LATINO IMMIGRANT PATTERNS

There was a surprise this morning on Chris Hayes’ show “UP” (MSNBC). The Republican position was debated by Jennifer Sevilla Korn represented the Hispanic Leadership Network. That was not the surprise; the surprise was that this Latino woman was a long term Republican.  I struggled mightily trying to turn her into a Cuban but failed.  She was not born in Florida but in Los Angles, which suggests she is of South American or Mexican origin. I tried to turn her into a “token” Hispanic” but failed at that as well. She is not isolated in the Republican Party as a “token” Latino would be. She has a long and provable association with Republicanism. My conclusion is that she was an authentic right wing Latino who was not a Cuban. This was the surprise.

Thus, I fell into a trap many people fall into. If a person’s politics are genetic, as I believe they are, then there should be some sort of equilibrium or balance of republicans to liberals. From the results of surveys on numerous issues, I have judged the distribution of progressives to conservatives to be 60% progressive and 20% conservatives with 10% on either end or in the extremes. My mistake was not to consider this while considering the skewed distribution due to immigration patterns. The Cubans who migrated to Florida were fleeing Castro, an extreme left wing form of politics. Of course, the people who fled were right-wingers, or conservatives (Marco Rubio). In contrast, in South America and Mexico, the people were fleeing poverty brought on by conservative trickle down economics. The people who fled were working class or progressives. We all know there were more immigrants fleeing poverty than there were people fleeing Castro.  What failed to recognize was that a great majority does not mean 100%. Of course, some economic elite in South American and Mexico will seek new opportunities in the U.S. (Jennifer Sevilla Korn) just as some working poor in Cuban will do the same.

There is a message about the future in all of this.  As more and more South American countries shed their right-wing dictatorships and military governments and democracies take hold—an extremely slow and painful process—the number of Latino  immigrants to the U.S. would be expected to fall but also the political affiliation of the immigrants would be expected to trend to the right.  However, because of the natural distribution of conservatives and progressives in populations, progressives will dominate.  

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