Pew Survey: It’s Getting Harder to Be Latino in America

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Nearly half of Hispanics say the situation has worsened for people of their ethnicity in the past year — up from about a third just after the 2016 elections. A similar percentage are insecure about their place in the United States with Trump as president, and over 6 in 10 are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country — the highest rate since the 2008 recession.

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Two-thirds of Hispanics say the government’s actions — which include lowering the bar for deportations, a now-rescinded effort to separate families at the border, scaling back protections for immigrants brought to the United States as children and reversing parts of the Affordable Care Act — have been harmful to Hispanics.

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Though political engagement varies among subgroups, the survey found that Latinos are generally more interested in and focused on the midterm elections than they have been in the past. Latinos historically turn out at lower rates than other groups of voters — with still-lower turnout in nonpresidential years — but the survey found that 52 percent of the nation’s 29 million eligible Hispanic voters say they have thought a lot about the midterms, up sharply from 35 percent in 2014.

Among the 23 percent of Hispanic adults who identify or lean Republican, roughly 6 in 10 approve of Trump’s performance, compared with fewer than 1 in 10 Latino Democrats. U.S.-born Latinos are considerably more confident about their place in this country than their foreign-born counterparts, although about 4 in 10 of those born here also say they have serious concerns now that Trump is president. Nearly 3 in 4 Hispanic women are dissatisfied with the way things are going, compared with half of Hispanic men.

{snip} But in the past three years, the share of Hispanics who expect their children to be better off financially than they are declined by 18 points — including drops among both Republicans and Democrats.

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Immigrant arrests and deportations of longtime residents have surged under Trump, heightening fear and mistrust of law enforcement in Latino communities, advocates say. Some 55 percent of Latinos say they worry that a relative or close friend will be deported, up from 47 percent a year ago. The number of Latinos born outside the country who say they would migrate again declined from 79 percent to 70 percent.

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The government has made it harder for immigrants to seek asylum, obtain legal residency or apply for visas to enter the country legally, in part by adding new vetting requirements and restricting access to those whom the government believes could become “public charges.”

Clarissa Martínez-de-Castro, the deputy vice president of policy and advocacy at UNIDOS US, the country’s largest Latino civil rights group, said the Trump administration has effectively “weaponized” the issue of immigration “to demonize not just the population of immigrants but any population they deem to be immigrant.”

Nearly 4 in 10 Latinos said they had experienced one of five types of discrimination in the past year, according to the Pew survey, such as being told to go back to their countries or being mistreated for things such as speaking Spanish or displaying symbols of Hispanic identity. An equal number said someone had expressed support for them during that period because they are Hispanic.

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That dissatisfaction was reflected in the Pew survey, with the share of Latino registered voters who say the Democratic Party is more concerned about them declining 11 points since 2015, to 48 percent. Fourteen percent of Latinos said the Republican Party had more concern for them, a small change from 12 percent three years ago. The share who see no difference jumped from 22 percent to 32 percent.

Increased enthusiasm for the midterms among Latinos dissipates among the young, the less educated and those voters who are naturalized citizens born outside the United States.

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