The Political Awakening of Immigrants

Por Adolfo Flores

Diego Ortiz wasn't as involved with issues affecting the immigrant community as he is today. Granted the California State University, of Northridge student understood the issues, being an immigrant from El Salvador, but he never did much about it.

The spring marches in Downtown Los Angeles in 2006 against the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 (H.R. 4437) marked a turning point for the now president of the Central American United Students Association at CSUN.

"Before the march I wasn't really active if you compared me now to then there's a major change," Ortiz said. "I started seeing what was going on and that I can actually make a difference."

Now apart from educating CAUSA members, taking part in protests and educating those around him on immigrant issues, Ortiz also spends a lot of his weekends volunteering at grassroots organizations that cater to immigrants.

H.R. 4437, also known as the "Sensenbrenner Bill", passed by the House of Representatives in late 2005, would've made felons of undocumented immigrants and anyone who helped them enter or stay in the United States.

Millions marched throughout the United States the following spring to protest the bill and ask for comprehensive immigration reform. The bill eventually died in the Senate, but it left behind a sense of empowerment to those who took part in the marches against it.

"I really think that just the display of the potential power even though we haven't seen anything like that since made people understand themselves differently after that," said Ruth Milkman Director of the Institute for Labor and Employment at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

Milkman who took part in the March and May protests in Los Angeles noticed that in the weeks following the marches immigrants realized the important role they played and more importantly the potential power that they carried as a whole.

"Living here in Los Angeles where you encounter immigrants in all kinds of service occupations all over the place I felt like people were just lifting their heads higher," Milkman recalled.

Threats to the immigrant community like H.R. 4437 aren't new. Back in 1994 voters approved California Proposition 187; it denied undocumented immigrants social services, health care and public education.

More than 70,000 people took to the streets of Downtown Los Angeles on Oct. 15 of that year to protest Prop. 187. Lawsuits against the proportions also ensued causing its implementation to halt, until it died in 1998.

"After Prop. 187 I think we saw some of the same processes unfold (as the marches of 2006)," Milkman said. "The dynamic was the same, the threat of deportation and the stigmatization that comes from this increasingly hostile reception that immigrants encounter when they come here is a stimulus to political activism and involvement."

Apart from marching there has been a surge in naturalization applications in the past years. In 2007 the United States Center for Immigration Services received nearly 1.4 million applications, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) titled "Behind the Naturalization Backlog: Causes, Context, and Concerns."

This increase in applications has caused the processing time for naturalization applications to rise from under seven months to eighteen months.

The study attributes this backlog to the fee increase, "heightened interest in the 2008 elections, citizenship campaigns by advocacy groups, and the charged political climate surrounding the immigration policy debate."

There have been many efforts by community leaders to mobilize newcomers to the political process, where nominee's and elected officials failed. One such national effort was by several national Latino organizations and the Spanish-language media to mobilize thousands of potential Spanish-speaking voters. 

The campaign was broken into two parts the first Ya Es Hora ¡Ciudadanía!, helped one million eligible legal permanent residents become citizens in 2007. Ya Es Hora ¡Ve y Vota!, the second phase, will try to mobilize more than a half million Latino voters this year.

The National Council of La Raza, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, Entrevista Communications, among others joined forces to launch its extensive media outreach and field activities to mobilize voters.

"In 2004, 16 million Latinos could have voted in (the presidential) election," said Arturo Vargas, Executive Director of the NALEO Educational Fund last fall. "Only 7.6 (million) voted, we're here to make sure that does not happen again."

 A 2006 report issued by Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugee's found that one-third, 12.4 million, of all United States immigrants are eligible to vote.

"Given these naturalized records, demographers project that immigrants will represent a considerable larger share of the electorate in the next two decades," according to "New Americans Vote! Advancing Social Change in Strengthening U.S. Democracy."

While numbers are a driving force it's not the only factor that makes immigrants important in regards to politics, Milkman said, referring to what sociologist call the selection hypothesis.

"The people who immigrate here tend to be a little different from the average person,"
Milkman said before adding that fighting for civil rights is a part of what makes them different. "It's not the poorest Mexicans who come to the U.S. its people with ganas, people who have ambition, who want to move up and often have a better skill set than the average person."

Louis DeSipio, professor of political science and chair of Chican@ Studies at University of California Irvine, has been studying Latino political behavior and the transition from immigrant to citizen for twenty years.

"Latinos want a more expansive government, they want their government to do more and they're willing to pay for it," DeSipio said. "Overtime the effect of an expanded Latino vote will be to reinvest in education, to reinvest in public services in a way that really hasn't been the norm since the late 1970's, early 1980's." 

This conviction benefits the United States, DeSipio said, because we rely on the political vitality of immigrants. Both Milkman and DeSipio agree that immigrants rediscover American values and have core American values more deeply held than do the native born.

As far as the impact of the Latino vote's impact on comprehensive immigration reform in the upcoming elections, DeSipio said, that even if every eligible Latino, including the ones who are in the process of naturalizing their vote will not unseat those in the House and Senate who oppose comprehensive immigration reform.

A summary of the "New Dimensions of Latino Participation" conference Oct. 2006, which assembled a US Senator, academics from various institutions, politic consultants, and leaders from Latino organizations, found that immigration doesn't rank high on the list of Latino concerns.

"You can't forget the traditional ones: education, social services and community safety," said conference summary co-author DeSipio. "Those are issues that have always been important in Latino immigrant communities and they didn't disappear with the protests a couple of years ago."

Navigating the process that is participating in American politics is not easy regardless of nationality, it will take community leaders to ensure that immigrants do turn out to vote said DeSipio.

"We shouldn't just assume that if immigrants were pissed off two years ago, which they certainly were and that they're naturalized that they're going to vote in November," he said.

In California the foreign-born voting eligible population increased by 23.8% between 2000 and 2006, according to a 2008 Election Profile on California by the MPI. In 2006 Latino's represented the 22.9 percent of the voting eligible population.

"Immigrants and Voting: 2008 Election Profile California," further stated that in the 2004 election 50 percent of foreign-born citizens voted.

Resources to mobilize immigrants into the political process will not be focused in Democratic states like California or Texas, but rather states where the race will be close like Nevada or Florida.

"That's tactically the right thing to do," said DeSipio, "but it overlooks the fact that to get immigrants into the political process they need to be mobilized."

Apart from accessibility Latino's haven't voted at the rates they could because they can't relate to a lot of the candidates, said Executive Director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), Gabriela Lemus. 

"The number of Latino elected officials does not match the numbers of the demographic, they're not representative yet," Lemus said. "We don't have sufficient representation in all levels of government and that's an important first step."

From 1996 to 2006 there has been a 37 percent increase in the total number of Latino's serving in elected office, stated a study detailing the progress of Latino elected officials published by NALEO Educational Fund released in 2007. 

"At the same time (Latino's) are not exactly welcomed at the table," Lemus said before stating that it creates frustration for. "It's not like everybody is jumping for joy at all the Latino's that are trying to get involved in the system."

Maria Elena Durazo executive secretary–treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said that looking at the number of Latino elected officials is one way of measuring success, but that shouldn't be the only factor.

"Lets celebrate the election of Latino's to political office but we shouldn't leave it there we have to continue demand even of them what our agenda is," Durazo said. "So I'm not going to measure success just on the basis of how many politicians we elect we have to measure success on how they vote and if they're tough enough to be leaders."

In order to harness the power of the immigrant vote and ultimately having immigrants reap the benefits an agenda that, claims Durazo, demands the following is essential: access to good quality education, good jobs, training, immigration reform and a halt to the criminalization of Latinos.

The labor movement has also organized another type of immigrant into the political process and that is the undocumented immigrant. To describe undocumented immigrants' participation in politics, Sociologist Milkman, referred to this phenomenon as non-citizen citizenship.

Undocumented immigrants involved in campaigns are very passionate and communicate the issues well with other low-wage and Latino voters, to which Durazo said is the reason why they are so effective. 
 
"We in labor have trained immigrant workers themselves to become the actual organizers, to be the coordinators, to be the ones that run the operation so they're not just foot soldiers they're actually running the campaigns," she added.

The May Day marches occurred once again this year, where more than 8,500 people marched for comprehensive immigration reform  and a halt to workplace raids.

Ortiz, president of CAUSA, returned from the protests with mixed feelings: Jealousy, after seeing how organized other groups were compared with CAUSA, and motivated to help his Latino brothers and sisters.

Adolfo Flores/ El Nuevo Sol

"Fort-six percent of the labor force in LA County are immigrants," said Maria Elena Durazo. "Numbers are a push factor and the economy depends more and more on immigrant workers."