The Anti-Immigrant Vitriol Keeps Rising; Will Latinos Who Support The GOP Wake Up?

By Felicia J. Persaud

News Americas, FORT Lauderdale, Fl, Fri. Sept. 23, 2022: On Wednesday September 14th, the start of National Hispanic Heritage Month, when it was reported that Florida’s governor, aka Ron ‘Trump Wannabe Death’ Santis, spent $615,000 taxpayers’ money to charter private planes to fly 50 mostly Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard to score points with the MAGAites, CBS Miami ran a story of Venezuelan advocates shocking reaction to the stunt.

In it, the reporter covering a state where one in five Floridian is an immigrant, thoughtlessly referred to the migrants as “illegal immigrants,” despite the fact that they are asylum seekers. Minutes after the story ran, we at News Americas, tweeted CBS Miami advising them to educate their reporter that the term was “undocumented immigrants” not “illegal immigrants.”

Well, that informed critique unleashed the MAGAites on us. They descended like poisonous snakes, unleashing their xenophobic venom. “Illegal aliens” is what they should have said, most responded, while one woman, @lili_pl, brazenly asked if we even knew English, and if we were “even legal.”

The responses sum up the rising tide of hate and xenophobia that has spiraled upwards since Donald Trump began his campaign for office. It is only getting worse and those emboldened by El Trumpeto, like Death Santis and Texas’ Greg A-Butt, are now out in full force, fanning the flames of hate shamelessly.

To them, all immigrants of color are a threat to their majority White control in the United States. That’s the Big Fear. Worse, they assume ignorantly that all immigrants who enter from the Southern Border are non-English speakers and predominantly Latinos.

While its heart breaking to see immigrants again being used like pawns in the political games between Republicans and Democrats in these United States, the current actions of Death Santis, A-Butt and others in the Trump Republican Party, will hopefully be a wakeup call to Latino voters across the country and in Florida, who tend to swing to the GOP’s side.

In the swing state of Florida in 2018, Republicans picked up a larger share of Hispanic voters than Trump did in 2016. Death Santis in fact won 44 percent of Florida’s Hispanic votes in 2018, according to exit polling reported by the Hill. In 2020, Trump picked up Florida’s 29 electoral votes, winning about 47% of the Hispanic vote in Florida and increasing his vote share over 2016 by about 12 percentage points.

The question now is after the Death Santis Martha’s Vineyard stunt and the dropping off of mostly Central American and South American migrants in front of the residence of the US Vice President by A-Butt, at the start of Hispanic Heritage Month of all days, is whether Republicans can continue to hold pace or make gains with the Hispanic voting bloc going forward.

Adelys Ferro, who heads the nonprofit Venezuelan American Caucus, rightly told WLRN in Doral, Fl, that it’s ‘hypocritical’ of GOP politicians to curry votes in the Venezuelan exile community by condemning the socialist dictatorship in Venezuela that so many thousands of Venezuelan refugees are fleeing, “only to turn around and then show, like this, that they really don’t want Venezuelans here.”

She is right. But will that sentiment be enough to rid the state of Florida from Death Santis and the state of Texas from A-Butt come November? The power is in the hand of immigrant voters, especially Latinos. Will they be woke enough to now “deport” the MAGA butt-holes?

The writer is publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com – The Black Immigrant Daily News.