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 News from Around the Americas | January 2008 
Immigration Issue Fades as Key Issue
 Alfonso Chardy & Helena Poleo - Miami Herald
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 |  | People are very focused on the economy, and they're focused on local issues like home insurance and real estate taxes. In their minds, everything is connected.
- Ric Katz |  | | | |
Guillermo Vega, a Nicaragua native, cast his ballot at a Hialeah voting site Friday for the first time in a primary since becoming a U.S. citizen, but immigration wasn't a factor in his choice of Hillary Clinton.
Bill Steward wants a solution to illegal immigration, but the issue was not on his mind when he voted in Fort Lauderdale for Barack Obama. Nor did it stand out for Broward resident Irene Pharmer, who voted for Rudy Giuliani.
In downtown Miami, retired chef Everett Hill voted for Clinton but not because of the New York senator's immigration stance - at odds with his wish to deport as many illegal workers as possible.
Illegal immigration - which consumed recent GOP debates with charges of hypocrisy and policy flip-flops and put Democratic presidential candidates on the defensive - has faded as a key issue for Florida voters.
As the Sunshine State heads into the Jan. 29 primary election, polls show the slowing economy is voters' top concern.
"People are very focused on the economy, and they're focused on local issues like home insurance and real estate taxes," said political consultant Ric Katz. "In their minds, everything is connected."
Cuban-born Fidel Muñoz, 74, who voted early in Hialeah last week, conceded immigration wasn't on his political radar in picking Sen. John McCain.
"What I want is for him to improve the economic situation and for my real estate taxes to go down," he said.
Hispanics make up almost 33 percent of the nearly two million registered voters in Miami-Dade and Broward. Immigration doesn't resonate with South Florida voters the way it did in Iowa, where Hispanics are less than 2 percent of the almost two million voters.
"Florida is different from a lot of other states that have large numbers of Hispanics because the two largest Hispanic groups in Florida, Puerto Ricans and Cubans, do not have the illegal alien problem," said Darío Moreno, political science professor and director of Florida International University's Metropolitan Center.
Unlike other immigrants who arrive without papers, Cubans can stay and apply for green cards after a year. Puerto Ricans, many of whom live in the Orlando area, are U.S. citizens by birth.
PRIMARY ISSUE
"The No. 1 issue on people's mind is the economy, and immigration is far from everyone's mind," said José Cancela, a former Spanish-language TV executive active in Cuban-American politics.
Nevertheless, Florida faces a growing undocumented population: an estimated one million, mostly from Haiti, Venezuela, Jamaica, Mexico and Central America. Anti-legalization groups like the Minutemen, who made national news for the group's patrols along the Mexican border, have mobilized in the state.
Cheryl Little, executive director of Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said Democratic candidates need to be more vocal in their support for legalization.
"While the Democratic candidates have said they favor comprehensive immigration reform, they have tended to whisper this message," Little said. "Republican candidates . . . have responded to a growing call to deport all undocumented immigrants."
The exception had been McCain.
The Arizona senator dropped in the polls after his unsuccessful push in Congress to legalize undocumented immigrants.
Opponents of the plan, which required paying penalties and returning to one's home country temporarily, called it amnesty.
McCain, who won New Hampshire's GOP primary, lost in Iowa to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. After speaking up at one debate in defense of the children of undocumented immigrants, Huckabee produced a tough immigration platform and accepted the endorsement of Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman project.
Bill Landes, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps' Florida state director, said he's keeping his "fingers crossed that someone like [CNN host and closed-border proponent] Lou Dobbs will jump in there on an independent ticket."
Mark Krikorian, executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo's short-lived presidential candidacy - he dropped out last month - kept pressure on Republicans to toughen their immigration position.
McCain, for instance, now says any legalization plans must come after the U.S. border is secured.
The Democratic presidential hopefuls, though embracing legalization, also have hardened their positions as national polls show voters worry about an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants posing a drain on taxpayer-financed services.
Even those immigrants who have played by U.S. rules are finding obstacles leading to the election. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizenship applicants, most of them Hispanic, have had their hopes dashed of voting this year because of agency backlogs.
CITIZENSHIP SURGE
About 1.4 million applied for citizenship in 2007, almost twice as many as the previous fiscal year. A voter-registration campaign by key Hispanic groups and the Spanish-language network, Univisión, coupled with a sharp hike in fees, prompted a rush to naturalize.
After learning Clinton's pro-legalization posture on immigration, retired chef Hill worried it would affect her ability to get the black vote, particularly in the South. Polls show most black voters oppose legalization.
"She'll have a hard time getting it past the South . . . and she can't pass that without us," Hill, 56, said of the black community's concerns.
For Steward, 60, a retired Xerox repairman in Fort Lauderdale, Obama earned his support because he believes the Democrat would "get us out" of Iraq.
Pharmer, who works for the city of Fort Lauderdale, voted for Giuliani because he seems "the most liberal, reasonable Republican."
As for immigration, she says, she has yet to identify a candidate with a "workable solution."
achardy(at)MiamiHerald.com
Miami Herald staff writer Casey Woods contributed to this report. |
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