Why Neither Party Speaks Our Language Yet

No one can blame Hispanic voters for feeling politically isolated. Both Democrats and Republicans have failed to connect with us. Twelve million Latino voters are in search of a candidate, but so far there is none to be found.

Barack Obama broke a key campaign promise. But Republicans are making an extraordinary effort to lose the Hispanic vote. If Republicans can’t get at least 33% of that vote, they likely won’t win the presidency back. Since Ronald Reagan, every single Republican candidate who has gotten more than a third of the Hispanic vote has won the election. And all polls suggest that Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich won’t get close to that number by November.

Republicans seem set on losing the general election because they reject every reasonable immigration-reform proposal that comes their way. For the first time in a generation, the GOP will have a presidential candidate who does not support a path to citizenship for most undocumented residents. Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and McCain all did. Republican refusal to even consider the Dream Act for students, let alone comprehensive immigration reform, is a sure way to lose the fastest-growing voting bloc.

And yet, believe it or not, immigration is not the most important issue for Latinos. We are more concerned about jobs, education and affordable access to quality health care.

Still, the issues concerning undocumented immigrants are very, very personal. If you attack them, you attack us all. They are our neighbors and co-workers; their kids go to school with our kids; they serve in battle next to our sons; they take jobs no one else wants; they pay taxes and overwhelmingly make America a better country.

But let’s start with the basics–some unsolicited advice for the candidates.

First of all, don’t call them “illegals.” Nobody is an “illegal” human being, and referring to them as illegal shows a double standard. You don’t call the American companies that hire them “illegals.” It’s wrong. Words matter.

Second, nobody is buying Republican speeches about securing the border. The number of undocumented immigrants has decreased from 12 million to 11 million, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Cities and towns along the Mexican border are among the safest in the U.S. And who needs high fences when 4 out of 10 undocumented immigrants arrive by plane and simply overstay their visas?

And third, if your plan is to make America an inhospitable place for immigrants, as new laws have made Alabama and Arizona, wave goodbye to the Hispanic vote for good.

Republicans are missing a historic opportunity to get the Hispanic vote back. Latinos are very disillusioned with Obama because he broke a campaign promise. “What I can guarantee is that we will have, in the first year, an immigration bill that I strongly support,” he told me in Denver on May 28, 2008. But he didn’t deliver. Latinos call it La Promesa de Obama. He didn’t keep his word.

Besides that, the Obama Administration is responsible for the separation of thousands of families with children who are U.S. citizens. Obama has deported more immigrants–over 1.2 million–than any other President in history. Even though his policies recently have concentrated on deporting criminals, his Secure Communities program has unjustly targeted workers with no record.

“Latinos,” Ronald Reagan used to say, “are Republicans, but they just don’t know it yet.” Latinos share many values with Republicans: their stance against abortion, their distrust of Big Government and their traditional views on family and religion. Republicans could have used these similarities–along with Obama’s contradictory immigration policies–to build a new alliance with Latinos. But they blew it.

Latinos are underrepresented politically; we should have at least 15 Senators, but we have only two. With 50 million of us and counting, Latinos will very soon elect a President of our own. El primer Presidente hispano.

Meanwhile, we have the difficult choice of voting for either a President who broke a major promise or a Republican candidate who doesn’t respect us. It was not supposed to be this way; 2012 was supposed to be the year of the Hispanic hope.

Ramos is an Emmy-award-winning news anchor for Univision News and the author of 11 books, including A Country for All: An Immigrant Manifesto and Dying to Cross