Romney Courts Hispanics at Univision Forum

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney participated in a "Meet the Candidate"conversation with Univision News on Sept. 19 in Florida.

This was Romney's latest effort to have the Hispanic voting block become committed to the Republican party.

Overall, Latinos make up 13.1 percent of Florida's more than 11.2 million registered voters. Among Latino registered voters, 452,619 are registered as Republicans, making up 11.1 percent of all Republican registered voters. And 564,513 Latino registered voters are registered as Democrats, representing 12.4 percent of all Democratic registered voters.

Romney fielded questions about several questions from hosts, Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas, the anchors of Univision's national evening newscast "Noticiero Univision."

While Romney has not given a clearcut immigration plan, he has said the nearly 11 million immigrants will have to self-deport if he becomes commander-in-chief.

"I believe that people make their own choices as to whether they want to go home, and that's what I mean by self-deportation," Romney said. "People decide whether they want to go back to their country of origin and get in line legally to come to this country. Look, legal immigration is critical to this country. I love legal immigration."

Romney failed to take a position about the Arizona law that would require legal immigrants to provide papers in case they're arrested or stopped by police for any reason.

Romney was also asked about safe-sex marriage.

"My view is this, that individuals should be able to pursue a relationship of love and respect, and raise a family as they would choose," Romney said. :I would like to have the term "marriage" continue to be associated with a relationship between one man and one woman. And that certainly doesn't prevent two people of the same gender living in a loving relationship together, having a domestic partnership, if you will. I can see rights, such as hospital visitation rights, and similar types of things, being provided to those individuals. But marriage for me continues to be a relationship between a man and a woman."

Romney was given the opportunity to address the crowd and said he was he was "concerned about America."

"I'm concerned about the direction of America," Romney said. "I'm concerned about the fact that we've gone for over 50 months with unemployment above 10 percent among Hispanic-Americans. I'm concerned about the fact that so many young Hispanic Americans dropout of high school, don't get the kind of education they need for the skills that they have to have for tomorrow. It's a critical time for our country. Washington is broken. I will go to Washington and with every ounce of my energy bring this country together."

Hispanics are the minority that grows the fastest in the United States. They're more than 50 million in the country. That's more than 16 percent of the total population. There are more than 23 million of Hispanics that can vote. However, only half of them are actually going to vote in our next election in November.

The president's deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, issued Team Obama's response to Romney's appearance.

"Tonight, Mitt Romney continued to demonstrate why Hispanic Americans don't trust him. Whether it's raising taxes on the middle class to pay for another millionaire tax cut, repealing Obamacare and leaving as many as 9 million Hispanic Americans without health insurance or doubling down on asking immigrants to self-deport, Mitt Romney is wrong on issues of importance to the Hispanic community. On critical issues, he continued to refuse to answer any of the tough questions or provide any specifics on what he'd do as president. We are just two weeks away from the first presidential debate, where the American people will demand more than vague answers and empty platitudes. It's time for Mitt Romney to come clean and get specific about his policies."