Hispanics back immigration moves by Obama

Hispanic voters overwhelmingly support President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, strongly oppose potential Republican moves to block the actions and blame Congressional Republicans for Congress’s inability to pass immigration reform, according to a Latino Decisions poll released Monday.

{mosads}According to the survey, 89 percent of Hispanics support Obama’s executive actions, against only 9 percent who oppose. Republicans have responded to the executive actions by threatening to sue the president or defund the initiatives through the budgetary process, and the poll shows that Hispanics overwhelmingly reject both of those options.

In addition, 66 percent of Hispanics polled say the president should use additional executive actions to protect those undocumented immigrants who don’t fall under the protections of the current executive actions. 

Republicans are furious with Obama for not waiting for the new Republican-led Congress to consider legislation on immigration reform, but a strong majority of Hispanic voters, 64 percent, say Republicans are to blame for not passing immigration reform sooner.

The Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill last year, but it got stuck in the Republican-led House.

The poll’s findings could have electoral consequences for Republicans, who trail Democrats significantly among Hispanics but made inroads with the group during the 2014 midterm elections. 

President Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012, while Mitt Romney took only 27 percent. But some Democratic-leaning groups have become disillusioned with the president, who delayed the executive actions until after the 2014 cycle.

While Hispanics still went for Democrats by a 2-to-1 margin over Republicans in 2014, the margin was considerably smaller in some of the key battleground states where Republicans notched their most impressive victories.

But in a call to discuss the poll results, Arturo Carmona, the executive director for Hispanic organizing group Presente.org, said immigration reform has returned as the primary issue for Hispanic voters, and that their support is now firmly back behind Obama and the Democratic Party.

“It’s a unifying, galvanizing issue for Latinos,” he said. “It seems like we’re living in different worlds when you see the rhetoric coming out of D.C. and the data in this poll. There’s a tremendous disconnect … Republicans are increasingly out of touch with Latino reality.”

“It’s clear Latinos see this as a major leap forward in healing our relationship with the president, particularly as we look ahead to 2016,” he added.

The Latino Decisions poll of 405 registered Hispanic voters was conducted between Nov. 20 and Nov. 22 and has a 4.9 percentage point margin of error.