On this week’s episode, Yali Nuñez joins to highlight National Hispanic Heritage Month. We discuss the contributions of the largest minority group in America. We also look at new polling that shows a decline in Hispanic pride in the U.S. due to poor leadership and how the community views the immigration crises at the border.

Yali Nuñez is a visiting fellow at IWF and the former Executive Director of Communications for the City of Hialeah. Before her role as Executive Director, she worked for approximately 4 years as the Director of Hispanic Media and Spokesperson for the Republican National Committee (RNC), giving the Latino community a voice inside the Republican Party. Prior to her work with the RNC, Ms. Nuñez was invited to join as Director of Hispanic Communications for the successful reelection campaign of Senator Marco Rubio. She worked for five years as a journalist for prestigious national and international media outlets, including FOX and Univision.


TRANSCRIPT

Beverly Hallberg:

And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode, we highlight national Hispanic Heritage Month by discussing the contributions of the largest minority group in America. We’ll also look at new polling that shows a decline in Hispanic pride in the US due to poor leadership and how the community views the immigration crisis at the border.

And we have a wonderful person to break it down for us today. Yali Nuñez joins us. Yali Nuñez is a visiting fellow at IWF and previously served as executive director of communications for the city of Hialeah. Before her role as executive director, she worked approximately four years as a director of Hispanic media and spokesperson for the RNC, giving the Latino community a voice inside the Republican party. Prior to her work at RNC, Ms Nuñez was invited to join as director of Hispanic communications for the successful reelection campaign of Senator Marco Rubio. She worked for five years as a journalist and is often on Fox and Univision, and is a pleasure to have you on She Thinks today. Thank you so much.

Yali Nuñez:

It is a pleasure to be here with you, Beverly. Thank you for having me.

Beverly Hallberg:

And so Hispanic Heritage Month started yesterday. This is Friday, September 16th. It started September 15th and it goes until October 15th. And just so people know what national Hispanic Heritage Month is, it is when we celebrate the history, culture and contributions of American citizens, whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and central and south America. And I’ll be honest with you, when I think of the Hispanic American community, I automatically think of strong family values and hard work. What else should we be thinking of and how should we honor the Hispanic American community in this next month?

Yali Nuñez:

I think you’ve made a very good and accurate description of what the Hispanic community is about. But it’s also about celebrating all the achievements, the contributions that we’ve done as a community across this wonderful nation of the United States, and all the years that we’ve been here and we’ve been giving to other communities to feel inspired by the work and the effort that Hispanics project every day in every sector that there is in the economy, in the health sector, in the education sector. It’s pretty much all over the place. We are a force to be reckoned here in the US, and we have the largest minority vote. When it comes to the electoral part of things in politics, we are a force to be reckoned. And that’s what is important, not only to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, but also to bring awareness of what the Hispanic community is doing and where we’re standing here in the United States.

Beverly Hallberg:

And we are going to get into just where Hispanics tend to lean right now, as far as the red versus the blue in the midterms. But I want to just pick up on the terms that we’ve already used, the term Hispanic, the term Latino. We hear now, the term Latinx, and I was hoping you could just kind of break it down for us. What is appropriate to use and when?

Yali Nuñez:

I think Hispanics and Latinos are terms that are appropriate. I don’t know if the Latino community is so much aware or maybe not aware, but so comfortable with the term Latinx. There might be a portion of the community there is. There’s another portion of the community that does not consider necessary to describe themselves as Latinx. I think right now the Hispanic community has always been an inclusive community. But I think right now, what we’re seeing by numbers is that they’re migrating to more conservative views and they want to experience what capitalism is truly because many of us come from places that have had a socialist system or a communist system, even for so many years. And we’ve experienced the consequences of what it is to live in a place like that and we want to leave that behind. We came to the land of opportunity precisely for that, for opportunity, and that can only be experienced in a capitalist society.

Beverly Hallberg:

And so when you do have members of the Hispanic community hear words like socialism being preached from even as high as the presidency, or you have somebody like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of course, a Congresswoman from New York. Is there immediately a negative reaction to that? Because as you said so many have come to this country to flee socialism.

Yali Nuñez:

I think it’s disappointing to hear it because we come to this country with the idea of building a new life, to have hope, to have an economy, a free and fair market that works for us and that we contribute to that market and to that economy in a way that we have not been able to previously do in our own countries because of the system that is in place. I think it’s important to be very aware for politicians to the words that they use, the language that they’re speaking about because many of them have never lived in a place like this, so they refer to all this socialized ideas of a society, whether if it is free health for everybody, or free education for everybody.

Listen, I come from Cuba. I was born and raised in Cuba and not until I was two or three. I was living there until I was 16 years old, so I know precisely how it works. Nothing is for free. When you’re making 10 bucks a month and they’re telling you, your education is free, that’s a lie. When they’re telling you your healthcare is free, but you’re making $10 a month in pesos, which is the national currency in the country, truly, it’s disappointing to hear these words and they need to be conscious about those things before they speak about it without never experiencing them before, because they’re selling an utopia that is truly not existent. It doesn’t work.

Beverly Hallberg:

And so on the last episode of She Thinks, we talked about the issue of the student loan forgiveness plan that President Biden has. When you hear that, when others in the community hear this idea that we’re going to forgive your college debt, how do most people in the Hispanic community feel about that and respond to that?

Yali Nuñez:

I’m going to give you a basic example. I was free of debt when I ended college. I went to the University of South Florida, so go Bulls. But I did it by working full time and going to school full time. I did not owe a penny to anyone after that and I had only been here for like six, seven years. It’s doable. And now I feel that maybe if I would’ve gone four more years and studied laws, maybe Biden would’ve paid my education.

How do you feel in respect to all those generations that have earned the right to go to school? They have worked their way. They have paid the way for the next generation to do it with honor, to do it with pride in their work, and now they’re just getting it for free. It doesn’t bother me the fact that they want to help, but it bothers me that they’re creating a culture around this issue that is not the correct one. It’s not one that is going to allow this generation to grow exponentially as they should be growing with all the advances there are in our society right now. But they’re just going to believe that everything has to be handed to them just because this administration has decided to follow this type of policy.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, I’m glad that you brought up that story because I think it does directly relate to something that you wrote that I encourage people to look at that is on iwf.org and the piece is entitled, “Low Hispanic Pride in the US Reflects Poor Leadership.” And I want to read just a portion of it. This is what you write.

You said, “the US has traditionally been a beacon of freedom to immigrants from around the world and each year we welcome more than 1 million new immigrants. But sadly for the first time pollsters have found that a majority of Americans say they are not proud of their country today. The survey by Fox News asked registered voters, “Are you proud of the country today?” To which 39% said, “Yes.” This is down 12 points from June 2017 and 30 points since June 2011. Hispanic and minority voters are increasingly shifting to the Republican Party because of this. First of all, explain to me your thoughts on this shift of feeling that you can take pride in your country.

Yali Nuñez:

I think in general, every Hispanic is proud of this great nation. This is the greatest and most generous nation in the world. But right now what we are experiencing, the Hispanic community is one of the most affected communities by the economic crisis that we are experiencing. This is not lost on us. We are in shock of how much the country has moved backwards I feel like. And I think there’s no pride, not in the country, but in the leadership that the country has at this moment, because it has not moved us forward and that’s where we want to move with every single American. I don’t think this is just something unique on the Hispanic community per se, but it is a global thing around the country right now that we’re experiencing when it comes to the leadership that is in place.

At this very moment, we have to be very concerned. Recently, the numbers show that the inflation for the month of August went up. It should have gone down. They said that the gas prices were going to keep going down and now we’re hearing from Janet Yellen that they’re going to go up again in December, just because the prices in Europe and the consumption and the buying from the Russians. And this is all we keep hearing. And there’s no way that any American can feel pride in seeing the country moving backwards instead of forward.

Beverly Hallberg:

We’ve talked about the economic aspect of this. I want to talk about some of the more social leaning topics, things in education, like critical race theory, the transgender movement. I started the podcast by saying that the Hispanic community is very family oriented. On these types of social issues, where are you seeing the Hispanic community stand on these issues? Are they speaking out against things that they don’t like or are many in support of them?

Yali Nuñez:

I think Hispanics are traditionally conservative families and they lean to be conservative. They want respect for the religion that they practice. They want to lead their family down the path of respect for others, for their community. They’re hard workers. We are hard workers. I include myself in it, of course. And with all these issues, one thing is to come to the country of freedom and a very different thing is to experience the debauchery that we are seeing with these type of topics.

It’s truly tough to see when they want to impose certain ideologies on kids because let me tell you something. They might say that the folks on the right want to push the whole socialism idea about, oh, the left is very socialist. The left only says socialist things, but this is what’s actually happening in socialist countries. They indoctrinate the kids since they are little. You go to school and all you see is the propaganda around what the regime is, the communist slogans. That is what you’re seeing and that is what we’re starting to experience here in America. And it’s very concerning to see it in topics that involve children, little children that should not be in the middle of politics, that should not be in the middle of these type of ideologies that are confusing them at an early age. It’s very, very disappointing to see this and it should stop as soon as possible. And I think the Hispanic community is behind this type of thinking.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, I want to take a brief moment to talk to you, our listeners. You may know the Independent Women’s Forum is the leading national women’s organization dedicated to enhancing people’s freedom, opportunities and wellbeing. But did you know we’re also here to bring you both women and men on the go the news? You can listen to our High Noon podcast, an intellectual download featuring conversations that make a free society possible. Hear guests like Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin discuss the most controversial subjects of the day.

Or join us for happy hour with At the Bar, where host Inez Stepman and Jennifer Braceras channel on the latest issues at the intersection of law, politics and culture. You can listen to past episodes at iwf.org or search for High Noon or At the Bar in your favorite podcast app.

Well, Yali, I want to get to one of the most contentious topics that we see between Republicans and Democrats, and that is what to do about immigration? I want to specifically talk about the crisis that we see at the border. We see that first of all, there is the reason we’re seeing this mass influx of people across the border is because of rapid corruption and neighboring Latin American countries and also just failed US immigration policies. How does the Hispanic community look at this and factor in their own opinion on the crisis at the border?

Yali Nuñez:

I think the first thing that we should address is how the Hispanic community feels about the immigration topics. We’re the first ones that want secure border. Hispanics are the first one in the whole United States that want a border that is secure because many Hispanics live in border states. It’s just as simple as that. They don’t want the crime crossing to the United States. They don’t want to see the consequences of what illegal immigration does to the country. They want to see this country prosperous and doing good.

Now, right now we do not have a secure border. Those words that the vice president recently used, very misleading, very, very misleading. We do not have a secure border. We’re having buses of people coming in when there’s an overwhelmed immigration system with our patrol border officers are right now overwhelmed with the amount of people that are coming in and it’s totally open border policy right now. That’s what we are experiencing and I don’t think any Hispanic in the country that wants to see this country and their community safe and secure can support what’s happening.

Right now, we have approximately almost 2 million of illegal immigrants that have come in lately. And in this fiscal year alone, there’s so many. And with one person … I’m all pro legal immigration. I think there’s people that come here and they have a legitimate claim to political asylum and they should be listened to, and they should be paid attention to, and they should be helped, because that is the grandiosity of this country.

But now when we are seeing illegal immigration happening on a daily basis, the way that it’s happening, people that are not good people coming in, one person that is not a good person that comes in is too many. And we’ve seen it. In just one fiscal year, we have almost I think 53 or 54. I don’t know where the number stands right now exactly, but over 50, for sure of people that could be classified as terrorist. No mother in a Hispanic community wants that for their community, so we need to get this situation under control and the administration should stop denying that there is a problem. The first solution to address it is to accept that there is a problem.

Beverly Hallberg:

And I want to pick up what you said on Kamala Harris there, who said, “The border is secure.” We have President Biden saying the economy is strong. Inflation is not as big of a problem as we’re making it out to be supposedly. When you hear these types of messages, how does that resonate within the community?

Yali Nuñez:

It’s sad. It’s truly sad, more than anything, but it’s also consequential of many things that happen within the community. Hopefully in the future everybody in the community is going to have the opportunity to go to college and to build a professional future. But many in the Hispanic community have low salaries and the incoming of people that are going to take even lower salaries, that puts them at risk of losing their jobs, of not having the same level of achievement and progress that they might have been having for a while. First, we have to address that part.

Second, I don’t think that anyone in the community wants to see the breaking of the law. We came to this country precisely because we respect law and order because we did not have that in our countries. And to see right now the way that they’re handling things, everybody’s just coming in. There’s not a secure way to do it. The border patrols are overwhelmed with all the situation. Federal money is going into all these institutions and that’s us paying for it. That’s the Hispanic community as well as a taxpayer paying for this situation. It’s just not acceptable. It’s really not.

Beverly Hallberg:

Final question for you is, do you think that the Hispanic community does feel that the American dream is still alive and well in the country?

Yali Nuñez:

I want to be an optimist, Beverly, and I want to say that it is. I hope that our process, our democratic process takes care more than anything of this bad moment that we’re going through. And I have the hope that the Hispanic community and every single community out there is responsible enough to go during this midterm elections and vote for politicians, not that promise unity, and then do divisive speeches, but that actually deliver on their promises of a prosperous nation, of a good economy for the next generation. I want to see them deliver and cast that balance for the right politician this time around. I want to think that the dream is alive and is well and it’s just going through a little blip right now, and we’re going to get over that not only on this next election cycle of midterms, but also on the presidential elections upcoming.

Beverly Hallberg:

Yes, I agree. There is still reason to hope and there’s much that people can do, especially around election day. And we so appreciate not only you giving us all this great information, but also joining us today. Yali Nunez, who is a visiting fellow here at Independent Women’s Forum. Thank you so much for joining us.

Yali Nuñez:

Of course, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Beverly.

Beverly Hallberg:

And thank you all for joining us. Before you go, Independent Women’s Forum does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. An investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity and wellbeing for all Americans, so please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate. That’s iwf.org/donate. Last, if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or a review. It does help. And we’d love it if you shared this episode, so your friends know where they can find more She Thinks. From all of us here at Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for watching. That was great. Thank you so much.