Republican Party Wrestles With Immigration Stance as It Courts Hispanics

Wall Street Journal

By Laura Meckler

April 17, 2015

Republican Party Wrestles With Immigration Stance as It Courts Hispanics 

Republicans here want to repeal the 14-year-old law that allows immigrants, legal or not, the benefit of in-state college tuition, and for Artemio Muniz, defending the law is both personal and political.

As the U.S.-born son of Mexican parents who lived as illegal immigrants, Mr. Muniz sees higher education as the American way to the middle class.

As a Republican activist eyeing an increasingly diverse electorate, Mr. Muniz sees preservation of the so-called Texas Dream Act as crucial to the GOP’s credibility among Latinos, whose growing numbers make them an important voting bloc nationally and in Texas, where they make up nearly a third of eligible voters.

“This is a mission to uphold what we believe is Republican heritage, a Republican legacy,” he told allies at a recent strategy meeting over shielding the law. “When it comes down to it, we’re going to draw a line in the sand.”

Mr. Muniz, 34 years old, is part salesman for the GOP and part agitator within it. He is an outspoken embodiment of the tensions surrounding immigration issues that bedevil the Republican Party, which is divided between demands for strict enforcement of immigration laws and the orderly assimilation of an estimated 11 million people now living in the U.S. without permission.

Republican state lawmakers have supported the Texas Dream Act, which was signed by former Gov. Rick Perry in 2001. But the newly elected Texas lieutenant governor and some GOP lawmakers want it killed. “It’s a question of fairness to American citizens,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said of the repeal measure, which cleared a state Senate committee this month.

Nationally, Republicans had moved toward a more welcoming stance in the months after the 2012 presidential election—when Hispanic voters overwhelmingly supported President Barack Obama . The shift was short-lived. The House GOP blocked a bipartisan immigration bill passed by the Senate in 2013, and has since declined to consider any pro-immigration legislation. Many lawmakers said such legislation was unwise until the U.S.-Mexico border was better secured.

Republican lawmakers are now trying to stop Mr. Obama’s executive actions that seek to protect several million illegal immigrants from deportation. Many Republicans agree the party needs to improve its standing with Hispanic voters but argue candidates need only engage the community, steer clear of divisive rhetoric and focus on such pressing concerns as jobs and the economy.

The debate takes on rising political importance as the 2016 presidential election approaches. Some Republicans considering a presidential run have taken a tough stand on immigration, in line with conservative primary voters. Others seem mindful of how Hispanic voters in the general election will react to such hard-line immigration rhetoric.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, at one end, has supported a path to citizenship, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz opposes any law that eases the way.

In 2013, Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) helped the Senate pass an immigration bill that included a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally. He later dropped support of his own bill after it was denounced by the same conservative voters he is courting for his presidential bid, which he launched this week.

The approach of the party’s presidential nominee is a central question in the 2016 election, when the party hopes to improve its standing among Hispanic voters. If Latinos remain firmly in the Democratic coalition, the Republican road to the White House will be extremely narrow.

Republicans back to former President Ronald Reagan have said the party should do better. “Hispanics are Republicans. They just don’t know it,” Mr. Reagan told Lionel Sosa, a consultant for Mr. Reagan’s 1980 campaign. Mr. Sosa recalled Mr. Reagan ticking off a list—including family, faith and personal responsibility—he said Hispanics shared with the GOP.

Mr. Muniz is testing that proposition in Texas, trying both to sell the party to Latinos while arguing a pro-immigration position to party leaders.

It is more than a full-time job for Mr. Muniz, who juggles law school with party activism in a high-profile American life once unimaginable to his parents.

His father, Artemio Muniz Sr., crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally as a teenager seeking work; his mother entered the U.S. with a visa but stayed after it expired. They settled in Houston and married in 1980.

A year later, the younger Mr. Muniz—Junior to his family, Temo to his friends—was born. His father learned to make mattresses while working at a $3-an-hour job sweeping floors at a mattress factory. Mr. Muniz Sr. saw he could make them to sell at flea markets. By 1992, he quit his job to run A&M Mattress Co. full-time out of a makeshift facility he built in his garage.

Artemio Muniz helped sell mattresses on weekends and during the week he attended a magnet school for academically gifted children. The assistant pastor at their church also sold World Book encyclopedias; when Mr. Muniz was 9 years old, he begged his father for a set.

Mr. Muniz recalled reading about everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall to Sammy Davis Jr., the Founding Fathers and blood types. “All my friends were in gangs and stuff,” he said, “and I was always reading.”

The burden of illegal status hung over the family. He remembered once as a young boy seeing an immigration officer near the cashier of a sporting goods store. As the family approached, Mr. Muniz’s father whispered to his mother in Spanish, “If they take me, take care of Junior.” The officer followed them out. The family turned right; the officer went left.

Mr. Muniz’s parents weren’t much interested in politics, he said. The family didn’t subscribe to a newspaper or cable TV. But as a child, the younger Mr. Muniz said, he was drawn to Republicans, beginning with Mr. Reagan.

In 1986, Mr. Reagan, then president, signed legislation that effectively offered amnesty to three million people living in the U.S. illegally, including Mr. Muniz’s parents.

The family took advantage of the opportunity, and Mr. Muniz’s father has since prospered. Last year, he employed some 70 people and tallied more than $10 million in sales.

Artemio Muniz in 1999 became the first in his family to graduate from high school. He spent a few years in and out of community college, while working with his father in the mattress business and trying to settle on a career.

By 2004, he transferred to the University of Houston, where, Mr. Muniz said, he began thinking deeply about politics for the first time. He had long been suspicious of government regulation, figuring his father’s makeshift mattress factory wouldn’t have survived, for example, under stricter zoning laws. Seeing his family and neighbors collect government benefits convinced him they were necessary but sometimes abused.

Mr. Muniz found a framework to his views in a column by conservative writer William A. Schambra, who argued for a sense of community anchored by the family and the private sector, instead of government.

“We had gotten away from the real world of what community was,” Mr. Muniz said, “neighbor helping neighbor.” His burgeoning interest in politics was stoked during an internship with the Houston City Council. He admired George W. Bush, who had reached out to Latinos, spoke Spanish and favored immigration, first as governor of Texas and then as president.

After graduation from college in 2006, Mr. Muniz worked for his father, running a new upholstery division. But they clashed over the business, and in the fall of 2013, Mr. Muniz entered the South Texas College of Law in Houston.

As Mr. Muniz’s interest in politics deepened, he said, he wearied of the assumption that Hispanic voters belonged to Democrats. “The Democratic Party was all about identity politics: ‘The Mexican community is poor because the white man is putting you down,’” he said. “We don’t have time for that.”

Following Mr. Obama’s 2008 victory, Mr. Muniz allied with other Latino Republicans interested in appealing to more Hispanic voters. He founded the Federation of Hispanic Republicans in 2009, an auxiliary of the Texas GOP.

At the state Republican convention the following year, Mr. Muniz and his allies failed to remove anti-immigration language from the party platform. Still, he kept adding chapters to his GOP federation statewide.

In Houston, he organized a network of pastors to introduce Republicans to Hispanic families. In one event, he invited mother-daughter pairs in 2011 to hear Republican Eva Guzman, who grew up in an immigrant family and served on the Texas Supreme Court.

Last summer, Mr. Muniz worked on the platform committee of the Texas Republican Party that endorsed a path to U.S. citizenship for some illegal immigrants. It built on the more pro-immigration language adopted for the 2012 platform, but this time the idea raised fierce opposition. At one point during the debate, Mr. Muniz said, he jostled with an anti-immigration activist in line for the microphone who called Mr. Muniz a “fat wetback.”

Mr. Muniz lunged toward the activist, but an ally, Victor Leal, pulled him back. “This is not how we’re going to win,” Mr. Leal recalled telling Mr. Muniz.

The convention ended with state party support for a new plank seeking tougher measures on illegal immigrants, including an end to in-state tuition for people living in the U.S. without permission.

Mr. Muniz continued working. In the fall, he advised a Latino Republican he had recruited to challenge a Democrat in a Houston-area statehouse seat. He told the candidate, Gilbert Pena, to remind voters how he had stuck up for Hispanic neighborhoods in a local redistricting fight. He suggested Mr. Pena go door-to-door in neighborhoods with swing voters and give his pitch in Spanish.

Mr. Pena ran a shoestring campaign. Two years earlier, the state party and pro-GOP interest groups had funneled about a half-million dollars to support the Republican candidate who lost to Mary Ann Perez, a Democrat.

On Election Day in November, Mr. Muniz told voters outside one precinct: “It doesn’t matter who else you vote for, vote for Gilbert. He fought for the community.” Mr. Pena narrowly defeated Ms. Perez.

Also in the fall, Mr. Muniz set up a Houston appearance for George P. Bush, who ran successfully for Texas land commissioner. Mr. Muniz invited local Hispanic leaders and introduced Mr. Bush with a hearty, “Viva Bush!”

Mr. Bush brought his father, Jeb Bush, and they spoke in English and Spanish to an enthusiastic crowd. Over lunch, Mr. Muniz and his allies lamented how their party was failing to win new Latino voters. “It has to change,” said Ray Villalovas, a businessman who contributes to Mr. Muniz’s group.

For years, Texas GOP leaders emphasized U.S. border security while rejecting calls to crack down on illegal immigrants. They have since moved closer in line with the national party.

Greg Abbott, who was elected Texas governor in the fall election with 44% of the Hispanic vote, said during his campaign he wouldn’t veto legislation ending the Texas Dream Act. Regarding immigration, David Carney, a senior adviser to Mr. Abbott’s campaign, said, “An election is not going to be won or lost on that particular issue.”

Mr. Abbott worked hard to win over Latinos. He traveled several times to the largely Hispanic Rio Grande Valley, for example, and bragged that his wife would be the first Latina first lady of Texas. His TV campaign ads ran in Spanish and English.

Mr. Patrick, the lieutenant governor, ran with a tougher message. He called illegal immigration an invasion and campaigned on a promise to kill the Texas Dream Act. Mr. Patrick won 46% of Hispanic votes, which some said was evidence immigration wasn’t a top concern.

Mr. Patrick’s spokesman said the lieutenant governor “had broad base support on many issues, including in-state tuition.”

Democrats see opportunity in the changing demographics. In the November election, Texas Latinos made up nearly 31% of eligible voters but just 17% of actual voters, according to a report by a trio of Washington think tanks called the CAP-AEI-Brookings States of Change. The report projects the Hispanic share of the Texas electorate will grow to 38% by 2030.

On a recent evening, Mr. Muniz gathered a dozen Latino activists in Houston to discuss protecting the Texas Dream Act. The meeting was dominated by Democrats, but he argued his GOP group should take a larger role.

“In all honesty, the best defense is to allow our group to become the lead moral authority because it was a Republican-passed bill,” he said. “If it becomes a partisan issue, or a Hispanic versus white issue, we can lose the Texas Dream Act.”

Politically, the battle claims such voters as Rafael Acosta, 67 years old, who immigrated from Mexico as a child and now owns a Houston restaurant. For decades, he said, he voted Republican but now often leans to Democrats.

He agrees with Republicans on many issues, he said, except immigration. “Anything that goes wrong in this economy, in this school system, anything in Texas,” he said, “it’s, ‘Well, the immigrants are at fault.’”

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