On Thursday’s edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press Now,” Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) responded to a question on whether the Democratic Party is out of step with working-class Hispanic voters by stating that Hispanic voters who live along the border tend to have different views and have “a more in-depth and more intimate opinion” on the border than people like him who live in Manhattan.
Host Peter Alexander said, “So, at the same time, there are Hispanic Democrats who say the party is out of touch, in particular, to the Latino working class.”
Alexander then read a quotation from Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) where Gallego said, “It’s usually white liberals that are talking to liberal Latinos, and they are essentially saying that’s what working-class Latinos feel and think about immigration. When in reality, they don’t.” And asked Espaillat for his thoughts.
Espaillat responded, “We’re not a monolithic community. We have people that come from different countries, that live in different regions. There are the Latinos that live at the border that have a more in-depth and more intimate opinion about what happens at the border than New Yorkers, like myself, that live at the border — that live in Manhattan. We have Latinos that live on the West Coast and Latinos that live in Florida, they may have a different persuasion about the entire immigration issue. But, altogether, we’re bounded by, I think, three fundamental elements: DREAMers, farm workers, and keeping families together.”
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