Catholics who came to this country were generally ethnic minorities at the time they arrived (first Irish, later Poles, Italians, etc.) As such they usually ended up as manual labor on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. Often they were looked down upon and not treated particularly well by their WASPish bettors. In such an environment, appeals to class warfare resonated heavily, ultimately resulting in strong Catholic support for FDR, Unions, Father Coughlin, and other avenues of “getting even” with the power elites.
Since most Catholics settled in northern industrial cities, they also embedded themselves in machine politics, and took full advantage of the patronage system.
What amazed me is how stubbornly persistent these attitudes have been. My Irish family has been in the country for over 130 years. Many went on to great professional success as lawyers, etc. Yet they still retain the old Democrat voting patterns. When pressed they will generally answer “Because my grandparents did. Because they’re for the WORKIN’ MAN!” Whether that is in any way true or not.
As a child I was stunned to hear older Irish Catholic relatives gathered around the kitchen table, bashing Andrew Carnegie with blunt and profane language. Nearly fifty years after he had died, mind you. Despite his libraries and all his contributions to Pittsburgh. They just dwelt upon old family tales about what a blood-sucking Scrooge he was as a boss.
It is only with my generation that at least some of us have seen the folly of all that, become Conservatives, and left the Democrat Party. But they still have more than enough straight-party voters.
I have no reason to believe that if they get amnesty, the new wave of Hispanic Catholics will be any different.
My dad came from southwest Missouri, growing up on a farm that harvested more rocks than any other crop. Along comes the Depression, and with the CCC camps and WPA, you would have thought that they would have become die-hard Dems. Not so. The family had been forced to leave the county they lived in at the beginning of the Civil War because of attacks by southern sympathizers. However they had voted in the past, the family was against session and therefore became hard core Republicans. Absolutely detested FDR and all Dems that followed him.
When Catholics, white, Hispanic or whatever, move to a different Christian denomination, we usually see them also abandon liberal anti-God, anti-American, even internationalist politics.