Donald Trump could win a majority of Hispanic voters in 2024. Even if he doesn't, it's a safe bet that he will get more Hispanic votes than any Republican candidate in history.
And that's terrible news for Joe Biden.
Biden won 63% of the Latino vote in 2020. That total fell to 57% for Democrats in the 2022 midterms. He needs at least that percentage to defeat Donald Trump. And it doesn't look good for him. A recent Sienna poll showed Trump winning 46% of the Hispanic vote with Biden getting 40%. It's only one poll, but the idea that a Republican could come so close to topping a Democrat among Hispanics has to give Democrats nightmares.
Ronald Reagan predicted that Hispanics would eventually become Republicans. Conservative family values and self-interest in terms of the economy would drive Hispanics into the waiting arms of Republicans. That is if the GOP ever got its act together and came up with a winning message.
Donald Trump has a winning message for Hispanics and black Americans: opportunity. Creating an opportunity society lifts all boats and sets new Americans on the road to prosperity.
But there's another reason Hispanics are flocking to support Trump: the madness at the border.
“I would be very disappointed if on day one, he doesn’t close the border,” Marilyn Thomson, a U.S.-born Homestead, Fla., resident who is the daughter of Cuban immigrants, said of Trump.
On Monday night, a Nicaraguan immigrant spoke at the GOP convention and made the case for Trump's immigration policies.
“Our open borders are making this problem worse,” said Linda Fornos, who came from the Central American country six decades ago and now lives in Las Vegas.
“It’s upsetting to see millions of dollars being sent to help immigrants who came here illegally while hardworking families who did it the right way are left struggling. The fact is, that illegal immigration hurts legal immigrants the most,” she said.
That's a powerful message that resonates with a lot more Hispanic immigrants than Joe Biden and the Democrats would like to think.
Yes, there are millions of illegal immigrants, many of them Hispanic, in the U.S. But there are also many millions more legal immigrants from all over Central and South America. And they are resentful and angry at Biden's open-door policies that let in more than 8 million illegal immigrants coming into the United States.
For some Latin American immigrants, the situation at the border reminds them of their home countries, where the rule of law might not be as strong, said Armando Ibarra, chairman of the Miami Young Republicans. He told the Herald that Hispanics in the U.S. are looking towards cities like New York, which have received an unprecedented number of immigrants in the past two years; so many that their shelters are overflowing.
“The people that they impact the most are working class, Latino and Black voters,” he said. “We’re seeing so many Hispanic Latino voters negatively impacted by the fact that their social services are overwhelmed by this large illegal immigrant flow.”
“We are facing an invasion on our southern border. Not figuratively. A literal invasion…. Every day, Americans are dying. Murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released,” said Cuban-American Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) Tuesday night at the convention.
Alex Berrios, CEO and co-founder of Mi Vecino, a voter outreach organization, said, “It’s less about immigration itself and more about the factors surrounding how these policies are being presented in South Florida."
“When we talk to Latinos, they’re not hearing, ‘Oh, he’s calling Latinos like me rapists and criminals, even though I’m also an immigrant,’” he said. “He’s talking about those actual criminals that are over there.”
On the other hand, Biden tries to stir Hispanic hatred against Trump by playing to their fears. His problem is that Hispanics know the difference between legal and illegal immigration. They know that it's not that illegals commit more crimes than native-born Americans. They don't. It's that every criminal act by an illegal alien wouldn't have to happen if our border was secure.
That's the immigration message Trump is sending to Hispanics. And it's resonating like no message from a Republican has ever resonated before.
