There are countless ways to measure the rebirth of my hometown of South Bend, but one of the most delicious signs is the growth of La Rosita ice cream shop on Western Avenue. After immigrating from Mexico to Chicago, Rosalina and Juan Cervera found their way to South Bend intending to start a restaurant. They wound up opening a paleteria that has become a vibrant community gathering place on the west side, emblematic of the vital role that South Bend’s Latino community has played in the life of our city. And that, in turn, is a microcosm of the essential role the Latino community holds in American society.

As the largest ethnic group in America, Latinos are a key part of the economic engine for our country. They are 50 percent more likely to start a business than their white counterparts. Latino-owned companies grow faster than companies owned by other groups.1

Latino communities uphold and embody the values that make us American. Sylvia Mendez and her family helped lay the groundwork for equal education across the country when she integrated her school in Southern California. Labor leaders from the Latino community helped organize one of the most successful grassroots boycotts of the 20th Century: the Delano Grape Pickers Strike of the late-1960s.2 Justice Sonia Sotomayor has admirably upheld our constitutional values on the Supreme Court. Trailblazing educators like Eduardo Padrón, President Emeritus of Miami Dade College—one of the largest universities in the country, where Latinos make up over 70 percent of the student body—fiercely advocate for inclusion.3 And business owners like the Cerveras are strengthening our local communities and economies across America. With a profound commitment to family, community, entrepreneurship, and service, Latinos profoundly shape the trajectory of the United States.

Despite these contributions, Latinos have been subjected to relentless and bigoted attacks by this President and his administration. A man who launched his campaign slurring Mexican immigrants and questioning the impartiality of a Mexican-American judge has since unleashed a crude crusade of cruelty and harassment, and inspired others to do the same. Emboldened by this officially-sanctioned prejudice, hate crimes against Latinos soared by more than 20 percent last year.4 And most devastatingly, in August, the Latino community was targeted and attacked when a gunman murdered 22 people in an El Paso Walmart. This act of terrorism continues to haunt Latinos throughout the country.5

To meet this moment, it is up to us to unify as a people to ensure that the next era is one where all Latinos feel they are empowered and know that they belong.

Climate change, pollution, and environmental degradation often strike Latino communities first, compounding existing inequities in income, health, and disaster preparedness.15 Half of Latinos live in the most polluted cities in the country,16 and even more live in one of three states heavily affected by extreme weather events: sea-level rise and hurricanes in Florida, heat waves in Texas, and droughts in California.17 As President, Pete will advance climate change mitigation and environmental policies that center the lives of communities of color that have so often been pushed to the sidelines.

• Support an environmental equity approach to policy-making that considers the impact of all policies on the health of communities.
• Invest in access to clean water. Pete will increase the USDA’s Water and Waste Disposal Loan and Grant Program by $10 billion over 10 years to provide more funding to underserved communities. He will also triple funding for the EPA to clean up toxic waste sites and contaminated water, as well as ensure safe drinking water for all.
• Combat air pollution and strengthen air quality standards. He will also reinstate the Obama-era Chemical Disaster Rule to protect communities from life-threatening industrial disasters.
• Streamline access to disaster relief for Latino communities. Pete is proud to be the first candidate to release a standalone disaster preparedness policy, Resilient Communities. As part of this comprehensive plan, Pete will create a Disaster Preparedness Commission within his first 100 days. This Commission will pay particular attention to island and coastal regions, including Florida and Puerto Rico.
• Protect public lands for future generations.
  

Immigration is a vital component of the American story and is particularly important to Latinos, who make up 44 percent of our nation’s current immigrant population.21 Further, millions of Latinos live in mixed-status households, where one or more family members is not a U.S. citizen.22 A majority of Latinos–including citizens and those with other lawful status–worry about deportation.23 This fear is even taking a toll on the health of Latino youth.24

Our immigration system has been in dire need of reform long before the current administration began implementing its cruel and racist policies against immigrants. While the U.S. economy and our communities continue to depend on immigration and the benefits that it brings, our country suffers from the longstanding policies excluding so many from full participation. Pete will soon release a full immigration agenda that focuses on the range of needs of immigrant communities across America. To support Latino immigrants, Pete will:

• Create a path to citizenship for the approximately 11 million undocumented people living in the United States who call this country home. Pete will support legislation that provides a mechanism to legal status and ultimately citizenship. This path would also be available for people with temporary protections—such as DACA and Temporary Protected Status (TPS)—who have lived here for decades. While working on a necessary legislative fix, Pete will restore and extend temporary DACA and TPS protections rescinded by the current administration.
• Honor the commitments of immigrants who serve in the Armed Forces. Pete will protect immigrant service members from deportation, as well as provide expedited and no-cost naturalization services to eligible Armed Forces members.
• Accelerate reunification of families. Pete will reduce the backlog of family-based visas and increase the number of visas issued for family reunification each year.
• Take some forms of immigration relief out of the courts. Pete will allow USCIS to adjudicate certain types of cases overwhelming the system and encourage ICE to agree to relief from removal in certain cases outside of the courtroom.
• Update the list of removable offenses.
  

Family-friendly policies help children grow in healthy environments, support parents in finding the work-life balance that works best for their family, and ensure seniors can age in place and with dignity.25 Despite that, the United States has among the least family-friendly policies across the industrialized world.26 This reality disproportionately affects Latino families, whose median family net worth is one-sixth of white families.27 Pete is committed to ushering in a new era for Latino families.

• Ensure working Latinos can retire with dignity. Pete’s administration will fully protect Social Security for the next generation without cutting benefits by ensuring the most fortunate pay their fair share. He will also establish a Public Option 401(k) that includes a Rainy Day Account to help families weather financial emergencies.
• Transform our long-term services and supports system to help Latino seniors age securely.

America’s education system takes already vast disparities and too often makes them worse. Pete’s administration will invest in students early and prioritize equity—lifting up Latino students, and all students, so that they can reach their full potential.

Students of color, students with disabilities, and students from low-income families are consistently denied access to the support they need to thrive. At the same time, too many state and local funding policies increase disparities by providing fewer resources for our lowest-income schools.28 Pete will:

• Ensure universal access to quality pre-K for every American child.
• Triple funding for Title I schools.
• Invest in English language learners and bilingualism.
• Increase diversity in teaching by doubling the number of educators of color in 10 years. Pete will eliminate the wage gap for Title I teachers, establish the Education Access Corps to train and retain future educators, and require new transparency about racial diversity in the teacher workforce.
• Level the playing field outside of school. Pete’s administration will ensure all children have access to after-school K-12 and summer learning opportunities, including in art, sports, and STEM education.

More and more Americans see college as a privilege for the wealthy, out of reach for working- and middle-class students. Today, Latinos are about 10 percent less likely to graduate from college within six years.29 And most Latino college students work over 30 hours per week to cover the cost of their studies, including 32 percent who work over 40 hours per week.30 As shared in his Opportunity Agenda, Pete will make critical investments that focus on equity to increase college access and completion.

• Make college more affordable. Pete will make college free for lower-income students with free tuition and support for basic living expenses, including housing and food. He will also make college affordable for all students by providing tuition subsidies for students from families earning up to $150,000.
• Get students on the path to college early by notifying high schoolers about their Pell Grant eligibility starting in 9th grade and completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for most students.
• Support college completion, not just enrollment. Pete will set a goal to achieve 10 million more graduates with high quality college degrees and credentials over the next decade. To achieve this, Pete will increase funding by $50 billion for Minority Serving Institutions, including Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and incentivize public colleges to improve completion outcomes, especially for students of color.31
• Make student loans more affordable. One in three Latino students who started college in 2004 defaulted on their student loans by 2016, compared to one in five non-Latino white borrowers.32 Pete will automatically enroll borrowers in affordable, income-driven repayment plans if they fall behind. He will cancel student debt for borrowers who attended unaffordable for-profit programs.
• Provide access to higher education for DACA recipients.
• Invest in our local communities by creating a $1 billion community college fund to address common barriers for college students.
• Expand and strengthen American apprenticeships through a $10 billion investment.
• Double annual investments in career and technical education programs in high schools and colleges.
  

The current administration’s efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act and roll back access to health care have already taken a toll on Latino health, which experts note “is now more endangered than ever.”33 Latino children’s uninsurance rate has increased,34 drug prices and premiums have skyrocketed, and health care outcomes are worsening for all Americans, especially Latinos.35 Further, significant inequities in health remain when it comes to access to quality care for Latinos compared to their white counterparts. Pete is committed to taking bold steps to transform our health care system by making it more affordable, equitable, and just.

• Drastically reduce drug prices for everyone. Pete’s drug pricing policies, shared in his Affordable Medicines for All plan, empowers the federal government to negotiate drug prices.
• Eliminate disparities in Medicaid funding for Puerto Rico.
• Eliminate the five-year waiting period for green card holders gaining access public health insurance programs.

Fueled by this administration’s racist rhetoric and immigration policies, Latino mental health has deteriorated significantly since 2016.37 This deterioration has taken place against the backdrop of a broken mental health care system and high stigma towards mental illness in the Latino community. To improve Latinos’ mental health, Pete will:

• Ensure access to comprehensive mental health services for everyone. Pete’s Healing and Belonging in America plan ​ will also reduce stigma by changing the narrative around mental health.
• Increase funding for culturally-respectful mental health services. Pete will invest in identifying and training future clinicians to ensure they are prepared to engage with communities in culturally-, linguistically-, and historically-appropriate ways.

Latinos in America are 3.1 times as likely to be incarcerated as white Americans, and 53 percent more likely to be convicted of a drug crime.38 They are more likely to be stopped by the police and, when stopped, are three times more likely to be searched than white Americans.39 As laid out in his Securing Justice plan for criminal justice reform, Pete is committed to reducing the number of people incarcerated in the United States, and ensuring that fewer Latino families are torn apart by these unfair and racist systems by reducing incarceration by 50 percent nationwide.

• On the federal level, eliminate incarceration for drug possession, reduce sentences for other drug offenses, and apply these reductions retroactively.
• Legalize marijuana and automatically expunge past convictions.
• Eliminate mandatory minimums.
• Direct the U.S. Sentencing Commission to explore sentencing caps for all crimes.
• End the criminalization of poverty and its link to incarceration.
• Develop incentives to encourage states to standardize and make public data available related to the use of force, line-of-duty deaths, policing activities (including traffic stops), officer safety and wellness, officer misconduct, arrests and charging, crime, and racial impact
  

• Build over two million new affordable housing units for people with low incomes.
• Ensure safe and stable homes for people who live in public housing. Pete will modernize and repair public housing.
• Ensure that rental assistance goes to all eligible families with children, expanding support to nearly five million families.

The homeownership gap between Latinos and white individuals has dramatically increased since the 2008 housing crisis, worsening a racial wealth gap.43 In 2016, the average Latino household held $6,300 in total wealth, compared to $140,500 for white households. Latinos are also nearly twice as likely as white people to rent their homes and are more likely to be displaced due to gentrification.44 To increase Latino homeownership and address these disparities, Pete will:

• Enable successful homeownership for up to one million new first-time homebuyers by investing $4 billion in matching funds to scale education and financing assistance programs.
• Prevent evictions and increase housing stability. Pete will establish an emergency assistance matching fund for states and municipalities to provide short-term rental assistance that keeps families in their homes, and provide them access to housing counseling services to support long-term stability.
• Combat discriminatory housing practices by expanding the Fair Housing Act to include protections against source-of-income discrimination, and reinstating the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule.
• Promote inclusive development and combat gentrification.
• End profiteering that hurts low-income tenants.

The Latino community is an integral force in pushing our nation toward achieving inclusive, progressive ideals. Pete’s administration will ensure Latino history and culture is embedded into American history and culture. He will:

• Support creating a national museum of the American Latino.
• Help document and celebrate Latino history and culture. Pete will provide funding and promote special exhibits and other activities to document and celebrate Latino history and the contributions of Latino individuals and communities.
• Expand the representation of Latino people and history in our National Parks System.