Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are likely less than three weeks away from knowing who will take office next year in the White House. As U.S. media has reported and polls keep presenting, a few swing states narrow the battleground for the two candidates: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Nevada are the main toss-ups during this race.
At this point it’s not easy to affirm what specific elements will eventually cause a leaning toward one runner or the other to win enough of the electoral college votes. However, the campaign has been focused on subjects that concern and polarize many Americans: economy, abortion rights and immigration. While the first two affect everybody, the latter impacts a limited demographic groups.
By 2023, 47.8 million foreign-born people will be living in the United States. This means around 15% of the U.S. population will be immigrants. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2022 around 10.6 million immigrants in the United States were born in Mexico. Other immigrant groups are identified as Indian, Chinese, Filipino, and Salvadorian. Additionally, this year, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the country exceeds 11 million, with an estimated 4 million of them Mexican.
Should immigration be the mobilizing subject for political support?
“If everybody comes [to the United States], it should be legally,” Jerry DuBois, a 72-year-old Republican voter and Air Force veteran told me in the swing state of Wisconsin. “That’s the way it should be. If they seek to cross [the border] we have to find out who they are and what they’ve done. I’m against illegal immigration. I think we need to find out who they are before they come to America, because we don’t need any more trouble than we already have.”
For citizens who think like DuBois, immigration has not been controlled the right way and this has evolved into a national security threat. Some Latin Americans who have settled in the United States share this view – some of them after living here illegally for a while.
In Florida, Cubans and Cuban Americans tend to see anything that embraces leftist beliefs as bad. Having fled a Communist dictatorship, it is hard for many of them to tolerate differences. “Many years will have to pass for me to think differently,” said Pedro, a Cuban taxi driver in Miami Beach, Florida.
Even though the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 permits all Cubans on U.S. soil to get a green card, they may go through hardships and risk their lives to get here. Pedro himself crossed illegally and by foot from Mexico to then apply for the process that now allows him to live legally in the United States. “I’d go for Trump,” he responded when asked which candidate he’d pick.
In a rally in Arizona last week, Trump repeated his promise to put 10,000 U.S. agents to secure and patrol the border with Mexico. During this last leg of the campaign, he’s also announced plans for mass deportations and blamed illegal immigrants as a whole for making the country unsafe.
Arizona is one of the most important swing states in this election. According to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO), 1 in 4 voters in Arizona is Latino. But the Latin community is not a monolith, especially when it comes to political beliefs. In Nogales, the city that’s right on the border with Mexico, you can find Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants differing in views from one another.
“I don’t like Trump’s policies and aggressiveness,” said Irene, a Mexican woman in her sixties who worked legally as a housekeeper in Phoenix for 19 years. “He says Mexicans steal American jobs, but that’s not true. There are jobs that Americans wouldn’t take and that’s why American companies hire Mexicans or Latinos instead.”
Irene, whom I met on the Mexican side of Nogales and who holds a U.S. tourist visa, added that she disagrees with Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship for children of unauthorized immigrants. She moved back to Mexico 11 years ago, but still visits her grandchildren who are spread out in Los Angeles, New York and Phoenix. Asked about the Mexicans who support Trump’s ideas on immigration, she said: “Well, of course, there’s a lot of racism and classism between Mexicans, especially between the ones who live in the U.S.”
Democrat Kamala Harris, however, has offered limited deportations for undocumented immigrants and “an earned pathway to citizenship” without overlooking security at the border.
Trump’s rhetoric on immigration is not uncommon. In fact, it could lean the election in his favor. Some days ago, Pew Research Center showed that Latino voters favor Trump at a higher percentage than in the 2020 and 2016 races. Although Harris has around 56% of Latino voter support and Trump has about 37%, the current Vice President is struggling more with this community than President Joe Biden did in 2020 and nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016.
