Naturalized American, Nicaraguan Linda Fornos regrets having voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and this year she will support Donald Trump because, she says, he will fight “illegal immigration” that “harms” the economy of “legal” citizens.
Fornos, who has lived in the United States for 16 years, voiced his criticism during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in mid-July: “One of my children has three jobs and the other one does too. Six jobs to survive in the Biden economy,” he said.
He called for “open borders” and for “millions of dollars being given to illegal immigrants while working families who migrated correctly are left in difficulties.”
Some 63.7 million Hispanics live in the United States, almost 20% of the total population according to 2022 figures.
According to the Pew Research Center, 36 million people are eligible to vote, although not all are registered. Only 16.5 million voted in 2020, according to the National Museum of the American Latino.
Most Latino voters were born in the United States and 24% are naturalized. In 2020, 59% voted for Democrat Joe Biden.
The Hispanic Vote
In the 1970s, the Latino vote was 3 to 1 for Democrats, a trend that is now 2 to 1, details Professor Benjamin Marquez, of the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin.
The Republican strategy, he said, is not to win the Latino vote “but to cut enough to win the election.”
According to Jorge Martinez, a strategist at the conservative America First Policy Institute, Trump and his running mate JD Vance are expected to “win the vast majority of the Hispanic vote, especially in the swing states.”
“The America First policy has helped the Hispanic community a lot, with an agenda that ensures prosperity, opportunities, growth and security so they can achieve their American dream,” he explained.
Fornos was preceded on stage by naturalized Peruvian Vanessa Faura. Given the current economic situation, Latinos are “surviving” in the US and it seems that they are “back in Latin America,” she said.
Faura, whose parents were Democrats, identifies with Republican “values” and leads a movement of conservative mothers.
“We were raised Democrats, but we believe in things they don’t. Many Latinos don’t support abortion and they pass laws in favor of it (…) They told us that the Republican Party was for whites, but it’s not like that. It all has to do with our beliefs,” said Bertha Rivera, a naturalized Mexican.
Selective memory
Although many Latino ancestors “just arrived” in the United States, their later generations began to fare better, Professor Marquez said.
“They are imperfectly following the path of white ethnicities: they go to school (in the United States), they speak English and they may think: well, maybe this is not such a bad place,” he said.
It may be that “each successive generation views Republicans with more sympathy and undocumented immigrants with less sympathy,” creating a phenomenon of “selective memory,” explained Marquez, who is affiliated with the Chicano/Latino studies program.
“We are taught in our countries that the Democratic Party is for the poor and the Republicans are for the rich. But when you come here the veil falls,” said Flor de Lis Grotestan, a 54-year-old Cuban, wearing her ‘Cuban Maga’ (Make America Great Again) T-shirt, the far-right movement.
“Capitalism gives you the strength to work, loans for your business, employment and to keep going,” said Grotestan, owner of a fruit sales business in Florida.
