In 2017, Voto Latino Will Continue to Stand Up For Our Communities
Congress just wrapped its first week back in session, and the Republican-led House and Senate immediately started debate on legislation that would deeply affect all Americans: to repeal the Affordable Care Act. If passed, the bill could leave the lives of 20 million insured Americans in peril.
Issues like health care access, cabinet nominations, budget resolution, investigations into foreign governments influencing our elections, immigration, women’s rights, among others will all be in the spotlight in the coming weeks and Voto Latino will continue to advocate to ensure that our community is represented and our voices are heard.
This Congress will include the most Latinos to ever serve, and will include the first Latina to ever serve in the Senate, as well as the first Florida member of Puerto Rican descent, the first Dominican American member and the first Mexican American from Nevada to serve in the House.
Your voices were instrumental in making sure that our community now has more representation nationally, but we’ll need you more than ever to ensure that the issues affecting our community are addressed.
Health Care
Voto Latino believes that the ACA has been beneficial to the Latino community and should remain in place. We believe that all Americans should have access to quality health care.
Thanks to the ACA, more than four million Latinos now have health insurance, and it’s cut the number of uninsured Latinos by 25 percent.
The ACA will be under immediate attack both from Congress and from the White House, and we must work together to preserve it and to ensure that the millions of Latinos who now count on health care aren’t left out in the cold.
Immigration
President-elect Donald Trump campaigned using hateful rhetoric against Latinos, immigrants, among others, and now 11 million undocumented immigrants are uncertain of their future under a President Trump.
First, we must protect DACA-recipients and ensure that their personal data, which they provided to the government in good faith, is not used against them to deport them or their families and loved ones.
There are nearly 750,000 young immigrants who have come forward, started their careers or continued their education, and President-elect Trump must do right by them.
Regardless of who’s president, Voto Latino will continue to advocate for humane immigrant rights that include a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants, because nobody should be a second-class citizen in America. Reforming our immigration system is critical for a safer and more prosperous America.
Voting Rights
In 2016, our country went through the first election since the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and the effects were widely felt. There were 868 less polling places across the country, and many people, especially from communities of color were disenfranchised from participating in their country’s democracy.
Now that President-elect Trump has tapped Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Al.) as his attorney general, voting rights will remain under continual threats and attacks. Sen. Sessions has frequently criticised the Voting Rights Act, going so far as calling it an intrusive piece of legislation.
Fair elections and equal access to voting for all Americans are the underpinnings of our democracy. Disenfranchising even one voter goes against our American values. We aim to fully restore the Voting Rights Act and safeguard the protections in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
Voto Latino will be vocal advocates and a presence among federal and local legislative advocacy efforts for the upcoming debates on sexual and reproductive health, criminal justice reform, LGTBQ equality, climate change, among other issues.
But we need you. This year, we need you to be vocal advocates for all communities too, and to ensure that we can collectively build a country that is more just and inclusive. Join us in this fight.
