A Romney Administration Perilous For Latinos

While Latinos are already familiar with Mitt Romney's own position on immigration, the make up of his administration is not yet evident. However, with Kris Kobach shaping Mitt Romney's immigration policy, the verdict is clear that he or others like him will be top candidates at the helm of Romney's immigration policy and enforcement.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

SB 1070, the promised DREAM Act veto, and "Self-Deportation". These are immigration stances Mitt Romney's has embraced in the primary and, needless to say, also three big problems that he has with Latino voters, problems which he cannot Etch-A-Sketch his way out of. But what makes Romney's immigration stances perilous to Latinos is that they derive from a common source: Kris Kobach and others like him that may be potential candidates in a Romney administration to lead immigration policy and immigration enforcement.

Kris Kobach, author of notorious anti-immigrant laws like Arizona' SB 1070 and Alabama's HB56, has been a close adviser to the Romney camp. It's very likely, Mitt Romney expected Kobach to be just an instrument that he could use to get him through the tough primaries. Romney seemed like he was going to dump his far-right position on immigration while using Senator Marco Rubio to pivot toward the center on immigration and recover the Latino vote. Back in April, Romney even went so far to distance himself by calling Kobach merely a "supporter."

Romney, however, is realizing that it isn't easy to publicly oust Kobach the way he would have liked. Kobach hasn't gotten the memo, as he has said both that he is as close to Romney as ever, and that Marco Rubio's alternative proposal to the DREAM Act falls short of his test (whatever that means). Given Romney's proclivity to appease the far right, it is of solid probability that Romney would install Kris Kobach as Secretary of Homeland Security or Director of Immigration Custom Enforcement.

SB 1070, meanwhile, is still in the hands of the Supreme Court. But regardless of what the Court decides, Kris Kobach-- with Mitt Romney's validation-- would certainly press forward making SB 1070 and "self-deportation" the standard of targeting Latinos across the country. This would entail measures that we've seen in Alabama which chased away the migrant workers, breaking the back of the local farming economy. Moreover, state laws granting in-state tuition to undocumented students would be once again challenged in court. In-state tuition laws have been a target of Kobach ever since he filed suit against Kansas.

We would unquestionably see an unfettered ICE agency and state police departments with wider license to target individuals with brown skin or spanish accents. The dragnet would apprehend not only undocumented immigrants but also Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban-Americans, and perhaps a beach-tanned caucasian who happened to speak spanish at the wrong place at the wrong time! A quick trip to the store could result with a deportation order or deportation itself. These are not hypothetical scenarios but real cases that have occurred even under the Obama administration. Such is the case of a U.S. Army soldier's wife, who after being stopped for a minor traffic violation found herself threatened with deportation while her husband is stationed overseas or an American citizen who was mistakenly deported to Colombia.

Even more alarming, Latinos would see an increase in conduct that is now the subject of lawsuit by the Justice Department against Sheriff Joe Arpaio. According to the Justice Department's complaint, there were instances where Maricopa county employees called Latinos derogatory names such as as "wetbacks," "Mexican bitches," and "stupid Mexicans," or cases of officers physically mistreating Latinos in routine traffic stops such as when a Latina woman and U.S citizen, who was five-months pregnant, was stopped pulled out of her car and slammed stomach first. Indeed, it would be open season to lawfully discriminate against Latinos.

While Latinos are already familiar with Mitt Romney's own position on immigration, the make up of his administration is not yet evident. However, with Kris Kobach shaping Mitt Romney's immigration policy, the verdict is clear that he or others like him will be top candidates at the helm of Romney's immigration policy and enforcement.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot