By Feet in Two Worlds reporter Aswini Anburajan

Of all the questions and fascinating possibilities raised by the 2008 election, one of the least pondered has been this: Will immigrants and ethnic minorities as a whole ever find a home in the Republican Party?

To put it another way, will the Republican Party embrace minority voters? Or do the desires of these voters and the GOP platform differ too widely to build a relationship between the two?

Here’s why this question matters: demographics. By 2050 the United States will be a majority minority nation, per projections by the Census Bureau. The impact of that demographic shift is already being felt politically, most significantly in the West where Latino voters have allowed Democrats a chance to win in states where they have struggled to be competitive in recent presidential elections.

A study from the William C. Velasquez Institute found that without Latino support in Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, Obama’s lead in those states would either disappear or fall within the margin of error.

Latinos and Asians, especially those who are immigrants or the children of immigrants, are either solidly Democratic or trending that way. Newly naturalized voters are also voting Democratic. In this election that might make sense for several reasons: immigrant voters want change. Many voters, who aren’t white, also feel a kinship with Barack Obama. The closest we’ve come to such an ethnic identification may be John F. Kennedy and Irish Americans in the sixties.

But what about future elections? Will these voters be voting Democratic in 2010 and 2012 too?

The answer is most likely yes, for three reasons. First, and most important, is the problem minority voters have with the Republican brand. Republican opposition to immigration reform and movements like the Minute Men have reinforced the idea that the GOP is hostile to voters who aren’t white.

The second reason these voters may continue to vote Democratic is because the Democratic Party reached out to them in 2006 and again in 2008. The Obama Campaign in particular has focused on creating a grassroots army of Latino voters in the West, and has well-coordinated fund-raising programs throughout the country with Asian donors, many of whom are immigrants or the children of immigrants. These voters have now participated – and will most likely continue to participate – by running for office, working on future campaigns, and lobbying for their issues. If Democrats continue to be open to these voters and the issues they care for, then it’s likely that they will continue to vote Democratic.

Third, a study by the Immigration Policy Center says that children of immigrants will be a crucial voting bloc, not just in this election, but in future elections as well. Many of these children were born in the United States to undocumented parents. Their political identity, for better or for worse, may be shaped by what happens to their parents and their legal status.

It was reported in the past month that conservatives, regardless of who wins the White House, are planning a strategic retreat in Virginia after the election to decide on the future of a party that has already been badly damaged. The goal some conservatives have said is to see how the party can rebuild a national grassroots network in the way they did after the Carter victory.

But who will that new party and grassroots movement include?

A recent article by Pat Buchanan on RealClear Politics argued that with Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, they would pass immigration reform and flood the country with new citizens, all of whom would vote Democrat and leave regions, such as the West, completely out of reach of Republicans.

But perhaps Buchanan is suffering from a little inside –the-beltway myopia. The converse of that argument is that a flood of new citizens could provide both parties a pool of new voters to choose from. These voters, unlike those who have been born and raised in the United States, don’t have an ingrained party identification or set of stereotypes to associate with either Democrats or Republicans. This argument that was underscored by a recent survey of Indian American voters conducted by the Campaign for America’s Future.

Latinos were seen as Republican voters in 2004, won over by Republican outreach efforts that stressed a shared vision of the American dream and similar social values. Many Asian Americans also voted Republican, motivated by the desire for lower taxes and the message of personal responsibility. It’s only been in the past four years that these ethnic groups have made a significant shift to, or back to, the Democratic Party.

Rather than shy away from immigrant voters, the Republican Party, with its emphasis on conservative social values and the power of individual entrepreneurship, could win these voters over with the right arguments. In terms of sheer population their strength as a party may depend upon it. But they must be willing to demonstrate that the GOP is open to immigrants. Support for comprehensive immigration reform would be a step in that direction.

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL., NOV. 2 – By Macollvie Jean-François, Sun Sentinel reporter.

On the day elections officials said would break turnout records, Marie St. Fort stood in line around the corner from a North Miami library, squinting into a harsh afternoon sun. She was about 200th in line, waiting to vote early.

“Oh, I don’t care if it goes into the morning, I’ll stay right here,” St. Fort, 49, said. “I have to vote today. I have so many reasons to vote, I don’t know where to start.”

Like many others who showed up at crunch time, the Haitian-born mother of five said she had to get voting out of the way because she had too many errands to run Sunday —the last day to vote early in Florida— between attending church and other activities. As St. Fort shuffled along over two hours, campaigners came along, making last-ditch attempts to get their way with local amendments and even to give away free candy bars and lollipops. A local Haitian activist stopped by to see if anyone had any problems voting. One woman came bearing a tray of $1 hot dogs individually wrapped in foil.

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When it comes to politics, not all immigrants are created equal. While the 2008 presidential campaign saw intense efforts by both major candidates to seduce Hispanic voters, other ethnic groups did not receive comparable levels of attention.

But one thing foreign-born voters of all origins have in common is that they did not see the deep discussion many of them expected about what is going to happen to U.S. immigration laws under the next administration.

Immigration reform was more a political frisbee than a political football: rather than being tossed around by the campaigns, it sort of hovered over public discourse, dipping to ground level only on occasion. Most of the references to it came in front of immigrant audiences, especially in candidate interviews and commercials on Spanish-language media.

Hispanics received a lot of attention during this fall campaign because of their large numbers in four states once labeled battlegrounds: Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico. Now, the three western states are considered to be leaning towards Barack Obama — and the Democratic candidate held a slight lead in most of the polls conducted in Florida in October. This is in no small part due to the high levels of support Obama has attracted among Hispanics in those states.

While those states saw a deluge of advertising in Spanish, Latinos in other regions were not catered to in such an intense manner. Most Hispanics in the U.S. live in states considered safe for one party or the other –New York and California on the Democratic side, Texas in the Republican column.

Latinos in non-battleground states did not miss much.

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By Suman Raghunathan, Feet In 2 Worlds consultant

The Associated Press broke the story Friday that presidential candidate Barack Obama has a half-aunt, Zeituni Onyango, who, after her request for political asylum was rejected, is now undocumented and living in Boston.

The range of immigration statuses within Obama’s extended family reflects the reality of many immigrant families in the United States. Both Obama and his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, are US citizens; Soetoro-Ng is married to a Canadian citizen. And like many immigrants, Obama has a large extended family still living in Kenya, his father’s homeland.

Today, mixed-status families are extraordinarily common. For example, according to the Urban Institute, there are at least 5 million children in the country with at least one immigrant parent. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 3 million of these children have at least one parent who is undocumented.

During nearly two decades of historic migration to the US, in a period of extended economic growth powered in large part by immigrant labor, the number of Americans born to immigrant parents has risen steadily. The changes to the nation’s demographic make-up are dramatic. According to Pew, more than half or the growth in the US population in the last decade alone came from Latino communities, much of it due to recent immigrants and their children.

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Feet In 2 Worlds senior producer Jocelyn Gonzales wraps up her video series on first-generation voters with an interview with Andrea Moya, who was born in Puerto Rico in 1986 and moved to New York four years ago to attend college.

Moya, who is originally from Guaynabo, works in film development in New York. In the video, she explains the particular relationship Puerto Ricans have with U.S. politics –“a weird dichotomy,” she calls it–, since only those who live in one of the fifty states are allowed to vote in American elections.

While Andrea’s family in the islands is interested in the U.S. elections, they cannot participate. At the same time, she is not voting in Puerto Rico’s gubernatorial election, but she plans to cast a vote for Barack Obama Tuesday. This will be the second presidential election she has participated in.

Both presidential candidates spent time in Florida in the past couple of days, fighting hard for the battleground state’s coveted 27 electoral votes. Hispanics –especially those living in Central Florida– are considered an important voting population to achieving that goal. But in a troubling sign for John McCain, one of his key Hispanic supporters in Florida is apparently unhappy with how the campaign is being run.

“They have completely ignored the Hispanic vote” in the central region of the state, Bill Negron, a member of the McCain steering committee in that area, told correspondent Maribel Hastings of the ImpreMedia Spanish-language newspaper chain.

Negron expressed bewilderment over the way the Republican campaign has been conducted in central Florida. As we’ve said before, that part of the state is considered crucial because of its high numbers of swing voters. Hispanics in the area –mostly Puerto Ricans– tend to counterbalance the heavily conservative south Florida Latino voters, who are mainly Cuban American.

“People ask me where McCain’s people are, where McCain is,” Negron told Hastings. “And it’s not only the Hispanic vote, but the vote in general. I don’t know if they took it for granted, or it’s just that they don’t know what they are doing, or that they don’t have the funds. But there was no work with churches, nor with civic groups and organizations here.”

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This week, in an interview with the nation’s largest Spanish-language newspaper chain, Barack Obama promised to begin working on immigration reform in the first year in the White House.

The new president – whether it’s Obama or McCain – will need to work with Congress on this tough issue. A few days ago, deep in an Associated Press interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, there was a worrying sign for advocates of immigration reform.

At the bottom of an Oct. 17 story about likely post-electoral Congressional action, came these lines about next year’s session:

Pelosi also said Congress would have to tackle the politically sticky job of overhauling immigration laws in the new Congress, after a bipartisan measure collapsed last year.

The estimated 12 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally “are part of the U.S. economy. We cannot send them all home, and we cannot send them all to jail, so we have to address it,” Pelosi said.

Any solution would have to be bipartisan, she said, so it may require sacrificing some of Democrats’ past priorities, such as giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

“Maybe there never is a path to citizenship if you came here illegally,” Pelosi said. “I would hope that there could be, but maybe there isn’t.”

That last comment has sent pro-immigration bloggers into a rage.

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In his chat with reporter Maribel Hastings of L.A. newspaper La Opinión, he made the disclaimer that if elected president he would have to deal with some more urgent issues at the start of his term. But Obama gave assurances that he is still committed to pushing forward immigration reform during his first year in office. [The interview was available only in Spanish on the chain’s website Tuesday: what follows is our translation back into English.]

The Democrat –who’s been warning his supporters against complacency despite his steady lead in the polls– also urged Hispanics to get out and vote. It’s becoming widely accepted that Obama will need Hispanic voters to put him over the top in some key states on the electoral map.

“I hope everyone understands what is at stake: if we’re going to try and make fundamental changes, comprehensive immigration reform, and a health care system that works for everyone, then we will have to see the Hispanic vote get out in record numbers,” he said. “In the battleground states, they can make all the difference in the world.”

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