Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric does not deter some Latinos from voting for him

Since he began his political career, the former president donald trump (2017-2021) has attacked immigrants. Still, many latinos are willing to once again ignore his attacks and reward him with their votes in the elections. presidential election of November.

Cuban Jorge Saldivar, who has been living in Houston (Texas) for years and will become a US citizen in a few months, assured EFE that he will vote for Trump because “With Republicans, businesses run better and the economy flows better.”

According to polls, the economy and immigration are the main concerns of Americans in this election.

Saldivar expressed his displeasure at Trump’s negative comments towards immigrants, although he understands that the magnate wants to protect his country. After several years in the United States, he has realized that immigration “It takes a lot of money from the Government.”

Trump’s attacks on the Latino community

When Trump announced his first campaign in 2016, he did so with insults to Mexico, claiming that he was sending “drugs” and “rapists” to the United States and, this month, in his third presidential campaign, he compared immigrants to the character Hannibal Lecter, the murderer from the movie ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (‘The silence of the lambs‘, 1991).

Comments like this meant that, in the 2020 elections, most counties with a large Hispanic population voted for the Democratic Party.

However, in some key states, such as Texas and Florida, Republicans saw significant increases in votes in 2020, and at the federal level, the percentage of Latinos who backed Trump was 38%ten points more than in 2016, according to the Pew center.

Josue, a Salvadoran who has been living in Houston for more than twenty years – a city where 44.8% He is Latino – told EFE that this year will be the third time he has voted for Trump.

“He has to improve a little (how he talks about Hispanics). “He has said that he is going to deport people and he has done so, but the others do not say anything and deport more people,” he stressed.

The Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, pointed out this month that in the last three years the Administration of US President Joe Biden has “returned or expelled” to more undocumented immigrants than in the four years of the Trump Administration.

According to Cuban Octavio Sánchez, founder of the Texas Latino Conservatives, one of the reasons why Latinos consider voting for Trump is because they see him as “a leader”.

“He sees himself as a strong person and Hispanics, particularly Hispanic men, like a leader,” Sánchez, whose organization seeks to increase Hispanic representation in politics in Texas, a state with more than 40% of the Latino population, and encourage that minority to vote for the Republican Party.

Faced with this, Elizabeth Reyes, 25 years old and the daughter of Mexicans, is not convinced that neither Trump nor his rival, Biden, are “leaders”, and points to the advanced age of both as a concern.

Biden, the oldest president in US history, is 81 years old, while Trump is 77. “Both are already elderly and it would be better if it had been a younger candidate,” commented Reyes, who has not yet decided who he will vote for. New generations that vote for those who can’t.

In any case, Reyes explained that what drives her to go vote is to be the voice of some of her relatives, who, being undocumented, do not have the possibility of exercising that right.

Yasmin Pajardo feels motivated to go to the polls for the same reason: “I want to be their voice, many immigrants cannot vote and someone who was born here thanks to my parents, who fought to give me a better life, I have to do it for them,” said the 32-year-old teacher, born in Houston to Mexican parents.

For Pajardo it is essential not to forget his origins when choosing a candidate: “It would be being hypocritical with oneself (…) You have to remember your roots, where you come from, how you started and where you are going.”

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