“We can’t allow the Republican Party to be hijacked,” Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, told The Washington Post in January in response to a Republican bill that would further clamp down the border. “Trying to ban legitimate asylum claims — one, it’s not Christian, and two, to me, it’s very anti-American,” Gonzales noted.
The question is whether Gonzales and Salazar will stick to their principles or fold.
Gonzales’ Republican colleague from Florida, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, has also decried the anti-immigration rhetoric Republicans have used as they champion that bill from Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Salazar said, “We understand that immigrants want to come and live in the promised land.” Referring to her Miami-area district, Salazar said, “Orderly legal immigration is good for the country and good for District 27.”
Roy has called the two members’ concerns about his bill “absurd,” but with Republicans holding such a slim majority in the House, the pushback from these two Latino members is significant. The question is whether Gonzales and Salazar will stick to their principles or fold.
That pressure to fold will clearly come from Roy and other MAGA Republicans who appear to believe Latino Republicans lack real power and are not to be taken seriously. Republicans like to use the elections of representatives such as Gonzales and Salazar to brag about the party’s diversity, but Roy’s insulting dismissal of their concerns suggests that Republicans don’t intend to actually listen to those Latino members. But give Gonzales and Salazar credit for trying to fight back within their own party.
Former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lethien, who represented the district Salazar now serves, left a legacy of being a Latina Republican who tirelessly opposed the anti-immigrant direction of her party. But she is an exception. My guess is that Gonzales and Salazar will eventually fall in line like, say, former Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, who once served as a foil to neo-nativist House colleague Steven King but now argues that President Joe Biden has not done enough to restrict asylum-seekers.
At one point, it appeared that Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., would depart from the typical pattern of Republican Latinos who defend immigration and then cave. During President Barack Obama’s second term, he was a part of the “Gang of Eight” senators working on a bipartisan immigration reform bill, the last bill that had a chance of passing Congress.
That pressure to fold will clearly come from Roy and other MAGA Republicans who appear to believe Latino Republicans lack real power and are not to be taken seriously.
But then Donald Trump took over the Republican Party, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who, like Rubio, is of Cuban descent, blasted Rubio as weak on immigration and even outlasted him in the 2016 Republican primary. As a result, Rubio, as a 2018 opinion piece by MSNBC political contributor Victoria DeFrancesco Soto argues, lost his opportunity to be the “sober counterbalance” to Trump and other MAGA Republicans.
Salazar and Gonzales may truly desire to change their party, but the 2024 Republican presidential primary will again include Trump and other candidates who have come to believe that they can be against immigration without losing much Latino support.
When I asked Salazar’s office for a comment about her immigration positions and to what extent they differ from most House Republicans and from the party’s likely 2024 presidential candidates, I received press releases and links to the introduction of the Dignity Act, her alternative to Roy’s restrictive bill.
The response included a Feb. 8 press release in which Salazar says, “Our broken immigration system is fracturing America—economically, morally, socially, and politically. It’s threatening the American Dream and our very way of life.”
Gonzales’ response similarly evaded my questions concerning politics within the Republican Party. He said, “Anyone that has seen the southern border knows there is an unprecedented crisis happening right in our backyard. While some people have different ideas on how to fix our border crisis, we are united on the fact that there must be a solution and soon.” He added that solutions such as border technology and work visas are what “local law enforcement, Border Patrol agents, farmers and ranchers” want. The responses from the representatives avoided addressing the question that has haunted Latino Republicans for years: How willing are you to break ranks with your party on immigration and place your community over partisan politics? The representatives avoided addressing the question that has haunted Latino Republicans for years: How willing are you to place your community over partisan politics? As for this political moment, given the tough talk on immigration coming from Republicans we’ll likely see in the primary, will you take a stand and oppose a potential nominee who disagrees with you that our country should respect immigrants? Republicans’ tough talk on immigration in the 2022 midterms failure failed to win over Latino voters. Maybe Gonzales and Salazar recognize the rising political strength of Latino voters and will stick to their principles. I doubt they will, but I hope they prove me wrong.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of The Latino Newsletter. 
