http://www.montereyherald.com/general-news/20150710/illegal-immigration-presidential-candidates-scramble-to-craft-new-messages/2Illegal immigration: Presidential candidates scramble to craft new messages
By Josh Richman and Joe Rodriguez Staff writers
Posted: 07/10/15, 8:10 PM PDT | Updated: 5 hrs ago
To understand the challenge that both Democrats and Republicans face in appealing to the increasingly important Latino vote in the 2016 race for the White House, consider Jose Garcia.
He wants Donald Trump to know he's dead wrong about Mexican immigrants bringing a wave of crime to the United States.
"He is trying to say we're all bad, that we're dumb -- that's just not right," said Garcia, a 53-year-old native of Mexico who crossed the border illegally in 1980, was granted amnesty under a 1986 law signed by President Ronald Reagan and now owns San Jose's Three Flames Restaurant.
But Garcia was also mortified to hear that San Francisco jailers had freed Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican national and oft-deported felon three months before he was arrested in the killing of 32-year-old Kate Steinle last week on Pier 14.
"How could they let somebody with a record like that go?" Garcia asked.
Suddenly, illegal immigration has once again become a sizzling issue, setting off a delicate dance among presidential hopefuls who are scrambling to craft just the right message.
Trump's ugly rhetoric and hyper exposure has bumped him up in the polls but embarrassed GOP leaders and made their hopes of luring Latino voters to their side seem even more elusive. At the same time, though, the San Francisco case has become a touchy topic for Democrats, who must now find a pragmatic, compassionate solution to illegal immigration while also making it clear they're not soft on crime.
In an attempt to repair the obvious damage, some fellow Republican presidential candidates are blasting Trump. "His views are way out of the mainstream of what most Republicans think," Jeb Bush said.
But Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz elected to "salute" Trump's hard line immigration stance and said he wouldn't attack the tycoon's "colorful way of speaking." GOP candidates Ben Carson and Rick Santorum agreed that Trump's underlying message was correct, even if his words were inflammatory. Rick Perry called for cutting off federal law-enforcement and homeland-security funding to cities or counties -- like San Francisco -- that provide illegal immigrants "sanctuary" from immigration officials.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, who supported sanctuary cities during her 2008 run, told CNN this week that San Francisco "made a mistake" and that she offers "absolutely no support for a city that ignores the strong evidence that should be acted on."
Many political experts believe Republicans can't win another national election without making serious inroads with the Latino electorate, which is projected to keep booming in coming decades. The GOP's own autopsy of Mitt Romney's 2012 defeat found that the party's path forward "must be to embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our party's appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only."
But Republicans nonetheless killed an immigration reform bill passed by the Senate in 2013 with bipartisan support. And GOP leaders in Congress now rule out any such legislation in the foreseeable future.
About seven in 10 Latino voters supported President Barack Obama in 2012. And though the Pew Research Center found the Democrats' advantage over Republicans among Latinos had narrowed somewhat by late last year, it still stood at 36 percentage points. Other polls show that Latinos' overwhelming support of Obama's executive actions granting deportation relief to several million illegal immigrants late last year could entice many to support Clinton next year.
Trump and other candidates using the San Francisco shooting to argue against all sanctuary policies are just "jumping on the bandwagon," said Jorge Gonzalez of San Jose, a Mexican immigrant and longtime Latino community leader. "Shame on them, because they should be looking for real solutions."
That means not letting hard-core criminals hide behind a shield meant for law-abiding immigrants, he said. "We need to precisely define the crimes that dictate who gets turned over for deportation. The Sanchez case is an opportunity to revisit the policy and refine it to reflect the need to protect public safety."
Mexican immigrant Aaron Resendez, a San Jose police advisory board member who several years ago helped craft Santa Clara County's policy aimed at thwarting federal immigration holds, agreed.
As drafted, the policy would have made exceptions for immigrants convicted of serious and violent felonies. But county supervisors later modified that policy in a way that allows illegal immigrants convicted of violent felonies to be released.
"We were never in favor of serious criminals being allowed to stay," said Resendez, a business consultant.
Garcia, Gonzalez and Resendez are Democrats. But Hector Barajas, a prominent Latino Republican consultant, also agreed that Trump shouldn't have singled out Mexicans for blame because immigrants from all over the world enter the U.S. illegally or overstay their visas.
Though there are some "bad apples," Barajas said, "for the most part, the immigrants who have come to this country are hardworking individuals who are just trying to get ahead."
Latinos, he added, "draw the line on felons. ... We don't want to see felons let loose back in our communities."
Barajas is dismayed by "people giving Trump any kind of credibility" because his words let Democrats paint the GOP as racist.
"He's digging the hole bigger and bigger for Republicans," Barajas said.
And it doesn't help that Republicans still lack a coherent immigration-reform plan as Latino voters prepare to surge to the polls, he added. "If Republicans are going to have any chance of trying to hold onto the Senate and at the same time try to win the presidency, they have to realize this sleeping giant is going to wake up in 2016 and it's going to want some answers."
Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said Latino voters think most politicians "are missing what the real issue here is: We're living in a violent society ... whether immigrant or not." But politicians who broadly scapegoat Latino immigrants should beware, he said.
"Latino voters are not short on memory," he said. "They will remember who has been on their side or not, and who has spoken well of them or not."
Latino voters, of course, must be U.S. citizens. But most of them, Vargas noted, have family members or friends who aren't. "And how somebody talks about your mother or grandmother, you're not going to forget."
