Hispanics are not political trophies, and the Democrats are not entitled to our votes.

As a Hispanic Republican, I am beyond tired of hearing the Democrats pander to my community as though we are incapable of seeing for ourselves how disastrous their radical policies have been for every other group they've tried to "help."

Time and time again, the Democrat Party has assumed that Hispanics support their stances on immigration, crime and welfare. They're so confident of our votes that they even think we'll embrace an Irishman from Texas with a Hispanic-sounding nickname.

But what if we don't want to be ruled by demagogues with bad ideas?

For all their accusations of racism and discrimination, the Democrats insultingly assume that the vast majority of Latinos aspire to nothing more than government welfare. That much was made obvious when President Barack Obama targeted Hispanics with Spanish-language, telenovela-style ads that encouraged them to sign up for food stamps.

I don't know who the Democrats have been polling, but the Hispanics I know want good jobs, not government handouts. That's exactly what we're getting from President Donald Trump.

Under the policies of the current administration, including tax cuts for middle-class workers, the Hispanic unemployment rate has dropped to 4.5 percent, the lowest figure on record.

The president's policies are also encouraging entrepreneurship in our communities — the surest route to upward mobility. According to a recent study by Biz2Credit, the average annual revenue of businesses with Latino owners jumped by 26.5 percent between 2016 and 2018.

Hispanics are building wealth with Trump in office, but the Democrats seem to think we should all be on welfare.

The Democrats also believe that Hispanic Americans should be outraged by the idea of securing the border, and that we should blindly welcome open-border policies that reward and incentivize illegal immigration.

This is nothing more than a political stereotype invented by smug liberals, and it's a blatant insult to every immigrant who came to this country legally.

I know many of those immigrants personally. Some of them are members of my own family. Instead of violating the laws of the country they wanted to call home, they waited in line to receive legal status.

They have nothing in common with the line-skipping migrants who organize caravans to walk across our border and violate our laws. Democrats, however, believe that embracing this act of lawlessness entitles them to speak for all Hispanics.

Hispanics don't like violent criminals in their communities any more than you do. Every single Latino immigrant I know fears and detests the subhuman MS-13 animals who cross our border and slaughter innocent Hispanics in America.

Every single Latino immigrant I know is disgusted by the flow of drugs into our communities from Central and South America.

Every single Latino immigrant I know is fed up with dangerous criminals who continue to find their way into our country even after they have been deported.

Democrats are free to support radical lawlessness, but Hispanics don't have to be associated with their dangerous escapades.

Hispanics are not the monolithic progressive voting bloc that Democrats think we are. We are not political trophies to be won by any politician who patronizes us with promises of government handouts in hastily-memorized Spanish.

That is precisely why I predict that more of us will vote for Republicans this November than ever before. We must choose between the pandering class of Democrats that assumes our support and the job-producing, community-protecting class of Republicans that has earned it.

Steve Cortes is a political commentator and a White House Hispanic Advisory Council member. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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