PHOENIX (Edited by Jon Garrido, Hispanic News) November 16, 2006 — Hispanics said "adios" to the Republican Party in Tuesday's elections, voting in much greater numbers than expected for Democratic candidates in an apparent rejection of the ruling party's efforts to blame much of the nation's problems on undocumented migrants.

Contrary to experts' predictions Hispanics would not turn out massively, exit polls show Hispanics accounted for 8 percent of the total vote about equal to the Hispanic vote's record turnout in the 2004 presidential election, and much more than in previous mid-term elections.

What's more, 73 percent of Hispanics voted for Democrats, while only 26 percent voted for Republicans, a CNN exit poll shows. In the 2004 presidential elections, 55 percent of Hispanics voted Democrat and about 42 percent voted Republican.

Many experts predicted Hispanics would not turn out in big numbers, in part because most of the hottest races took place in states with no major Hispanic presence. Also, experts said it would take until the 2008 elections for the largely Hispanic "today we march, tomorrow we vote" protests of this year to translate into the naturalization and registration of large numbers of foreign-born Hispanic voters.

But the anti-immigration hysteria spearheaded by Republicans in the House — and by cable television fear mongers such as Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs — upset U.S.-born Hispanics who normally don't care much about immigration.

With nearly every house district and senate seat being decided by a 2-3 percent margin, every vote counted. With Hispanics being 8% of the total vote with even distribution in most congressional districts and states, without the American Hispanic vote, Republicans would have won the House and Senate decisively in 2006.

Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, agreed. "We should always be mindful that there was a little bit of God and a lot of bit of luck here. A 4,000-vote shift and we would have four new senators, not the U.S. Senate."

Veiled Racism Suspected

Republican sponsorship of a law to build a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border and Republican House members' efforts to pass a bill that would have turned millions of undocumented workers into felons fueled a climate many Hispanics saw as veiled racism. Sure, Republican anti-immigration crusaders said they are only against "illegal" immigration, and they have nothing against Hispanics.

But when they accused Hispanic immigrants of draining Social Security coffers, clogging schools and hospitals, being potential terrorists and bringing infectious diseases into the United States — millions of Hispanic-heritage U.S. citizens felt insulted. It was as if all Hispanics were suddenly cast as potential national security threats.

If the Republican effort to put immigration at the center stage was aimed at drawing attention away from Iraq or mobilizing their constituencies to get out and vote, it didn't work with the general public either.

Exit polls show when asked which issues were extremely important to them, 42 percent of voters said corruption and ethics, 40 percent said terrorism, 39 percent said the economy, 37 percent said Iraq, 36 percent said values and only 29 percent said illegal immigration.

Many candidates who campaigned on get-tough-against-illegal-immigrants were defeated. J.D. Hayworth, an Arizona Republican who centered his campaign on immigrant bashing and supported building the 700 mile fence was among the defeated anti-immigration candidates.

Of 15 races where immigration was the center of the debate, tracked by immigration2006.org, 12 were won by immigration moderates and only two by hard-line anti-immigration activists.

Seek Serious Solutions

The strategy of blaming undocumented workers for many of the country's ills backfired. Now, with luck, candidates for the 2008 presidential election will abandon the populist enforcement-centered political deceptions of anti-immigration crusaders and seek serious solutions to stop the flow of migrants to the U.S. borders.

Instead of backing a useless 700-mile fence, which will only push migrants to enter the United States elsewhere along the 2,000-mile border, they should look at ways of helping reduce the income gap between the United States, Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

As long as the United States' per capita income of $42,000 a year continues to be far ahead of Mexico's $10,000 a year, or Nicaragua's $2,900 a year, there will be no fences high or wide enough to stop the flow of migrants.

As the European example shows, the only way to reduce migration will be greater economic integration, including offers of aid conditioned to responsible economic policies. Hopefully, both parties will hear this message from Tuesday's vote and turn their backs to the deceptive enforcement-only remedies offered by anti-immigration fear mongers in recent months.