Why Immigration is Fizzling in Florida for Gingrich

It was the same story the next day, when Gingrich addressed a packed ballroom at the conference sponsored by the Hispanic Leadership Network, a Republican group seeking to improve the party's performance among those voters. The overflow crowd, almost all of it Hispanic, sat in almost indifferent silence as Gingrich derided Romney's call for massive "self deportation" of illegal immigrants as "a fantasy ... not a solution." Much louder applause erupted from the group a few minutes later, when Romney's youngest son Craig introduced his father in fluent Spanish -- and when Romney promised a hard-line foreign policy against Cuba and Venezuela and pledged to support statehood for Puerto Rico if residents there endorse it in a referendum.

Florida was supposed to provide Gingrich's first electoral reward for embracing a more flexible and lenient approach to illegal immigration than his rivals -- positions, as he pointedly noted to the Hispanic group, that the other candidates have persistently attacked as "amnesty." 

Yet the muted reaction at the Hispanic conference captures a surprising trend: There are no signs in Florida that Gingrich's immigration position is benefiting him among local Hispanics, who cast 12 percent of the votes in the 2008 GOP presidential primary. In a Univision/ABC/Latino Decisions survey released last week, Romney led Gingrich by nearly two-to-one among Hispanics likely to vote in next Tuesday's GOP primary.

Among Hispanics who identify as Republican, Romney's favorable ratings in the survey significantly exceeded Gingrich's-suggesting that the former Massachusetts governor actually has more room than his rival to expand his support. And Romney has secured the endorsements of most the state's leading Hispanic politicians, such as popular Cuban-American Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Romney's surprising advantage reflects the unusual dynamics of the illegal immigration issue in Florida. The issue is of much less direct concern to Hispanic voters here than in probably any other state, especially those who participate in Republican primaries.

The reason is that illegal immigration, and concerns about deportation, are simply not relevant to Cubans and Puerto Ricans, the two largest groups of Hispanics in the state, and the ones most likely to vote in a GOP primary. (Cuban-Americans alone comprised about three-fifths of the Hispanic voters in the 2008 GOP presidential primary, according to exit polls.) Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and call settle in any state. And Cubans benefit from the so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy under which refugees from the island are turned back if intercepted at sea, but are permitted to remain (and put on a pathway to citizenship) if they reach the U.S. mainland.

"It's impossible to be an illegal immigrant if you are Cuban; the only way you get turned back, repatriated, is if you are intercepted at sea," notes Carlos Curbelo, a Miami-based Cuban-American Republican political consultant. "The ones that would have a gripe about it aren't here, they are back in Cuba."

That doesn't mean Hispanics here support Romney in his argument with Gingrich. Romney has called for toughening workplace enforcement to increase pressure on illegal immigrants to "self-deport" if they cannot find way; Gingrich has said he would establish citizen review boards to allow some unspecified number of illegal immigrants with long roots in the community to remain in the U.S.

In the Univision survey, 62 percent of Florida Puerto Ricans and even 56 percent of Florida Cubans took a position to the left of both men: they said they supported providing illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, as President Obama and many Democrats support. Less than one-in-five in each community supported treating illegal immigrants as criminals.

Those sentiments were reflected at the HLN conference, where Romney's call for self-deportation drew skepticism that in some cases bordered on ridicule even in this audience of conservative Hispanics.

"It's a fantasy," said Eddy Barca, who runs a small business that distributes school uniforms. "Come on, man: do you think they are going to leave on their own? You have a car, you have a house, you have the kids, maybe the grandkids. Are they going to leave on their own?"

Maryam Laguna, a half-Persian, half-Cuban communications officer at a local foundation, was equally incredulous. "For me, it's not realistic," he said. "You can't have an expulsion policy. You can't just say everyone has to get on a plane and leave."

Yet Laguna, despite her skepticism on immigration, is supporting Romney. To her, the issue is secondary, even somewhat abstract. "I don't think to the average person in Miami, the immigration issue would resonate because they are Cuban-American," she said, looking around at the crowd. "This room would not be as affected."

Whit Ayres, who polls for the Hispanic Leadership Network, says focus groups he's done among Florida Puerto Ricans have found them similarly disengaged on the issue. "It's flat, it's nothing," he said. Puerto Ricans and Cuban-Americans, Ayres noted, may express similar views to other Hispanics in terms of empathy for illegal immigrants, and support for providing them a pathway to citizenship.

But the issue lacks the emotional response it generates among many Mexican-American families, especially in the Southwest, more likely to know someone directly affected. (Studies by the Pew Hispanic Center estimate that Mexicans comprise nearly three-fifths of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.) "It's the difference between something you think you should care about, and something that affects you directly," Ayres said. 

Laguna said she believes illegal immigration is becoming more of a concern for Florida Hispanics as the numbers emigrating (legally and illegally) from central and South American countries grow; Hispanics who are neither Cuban nor Puerto Rican now comprise nearly half of the state's Latino population, according to the 2010 Census.

But relatively speaking, illegal immigration remains a less urgent issue for almost any community here than along the Southwest border: the Pew Hispanic Center calculates that Florida ranks only seventh in the share of its workforce composed of undocumented workers, well behind states like Nevada, Arizona and California, and not much above Maryland.

Both Ayres and Curbelo agree that the issue still can cause problems for Republican candidates among Florida Hispanics, partly in the primary but especially in the general election. "The danger is if your tone is too harsh on illegal immigration all Hispanics take umbrage," Ayres said.

The leadership network conference offered a riveting demonstration of that dynamic Friday when Cuban-American Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who has generally taken a hard line on illegal immigration, struck a conspicuously more moderate tone in his address to the group. Rubio distanced himself from Romney when he said it was "not realistic" to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants. He also subtly separated from both Romney and Gingrich when he suggested that the U.S. had to find ways to "accommodate" young people brought here illegally not only if they enter the military (as both GOP contenders support) but also if they are obtaining higher education (which they have opposed).

But Rubio has opposed the DREAM act, which would provide citizenship for young people in both those conditions, as too broad. His opposition provoked a protest from two young Hispanics, who interrupted his speech Friday with loud chants asking whether Rubio's loyalty lay with the Latino community or the tea party. Rubio, looking pained, praised them as "very brave" for venturing into such a hostile group, and asked the sponsors to let them stay.

Security whisked the two away anyway, and the interruption quickly passed. But the emotional intrusion was a powerful reminder that the issue of illegal immigration will likely create much more turbulence for the eventual GOP nominee among Hispanics in Florida and elsewhere, once it is debated outside of rooms that are filled mostly with conservative Cubans.