Latino Advocacy Group Calls for Votes Against Democratic Senators Who Voted to Delay Executive Action on Immigration Reform
Four Democratic Senators who have opposed immigration reform in key swing states may lose Hispanic votes.
The Presente Action group issued a statement Tuesday advising voters against voting for Sens. Kay Hagan, N.C., Mary Landrieu, La., Mark Pryor, Ark., and Jeanne Shaheen, N.H., according to the Huffington Post.
"Latinos are not political footballs to be thrown back and forth as convenient," the group said, according to the Washington Times. "But that's what Sen. Pryor seems to think -- he joined four other Democratic senators and Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz to push President Obama not to use executive action to provide relief for millions of undocumented immigrations, all because they though it could hurt their election chances. They didn't have our backs -- so we won't have theirs."
The senators did not oppose executive action on immigration reform, but they supported amendments along that would prevent certain measures alongside Republicans.
One of those amendments was the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, the Huffington Post reported.
"We have voting power and we're going to use it in the upcoming elections to illustrate that we will not support political candidates who continue to stand in the way of executive action and the continued suffering of 11 million people," Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente Action, said in a statement. "Utilizing the Latino population as a means for political gain cannot be tolerated."
Carmona said that by not voting for executive action on immigration reform, the senators had "crossed a line," and the group was not going to tolerate pushing the most vulnerable of the population under the bus, according to the Huffington Post.
While the Latino populations are not overwhelming in some of the states, their margins for the election are very slim, making the Hispanic votes an important factor.
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