Wall Street Journal
By Laura Meckler
July 7, 2015
The
nation’s largest Latino advocacy group says it invited every
presidential candidate to annual convention next week. Two Democrats,
but not a single Republican, plan
to attend, a spokesman said.
Democrats
Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, and Martin O’Malley,
former governor of Maryland, will appear at a lunch Monday in Kansas
City, Mo., before the
National Council of La Raza, an advocacy and civil rights organization
for Latinos. The group has been a vocal backer of a path to citizenship
for people in the U.S. illegally and other changes to the immigration
system.
Retired
neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who is running for the GOP nomination, was the
only Republican to address the National Association of Latino Elected
and Appointed Officials
last month in Las Vegas.
A
wider turnout is expected at the end of the month for a convention of
the National Urban League, a civil rights organization that is heavily
African-American. Republicans
Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and Mr. Carson, along with Mrs.
Clinton and Mr. O’Malley, all plan to attend, the group said.
The
GOP absence from the La Raza conference comes at a time when the
Republican field is struggling to respond to incendiary comments from
candidate Donald Trump, who
charged that Mexican immigrants are “bringing drugs, bringing crime,
they’re rapists.”
Ever
since Hispanic voters helped re-elect President Barack Obama in 2012,
the Republican Party has been working to improve its image with Hispanic
voters. But presidential
candidates are also trying to appeal to the many Republican primary
voters who oppose liberalized immigration policy.
Also
missing from the Kansas City convention will be Democratic presidential
contender Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is mounting a strong
challenge to Mrs. Clinton
in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first primary contests. He supports a
path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally but has a mixed
record overall on the effort to overhaul immigration policy.
In
2007, Mr. Sanders allied himself with unions who opposed a guest worker
program in a broad immigration overhaul and voted against the measure.
In 2013, when the matter
came up for debate again, he remained opposed to the guest worker
program that was included but in the end, he voted for the legislation.
Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton both appeared at the Las Vegas gathering of Latino officials in June.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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