Powder Tracks and Fever: Understatnding the Evoulution of the Hispanic Vote and its impact on Border Security!

Political Correctness and the evolution of the Hispanic Vote in the USA is impacting the GWOT or WWIJ(World War on Islamic Jihad) by causing both the Democratic and Republican Parties(see this Puerto Rico Herald 12/2003 article to read about this Political Courtship) to tip-toe around the issue of Border Walls on both the Canadian and Mexican Borders of our Country. The state of Florida's Hispanic vote which in elections past has been overwhelmingly Republican because of the Exiled Cuban has changed because of the large influx of Hispanics from other parts of South America. We all remember the important role Florida played in the last the election of our President George W. Bush, who has had the Churchillian Courage to take to the Islamic Jihadists. The Democrats and it minions making up the Media Wing of the Democratic Party aka MSM has done everything it can to undermine this effort. Globalism, Political Correctness and the quest to win over the Hispanic vote has also undermined this World War on Islamic Jihad. Fear of the "Pete Wilson Effect", its backlash again California Republicans, stemming from his support of 1994's Proposition 187, an initiative that sought to deny illegal immigrants and their children access to virtually all public services, including education, and to require all public employees to report illegal immigrants to immigration authorities, has further complicated this Hispanic Voter issue for GOP leaders, strategist and President Bush.

Hispanics are the fastest growing minority and thus voting block in the USA. Census data show that we Hispanics number 42.7 million (I am the son of immigrants form Spain and am married to Mexican/Irish woman and have a daughter). From 2004 and 2005, our size jumped by 3.3 percent, a spike fueled by 800,000 births and 500,000 new Hispanic immigrants. Blacks represent the second largest minority group, at 39.7 million, followed by Asians, with 14.4 million, according to the census report. It is for this reason that the Bush Administration from its inception has courted the Hispanic vote. Remember early on in August of his first term when Presidents Bush and Fox met in Washington to discuss the Illegal and Border Problem

The Mirage of Mexican Guest Workers
Philip L. Martin and Michael S. Teitelbaum
From the Council on Foreign Affairs, November/December 2001

Summary: U.S. and Mexican policymakers are rushing to resolve long-standing immigration problems. Guest worker programs are on the table, but the negotiators show a troublesome myopia about the programs' implications. The supposed economic benefits of such programs may prove illusory, and the "guests" may in fact come to stay.

The Presidents discussed three proposals:

The first, most expansive plan would legalize or give amnesty to some or all of the illegal Mexican immigrants on U.S. soil.
A second approach would grant guest or temporary work visas for a specified time period, on the understanding that the workers would leave the country when their visas expired.
Finally, an "earned legalization" program would grant temporary legal status and create a way for individual migrants to earn permanent legalization by fulfilling certain conditions, such as 90 to 150 days of farm labor within a year of receiving a guest visa.

In August, Mexican and U.S. negotiators reached preliminary agreement on proposals involving the latter two concepts. Their plan would bring in guest workers to fill niches in agriculture, hospitality, and food service -- sectors that already employ a large proportion of the illegal Mexican immigrants in the United States. The guest workers could then seek permanent legal status by "certify[ing] that they have been living and working in the country for a specified time, and have been paying taxes." When Fox visited Washington in early September, he surprised the White House by publicly calling for a final accord by the end of the year; Bush administration officials reaffirmed their commitment to the talks but said Fox's timetable was too optimistic. The September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon then pushed the issue into the background, although political proponents have not given up.

The evolution of the Florida Hispanic vote serves a poignant microcosm of the Hispanic Vote in the USA:
From Washington Post
"Crucial Florida Vote May Hinge On Burgeoning Latino Population"

By Dan Balz and Richard Morin 10/162004

"In one of the most important subplots in Florida, the Massachusetts senator is battling to make inroads against the president with the state's increasingly diverse Hispanic population. A separate poll conducted by The Post, Univision and the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) shows Bush holding a significant lead among Hispanic voters in Florida.
Bush has an overwhelming lead among Florida's Cuban Americans, who dominate the state's Hispanic population. But among the faster-growing non-Cuban Hispanic groups in Florida, the race is a virtual dead heat. The poll of Florida Latinos found Bush the favorite among older and foreign-born Hispanics while U.S.-born Hispanics split their vote. Nearly one in five Florida residents is of Hispanic descent."

From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel
by Tal Abbady Posted May 10 2006

"Hispanics continue to be the country's fastest-growing minority, accounting for almost half of the national population growth between 2004 and 2005, census figures released today show.
The boom is part of profound demographic changes in the United States, where one-third of residents now identify themselves as minorities. The minority population reached 98 million in 2005, or 33 percent of the country's 296.4 million inhabitants.
Growth in South Florida in recent years has reflected the Hispanic boom nationally.
In 2004, there were 369,467 Hispanics in Broward County, up from 272,652 in 2000. In Palm Beach County, the number of Hispanics increased from 140,675 to 192,272 over the same period.
The group hopes to achieve a high voter turnout for the November mid-term and gubernatorial elections. More than 60 percent of all registered Latino voters in Florida turned out for the 2004 presidential election, he said."

From the Boston Globe
"A growing Hispanic vote still favors GOP(in Florida)
by Dario Moreno 3/7/2004
"It is impossible to understand Florida politics without taking into account the rising political influence of its Hispanic population. Hispanics are the state's largest minority group, comprising 16.8 percent of the total population of 16 million. They are also a sizable portion of the state's voters. Hispanics make up 11 percent of Florida's electorate, a number that has important implications for the 2004 presidential election. When one tries to analyze Florida's Hispanic politics through lenses ground to the prescription of other states, one comes away with a vision that is decidedly out of focus. Things work differently in Florida. Whereas Latinos are overwhelmingly registered as Democrats in other parts of the nation, in Florida, Hispanics are a pivotal faction in the governing Republican coalition. ......

With dramatic population shifts in the past decade, Florida can no longer be characterized as a suburb of Havana. Today, Cubans are a minority of the Hispanic population -- just 31 percent. The rest are divided among Puerto Ricans (18 percent), Mexicans (13.5 percent), and more than a million Colombians, Peruvians, Nicaraguans, Dominicans, Venezuelans, and Guatemalans (37.41 percent of all Florida Hispanics).
But the majority of Florida's non-Cuban Hispanics are not yet citizens and therefore ineligible to vote. Still, the question remains: As this voting bloc emerges will it vote differently from its Cuban-American neighbors? Right now, Florida's non-Cuban Hispanic population is so diverse that it's difficult to mobilize around a common non-Cuban Latino agenda.
Moreover, even as they grow into their political strength, it's possible, even likely, that non-Cuban Hispanics will share the views of their Cuban-American neighbors. Like the Cubans, a large number of Florida's Hispanics immigrated to the United States because they were fleeing either communist regimes or Marxist guerrilla groups. These include: Venezuelans fleeing the leftist Chavez regime, Colombians who left their homeland because of the violence of the Marxist FRAC, Nicaraguans who left in the 1980s during the rule of the Cuban backed Sandinista regime, and Peruvians escaping from extremely violent leftist groups. Cuban-Americans have reached out to these other anticommunist Latinos in order to form political alliances. It was just such an alliance that elected Republican Juan Carlos Zapata, a Colombian-American, to the Florida House of Representative. Such strong ties between Cuban-Americans and other conservative Hispanic immigrants makes it extremely difficult to developed an alternative agenda among non-Cuban Hispanics.
Even among traditionally Democratic Hispanic groups, such as Puerto Ricans, Republicans have done better in Florida than in any other part of the country. Republican John Quinones, a Puerto Rican, defeated a Democratic Hispanic in a central Florida district heavily populated by Puerto Ricans. While Al Gore received an estimated 52 percent (98,716 to 91,123) of the non-Cuban Hispanic vote in the 2000 presidential election, Governor Jeb Bush easily defeated his Democratic challenger Bill McBride by a 2-to-1 margin among non-Cuban Hispanics in the 2002 gubernatorial contest.

Doing the Latin Swing; Latino voters are the Soccer Moms of the new decade

The Weekly Standard
December 3, 2001
Matthew Dowd,
(was the leading Bush-Cheney campaign strategist, who has famously remarked that "As a realistic goal, we have to get somewhere between ... 38 [percent] to 40 percent of the Hispanic vote" in 2004 for the GOP to be successful, these polls are very bad news indeed )

"As far as the 2004 election is concerned, despite the impressive growth of the non-Cuban Hispanic population, an overwhelming majority of Hispanic office holders and voters in Florida are still Cuban-Americans. If Cuban-American voters continue to give Republicans their strong support, Florida's Hispanics will be squarely in the GOP column this election year, as they were for President Bush in 2000. (Bush defeated Gore 356,357 to 131,804 among Cuban-Americans.)

Should John Kerry wish to do better, he must continue his strong advocacy of universal health care, develop an articulate and realistic policy toward Cuban democratization, and strongly support the economic embargo against the Castro regime. That's what Florida's Hispanic voters care about -- and they'll be watching."
"LIKE THE REAGAN DEMOCRATS in the 1980s and the Soccer Moms in the 1990s, the most sought after vote bloc in the coming decade will be what you might call the Latin Swing -- upwardly mobile Latino voters who are not the loyal Democrats many people assume they are.
Latinos have grown from 2 percent of all voters in the 1980 presidential election to 7 percent of all voters in 2000. In 2004, this number is expected to grow to 9 or 10 percent. Thus Latinos will be on a par for the first time with African Americans as a share of the national electorate. This might be construed as unalloyed good news for Democrats, who still receive a solid majority of Latino votes nationally. But it is not a bloc Democrats can take for granted, as we saw this past November 6.
Michael Bloomberg's victory as mayor of New York was made possible by his splitting the Latino vote with Democrat Mark Green. Exit polls showed he received about half of the Latino vote. Certainly he was helped by the internal battling between Latino leaders and the Green campaign....While Democratic candidates by and large have maintained their overwhelming lead among African-American voters, Republicans have managed to increase their share of Latino voters over the years. In the early 1980s, the average support for Republicans among Latino voters was 18 to 20 percent. In the 2000 elections, that figure had risen to 25 to 30 percent. Nationally, President Bush received 35 percent of the Latino vote......But the main reason is that as Latinos rise on the economic ladder their voting behavior becomes less reliably Democratic.
The exit poll data for the 2000 election are quite revealing on this point. Latino voters with incomes under $ 30,000 voted 31 percent for President Bush; Latinos with incomes between $ 30,000 and $ 75,000 voted 37 percent for Bush; and Latinos with incomes above $ 75,000 voted 46 percent for Bush. As Latinos rise economically they begin to split their votes more between the two parties. This is exactly what happened in the early 20th century with the economic rise of European immigrant groups in America.
The growth of the Latino population has been dramatic in certain key Electoral College states. Latinos have grown in their traditional strongholds of Texas (29 percent of the voting age population), California (28 percent), New Mexico (39 percent), and Arizona (21 percent). But they are also becoming a sizable percentage of the voting age population in states such as Illinois (11 percent), Georgia (5 percent), North Carolina (4 percent), and Oregon (6.5 percent).
Nevada has seen its Latino voting age population grow from 9 percent in 1990 to 17 percent in 2000. This growth has mainly been in Clark County (Las Vegas), where potential Latino voters have gone from 1 in 10 in 1990 to 1 out of 5 today. Because of this growth, Nevada is no longer a reliably Republican state and will likely be a swing state in 2004.
The closeness of the 2000 election in Florida was foreshadowed by the non-Cuban Latino population growth in the central Florida areas of Tampa Bay and Orlando. In 1988, when former President Bush won Florida by more than 20 points, 2 out of every 3 Latinos in the state were of Cuban descent, a solid Republican bloc. In 2000, 2 out of 3 Latinos in Florida were non-Cuban. This fact alone moved Florida into the swing column in 2000.
So why has Texas not followed the example of California in becoming more Democratic as its Latino population grows? A big part of the reason is that Texas voters, across ethnic lines, are more conservative than California voters. A further factor may be lingering hostility among Latinos in California towards former Republican governor Pete Wilson. The success or failure of potential Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Riordan, who had tremendous success among Latino voters as mayor of Los Angeles, may show whether the "Wilson effect "
(Wilson's use of immigration as a wedge, the Republican party subsequently paid a high price in alienated Latino voters, a problem that the GOP has been struggling to overcome ever since.)But in the campaign, the message about illegals was amplified and expanded so that it seemed to apply to all immigrants.....

From the Sacramento Bee "Immigration: Will it be the hot poker of 2006?" by Peter Schrag April 26, 2006
"Wilson embraced Proposition 187, the initiative that sought to deny illegal immigrants and their children access to virtually all public services, including education, and to require all public employees to report illegal immigrants to immigration authorities. The message was reinforced with TV commercials, using Border Patrol footage of shadowy figures running across a freeway and the doomsday voice-over: "They just keep coming." Wilson won, and Proposition 187 passed easily but the campaign triggered a great surge of naturalization and voter registration by Latinos, nearly all of them as Democrats. In 1990, 9 percent of California voters were Latinos. Now it's 19 percent."
has been exorcised. But an important and neglected difference between the two states is that nearly 45 percent of Latino voters in California live in union households, while in Texas that figure is only 6 percent. Union households are overwhelmingly Democratic. This helps explain how President Bush was able to get 43 percent of the Latino vote in Texas and only 29 percent in California. Unfortunately for Republicans, the same California pattern of union membership among Latinos holds true in Nevada and Florida as well.
All of these factors point to the Latin Swing being instrumental in coming elections. In 2002, Latin Swing voters could decide statewide races in Texas, California, Illinois, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Because the Latino vote continues to grow as a share of the electorate, Republicans will need to maintain their upward trend with Latino voters. Otherwise, Latino population growth will simply be a recipe for Democratic gains.
The emergence for the first time of a minority group as a key bloc of swing voters will force candidates of both parties to become more sophisticated and less patronizing in their outreach efforts. It will force the media as well to become better sociologists. For instance, Latinos are often assumed to be monolithically Catholic, when in fact the fastest growing religious group among Latinos is Protestants. Further, immigration is often assumed by the media to be the top concern of Latinos, when in fact the top issues are presently fighting terrorism, education, and the economy.
Political consultants, too, will have to retool to deal with the Latin Swing. Consultants can no longer do a paint-by-numbers ad buy on Spanish-language TV or radio, when Latin Swing voters turn out to be watching primarily English language television.
After the last few elections, American politics has come to seem static and predictable. The emergence of the Latino middle class, or Latin Swing, as a key political bloc is about to change that."

The evolution of the Courtship of the Hispanic Major Minority and its vote has to be understood so that Conservatives can effect a positive influence on our Representatives in both chambers of the Legislature and in the Executive Branch. Our leaders need to inform the world that a High and Thick Wall on the Border will help Protect Mexico's huge influx of Ex-patriot income into their economy(greater than its Tourist and Oil revenues), its legal and illegal workers in the USA, Hispanic Americans in the Southwest and the Occidental World since we are the Economic and Democratic Engine of the World! If some Islamo-Jihadists posing as a Mexican/Hispanic Worker crosses the Border and destroys us by a 1000 slashes the Free World is Doomed! A Wall is good for everyone and it is not Racist it is Smart and this should be the message from our Leaders and all Americans to the World!