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Hispanic Caucus Chair on Joe Biden: I 'Peered Into His Heart' and He Wants a Path to Citizenship

May 13, 2021

Even before Representative Raul Ruiz was the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, or became a member of Congress in 2012, he was a doctor in California

Ruiz sat down with Newsweek for a Q&A-style interview to talk about being a physician and a lawmaker during a pandemic, the ins and outs of getting Biden and Congress to move on immigration, the Latino vote, disinformation campaigns, and more.

Newsweek: When people hear the name Coachella they think of the music festival, but you grew up in Coachella, California. The child of farmworkers you achieved your dream of becoming a physician and have been in Congress almost a decade.

Growing up in a trailer park, son of farm workers, and being the first generation to graduate from high school and go to college, I understand from my own life story the hardships and struggles that many of our community members face. It gives me a real first-hand perspective, not just then, but even now, as my mother still lives in the home where we moved into in Coachella—where both my brother and sister are blue collar workers. I have an extended family that continues to work very hard and struggle, and I have childhood friends that are struggling now to put food on their table, pay for their kids' education, and take care of their parents.

So, one, I have the street credibility of my childhood and two, being a student of science, a scientist myself, and a doctor from Harvard, I utilize my training and experience as an emergency physician, public health expert, and my skills working in the emergency department, to come up with strong evidence-based policy that will actually work in its implementation on the ground.

Often, these past couple of weeks, I've just really been feeling bliss because I go to work and I talk about protecting the powerless and the fight for environmental justice and pollution. And I understand not only because I've taken care of patients coming in with worsening asthma or COPD—usually poor patients from under-resourced communities with lack of physicians and lack of medications—but also because of the ability to problem solve and provide good evidence-based solutions to this issue.

Then I go into another meeting where I talk about gun violence and gun safety in a public health framework. Then I can go into another meeting and talk about helping our veterans exposed to burn pits, who are now dying of cancer and other illnesses. So for me being able to use all of my life experience trained in humanitarian disaster aid, emergency medicine, public health, and my street credibility, and my understanding because I'm so involved with the community, it helps me to speak right to the heart of the issues with good, solid policy that will make a difference in the lives of the people I serve.

Newsweek: Let's move to one of those priorities, which is immigration. You recently met with President Biden, Vice President Harris and CHC members at the White House to discuss the idea of immigration planks like an earned pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, farmworkers, and essential workers being part of the coming sweeping infrastructure package Biden is hoping to pass.

The CHC left that meeting saying the administration is open to the idea. Can you share the details of that conversation, and is it your belief that Biden must deliver on this campaign promise and stand with the Latino community as activists say the community stood with him?

I looked in the man's eyes and peered into his heart and I can tell you that authentically and genuinely he wants to find a way to develop a pathway to citizenship for our millions of essential workers who have borne the brunt of the pandemic and that are undocumented. For our Dreamers, farmworkers, temporary protected status (TPS) holders, et cetera.

It is true, however, that we do need legislation to codify DACA and TPS and to provide these immigration policies that will fix our immigration system. He fulfilled his promise in introducing his immigration reform plan on day one, and that plan is now in the hands of Representative Linda Sanchez and Senator Bob Menendez, two members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Meanwhile, we aggressively and successfully advocated for the passage of the Dream and Promise act that would give a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS holders and DED holders, as well as the Farm Workforce Modernization Act.

I'll be the first to tell you that although those two bills will be a major victory for our communities—they cover about four to six million undocumented essential workers and others—that there will be many more that we need to address. We also need to fix the immigration system, streamline it, and make it more efficient to use technology at the border to do border security the right way. That's in addition to addressing the root causes of the migration that thousands of families are making to flee violence, corruption, and hunger in their home countries.

In the case that we eventually need a budget reconciliation process, there is a very strong case to be made by us and the administration that immigration reform, the pathway to citizenship will be a strong budget issue because it increases our GDP. In fact, previous studies have shown that immigration reform can increase our GDP by $1.4 trillion. It also would create over 2 million jobs and it will increase cumulative American salaries by over $780 billion.

Newsweek: A follow-up for you on immigration. Polls show that most Americans, when they hear immigration, one topic that comes to mind is the influx of migrants coming to the border in the first 100 days of Biden's presidency. What do you say to Republicans who say this must be dealt with first before any other parts of immigration reform can move?

I say it's a stall and delay tactic, because ultimately they do not want to have any serious conversations on moving forward. You know, they tried it their way, which was based on hate, fear, cruelty, human rights violations, by separating children from their mothers and causing terror in order to intimidate and push forward an ineffective border wall. And it didn't work.

In fact it made things worse, because they decimated the system that would effectively and efficiently process asylum seekers who legally have the right to seek asylum, according to our American laws. Now it takes even longer and it's more complex to get them into a court hearing as quickly as possible. So they pretty much shot themselves in the foot. We also know that the surges that are occurring at the border will continue to occur in a cyclical manner, regardless of who's president, due to conditions in their home country, not conditions in our country.

We've heard the horror stories of many who have escaped violence. Many families who send their children under the threat of sexual violence, physical violence, even death, if they do not comply with narco traffickers or gang members. Given the recent major hurricanes in Central America that decimated their agricultural industry, many of them are suffering from hunger and so they're going to where they believe the food source is plenty. These are the issues that they failed to address and these are the issues that they actually made worse.

Newsweek: As we know, immigration is not the only issue Latinos care about. When it came to Latino voters in November, Biden secured nearly two-thirds support and did well in key states like Arizona, which helped him win the presidency.

But Donald Trump improved markedly from 2016, in states like Florida and along the border in Texas, two states with huge Latino populations. What lessons should Democrats be taking from those results to ensure Republicans don't continue to make gains in the midterms next year or in 2024?

It's important first to recognize that Latinos catapulted the Biden-Harris ticket to victory. They did so because of the record amount of Latino voter turnout, which created the margins necessary for them to win in swing districts in states such as Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and even Georgia. In Georgia, President Biden won by 11,000 votes. The new increase in Latino vote was 17,000. So definitely Latinos played a very crucial, significant role in president Biden winning his election.

There was an increase in new Latino voters for Republicans and Trump, but that increase was not significant enough to say that Biden lost Florida and Texas because of that increase. Nonetheless, those increases that we saw should compel Democrats to take it seriously and understand what members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have been saying all along, which is that, one, Latinos are not a monolith.

They're not a "Latino vote." They are Latino voters. So they need to not nationalize the Latino outreach and message, but they need to regionalize the efforts. Two is we saw the Trump campaign invested money specifically to do outreach to Latino voters in those areas. So there needs to be a substantial increase in investment, not only with consultants, but in the media markets that Latinos listen to or view at home.

Thirdly, the message needs to hit the hearts and minds of Latinos based on their background, where they live, where they work, and the interests they have. You need to utilize the methodologies that work in Latino communities and speak to their issues—almost like a parallel campaign or multiple parallel campaigns—even within the Latino community. Those are some very, very important lessons learned, especially, "If you spend it, then they will vote."