With Latinos emerging as America’s fastest growing population group – and increasingly eligible to vote in pivotal electoral states – this year’s key political races are expected to employ uniquely targeted campaign strategies to win their votes. But with growing anti-immigrant rhetoric in American politics, increased deportations and states enacting legal measures that some liken to racial profiling, the question is: Who will Latinos support?

A noted panel of U.S.-Mexico scholars will address this subject Thursday, March 29, during “Elections, the Law and Languages at the Border,” part of SMU’s continuing interdisciplinary “Migration Matters” series that runs through April 26. The discussion, free and open to the public, will be 5:30–7:30 p.m. at SMU’s McCord Auditorium, 306 Dallas Hall.

Featured speakers will be Luis Fraga, director of the Diversity Research Institute, Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement and political science professor at the University of Washington; Luis Plascencia, social and behavioral sciences professor at Arizona State University and John Lipski, professor of Spanish linguistics at Pennsylvania State University.

“Many of our students will be voting in a national election for the very first time, and our two major political parties are already asking for their votes based specifically on immigration and border policy issues,” says “Migration Matters” coordinator Jason Gonzales Sae-Saue, an English professor in SMU Dedman College of Humanities & Sciences who specializes in Chicano/a literature.

“This panel will teach them how to recognize the ways politicians solicit their ballots at state and national levels based on key border topics,” he says. “The panel also will highlight how our students must regard contemporary immigration and border debates historically, and to learn to recognize how current policy issues cannot be separated from more than a century of U.S.-Mexico relations.”

Fraga notes that it is now undisputed by leaders in both the Republican and Democratic parties that Hispanic/Latino voters are among the critical contributors to any presidential election strategy. “Their population growth in such key states as California, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada has led to increased rates of registration and voting that can make them crucial to victories for either party.”

There is no Democratic strategy to win the White House that is not grounded in winning California, he explains. “Latino voters are critical to a Democrat winning there, and, with very few exceptions, they are why California is now consistently a Democratic state.” Similarly, “there is no Republican strategy to win the White House that does not include Florida, and, increasingly, Hispanic voters in that state determine the outcome of who wins.”

John Lipski is expected to highlight how immigration, geographical proximity between the U.S. and Mexico, the U.S. annexation of Spanish speaking territories, and U.S. labor programs have resulted in more than 40 million native Spanish speakers residing in this country. “Spanish is not just the idiom of immigrants, but rather it is the primary language for many U.S. Americans – and generally a defining one for the United States,” Sae-Saue says.