Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform / Hillary en español

Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform

The Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform or 'CAIR' is a nationalist organisation that seeks to oppose and reduce the current levels of immigration from Mexico and the associated legislative policies. Considering its website in isolation from any other elements of activism, they attempt to achieve these goals through sharing facts, opinion and anecdotes that propagate anti-Latino (as well as general xenophobic) sentiments. Often, short headlines and excerpts from articles belonging to other publications and websites are shared here, in order for such information to reach a wider audience and to be seen by members of the website who presumably hold unilateral views on immigration within Colorado.

According to CAIR, "nearly 20 percent of immigrant-headed households in Colorado receive some form of welfare benefit" and "Colorado spends $50 million per year educating immigrant children from Mexico alone." CAIR goes on to cite statistics regarding civic issues that do not, or should not have implicit links with the morality of immigrant assimilation. Among these more trivial issues is the fact that "11% of Colorado workers travel more than 40 minutes to work. The commute time [will] likely double by 2025." Clearly, the use of such statistics, whether true, false, or distorted beyond their original meaning, is intended to provoke anger from the viewer who witnesses the leeching effects of these aliens on his/her state welfare and his/her personal tax contributions. 

The self-evident political trajectory of this site makes it all the more intriguing when we realise that actually, CAIR avoids attaching any moral implications to the statistics and figures which characterise the majority of their information output, refusing to revert to racist generalisations or xenophobic slurs. Instead, they simply arm their readers with 'facts' and guide them conspicuously, quickly and efficiently to an unequivocal political position that allies itself with traditionally Republican-held stances on immigration. The reasons for CAIR's discernible policy remain elusive, but it is worth noting that these same tactics are replicated throughout the anti-Latino immigration platforms. It was then candidate Donald Trump who most famously implemented this strategy, relying on assertions that he was 'only referring to illegal immigrants' (despite the lack of distinction in his speech) and the oh-so-persuasive "I love Mexico!" line. In refusing to link the assumed evil character of Latino immigration with their own proposed facts, CAIR is perhaps attempting to shelter themselves from criticism or appeal to the more liberally-minded democratic voters that have won Colorado in the last 3 general elections.¹ 

In itself, this is but a natural extension of CAIR's own unofficial affiliation with the Republican Party which has itself seen much internal division over how to approach the Latino voting group. This is because, given the largely Catholic convictions (55% of Latino adults in America²) and cultural conservatism of Latino immigrants in combination with their rapid growth as a demographic within the United States, they constitute an ideal resource for Republican votes which could solidify Republican territories in the South-West and capture previously elusive states like Nevada and Colorado. This movement saw the rise of candidates like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio with Latin-American roots because of the tendencies of ethnic voting trends. Raymond Wolfinger summarises this and explains the rise of Rubio and Cruz by writing that "ethnicity will be more important in the absence of other plain cues to guide voters"³. However, Republican voters eventually sided with Donald Trump who ignored the potential gains of Latino support in an effort to capitalise instead on the white American vote with his anti-Latino rhetoric. It is into this strain of Republican politics that CAIR falls as it attempts to mobilise support from Coloradans to combat the influx of Latino immigration. 

Finally, CAIR's tagline of 'Advocating for the rights of future generations of Americans' provides further insight into their mission and its character or motives. In marketing themselves as a group concerned with rights, CAIR takes up a nationalist and patriotic stance, creating stark divisions across notions of American identity and how this should be defined. As outlined in this week's lecture, this argument is one that is intrinsically dependent upon assumptions regarding a certain narrative of American history in order for CAIR to construct a valid argument. For example, their advocacy for the rights of Americans assumes that Latino immigrants should not be considered American unless demonstrating full assimilation. Furthermore, this statement suggests that Colorado, whiteness and the English language are all determinant factors for this regional presentation of 'American'. For these arguments to be true and/or morally valid, America and its history must be viewed exclusive from a post-colonial perspective that foregoes the histories of indigenous annihilation and innumerable treaties that artificially constructed America itself. Indeed, Colorado itself was partially owned by Mexico and France before it was occupied in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), and the Louisiana Purchase (1803), respectively. 

Overall, CAIR epitomises certain elements of Huntington's The Hispanic Challenge⁴, asserting that the continuation of this influx will provoke an episode of civic, economic and cultural ruin for the state of Colorado which is already notably ethnically diverse, with 20.7% Hispanics/Latino-Americans. Their arguments for the consequences of such immigration, both legal and illegal are communicated exclusive through facts, statistics and anecdotes of crimes committed by illegal aliens within the state. Like Huntington's article, CAIR's message relies on specific, artificial constructions of American identity and history which immediately undermine its claims to a sensible response to immigration. Nonetheless, CAIR articulates several of the pressing concerns raised by illegal immigration in states like Colorado and accordingly, should be considered and evaluated reasonably within the U.S government, irrespective of partisan allegiance. 

Hillary en español

In July 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton created a Spanish version of her personal Twitter account as a part of her wider election campaign against Republican candidate Donald Trump. The site features Spanish translations of Clinton's own tweets as well as the sharing of pro-Hillary tweets that are framed specifically with regards to the Latino community. 

This was a clear effort to integrate the Latino community into the Clinton campaign and capitalise on Trump's dismissal of this voting group within his own campaign and superficially, it simply reaffirmed Hillary's commitment to liberal immigration policies that would have seen the maintenance of current immigration trends from Mexico and Latin America. However, in communicating directly using the Spanish language, Clinton connoted a rejection of assimilation which has always been the measure by which acceptable immigration levels and policies had been judged. In foregoing the idea of assimilation into Caucasian America, Hillary began to alienate many Americans and even defied some of the early rhetoric surrounding immigration such as President Theodore Roosevelt who stated that "exact equality" for immigrants was...

"predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American... There can be no divided allegiance here"⁵

However, Paolo Luisi, a "Latino content and creative strategist"⁶ within Hillary's campaign offers a more liberal and modern explanation for 'Hillary en español', stating that;

"We want everyone to know — including the more than 40 million Spanish speakers in this country — that no matter what language you speak, the values that unite us as Americans transcend narrow minded ideas on who we are or what we should sound like."

While groups like the CAIR rely on specific narratives of American history and society, Luisi's statement promotes a more diverse view
of what might constitute an American, even so far as to break boundaries of language. It is interesting to note how  Luisi's statement still hinges on the idea of America as a central rallying point for public support, it is simply a different interpretation of America. An interpretation that subconsciously acknowledges the multicultural origins of the American nation while celebrating this legacy today with regards to the Latino community and their sharing of the American "values that unite us".

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform - http://www.cairco.org/, 1995 - present. Last accessed 31/03/2017.

Hillary en español - https://twitter.com/hillary_esp?lang=en, 2016-2016. Last accessed 31/03/2017.

Secondary Sources 

1 - 270 to win, Historical general elections. Retrieved from <http://www.270towin.com/historical-presidential-elections/>. Last accessed 31/03/2017.

2 - "The Shifting Religious Identity of latinos in the United States" May 7, 2014. Retrieved from <http://www.pewforum.org/2014/05/07/the-shifting-religious-identity-of-latinos-in-the-united-states/> Last accessed 31/03/2017.

3 - Wolfinger, Raymond E. "The Development and Persistence of Ethnic Voting" The American Political Science Review Vol. 59, No. 4 (Dec., 1965) pg. 908. pp. 896-908. 

4 - Huntington, Samuel P. The Hispanic Challenge, 2004. Retrieved from <http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2495> Last accessed 30/03/2017.

5 - Roosevelt, Theodore speaking in 1907. Retrieved from <http://www.rense.com/general77/ted.htm> Last accessed 31/03/2017.

6 - Latimer, Brian. "Hillary Clinton Now Has Campaign Site En Español" NBC News, July 21 2016. Retrieved from <http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/hillary-clinton-now-has-campaign-site-en-espa-ol-n614071> Last accessed 31/03/2017.