As the Republican race for the party’s presidential nomination begins and the 2012 cycle kicks off in earnest, the Party’s stance on immigration and ability to compete for Latino voters will be a major storyline. In this report, America’s Voice provides a review of GOP presidential candidate positions on immigration, finding that the field tilts hard in the anti-immigrant direction. We follow the candidate profiles with analysis of the Party’s lurch to the right on immigration in recent years, and provide four lessons for the Republican Party when it comes to Latino voters, immigration, and its potential significance for 2012 and beyond.

For years, anti-immigrant activists have scared Republican officials into thinking that GOP voters are rabidly anti-immigrant and oppose any candidate who supports common sense reform. The recent ascent of Newt Gingrich, who has weathered attacks from enforcement-only candidate Mitt Romney over his immigration position, demonstrates conclusively that this line of thinking is wrong.

By consistently strong majorities, Americans support comprehensive immigration reform. In 2009 as in previous years, voters want the President and Congress to advance a solution that legalizes the undocumented workforce, requires them to pay taxes, levels the playing field for workers and employers, and restores the rule of law. The same was true in the run-up to the 2008 elections, when swing voters chose candidates who offered practical solutions to the broken immigration system over those who offered just empty rhetoric. Following is a snapshot of recent opinion polls on immigration reform.

This new report from America's Voice examines—and demolishes—Smith’s claim that Republicans can maintain a hard-line on immigration reform and still court the Latino vote by running Latino candidates. The report highlights several key findings with major implications for Republican strategists and the 2012 cycle.

This backgrounder on constitutional citizenship reveals that recent attempts to deny citizenship to babies is unconstitutional and wrong, leading to millions of dollars lost in litigation, and viewed by the fastest growing voting demographic -- Latinos -- as an attack on their community. Moreover, revoking the 14th amendment is not a solution for fixing our broken immigration system.

Leaders of the Subcommittee, Reps. Lamar Smith, Elton Gallegly, and Steve King, are professing profound concern for people of color and American workers. But their voting records tell an entirely different story, and America’s Voice Education Fund (AVEF) is exposing the rank hypocrisy behind their strategy.