Column: Stop conflating 'Latino' with 'immigrant'

Following Donald Trump’s electoral victory, and the inevitable blame game among blue voters, it was Latinos, more than any other group, that emerged as the face of the turncoats who had thrown the Democratic Party under the bus. “It is madness to spend capital trying to help people who are no longer a major part of your electoral coalition.” Last’s sentiment summarizes well the conventional wisdom that’s dominated political thought on both sides of the aisle for some time now: Latinos care deeply about immigration, and will support whichever party touts the more liberal policies on the border. The most prominent of these assumptions is that Latinos see themselves as immigrants, or, more specifically, that they recognize a shared ethnic plight in immigrants without proper documentation. More specifically, they ought to bring an end to the notion that “Latino” is interchangeable with “undocumented immigrant.” This all cuts against the crystallized belief that Latinos are immigrants, or that even immigrants without proper documentation have innate solidarity with one another. But what’s clear is that, today, the majority of Latinos in the U.S. do not see themselves as immigrants, without proper documentation or otherwise.