Conservative pundit Ann Coulter continued to tell Republicans to stop “sucking up” to Hispanics and other voters when it comes to immigration reform during an interview Saturday on the Fox News Channel show “Huckabee.”
As usual when Coulter speaks about the Latino vote, she based many of her assertions on faulty premises.
“Don’t suck up on things like amnesty,” Coulter said, later continuing, “This idea that recent Hispanic immigrants want a huge wave of illegal immigrants to compete with them for the same jobs and drive their wages down, is silly. The Democrats are trying to persuade Republicans to fall for this so that the Democrats get more voters.”
In fact, polling data shows that immigrants from Latin America tend to support immigration reform in greater numbers than U.S.-born Latinos.
Instead of supporting immigration reform, she urged Republicans to follow the party’s 2012 presidential candidate’s example.
“As Romney said, we will appeal to Hispanics the way we appeal to everyone -- by saying we’re the party that offers opportunity and freedom from regulation and we won’t pass stupid bills like Obamacare that pay for abortions,” Coulter said, paraphrasing comments from U.S. Senator-elect Cory Gardner (R-Co).
Romney, who pushed the policy of “self-deportation” and pledged to strip deportation relief from those brought here illegally as children, won only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012. It was the worst performance among Latino voters in a presidential election since Bob Dole’s failed attempt in 1996.
Coulter raged against Latinos after they rejected Romney, implying in a column that those who backed Obama, particularly nonwhites, are “nitwits who deserve lives of misery and joblessness.” She singled out Latin American immigrants in particular, portraying Latinos as a lazy “underclass” looking for a handout, despite the fact that immigrants use less government benefits than they are entitled to, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Coulter said the new Republican-controlled Congress should pass bills popular among conservatives that Obama would be likely to veto, in order to showcase the divergence between him and the GOP.
“The newspapers are going to have to report what Obama just vetoed and people are going to have to say, ‘Wait a minute, illegal aliens are getting earned income tax benefits?’” Coulter said. “Most people would be shocked to know that’s happening now. Send that one up.”
In fact, undocumented immigrants do not generally earn tax breaks for themselves, but rather on behalf of their U.S. citizen children. In other ways, undocumented immigrants -- who are generally excluded from government benefits -- subsidize benefits for U.S. citizens.
For example, undocumented immigrants pay an estimated $13 billion into social security, according to the agency’s chief actuary, while only taking roughly $1 billion back.
She and the show’s host later praised Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who had taken a hardline approach of immigration reform. Patrick ran a campaign ad saying the Islamic State group was planning an invasion through the U.S.-Mexico border, an idea that Department of Homeland Security officials have repeatedly said is not supported by any credible evidence.
They cited Patrick’s performance among Hispanic voters as measured by the national exit poll, at 46 percent -- a high figure for a Republican, given that party’s mediocre performance among Latino voters in recent years.
Some pollsters, however, dispute those results, saying the national exit poll isn’t designed to offer a representative sample of subgroups like Hispanic voters. A poll by Latino Decisions of more than 500 Hispanic voters in Texas over the five days leading into the election found that only 29 percent of respondents backed Patrick.
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