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Immigration Reform: Congress Won't Vote? A Changing Electorate Will

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POST WRITTEN BY
Javier Palomarez
This article is more than 9 years old.

Plagued by ideological gridlock, midterm electioneering and the fall of Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Congress appears hopelessly fragmented and paralyzed, unable to vote on the most important policy issues of our time. Some think comprehensive immigration reform is dead, others say that’s for the best. Anti-reformists argue that lawmakers should double down and focus on jobs and the economy. The problem: Comprehensive immigration reform is the economy.

It’s been an entire year since the Senate immigration bill was passed then shut down by the House. What really frustrates me — and other CEOs, including Randall Stephenson of AT&T, Lowell McAdam of Verizon, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Muhtar Kent of Coca-Cola — is that this bill has something both liberals and conservatives can love.

For fiscal conservatives, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the Senate bill would reduce our deficit by nearly a trillion dollars over the next 20 years. For liberals, economists project passing immigration reform would raise wages by 25 percent and create 160,000 jobs each year — American jobs. All this should persuade any member of Congress with a conscience to pass immigration reform. But for some on Capitol Hill, the only job they care about securing is their own.

As for the everyday American who thinks preserving our economy is a good thing, my association partnered with the George W. Bush Institute to publish an immigration study. That study found:

  • Approximately 20 percent of small businesses are immigrant-owned, and they contribute nearly $776 billion to the U.S. economy.
  • Immigrants employ 1 out of 10 American workers.
  • Immigrants are more likely than natives to create their own jobs — making them job creators, not job takers.
  • Forty percent of Fortune 500s were created by an immigrant or their child, including AT&T, Bank of America, eBay, Google, Intel, Kohl’s department stores and Yahoo.

If Congress refuses to vote on immigration reform, the changing face of America will. We live in a democracy, in a country that 53 million Hispanics call home. Consider also that 50,000 Hispanics turn 18 every month and become eligible to vote. That’s one every 45 seconds, or a quarter-million new voters who can be registered between now and the midterm elections.

Latino Decisions, a leading political opinion research group, concluded that up to 33 House seats — including 14 Republican seats — can be decided by the Hispanic vote. Alienating Hispanic voters is a dangerous game of Russian roulette; you can only go so many rounds before you inevitably do some serious, irreversible damage to yourself and your party.

Bottom line, the Hispanic vote will become increasingly more indispensable with each passing election cycle. And this isn’t conjecture; look at some of the most recent and most closely watched elections:

— Mayor Bill de Blasio won New York City with 87 percent of the Hispanic vote.

— Gov. Terry McAuliffe won Virginia with 66 percent of the Hispanic vote.

— Sen. Marco Rubio won the Florida seat with 55 percent of the Hispanic vote.

— Gov. Chris Christie won New Jersey with 51 percent of the Hispanic vote.

And let’s not forget: In 2012, President Barack Obama won with 71 percent of the Hispanic vote. In fact, during a meeting with the president, I said to him, “Mr. President, respectfully, you wouldn’t be Mr. President were it not for the Hispanic vote.” He agreed.

I’ve expressed this directly to President Obama as well as to leaders of the Republican Party: Never before has the Hispanic electorate played such a pivotal role in electing an American president and never again will an American president be elected without courting the Hispanic vote.

Here’s the best advice I can give Congress: At the end of the day, negotiations, whether they’re motivated by profit or politics, achieve their highest possible success when we recognize that cooperation works better than conflict, that solidarity outlasts isolation, and that our differences do not outweigh our common interests.

The opportunities abound, but the window is closing. If Congress fails to act on immigration reform this summer, rest assured that the Hispanic community will hold those responsible accountable come Election Day.