Increased immigration of Hispanics is a vital, urgent concern to Hispanic leaders: it means more money and power for them. Those leaders - together with those who want more immigration for other reasons - try to convince political candidates (such as Mitt Romney) that if only they'd go weak on immigration Hispanics would flock to support them, en masse.

Now, the Associated Press is admitting something others have known for a long time: the concerns of Hispanics in general are not fully in sync with the concerns of Hispanic leaders. From "No one-size-fits-all approach to wooing Hispanics" [1]:

The reasons that Hispanics give for choosing between Obama and Romney are just as diverse as the countries that they or their ancestors once called home, suggesting there's no one-size-fits-all approach to courting the nation's fastest-growing minority group.

The Latino vote isn't monolithic or, really, a voting bloc. It includes a range of people with varying opinions. Among them are Republican-leaning Cubans in Florida, new Mexican immigrants and longtime descendants of Spanish settlers in the Southwest, and Democratic-tilting Puerto Ricans in the East.

Immigration policy would seem to be the natural top issue for these voters, except that nearly two-thirds of Hispanics are born in the U.S. Their priorities are the same as the general population — jobs, the economy, education and health care...

...Like most minorities, Hispanics traditionally have leaned Democratic. But a recent Pew Research poll indicates that Hispanics also are the fastest-growing group of independent voters, with 46 percent now shunning a party label compared with 31 percent six years ago. Such results only underscore how diverse Hispanics are and the challenges for the political parties...

...Mindful of the diversity among Hispanics, Obama has custom-tailored his outreach, including tweaking Spanish dialect for different regions.

The article does verge a bit into stock complaints about Romney's (non-existent) "anti-immigration stance", but it's refreshing that the AP finally admits something we've known for a long time: the Hispanic vote isn't monolithic.

Please take a few moments and send this post (short link below) to Romney's advisors on Twitter to help them get up to speed.

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[1] Hosted at AP: peekURL.com/zrvZD2F
Hosted at CBS News: peekURL.com/zmAzQsM
Main author: Jeri Clausing
Contributing authors: Laura Wides Munoz (see that link), Kristen Wyatt, Amanda Lee Myers