RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: Think U.S. Latinos only care about immigration? Think again

I often hear Latinos complain that other people can’t wait to tell us which leaders to follow, what issues to care about and what causes to champion.

Yet America’s largest minority — which will likely account for about 20 percent of the U.S. population in the 2020 census — is in many respects awfully complicated.

Most U.S. Latinos are fiercely proud to be American, but we also cherish our ancestral roots in Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico or any one of more than a dozen other countries of origin. About two-thirds of Latinos are registered Democrats, but our conservative instincts sometimes lead us to vote for Republicans who can resist the GOP’s anti-immigrant impulse. And while some of us get worked up over what the media call “Latino issues,” we actually care about the same litany of issues that mainstream America cares about — because, increasingly, we are the new mainstream in America.

In other ways, however, Latinos are easy to understand. Like most Americans, we care about those issues that directly impact our lives. And we want to be treated with respect by our leaders and our institutions. Most of all, we don’t want to be told how we’re supposed to feel, vote or think. If, for instance, we concluded on our own that former President Donald Trump was racist against Latinos, that’s fine. But if the liberal media — which is mostly run by white people, with precious few Latinos within its ranks — try to pressure us to see it that way, we’ll push back.

Sadly, on most matters related to Latinos, the media and the political parties are always the last ones to get the memo. So they have traditionally advanced the narrative that, if Latinos were to rank their concerns in order of importance, immigration would top the list.

Not so fast. A revealing new survey of Latinos says otherwise. According to an Axios-Ipsos poll, the top three issues of concern are currently COVID-19, gun violence and racial discrimination.

Immigration was way down in fifth place. In fact, it was tied with climate change, which is never talked about as a “Latino issue.”

Just 21 percent of Latinos listed immigration as the top concern. That means that — for nearly four out of five Latinos — there are bigger fish to fry than deciding who gets to enter the United States legally and what we should do with those who are already here illegally.

These findings are in sync with about a dozen other surveys of Latino concerns I’ve seen over the past several years.

In those polls, immigration has been almost an afterthought to those who worry more about jobs, education, crime, health care and the U.S. economy.

The Axios/Ipsos poll doesn’t explain why the numbers broke down this way. That’s my job.

First, it makes sense that COVID-19 is a top concern. At its peak, the pandemic was brutal to Latinos in the United States, Compared with whites, Latinos were two times more likely to contract COVID-19, 2.8 times more likely to be hospitalized with it and 2.3 times more likely to die from it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Likewise, gun violence was bound to pop up as an important issue for Latinos. Gang violence, street violence and even police violence continue to plague Latinos in the United States. Long before white America began to recoil over mass shootings at suburban high schools, Latinos were being killed by guns that spilled into barrios and housing projects.

Finally, one year after the murder of George Floyd, Latinos are thinking a lot about something they have confronted all their lives: racial and ethnic discrimination. Although the slights are more subtle these days than they used to be, Latinos are still not given equal opportunity in a country that often sees only Black-and-white.

As for immigration, the fact that the issue placed so low on the list of concerns is probably tied to the ambivalence that many U.S. Latinos feel toward immigrants and the skepticism with which they view both sides of a broken immigration debate.

Even my own tribe is a disappointment. You would think that Mexican Americans, at least, would have empathy for those who try to enter the United States. After all, so often, those migrants come from Mexico. Even so, it seems, most Mexican Americans have other things to worry about.

Who says U.S. Latinos don’t assimilate? Unfortunately, we do it all too well.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, “Navarrette Nation,” is available through every podcast app.