As GOP Reaches Out to Immigrants, Some May Call It a Stretch

SEATTLE — If all immigrants were like Allen Huang, the Republican Party would have nothing to worry about.

The Chinese engineer, who arrived in America 12 years ago on a student visa, became a U.S. citizen in March and is running for the Washington state House as a Republican, saying he finds the GOP a welcome change from Chinese communism.

“Relying on big government doesn’t work,” Huang said. “To me, Republican ideals of personal responsibility and less government interference are closer to my personal values.”

Such talk delights GOP leaders hoping to lure the rapidly growing immigrant and ethnic vote away from Democrats. But it’s hardly a sentiment they can count on.

Even as George W. Bush scores points with Latino voters in his bid for president, the Republican Party as a whole is struggling with a reputation for being unfriendly toward immigrants.

And even Bush’s popularity among Latinos is by no means a lock. His opponent, Vice President Al Gore, enjoys strong minority support and is counting on immigrants to help him win the White House.

Democrats have long assumed the immigrant vote to be their franchise, enjoying an image as the party favoring blue-collar interests, ethnic diversity and social services.

That image appeared to be reinforced in 1994, when then-California Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, pinned his reelection campaign on a tough stand against illegal immigration. Two years later, the Republican-controlled Congress followed with restrictions on the rights of immigrants and refugees.

Bush has pointedly distanced himself from Wilson’s views, but the memory remains distasteful for many new Americans, said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigration group.

“The cynical political calculation in 1994 by Pete Wilson and his like was that immigrants don’t vote, the issue divides Democrats, and beating up on immigrants mobilizes conservatives,” Sharry said.

“It worked. It got Wilson reelected. But now just the opposite is true. The immigrants vote, the issue mobilizes Democrats, and it divides Republicans.”

Sharry said Wilson’s campaign and the subsequent actions by Congress spurred a backlash. Amid fears that they might be denied services or even citizenship if they waited too long, immigrants swamped the Immigration and Naturalization Service with citizenship applications.

From 1993 to 1999, 6.4 million immigrants applied--more than in the previous 35 years, the INS says.

Citizenship confers the right to vote, and with 10% of the U.S. population now foreign born and 21% having at least one foreign-born parent, many politicians have decided it pays to treat immigrants as voters rather than as scapegoats for social ills.

“How they break to one party or another may well determine which party dominates in the next few decades,” Sharry said. “It’s a high-stakes battle. Republicans have realized they can’t win by relying on a declining number of angry white men.”

Few immigrants come as primed for the Republican Party as Huang, 37, who says his family was persecuted by the communists because his grandfather once worked for a U.S. consulate in China.

But there are many newcomers, including conservative Catholics, who can identify with Republicans’ pro-family and anti-abortion positions, not to mention the appeal of lower taxes.

Most immigrants arrive without a strong partisan preference. Their goal is better jobs and better education for their children, and either party can connect on those issues, said Gregory Rodriguez, a fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

He pointed to recent TV ads featuring Bush’s nephew, George P. Bush, the son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his Mexican American wife, Columba.

“I am a young Latino in the U.S. and very proud of my bloodline,” the younger Bush says in one ad. “I have an uncle that is running for president because he believes in the same thing: opportunity for every American, for every Latino. His name? The same as mine--George Bush.”

The strategy is “extraordinary, almost subversive,” Rodriguez said.

“The Bush message to Hispanics historically has been, ‘You are part and parcel of the mainstream, you are part of America.’ This is taking it several steps further: ‘You are part of our family.’ ”

The ethnic and immigrant vote is becoming crucial in presidential elections. Latinos and Asians make up 28% of the population in four states--California, Texas, Florida and New York--that account for 61% of the electoral college votes needed to win the presidency.

Across wide swaths of America, however, Republican leaders chasing the immigrant vote must battle in-house conflicts, inertia and ignorance about ethnic communities.

Even in Washington, a relatively diverse state where Latinos and Asians each make up 6% of the population, Republicans only now are warming to the idea of courting newcomers.

“They have absolutely no plan,” said Greg Gourley, a citizenship instructor in the Seattle area. “They’re aware of the issue, but they haven’t figured out what to do.”

Gourley calls himself a Republican, but a frustrated one. He has taken it upon himself to raise the issue within the party--with mixed results.

“Some Republicans would rather I disappeared,” he said. “A lot of Republican politicians feel ill at ease with immigrants. They don’t speak the language. The food is different. They find a greater comfort level with the middle and upper class, in the farm belts and suburbs.”

Still, gadflies like Gourley, along with the national GOP’s new emphasis on courting the Latino vote, have prompted state Republican leaders to take action. The party is buying newspaper ads targeting Latinos in eastern Washington and plans to do the same for Asians in the Seattle area.

In the race for governor against Democratic incumbent Gary Locke, who is of Chinese descent, Republican front-runner John Carlson is working with Gourley to reach the immigrants.

“The Republican Party is at its best when it’s the party of hope and opportunity,” Carlson said. “That’s the common ground that all immigrants share.”

But Carlson has his own handicap, says Habib Habib, a Democratic activist in Seattle and an immigrant of Indian descent born in Tanzania. Carlson led a successful ballot initiative in 1998 to ban affirmative-action racial preferences in state hiring and college admissions.

“In a general election, they make statements that appear to be wooing minorities,” Habib said. “But otherwise, they don’t seem to pay any attention to it.”

Working in the GOP’s favor, both here and nationwide, is the fact that the immigrant community is no monolith.

In a Washington Post poll last winter, 26% of Latinos called themselves liberal, 34% moderate and 34% conservative.

Regional differences further splinter immigrants: Miami’s large Cuban American population tends to vote Republican, while California’s Mexican Americans lean toward the Democrats. And ethnic backgrounds divide the Asian vote: Broadly speaking, voters of Filipino and Japanese descent favor Democrats, Chinese Americans are split, and Vietnamese favor Republicans, though the fading of anti-communist fervor has diluted that support.

Many political races still can be won without solid backing from newly minted voters. Just 24% of foreign-born Latinos, for example, are naturalized citizens and thus eligible to vote.

But given the steady browning of America, it is shortsighted to neglect the immigrant vote, said Karen Narasaki, a fourth-generation Japanese American who heads a voter registration drive for the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.

“Clearly, the demographics are only going in one direction,” Narasaki said. “It’s an investment.”