If you say that you aren’t surprised by Trump’s lead in the Republican primaries, you’re lying. No one saw this coming a few months ago, but even CNN agrees that Trump could very well win the Republican nomination. With the reality of a Trump nation finally setting in, a large number of people in the Latino community has started to mobilize and seek citizenship solely for the purpose of voting against Trump in the upcoming election, according to The New York Times.
In case you haven’t heard, Trump isn’t too keen on the idea of undocumented immigrants hanging out in the United States. According to his website, Trump wants to build a physical wall across the Southern border of the U.S., claiming that “Mexico’s leaders have been taking advantage of the United States by using illegal immigration to export the crime and poverty of their own country.” He doesn’t only insinuate that all immigrants are criminals on his website—Back in June, he said of Mexicans, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” This hasn’t exactly caused immigrants in the U.S. to feel warm and fuzzy about his leadership.
The Times gives the example of Villegas family, of which six members are trying to become naturalized citizens to ensure that Trump does not become president. “I want to vote so Donald Trump won’t win,” Ms. Villegas, a legal Mexican immigrant, told the Times. There was a spike in naturalization applications by 11 percent in the 2015 fiscal year, and advocates predict that there could be one million applications in 2016.
So why is this so important? Well, Vanity Fair predicts that a larger Latino voter turnout could “make a serious difference” in the upcoming election. Citing the last presidential race between Obama and Romney, when Obama won by only 4 million votes, we can see that every vote counts. With this increase in Latino voters against Trump, it is entirely possible that Trump will start to fall in the polls.