They predict that President-Elect Barack Obama — who won two-thirds of the Hispanic vote in the Nov. 4 election — there will be continued enforcement, but with a different focus.
“Only a very small part of the 350,000 (deportations) was caused by the very high-profile and, I’d argue, harmful worksite raids that occurred throughout the country,” says Don Kerwin, vice president for programs at the Migration Policy Institute. “Probably one thing you’ll see less focus on are those kinds of dramatic raids that entail criminal prosecutions of large numbers of workers.
Clarissa Martinez, director of immigration for the National Council of La Raza, notes that President George W. Bush had promised the same thing, but didn’t keep it.
“The problem with Mr. Bush is that when he decided to make a push for immigration reform, it was too little, too late,” Martinez says. “Even though there were attempts to craft bipartisan legislation, he wasn’t able to muster members of his party to come on board. More than anything that we’ve seen during these eight years, a potential legacy he was building — which was, really to expand the tent of the Republican Party and to bring in greater Latino support for that party — has been deeply eroded.’’
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