(CNSNews.com) – The more than 9 million Hispanics expected to cast their vote in the 2008 election will pick the presidential candidate who they think will best support the people in their community -- legal and illegal alike.
“When you’re in the voting booth, here is what you are going to think,” the Rev. Luis Cortes, president of Esperanza USA, the largest Hispanic faith-based community development corporation in the country, told Cybercast News Service. “You are going to think, who is going to help my uncle the most,” meaning the family member who may be outside the United States or in the country illegally.
Esperanza held its National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., last month. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is meeting in the nation’s capital this week, with organizers echoing Cortes’s opinion that Hispanics will decide between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain based on who they think will do the most to solve the nation’s immigration crisis.
“LULAC supports comprehensive immigration reform,” Rosa Rosales, president of the LULAC, the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy group, said at the opening of the conference. “We want to get the 12 million undocumented workers out of the shadows.”
Cortes cited a 2005 study by the Pew Hispanic Center that showed 8 million of the 12 million undocumented people in the United States were Hispanic – 6 million from Mexico and 2 million from Latin America, mostly Central America. He said that one out of five Latinos is affected by those numbers.
“Almost every family has a family member who is an undocumented worker,” Cortes said. “They know the struggle of trying to survive and fix their legal status.”
Cortes said that a temporary worker program is a “must” for Hispanic voters, not only because Latinos fill so many jobs that Americans don’t want, but because many workers don’t want to remain in the country indefinitely. Rosales said that current immigration laws cause exploitation of workers who are in the U.S. illegally.
“We want a humane solution,” Rosales said. “The immigration laws are broken right now.”
Both Cortes and Rosales said they need to hear more specifics from Obama and McCain before they decide which presidential candidate will do the most for immigration reform.
But Cortes also said that a McCain surrogate had relayed that McCain would make immigration a priority for the “first 100 days in office.” Obama’s representative said that while immigration reform was important, the issue would more likely be a first-year-in-office rather than a first-months- in-office priority.
Cortes said Latinos also care about other issues in the presidential race, including the war in Iraq and jobs.
“Yes, I want the war to end and I want a better economy, but what are you going to do for me?” Cortes said. “Immigration is going to trump everything else.”
Both Obama and McCain are speaking Tuesday at the LULAC meeting. The candidates also were invited to speak at the prayer breakfast, but neither accepted.
McCain has attended several past breakfasts and addressed this year’s crowd via video.