A GUIDE TO THE ISSUES

by Daniel W. Sutherland

Executive Summary

According to national polls, immigration is one of the top five issues on the minds of Hispanic voters today. As both parties aggressively court Hispanic voters, immigration issues will often be in the press over the next several weeks. This report is designed to give a balanced, objective overview of those issues. It identifies the major questions and explains the arguments on both sides. It also highlights statistics about the importance of the Latino vote. The report analyzes such questions as:

• How many workers should we allow into the country?
• What is an “H1b” visa and why do Alan Greenspan and Bill Gates care?
• What steps might Congress take to allow more foreign workers into the country?
• What should we do about the millions of illegal immigrants living permanently in this country?
• Is another blanket amnesty the answer?
• Why is the AFL-CIO suddenly siding with illegal workers?
• What should our policy be toward Cuban refugees?
• Why does the Clinton administration have such a hypocritical policy on Cuban rafters?
• Is the “wet foot/dry foot” test the only option?
• What should we do with immigrants who commit crimes?
• Can we keep immigrants in jail indefinitely?
• Should people who commit minor crimes be deported?
• Why do serious criminals avoid deportation?

Introduction

Many of the faces we will see during the 2000 election season are very familiar to us. Another Bush, another Clinton, and mainstays from the past two presidential administrations will dominate the airwaves. Many of the issues these people will be discussing are also very familiar to us: education, Social Security, Medicare. Nevertheless, this election season may break precedent at least in one respect: this may be the first election when Hispanic voters are aggressively courted.

The sheer number of Hispanic voters makes it impossible for the major political parties to ignore this growing segment of the population. It is estimated that there are 6 million people of Hispanic ancestry who are prepared to vote in 2000, over 1 million more than voted in 1996. In 1996, Latino voters made up just under 5 percent of the electorate; this year, they might constitute as much as 8 percent of voters. Because these voters are clustered in some of the most electoral-rich states some believe that Hispanic voters could turn the tide in the presidential race. Latinos are approximately 11 percent of the voters in California, 17 percent in Texas, 12 percent in Florida, and 7 percent in New York. Karl Rove predicts that if the Bush campaign can attract 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in California, Bush will win the state.

You may download the entire report as an MS Word document here.

Immigration 2000

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