05/10/13 Virtually all of the GOP’s top-tier potential candidates for president in 2016—Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul—are supporters of immigration reform.  For whoever runs, Florida will be a crucial, must-win state.  And Florida supports immigration reform too. A new poll released this week by the Public Policy Institute, and commissioned by the Florida [...]
Read More »

05/03/13 Cross-posted at Latino Decisions, Latino Vote Matters, and Daily Kos: Recent elections demonstrate that immigration is a mobilizing issue for Latino voters. We can be sure that Congressional action, or inaction, on the current comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) bill will factor in to Latino voting decisions in 2014 and beyond. Our recent polling finds a majority of Latino voters, 58%, cite [...]
Read More »

05/01/13 One desperate tactic in the playbook of those who oppose immigration reform has been to try and split the coalition of supporters, by pitting immigrants and African Americans against each other.  Nativists have tried time and time again to paint the specter of immigrants taking jobs away from African Americans, despite high-profile leaders like the [...]
Read More »

05/01/13 Yesterday, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) stated that the best arguments to convince his Republican colleagues to support immigration reform were political in nature: “if we don’t do this, we can’t begin the conversation with our Hispanic voters, and all you have to do is the math.  Do the math on the growth of the Hispanic [...]
Read More »

04/23/13 Pinging around the blogosphere today has been a Politico article claiming that immigration reform could be a “bonanza” for Democrats, considering that reform could eventually lead to more Hispanic voters, who voted Democratic by a 3-1 margin in the last election.  As the article breathlessly wrote about current undocumented immigrants (right before they noted that [...]
Read More »

04/16/13 As the Senate Gang of 8 prepares to roll out an immigration bill, CBS News today had this post on the immigration and the Latino vote–that is, why there is so much support for immigration reform in the first place (because it matters electorally). In 2012, Mitt Romney engaged in an immigration-bashing strategy, supporting “self-deportation” [...]
Read More »

04/15/13 Cross-posted at Latino Decisions: Groundbreaking poll of Latino undocumented immigrants shows 85% have U.S. citizen family members; and 87% would plan to apply for citizenship if immigration reform passes A new poll of Latino undocumented immigrants finds they have deep roots in America, with strong family and social connections to U.S. citizens, painting a portrait of a [...]
Read More »

04/11/13 New polling from NBC News/Wall Street Journal underscores the fact that an earned path to citizenship is the mainstream position in the immigration debate.  Additionally, yesterday’s jubilant rally on the Capitol lawn demonstrates that the energy and enthusiasm in the debate is also on the side of citizenship. According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice [...]
Read More »

04/11/13 You’ve heard us say many times that when it comes to immigration reform with a path to citizenship: the American people want it, Democrats promised it and Republicans need it. Today, we get conclusive proof from the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that the American people — including Republicans — do want citizenship for the [...]
Read More »

04/09/13 Yesterday the polling group Public Opinion Strategies (POS) released the results of  ”a set of special focus groups” conducted with Hispanic voters in Las Vegas, NV, and posted the first of what will be a series of blog posts on its findings. When the Nevada Latinos were asked what they thought about today’s Republican Party, they responded [...]
Read More »

03/21/13 Cross-posted at Latino Decisions Recently there have been a series of high profile endorsements for comprehensive immigration reform from the Republican Party. Immediately after the November 2012 election Bobby Jindal made a plea for more civility and and less stupidity on the immigration issue. Before too long, it was the Gang of 8 in the U.S. Senate which included four [...]
Read More »

03/18/13 According to a new Republican National Committee (RNC) analysis of the Party’s shortcomings in recent elections, the GOP’s embrace of hardline anti-immigrant policies is at the heart of their problems with Latino voters.  And as a new Latino Decisions poll makes clear, if the GOP successfully changes its position on the issue, the Party has [...]
Read More »

03/14/13 As the Associated Press reported yesterday, “President Barack Obama told House Republicans Wednesday that they would benefit politically more than Democrats would from supporting a comprehensive immigration overhaul, lawmakers present said … The assertion prompted some ‘light chuckles’ from certain Republican members, while others reacted more like Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who said, ‘There’s something to it.’” As  Lynn Tramonte, [...]
Read More »

03/06/13 Guest-posted at Latino Decisions. A new Latino Decisions poll finds that Latino voters are paying very close attention to the immigration debate in Congress and that a candidate’s stance on immigration policy will directly effect how many Latino votes they win or lose.  The new poll of 800 Latino registered voters nationwide was conducted in [...]
Read More »

03/05/13 The 2012 election was a game changer for immigration reform, and thanks to unprecedented Latino turnout and a recognition by both political parties of their growing political power, the prospects for enacting bipartisan immigration reform have never been stronger. On a press call and webinar today, Latino Decisions along with national immigration, Latino and labor [...]
Read More »

02/22/13 Whatever Republicans think they’re doing to start to win back that 75% of the Latino vote they lost in the last election, it’s not working.  While many in the GOP have moved toward more mainstream policies on immigration and have been willing to come to the table, others have opposed immigration reform that creates a path [...]
Read More »

02/21/13 As we’ve said before, pro-citizenship and common sense immigration reform stances are the mainstream in the immigration debate—an argument bolstered by a range of national polling, including two new polls out today. According to separate surveys by both Bloomberg and the Pew Research Center, public support for immigration that includes a pathway to citizenship remains vast and strong.  According to Bloomberg: Fifty-three percent [...]
Read More »

02/08/13 This week alone, a raft of new polling has underscored the fact that a majority of Americans want immigration reform with a path to citizenship—not legalization without citizenship or any mass deportation option.  Quinnipiac finds that 56% of all Americans support the creation of a roadmap to citizenship, the Washington Post/ABC News has the number [...]
Read More »

02/06/13 During the House Judiciary Committee immigration hearing yesterday, Republicans’ attempted to define a policy that offers undocumented immigrants “legal residency but not a path to citizenship” as the “middle-ground option in the debate over immigration” according to the New York Times.  Judiciary Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) asked, “Are there options we should consider between the extremes of [...]
Read More »

02/06/13 At The Plum Line, Greg Sargent has been getting to the crux of the policy and politics of immigration. Over the past couple days, he has written several important posts on the issue. This morning, Greg wrote: In recent days, Republicans have begun to spin misleading impressions of the two parties’ positions in the immigration debate. They [...]
Read More »

01/23/13 Immigration reform has become a win-win-win issue—smart politics for both Republicans and Democrats, and smart policy for the nation.  Gary Segura, a Principal at Latino Decisions, and Lynn Tramonte, Deputy Director of America’s Voice, gathered on a press call and webinar today to review new Latino Decisions analysis outlining what Republicans lost by following an anti-immigration strategy in the [...]
Read More »

01/23/13 A range of new polls offer fresh evidence that Americans want immigration reform with citizenship, while providing another reminder of the momentum behind immigration reform in 2013: Bipartisan Poll from Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies – Overwhelming Support for Citizenship and Likely Legislative Framework: As Eliseo Medina of SEIU writes in Huffington Post of the bipartisan polling, “A [...]
Read More »

01/18/13 A solid majority of U.S. voters favor common sense immigration reform that includes a path to earned citizenship for current undocumented immigrants, and strong accountability measures, according to a groundbreaking, bipartisan poll conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, and Hart Research Associates, a Democratic firm. The national survey of 1,003 registered voters, sponsored by [...]
Read More »

01/18/13 As Congress and the President begin considering immigration legislation this year, it’s important for Republicans to remember why they need to support this effort.  President Obama beat Mitt Romney by more than a 3-1 margin among Latino voters in 2012, which spells demographic disaster for Republicans unless they reconsider their hardline stances on immigration and other [...]
Read More »

12/13/12 Latinos and the Republican Party haven’t seen eye-to-eye much recently.  However, leaders of prominent Latino-focused organizations and leading Republican pollsters each made news yesterday and reached a similar conclusion: the Republican Party needs to play ball on real immigration reform or else pay an escalating political price.  There’s a consensus that changing demographics and the [...]
Read More »

12/13/12 Since last month, we at America’s Voice have for good reason spent much time lifting up the Latino vote and its pivotal role in the 2012 election.  But another key voting bloc—Asian Americans—has also been making headlines, and the Republican failure to court it means even more trouble for the GOP in a diversifying future. [...]
Read More »

12/10/12 The ramp-up to the upcoming immigration reform legislative battle has started and will continue to play out in public over the coming months.  As America’s Voice Education Fund’s Executive Director Frank Sharry told USA Today, the legislative “measures that pass are those are litigated in public, in a loud debate.”  However, despite the impending noise, [...]
Read More »