Many from the legal Latino community understand the impact illegal immigration has on our country, on their own well-being and realize that illegal immigration is nothing short of modern-day slavery. It's not good for the people and it's not good for the economy. Especially when they went through the proper channels to become citizens and their own version of The American Dream is being threatened by those who are here illegally.
HIALEAH — Cuban-Americans here have the rare opportunity to vote for two of their own for the presidency of the United States. Yet, some are making a different choice: They're backing Donald Trump.
The controversial frontrunner has insisted he'll draw Hispanic voters despite launching his campaign last June with inflammatory remarks about Mexicans and rapists. And as he competes in Florida, the biggest state yet to test his boast, there is anecdotal evidence of support among Miami-Dade's staunchly Republican Cuban-American voters even as most back Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, whom many Cuban-American voters helped elect to the U.S. Senate in 2010.
For Trump backers, ethnicity plays no factor.
“I don't think Cuban, I think American,” said former Hialeah Mayor Julio Martinez, who, for two weeks, has held a Trump campaign sign outside an early voting site just blocks from where Rubio last week implored Hispanics to vote for him in Tuesday's presidential primary.
Perched in a lawn chair outside the John F. Kennedy Library, holding a “The Silent Majority Stands with Trump” sign, Martinez said he was backing Trump because there was “nobody better suited” to fixing the economy.
“The worst problem the United States has today is the economy,” he said.
Trump's pledge to force Mexico to pay for construction of a wall at the U.S. border and his call to deport the nation's estimated 11 million immigrants who are here illegally have infuriated Hispanic advocacy groups and led to heated protests at his rallies. But for backers, they play no role. Even Trump's support for closer ties with Cuba's government makes no waves.
Martinez said he'd even persuaded his wife, Xiomara, to back Trump. She's been a citizen for two decades, though she was in the United States illegally for a time with a lapsed Nicaraguan visa.
“She said at the beginning, ‘What are you doing? He's too rough on immigration,' ” Martinez said. “I told her, ‘You walk into the house and someone is sitting on your couch, what do you do? You call the police. That is what he is saying.' She voted for Donald Trump three days ago.” Read More…
