as the Hispanic population grows.
So why do Hispanics vote Democratic? Like most legal
immigrants since Teddy Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act, Hispanic immigrants are
poor. The poverty rate of second-generation Hispanics is lower than the first
-- but the third generation's poverty rate is higher than the second.
Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that
Hispanics have the highest illegitimate birthrate in the country. According to
the Centers for Disease Control, in 2010, for every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic
women, 80.6 had children out of wedlock, compared to 65.3 for unmarried black
women and 29 for unmarried white women.
If Republicans think we can have mass amnesty for
millions of government-dependent immigrants and become a more libertarian
country, they're crazy.
This isn't because of a failure to "reach out."
Republicans can't beat Democrats at the government assistance game. From single
mothers to corporate subsidy-takers, they want your money and the Democrats
promise to give it to them.
Instead of trying to compete with the ethnic lobbies,
welfare schemes and racialized politics of the Democrats, perhaps Republicans
should allow our immigration system to admit more immigrants who won't
immediately go on government assistance, as 60 percent of new immigrants do
now.
Putting 12 million to 20 million of them on a "path
to citizenship" won't make them like Republicans; it will make Republicans
lose.
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