Hispanics’ Voting Preferences on Immigration

Summary

As the nation’s largest minority, Hispanics have been a point of focus in recent elections, especially given the rising importance of immigration as a policy issue. The majority of immigrants to the United States are Hispanic, so it has long been assumed that Hispanics will be most loyal to candidates that make immigration to the U.S. easier.

On this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Jim Robb of NumbersUSA joins host and executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian, to discuss voting and public opinion trends among Hispanics, particularly regarding immigration, and to debunk the longstanding myth that Hispanics want open borders.

“Hispanics, they’re not especially conservative,” Robb explains, “but they’re as conservative as other Americans are conservative.” In essence, Hispanics are increasingly voting like the rest of the U.S. population, which often happens among other immigrant groups, as they and their children assimilate to the broader American culture over time. Robb’s recent book, Political Migrants: Hispanic Voters on the Move—How America’s Largest Minority Is Flipping Conventional Wisdom on Its Head, discusses these trends in greater detail.