CAP: Idea of the Day: Florida’s Immigration Turnaround
This May, Florida became the latest state to pass DREAM Act legislation, allowing young undocumented immigrants to pay the same in-state college tuition rates as other Florida residents. In driving the bill toward passage in the Florida House of Representatives, Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford (R) single-handedly prevented his Republican colleagues from blocking a vote on the legislation—HB 851—by threatening to hold the state’s budget hostage until the Florida Senate allowed a floor vote on it.
Speaker Weatherford’s actions, coming only three years after Florida came dangerously close to passing an Arizona-style anti-immigrant bill—SB 2040—highlight the state’s political and demographic evolution. SB 2040 would have opened the door to racial profiling by requiring law enforcement to check the legal status of anyone they believed to be in the country without legal status. The fact that Florida could swing so rapidly from anti- to pro-immigrant legislation—and that a young conservative leader could be out in front of it—says a lot about how the state has changed over the past few years. Speaker Weatherford’s success should be recognized as a watershed moment for Florida’s immigration policy and as a bellwether that a segment of the Republican Party is finally fighting for the votes of a changing electorate.
Florida’s demographic shifts
Latino voters have played an increasingly important role in Florida’s elections over the past decade, with the Latino population in the state growing three times faster than in the country as a whole. Latinos now make up 13.9 percent of the voting public in Florida, and their growing prominence is a key reason for President Barack Obama’s victories there in 2008 and 2012. In fact, no presidential or gubernatorial candidate has won the state without also winning the Latino vote since 1998.
While Latino voters are growing as a share of the overall Florida electorate, perhaps more significant is the fact that they are increasingly identifying with the Democratic Party. In 2006, a plurality of Latino voters in Florida still affiliated with the Republican Party. (see Figure 1) By 2012, however, Democratic affiliation among Latinos topped Republican affiliation by more than 10 percent—a 14-point uptick.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2014/08/15/95655/a-model-state-floridas-legislative-turnaround-on-immigration/
"A segment" of the republican party may be trying to modernize itself on the issues of immigration and the US' growing ethnic diversity, but a more powerful segment (led by tea partyers) still seems to control the national GOP.
