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    Senior Member Virginiamama's Avatar
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    Illegal Immigrant Registers Voters in Alabama

    http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/in...art_river_home

    By Connor Sheets | csheets@al.com
    Email the author | Follow on Twitter
    on October 25, 2016 at 7:34 AM

    Late Sunday afternoon, as the sun hung low in the sky over the Green Park South trailer park in Pelham, a small crew of immigration advocates swept the neighborhood, clipboards and voter rolls in hand.
    The gathered organizers and volunteers were there to knock on the doors of immigrant and Latino residents as part of a statewide initiative called Alabama Vota. Their goal was to register people who are eligible to do so to vote on Nov. 8, and to take steps to ensure that the community's registered voters make it to the polls.
    And they had to move quickly. Monday was the last day Alabama residents were permitted to register to vote in this year's election.
    I never stop registering people. I always have the forms in my car and always register people to vote

    Shoe-leather advocacy
    Alabama Vota's mission is important to organizers like Carlos Ramos, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who illegally crossed the border into the United States in 2000 and has been here ever since. Now settled in Alexander City, Ramos says "the hope" of boosting his community's participation and representation in local and national politics is what has kept him inspired to do this work since 2014.
    "One day, if everybody votes, we can find the right person to run the country and help us – help my community," the 43-year-old said.
    "It's something I believe in, because there's too many people who don't believe in voting, but I try to tell them that it's really important, maybe for them or maybe for their family or the next generation."

    The shoe-leather advocacy is no easy task, as most of the people who answered the door Sunday were undocumented immigrants who are therefore not allowed to vote in the United States.
    But that has not discouraged the leaders of Alabama Vota from hitting the pavement dozens of times in recent months in hopes of inspiring ever more people to pull the lever in two weeks.
    The voter education, registration and motivation initiative operates under the umbrella of the statewide advocacy group Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ACIJ).
    Alabama Vota's goal was to register 600 people during its current campaign, a goal the group has met and exceeded. Between July and Friday, Alabama Vota registered 646 voters in mainly Latino and immigrant communities across the state, according to the group's statewide field coordinator, Jennifer Harrell.
    'Civic engagement and empowerment'
    Sunday's work began with a planning session in Alabama Vota's headquarters on the second floor of the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama (¡HICA!)'s Homewood office building. Decorated with protest signs, photographs of past rallies and images of Monarch butterflies – which the group has adopted as a symbol of migration – the space's tables and desks were stacked Sunday with educational fliers, promotional T-shirts and voter registration rolls.
    The rolls are key to Alabama Vota's strategy, as organizers use them to identify and target specific groups of voters, allowing them to make educated assumptions about which homeowners have not been registered and to pinpoint which homes are linked to registered voters who can be nudged to go to the polls next month.
    Ramos, Harrell, and Alabama Vota civic engagement organizers Victor Spezzini and Justin Coley met in the office Sunday to decide upon the exact plan they would use before they drove out to Pelham.
    "So the strategy for Green Park is to finish up what we did last time and then go door-to-door," Coley said, gesturing to his marked-up voter roll. "So you're highlighting the ones that were not home, and it's that plus the ones we didn't get to."
    An Alabama Vota organizer's phone displayed a series of text messages related to the group's progress canvassing a Pelham trailer park Sunday in hopes of registering immigrant and Latino residents to vote and urging them to get to the polls Nov. 8. (Connor Sheets | csheets@al.com)
    Connor Sheets | csheets@al.com
    Harrell expounded on what they would do when they hit the streets.
    "We have a list of already-registered voters, we're going to knock on their doors and re-engage, make sure they know the voting date, see if they're going to vote, give them sample ballots," she explained. "We'll also be asking if they have transportation to the polls or if they need rides."
    The canvassers also engaged in "randomly selected blind canvassing," where they knocked on the doors of properties in the area that were not listed in the rolls as the homes of registered voters. Harrell instructed them to see if the residents who answered were eligible to vote and registered in Alabama, and then to engage in voter education and registration as needed.
    "The ending goal of all this is civic engagement and empowerment," Harrell explained.
    'Eligible para votar'
    "Buenas tardes."
    "Como estas."
    "Me llamo Carlos."
    "Eres gente eligible para votar?"
    These were the first four sentences Ramos said to Nicolas Garrido, a man who answered a mobile home door in Green Park South on Sunday.
    The man said good afternoon back; he was good; he gave Ramos his name. And he disclosed that he is in fact not eligible to vote – he is indocumentado, sin papeles, un inmigrante ilegal, as other people put it at different points Sunday.
    "No tengo un numero de Seguridad Social ... Yo no tengo los papeles," was how Garrido chose to put it.
    "My family is eligible to vote but I don't know if they're registered," Garrido told Ramos in Spanish. "I'm not sure if they're going to vote, but now we're interested because of you."
    Ramos gave him several Alabama voter registration forms and other voter education documents. Then he moved on to the next trailer.
    It's painstaking work, but Alabama Vota's leaders and volunteers see it as vital to the survival of Alabama's Hispanic immigrant communities.
    Launched in 2011 as a relatively modest effort to fight back against Alabama's H.B. 56 anti-immigration law, the ACIJ has become a statewide coalition of immigration advocacy groups.
    As just one of ACIJ's many initiatives, Alabama Vota draws on immigrants, volunteers and local college students for support.
    Alabama Vota organizer Carlos Ramos and volunteer Noel Espinal canvassed a Pelham trailer park Sunday in hopes of registering immigrant and Latino residents to vote and urging them to get to the polls Nov. 8. (Connor Sheets | csheets@al.com)
    Connor Sheets | csheets@al.com
    Noel Espinal and several other Samford University freshmen came along Sunday to volunteer with Alabama Vota. They were mainly there to get credit for school, but they came away with an experience they variously described as "eye-opening," "important" and "awesome."
    Espinal, 18, hails from West Palm Beach, Florida. She said the day of canvassing showed her how important it is for U.S. citizens to appreciate what they have.
    "I find it interesting how there's a lot of people who live here and aren't able to vote, and how a lot of people who are able to vote don't realize what a privilege it is," she said in between knocking on doors Sunday evening.
    "As American citizens, it's our privilege and our duty to vote and participate in the political process, and a lot of people – especially young people – don't realize how important that is."
    Despite several years of coordinated efforts by groups like the ACIJ, 2016 state data shows that only 0.81 percent of active and inactive Alabama voters are Hispanic. That's an increase of .14 percent over last year's numbers, and more than double the .39 percent of voters who were Hispanic as of 2008.
    But with only 17,616 of an estimated 67,000 voting-age Latino Alabamians registered to vote as of 2014, Alabama Vota has its work cut out for it. That workload will only grow over time, as the Institute for Southern Studies issued a report earlier this year that predicted another 67,000 Latinos will turn 18 and become eligible to vote in Alabama by 2032.


    Still, as state numbers show that Alabama's active Hispanic voting population has increased from 11,028 in 2008 to 24,649 today, advocates see that the community's ability to influence local and national politics will increase if voter education and registration efforts can keep up with the growth.
    That's one of the main motivating factors that Ramos says keeps him engaged in voter registration and education efforts year-round, whether or not it's an election year.
    "I never stop registering people. I always have the forms in my car and always register people to vote," he said. "The campaign ends in November, but I'm still going to keep doing it."

    Equal rights for all, special privileges for none. Thomas Jefferson

  2. #2
    Administrator ALIPAC's Avatar
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    Thank you for posting this! Ill place a link to this article under today's email alert!

    http://www.alipac.us/f8/illegals-go-...ground-339312/

    W
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

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