Hispanic Americans, more than white and black Americans, are the most convinced by campaign rhetoric that denounces illegal immigration to the United States and the “defund the police” movement, a new survey finds.
New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall noted five issues facing Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign — one of which is President Trump’s support among Hispanic Americans.
Fifteen focus groups of Hispanic Americans and polls of white and black Americans, conducted by Ian Haney López and Tory Gavito, reveal that Hispanic Americans are the most convinced by campaign rhetoric that opposes illegal immigration and defunding local police departments.
Black Americans, at the same rate as white Americans, were convinced by the rhetoric, Edsall writes:
Another data point they found “even more sobering”: López and Gavito asked eligible voters how “convincing” they found a dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points. Among other elements, the message condemned “illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs” and called for “fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.” [Emphasis added]
As they expected, “almost three out of five white respondents judged that message convincing.” [Emphasis added]
More disconcerting to López and Gavito, both liberals, was that “exactly the same percentage of African-Americans agreed, as did an even higher percentage of Latinos.” [Emphasis added]
The results come months after a Washington Post survey found that some 70 percent of Hispanic Americans opposed pausing all immigration to the U.S. in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus crisis — more than any other racial demographic group.
López and Gavito’s research found that voter registrations among non-college-educated white Americans, Trump’s base of support, are up 46 percent in the vital swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
While Trump has made inroads with Hispanic Americans, the research shows that Democrats’ identity politics efforts have largely failed in terms of convincing large swaths of the Hispanic community.
Specifically, as Breitbart News noted, Democrats and Biden have sought to couple all non-white minority groups together under the umbrella term “people of color.” The phrase, though, is hugely unpopular with Hispanic Americans, the research finds.
The majority of Hispanic Americans surveyed rejected the term “people of color” and said they preferred viewing the Hispanic community as its own designation that is assimilating into American life through hard work.
Trump, surveys have shown, can make significant electoral gains over Biden with precise messaging on immigration, wages, jobs, and crime. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from August, for instance, found that undecided voters are the most supportive of reducing overall immigration to the U.S. when the issue is talked about in terms of the labor market.
There are currently 20 to 30 million unemployed and underemployed Americans, all of whom want full-time employment with competitive wages and good benefits. Economists have found that their job opportunities and wages can be easily diminished by high immigration levels where about 1.2 million green cards are given out and another 1.4 million work visas are rewarded annually.
One particular study by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Steven Camarota revealed that for every one percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupation, their weekly wages are cut by perhaps 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by potentially 8.75 percent, since more than 17 percent of the workforce is foreign-born.
The high immigration policy is a boon for giant corporations, real estate investors, Wall Street, university systems, and Big Agriculture that can cash in on an economy that offers low wages to a flooded U.S. labor market.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.