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With less than two months to go before the midterm elections, pro-immigrant activists and Democrats blame Republicans for using divisive and scare tactics to gain political power at the ballot box.
An example is the recent controversial issue of fentanyl and opioids that are allegedly trafficked by immigrants and refugees.
In Nevada, the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC) is running an ad in Spanish blaming Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) for failing to prevent “dangerous drugs” such as fentanyl reach the streets of the state.
Additionally, the NRSC through a tweet attacked Masto for voting against the necessary funds to combat drug trafficking on the southern border.
The 99% of all drugs intercepted at the border enter through the ports of entry by car, truck, boats and planes and not by migrants or asylum seekers, according to investigations by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of the United States.
Activists and political leaders assure that the fentanyl and opioid crisis are not migration issues but rather complicated and multidimensional issues, involving international trade, health care, public health, corporate responsibility and a series of legal measures to confront criminal organizations and fight cartels.
Zachary Mueller, political director of America’s Voice, an entity that advocates for changes to laws that guarantee labor, civil and political rights for immigrants and their families, said that these messages are something that will continue to advance as we approach the midterm elections.
“Republican candidates in general across the country have opened This racist and dangerous lie that somehow migrants and asylum seekers at the border are to blame for the rise in fentanyl deaths and the opioid crisis in our country,” Mueller said.
But the reality is different, Mueller said, since it is well known that opioids and other illicit drugs that enter the United States do so through ports of entry in trucks, automobiles, and other modes of transportation by drivers who are usually American citizens.
“They do not come through migrants who seek to have a better life to fulfill the American dream, or to seek asylum in safety and recover that refugee status in United States,” said Mueller.
Mark J. González, president of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party (LACDP), said that what they are doing the republicans is that they are trying to scare people, mainly e to voters to say that Latinos are creating certain problems that have been around for years.
“Take a look at a state like Texas, where I am from, where you see the children who are in cages,” said González. “Republicans fight more for the rights of pets than for human beings.”
However, these tactics are affecting the numbers of the Republicans mainly with new citizens, whether they are immigrants who naturalized or young people of Latino origin born in the United States who come of age and register to vote.
“Republicans are a distant third in voter registration here in the state ”, González asserted.
Which is why all eyes in the midterm elections will be focused on Nevada, Arizona and other typical purple states that leaned more toward blue (Democrats).
Everything is a strategy
The political strategist, Luis Alvarado, said that everything is a political strategy based on numbers. He explained that when former President Donald Trump ran for president, he used anti-immigrant rhetoric that worked for him.
“Now the Republicans want replicate the strategy to scare the American community into responding and shifting the blame for the social problems of this country onto the Democratic Party,” Alvarado said. “If they do it, it is because mathematically they see that in states like Nevada where the level of the Latino population has dropped, it helps the Republicans to have effervescence to go out and vote.”
Alvarado said that the tactics are only useful in certain states because the demographic changes of each state and use the anti-immigrant fervor to raise the number of participants in the elections.
However, he stressed that in states like California and others blue states this strategy does not work in the slightest. On the contrary, it helps the Democrats go out to vote to punish the Republicans.
“At the end of the day, all strategies are based on mathematics specific to each state”, he stressed.