As the race to the primaries heats up, candidates naturally begin to hone their message to target certain voting blocks: evangelicals, “security moms,” etc. When it comes to the Latino vote, however, the candidates, especially Democratic candidates, are treading lightly. On the one hand, no one can now deny the emergence of a powerful Latino voting block (although it has yet to reach the political unity necessary to be on par with groups such the conservative Christians). On the other hand, to appear weak on immigration is to lose the support of rural populations who feel threatened by the influx of immigrants.

As a result, the majority of the Democrats have skirted the issue, promising to be tough on border enforcement without offering up a coherent positive solution that would make them vulnerable to criticism. At this point, it seems unlikely that a Democratic president would do much to change the situation, at least in any long-term sense. The majority of the candidates supported the failed McCain-Kennedy bill, which would have provided a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, but beyond that, none of the leading candidates are willing to outline specifics.

Among the Democrats, the Obama campaign appears to be courting the Latino vote the most, especially in Iowa. Mr. Obama’s campaign has spent considerable effort attempting to educate Latinos about the American political process and their potential role in it. Many immigrants arrive fleeing corrupt and inefficient governments where elections are bought and individual votes mean less than nothing. Jesus Estrada, the Latino outreach coordinator for the Iowa Democratic Party sees this as the biggest obstacle towards the development of a strong Latino voting block, saying to the New York Times, “Our biggest problem is to get people to understand the process. Many don’t have a clue, and we need to relate politics to their everyday lives.”

This, then, is the balancing act; how do you appeal to a constituency without concretely addressing one of its primary concerns? This is what the Democrats are trying to do, yet as they go about, they lose sight of a more important question: What does this say about the current political perception of Latinos? More importantly, what is this process going to do for the Latino perspective and the Latino identity?

Currently, Latinos are in a political nether-space. The power to address issues currently sits with the politicians, and as long as Washington keeps one foot in the door the Latino community will continue to hover on the edge of existence. We must consider what sort of effect we are having on a population that is rapidly increasing: we can only ignore them for so long; eventually the Latino community will realize itself and its place in this country.

What we must consider is the effect we will have on the content of this eventual realization. In this sense, the McCain-Kennedy bill was ideal; it would allow the realization of the Latino community by directly addressing their concerns and serve to quickly allow them to take control of their own political destiny. If we continue to refuse to address the immigration issue, we will merely prolong it, and in the process, create a political community even more distrustful of politics than when it came into the country.

This is the last thing we want; the American political identity has already been fragmented by special interests, the myth of the Red/Blue divide, and the apparent moral gap in society. Adding a large, disenfranchised and increasingly politically aware block to our political spectrum is the last thing that our country needs as it heads into a very unsure future.

In light of this, the current attitude of the Democratic candidates is unnerving. Hopefully, as the campaign evolves, the candidates will develop more coherent positions on issues of immigration and citizenship. I fear that a Democrat will enter office and be unable to form consensus on what is to be done. We are currently struggling to resolve a number of internal differences within our national consciousness; this one should be easy, and we need to resolve it and start moving on.