Legislature must embrace change, stop anti-Latino agenda

Last year, Latinos surpassed non-Hispanic whites as the single largest ethnic group in California. Texas is next, and we should embrace the opportunity that brings. The 84th Legislature has just wrapped up its regular session, and I’m still not seeing it.

California’s Latino population reached 39 percent of the population last year, according to that state’s demographers. Non-Hispanic whites, the next-largest group, made up 38.8 percent. This is a major shift that occurred in the space of a generation; in 2000, the numbers were 32.3 percent and 46.6 percent, respectively, and in 1990 they were 25.4 percent and 57.4 percent.

In Texas last year, the Latino population of 10.7 million was about 37 percent of the state’s 27.2 million people, according to the state’s Department of State Health Services. The non-Hispanic white population of 11.6 million made up about 40.7 percent. These numbers were 31.9 percent and 52.4 percent, respectively, in 2000; since then, Latinos have made up 63.5 percent of the state’s growth.

As with California, our state is struggling with the change. In that state in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the response was to pass a slew of anti-Latino laws. The result was a change in the political makeup of the state leadership, as Latinos reacted by turning out to vote against the attacks on their community.

In Texas, instead of focusing on the opportunities change brings to enrich our economy and our culture, our Legislative focus is still largely driven by the poli- tics of fear instead of a policy of optimism. In past sessions, we faced the “cracking and packing” of redistricting that limited the opportunity to elect a candidate of choice and witnessed onerous voter ID laws aimed at suppressing the vote.

This session, we faced proposals to:

Force local police to become immigration agents, which would hurt community safety by making victims of and witnesses to crime less likely to come forward (Senate Bill 185)

Repeal in-state tuition to Texas DREAMers, denying an opportunity for Texas immigrant children to pursue higher education (SB 1819)

Recast DPS as a state “border patrol,” at a cost of $800 million, with no accountability for oversight of finances or the impact on civil rights for those who live in border communities (House Bill 11)

Create a “border security” compact with other states that, if executed, would further militarize the border (SB 1252)

Put severely ill immigrant children at the end of the line for some medical services (HB 2835)

Force the state to study only the negative effects of immigration (SB 62)

Thankfully, only one of these passed. But the effort took up much time and attention that would have been better spent on a proactive agenda, such as that put forth by the Senate Hispanic Caucus and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which focused on education, health care, economic develop- ment and civic engagement.

Unfortunately, the reality is that the far right makes up much, if not most, of the grass-roots base that drives the Republican Party, whose members followed the political imperative to ignore a proactive agenda and push for laws hostile to Latinos.

The one bill that did pass was, in a sense, the worst of the bunch, because it took such a huge bite of the budget. While the other proposals are recognizably anti-Latino, HB 11 was cast as a lawand-order bill.

Instead of spending $800 million on the true needs of the border, such as ports-of-entry infrastructure, or the state, such as promoting bilingual programs that could set us apart globally, we threw nearly $1 billion in this budget — and obligated future General Funds budgets — at a concept that began as a political campaign.

This is not good business for Texas. Besides wasting precious state resources, it sends a terrible message to the entire world, hurting the border communities I represent, which are the gateways to our multibillion-dollar trade partner and friend, the United Mexican States.

This is not the direction Texas needs. While the Legislature has not outright rejected our Latino future, this session represented another missed chance to embrace change and craft policies based on optimism about what lies ahead.