For 70-year-old Digna Muñiz, rising costs make it hard to get by.
“We are looking at a bit of a difficult time,” said Muñiz, who moved to Charlotte from Puerto Rico. “Groceries are getting more and more expensive, but we go through it because we have to go through it.”
Low wages and high grocery prices impact many Latino households in Charlotte, like Muñiz’s. She still works to provide for her family.
A UnidosUS study released in September shows that Latinos in North Carolina are not unlike most other voters. They’re concerned about inflation, jobs and the economy, and affordable housing. These are issues Latinos want elected officials to prioritize.
However, immigration has not been a top priority for the Latino electorate in recent years.
“Right now, you see four out of the top five priorities for voters, the most acute, related to the pocketbook, and immigration kind of figures into the equation even when it’s not a top priority,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS.
Immigration ranked sixth, after health care and crime. Participants in the study want a pathway to citizenship and more enforcement against human smugglers and drug traffickers.
“I think the best way to encapsulate it is, they want to see an approach to immigration that is firm but is fair and free of cruelty,” Martinez De Castro said.
Gabe Esparza, a former official at the U.S. Small Business Administration and former candidate for North Carolina treasurer, says immigration doesn’t tend to be a priority for Latinos in the state.
“There’s something that people always miss when it comes to making assumptions about Latinos — immigration is not the number one topic,” Esparza said.
North Carolina’s Latino electorate is still relatively new. In 2021, 68% of the state’s Hispanic population were U.S. citizens, according to the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management. That’s close to 800,000. This year, about 24% of Latinos in North Carolina will vote in their first presidential election.
Jose Alvarez is vice president of Prospera North Carolina, which supports Latino entrepreneurs. He agrees that the economy is a top concern for Latino voters.
“Immigrants are focused on priorities, and that priority is putting food on their table and that has to do with the economy,” Alvarez said.
According to UCLA and Cal Lutheran, Latinos in the U.S. contributed $3.7 trillion to the economy in 2022. If Latinos were their own country, that GDP would rank fifth in the world.
Here in North Carolina, the Latino GDP reached $36.9 billion in 2022, with Charlotte Latinos contributing $12.9 billion.
Although Latinos greatly impact the economy, community members like Alvarez and Esparza feel like candidates have work to do to engage with the community.
“I would love to see them more involved and get the actual feedback from the actual community at the grassroots level,” Alvarez said.
The UnidosUS study found that 49% of Latino voters in North Carolina had not been contacted by a political party or campaign.
“I see it as an enormous opportunity for the political discourse and the candidates of today to engage with Latinos,” Esparza said. “It should be on issues of economics, on jobs, on education, on housing, on health care, and not on immigration.”
