The senator’s plan promises to eliminate private health insurance and to introduce a single-payer, national health insurance program. The idea is to expand the current Medicare system, which covers primarily those aged 65 and older and some with disabilities. This means that all U.S. citizens would have guaranteed rights to public health care, which would be covered by the taxpayer.
Hispanics have the highest uninsured rate of any ethnic group at 37.1%. Former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) had decreased the rate of uninsured Hispanics, but under the Trump Administration, that number has risen again. More than 22 million Hispanics still lack health insurance coverage.
Given the high likelihood of Latino families in the U.S. being low income and uninsured, it is unsurprising that Latinos are showing support for Sanders’s promise to ensure all citizens.
Immigration and labor rights
Sanders’s immigration plan is unique because he links this issue, which disproportionately affects Latinos in the U.S., to workers’ rights.
This is particularly smart because it handles Sanders’s long track record placing labor interests above immigration, which has put the progressive senate in opposition to his otherwise pro-immigrant rhetoric more than once.
His proposed policy attempts to create a worker-centric immigration plan that incorporates immigrants’ labor rights.
Sanders’s plan does two things for Latinos. First, Sanders’s plan would allow immigrants to participate in Medicare for All and College for All.
Second, the plan would offer whistleblower protections for immigrant workers who speak up about workplace abuses. This policy would improve working conditions for immigrants who often suffer abuses at the hand of their employers for fear of retaliation that could result in their deportation. Given that about half of Hispanic workers are immigrants, Sanders’s politics on labor rights would positively impact about 12 million Latinos.
As a consequence, Sanders’s plans would increase labor standards for farmworkers, domestic workers, gig economy workers, and workers in other underregulated industries. In 2014, 43.4% of those working in farming, fishing and forestry in the U.S. were Latino. Similarly, 32.2% of workers in construction and extraction were Latino, making it easy to see why these combined immigration and labor policies are appealing to the group.
And while immigration is an important issue to Latinos, it historically ranks behind health care and the economy in terms of importance during election cycles. That is why Sanders’s strategy to link immigration with workers’ rights is quite smart, as it also allows him to bank on the negative impact Trump has had with Latinos and other minority groups in terms of immigration.
Latino voters are young Americans who grew up in the aftermath of the 2008 recession. They are entering the workforce to face wages that have remained remarkably stagnant despite the positive economic trends. They have not witnessed capitalism deliver on its promises. They have not seen the profits trickle down. The policies of a pro-labor candidate makes all the sense in the world for first- and second-generation Latinos, who have not had time and opportunities to accumulate wealth.
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DemocraciaAbierta | Radio Free (2020-02-27T14:50:57+00:00) What can Bernie Sanders do for U.S. Latinos?. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/02/27/what-can-bernie-sanders-do-for-u-s-latinos/
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