Evangelical leaders mistaken: Latino immigrants not hard-wired to be conservative

The New York Times recently featured a piece on evangelical leaders and their support for the Rubio amnesty bill.

This bill violates any number of evangelical principles such as equality under the law, accountability for unlawful choices, respect for sovereign borders, and self-reliance. That’s why it is so surprising to see so many evangelical leaders abandon these principles en masse to jump on board the amnesty train.

Many of the evangelical leaders who make up the Evangelical Immigration Table are men I respect and admire. On the immigration issue, however, they are just plain wrong. So consider this an intramural discussion among members of the same team.

In the Times piece, one evangelical leader was quoted to the effect that evangelicals must support amnesty because it “respects the God-given dignity of every person.” In essence, what this leader is saying is that respecting another person requires you to reward them for breaking the law. This, of course, is absurd.

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Speaking of illegal immigrants, this leader also says, “They’re social conservatives, hard-wired to be pro-family, religious and entrepreneurial.” Yet the illegitimacy rate in the Hispanic community is well north of 50%, and the Heritage Foundation has indicated that the average illegal alien has just a 10th grade education and is therefore a low-skilled worker who will consume far more in welfare benefits than he pays in taxes. I don’t have a trained eye, but the facts simply don’t support the “socially conservative entrepreneur” meme.

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Researchers at the polling organization Latino Decisions wrote in 2011, “Minority citizens prefer a more energetic government, by large and statistically significant margins.” In other words, Hispanic immigrants love bigger and bigger government and more and more government programs. They are decidedly not, as evangelicals largely are, supporters of smaller, less intrusive and less expensive government. In other words, if Latinos are hard-wired to be anything, they’re hard-wired to be liberal Democrats. That’s why 71% of Latinos voted for President Obama, and are likely to vote left for decades to come.

If evangelicals think that amnesty will magically transform Hispanics into conservative voters, they need only learn from history. Ronald Reagan granted outright amnesty, no conditions, in 1986 after receiving 37% of the Latino vote. His successor, George H.W. Bush, received just 30% of the Latino vote in 1988. There was simply no loyalty or electoral gratitude there.