LATINO POLITICS- Could Latino youth in the U.S. illegally determine the 2016 presidential election without even casting a single vote?
Imagine the scenario:
DREAMers personally confronting Republican presidential candidates at campaign stops and causing scenes that put the politicians uncomfortably on the spot to defend their anti-immigrant positions to the very people they are condemning.
Then, as the campaign unfolds, there’s the growing humanitarian issue of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America – and candidates increasingly forced to deal with the unpleasant image of these kids packed like sardines in detention camps while awaiting deportation.
Both angles offer a potential human drama never before seen in a presidential campaign. How will candidates handle it, and how will American voters and their consciences react?
There was a hint of what could lay ahead this week when a couple of DREAMers confronted Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican senator from Kentucky at a campaign stop in Iowa where he became so uneasy with the situation that he walked away from them, abandoning his half-eaten hamburger.
Could this have even been the first real misstep of the campaign leading up to the primaries and caucuses, an unpredictable road where many candidates have stumbled over the years?
Rand was exposed as being unwilling to engage one-on-one with two young people who politely wanted to talk to him about an issue with which he has more than a passing interest.
Early this summer, Rand threw his political weight behind a pro-immigration reform group effort to get Congress to reform the immigration system this year.
That decision, however, may have created more problems for him with Tea Party activists who have already shown their continued clout by helping to shockingly oust House Majority Leader Eric Cantor from office in the Virginia Republican primary in June.
So now perhaps the last thing Rand wanted was for his Tea Party critics to see him having a meaningful dialog with DREAMers and to give the rabid right-wing of the GOP one more reason to oppose him.
But it’s all out there on social media, as the DREAM Action Coalition taped the confrontation, which has now been distributed it to news media organizations and posted online to be reviewed and used, as it surely will be in the campaign.
And that’s another, equally important part of this scenario. In this new technological age, Latino youth don’t have to depend on the traditional news media to record and report what is happening to them.
One inexpensive video camera and social media are all they need to circulate their message, and you can bet there will always be some media outlet eager and ready to report it.
Imagine the lasting image that will be created when the first video or picture comes out documenting what is happening behind the scenes to those thousands of unaccompanied children in detention camps. What was that old line? One pictures says a thousand words?
Republican Rep. Steve King was confronted Monday night at his own fundraiser by activist Erika Andiola who argued with the Iowa congressman over his stance on immigration.
Of course, this augurs poorly for all candidates.
Despite the pass he is getting from most Latino, President Barack Obama’s own record on deportations have earned him well-deserved criticism from some immigrant activists. And this situation at the border potentially is a no-win crisis for all politicians.
The question is how much more mileage can Obama and Democrats get from his 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order that allowed hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to stay in the country without the threat of deportation?
And what will it cost Democratic presidential candidates with undecided voters to go on the record in the campaign saying they will unconditionally stand behind that executive order?
For this has now become a political issue beyond immigration reform, which largely went ignored in the 2012 campaign.
Latino youth in the U.S. illegally have captured an unimaginable role in the campaign ahead. But now what will they do with it?
(Tony Castro is the author of the newly-released "The Prince of South Waco: American Dreams and Great Expectations," as well as of the critically-acclaimed “Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America” and the best-selling “Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son." Castro writes for voxxi.com where this piece was first posted.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 64
Pub: Aug 8, 2014
