Democrats and Hispanics love affair -- is it based on income?

[eric82oslo]

As the child of a fairly recent immigrant from a developing country, I don't think white Americans with no recent foreign roots understand that if you are someone who cannot afford food for your family, can't afford a roof over your head and can't find a job, you're going to vote for the candidate who will give you those things and you'd be a fool if you didn't. And if you have food on the table, a roof over your head and some sort of employment, you're going to be fine with that person staying in office. Even if he's corrupt. Even if he shoots political enemies in the back of the head in dark alleys. Even if he suspends the constitution and makes himself President For Life.

It's beyond most Americans' frame of reference for why people like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro or Muammar Qaddafi or the Shah of Iran would be able to stay in power for so many years. If your life precludes being able to take basic things like food, clothing and shelter for granted, those are your overriding concerns. Not free speech. Not government transparency.

I'm not trying to compare Barack Obama to a third world despot. I'm simply trying to get you to understand that even if Hispanics did agree with Republicans on abortion or family values or foreign policy, they're not going to vote for a party whose policies would threaten their economic security and make it harder for them to obtain things like education and healthcare. They're not far enough removed from severe poverty and scarcity to buy into the poor white mentality of "I don't need no health insurance as long as I have mah guns and mah freedom!"

This is the problem. Too many people vote for their own self interests instead of the candidate who will keep us protected from the government and limit the power of government.

Is it a problem with democracy that people vote for their best self interest? Isn't that the whole point with a democracy? Isn't the moral reason why the US government is fighting dictatorships abroad that people in those countries are getting hurt economically and politically in those countries?

[eric82oslo]

Also, people seem to think the surge of Asian immigrants (more coming in than Hispanics now) are the Japanese/Chinese/Korean ethnicities. In actuality, they're mostly Muslim immigrants from Asia... so I don't think the GOP will be doing that good of a job of attracting them either.

I thought lots of them were Chinese and Indian. Muslims from which countries exactly? Arabia, Iran and Iraq?

[eric82oslo]

So, both Chinese and Indians (and East Asians and South Asians more generally) continue to represent large percentages of new Asian immigrants. It does appear, though, that the naturalization/immigration ratio is higher among Indians than among Chinese. I don't know whether this is just because rates of immigration are changing from 5-10 years ago, or instead more Chinese people get green cards without eventually becoming citizens.

Yeah. The other day I read a New York Times article about this. There are restrictions for how many permanent visas or citizenships different nationalities may receive each year. For some countries like the Phillipines, Mexico, China and India, the number of applications are much, much higher than the legal visas available. Thus residents of certain nationalities have had to wait for 20 years or in some cases even more in order to obtain citizenship. Now we're talking legal immigrants of course. The longest waiting time is expected for residents of Phillipine nationality. As of 2013, they've had to wait on average 23.5 years in order to change their green card into full citizenship. Mexicans stand at almost 17 years, while Chinese and Indians - for some reason lumped together - had an average waiting period of 12 years. Sorry, this number of years does not apply to every resident, only to those being siblings of a current US citizen. For spouses and children, the wait is less than 2 years, even for these worst hit countries.

This is the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/us/legal-immigrants-seek-reward-for-years-of-following-the-rules.html?pagewanted=all

Here is the graphic illustrating the long wait: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/07/15/us/legal-immigrants-waiting-in-line.html?ref=us

[eric82oslo]

Wow, the shift from 2000 to 2004..

It's called September 11. Hispanics reacted the same way as New Yorkers, New Englanders and other Northeastern Democrats. With empathy and voting less Democratic than usual.