Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has never seen a “Hispanic panhandler” in Texas because Hispanics would find it “shameful to be begging on the streets,” he said during a “Q &A; Session” with U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce CEO and President Javier Palomarez. Responding to a question about how to inform, mobilize, and attract Hispanic voters in 2016, the Republican presidential hopeful reasoned that the Hispanic community is a “fundamentally conservative one” because they “work their fingers to the bones.”
In my view, the Hispanic community is a fundamentally conservative one. If you look at the values that resonate in our community: they are faith, family, patriotism, hard work.
Some years ago, I was having lunch with a Hispanic entrepreneur in Austin. He asked me a question. He said, “When was the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?” And that’s a great question. You and I grew up in Texas. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Hispanic panhandler. And the reason is in our community it would be shameful to be begging on the streets.
Now if you want people to work their fingers to the bones — hard work — you’ll have Hispanic men and women lining up to work hard and provide for their families. Those are all conservative values. And I think the most potent ethos in the Hispanic community is what we believe in. It’s the shared value in our community.
[…] How do you connect with the Hispanic community? Some of it is that you go and connect with shared values, asking for their support. In Texas in 2012, I received 40 percent of the Hispanic vote at the exact same time that Mitt Romney was getting clobbered with 27 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide.
During the same Q&A;, Cruz insisted he wanted to focus on “securing the border” and rejected immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, even going so far as accusing Democrats of trying to “scare” Hispanics into voting for them by supporting immigration. But Cruz didn’t make the connection to the back-breaking work of Hispanic undocumented immigrants, many of whom work in substandard conditions for wages below the federal poverty line as farm or domestic workers because many employers exploit their legal status.
A United States Department of Labor National Agricultural Workers Survey found that at least 53 percent of farmworkers nationwide are undocumented, with a vast majority coming from Latin America. Farmworkers endure substandard working conditions, such as picking 32 pounds of tomatoes at a piece rate of 50 cents, a task that one farm worker described as “heavy work, you have to bend over, run to turn in your baskets, and your back hurts.”
A National Domestic Workers Alliance report found that 46 percent of domestic workers are immigrants, many of whom are undocumented. The report found that the majority of undocumented domestic workers often do not complain about their working conditions because they fear their immigration status would be used against them.
And while Cruz identified conservatism as his primary “shared value” with Hispanics, one of the largest U.S. Hispanic Evangelical organizations used similar values language to pressure Republicans on immigration reform. On Wednesday, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) challenged presidential candidates to support comprehensive immigration reform that “secures our values and our families.”
Cruz previously made similar remarks about Hispanic panhandlers on Fox News Sunday in 2012.