Thursday, January 15, 2009

Hispanics and the New Administration

The Pew Hispanic Center released a post-election poll on the expectations of Hispanics of the new administration of Barack Obama. It revealed that the economy had replace immigration as their first pre-occupation. In fact, immigration had also been been passed by education, health care, national security, beating out energy policy. But an integral perspective would see the issues interlinking and united around the working and lower middle class status of most Hispanics. Had the survey included workers' rights -- wages and work condition -- that too may have eclipsed immigration. Despite their concerns Hispanics look more optimistically to the new administration then most Americans.

The survey also indicated that a higher percentage of Hispanics went to the polls in November. The get-out-the-vote campaign seems to have worked. There were significantly higher averages of first-time and young (18-24) voters among Hispanics.

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