Obama Struggles to Secure Latino Votes

Although President Obama is focusing his campaign for re-election on the Latino public, analysts believe the task of winning the votes of this sector of the electorate may require a lot work, due to a series of unkept promises.

Pursuing a second term in the 2012 elections, Obama has already started campaigning on certain television and radio channels in the United States most watched by Latino audiences. With the phrase “We have a president ready to fight,” Obama is trying to get the support of Hispanics — the group with the fastest growing demographics in the United States, representing 8.7 percent of voters in the U.S. However, analysts are predicting difficulties in this endeavor.

“There is a feeling of disappointment among Latinos, because issues that were supposed to be priorities were not treated as such, in a context that the economic situation has become the center of policies [for Obama],”* stated Erwin de León, researcher from the Urban Institute in Washington.

Item by item during the Obama administration, it seems nothing has changed in the situation for Latinos, or at least substantially very little.

Immigration Reform

One of the unkept promises that could hurt Obama’s campaign relative to Hispanics is the reform of immigration laws in the country.

In an interview before the 2008 election, then-candidate Barack Obama promised that “we will have in the first year [of his presidential term] an immigration bill that I strongly support.”

But the reform of immigration laws continues to be a desire and requirement of Latinos in the United States, who still have 12 million people in illegal situations. Last Wednesday, Obama sat at a roundtable at the White House responding to questions from Latinos. Obama pointed out that the ones responsible for this situation were the Republican opposition, which, he added, does not have the leadership to present a proposal for debate nor to negotiate a bipartisan agreement that can become law.

“The broken promise of immigration reform is a big white elephant in relation to the president for Latino voters. It is worrying, because he continues to blame the legislative process and does not have courage to confront an immature Congress,”* said Jorge Mario Cabrera, spokesman for the Coalition of Immigrant Rights.

“We believe that [Obama] supports us unconditionally, but he could use his authority to alleviate the problems of millions in illegal situations,”* he stated.

“The problem is that in practice, Obama must answer to the number of deportations, which, this year, will be higher than the number carried out during the (either) term of George W. Bush,”* says researcher Erwin de León. “There is a desperation on the part of government to prove its good faith with the Hispanics on this matter. However, without forceful actions, those who are against immigration and the conservatives who occupy decision-making places, where power is actually exercised, are defining the debate,”* he stated.

Dream Act

One law promised by Barack Obama, the Dream Act, would enable two million young people in illegal situations, mostly Hispanic, to receive citizenship if they complete at least two years of studies in higher education with good academic standing or serve two years in the Armed Forces. One version of the law, with the support of the president and the Democrats in Congress, was approved in the House of Representatives in December 2010, but did not get the necessary votes in the Senate.

At a roundtable with Latinos last Wednesday, Obama stressed that the idea that he could, in a unilateral way, change and convert these bills into law is “simply false,” and once again put the responsibility on Republicans.

“It is disappointing, because we thought that we would finally be getting answers, but the reality is that we are are tens of thousands of young people who have done nothing wrong(…), but we can not enroll at some colleges and we do not have the right to have financial aid, who are, in practice left outside of the system,”* said Juan Escalante, of the organization Dream Activist.

Education

The system of basic education of the Latino community has not improved since Obama took office. The government recognized it needed to make more investments, train teachers for students whose first language is Spanish and create programs for those who have difficulties learning in English.

In practice, in all, less than one-half of all Latino children go to preschool and the rate of leaving school in some states has reached 50 percent. Moreover, barely half of Latino students manage to graduate secondary school, according to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

However, the effects go beyond basic education. Actually, only one in eight Latinos have college diplomas. “There is a concern at a very basic level within families about what the future will be for their children in a country that is only talking about preparing them for basic challenges. It is not a just a partisan issue, because it has been a long-term problem, but there was great hope that this president would take a more concrete measure,”* Saba Bireda, director of the Center for the Investigation of Poverty and Racism, told the BBC.

Jobs

In the middle of a serious crisis, the unemployment indexes show that, for Latinos, the situation is still worse than for the rest of Americans. The rate of unemployment in the U.S. in general terms is 9.1 percent, but has reached 11.3 percent for the Latino section of the population. The situation is particularly critical for the at least 1.1 million Latinos who have been seeking work for six months or more without success. In addition, there has been an increase in immigration control, which means many illegals who have been been working in the informal market now encounter limits in getting work at businesses that do not want to hire them without formal papers.

Furthermore, according to analysts, one of the reasons for this higher unemployment figure now is that Latinos are a majority in the construction and industry sectors, two areas that were very affected by the crisis in 2008. In early September, Obama launched his “jobs initiative” (with the acronym AJA). With this package, the president attempts to inject resources into the American economy with a plan of investing in infrastructure, job creation measures and tax incentives for businesses that hire new employees.

Obama now is campaigning for AJA, knowing that its approval would bring some relief, and not just to the Hispanic community. However, critics of the initiative state that it may not be sufficient: It is estimated that there are 25 million people without jobs in the country, a larger number than those whom the project could benefit.**

Poverty

The relative numbers of poverty in the United States are also worse for Latinos. The office responsible for the census of the country indicates that 15.1 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. In 2007, before the Obama victory, this index was 12.5 percent. Among Hispanics, the level of poverty is significantly higher than for white non-Hispanics: 26.6 percent versus 9.9 percent. Actually, more than one in four Latinos is poor and more than 30 percent of them do not have a health plan, public or private, which leaves them outside the system of primary health care. At the same time, with the fiscal crisis, there are cuts in social programs, such as Medicaid, a program in which Latinos are, in large part, beneficiaries.

Obama says that the improvements introduced by his government in this area were a step forward, but the law relevant to the health sector was far from his announced objectives in the campaign. According to researchers at the University of Michigan, it will take between six or seven years to revert the poverty numbers back to the levels seen in 2000, lower than 12 percent. But this is an unpromising time period for a presidential election in 2012.

*Editor’s Note: These quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.

**Translator’s Note: As of Oct. 13, Obama and Republicans are at a stand-off over the the AJA (American Jobs Act), as Republicans were able to filibuster and prevent a vote.