Thread: Latino advocacy groups roll out voter registration drive

Latino advocacy groups roll out voter registration drive
Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Claudia Galarza, a 25-year-old school secretary in Pittsburg, became a U.S. citizen in January and is eager to cast the first vote of her life for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary in February.

"I really want to make a difference," said Galarza, who came here from Mexico at the age of 6. "My main concern is the war, because I believe it's messing up the economy. The second one would be immigration, to help some of the people who've been here a long time that don't have any documents."

Galarza is among hundreds of thousands of new U.S. citizens who are the focus of a high-profile voter registration drive being rolled out Wednesday by several national Latino advocacy groups who sense a historic opportunity to dramatically increase Latino voting strength for the 2008 presidential election.

The campaign will build on a surge in new citizenship applications over the past year, driven in part by the huge immigrant rights marches in the spring of 2006 and in part by a steep jump in the citizenship application fee this summer.

"We're at a fork in the road - we've got to take it," said William Ramos, director of the Washington, D.C., office of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, paraphrasing Yogi Berra. "The fork is: Do we as a community realize the power we have in participation, or do we stay dormant? We showed we had the power in mobilizing through the marches. We said, 'Hoy marchamos, mañana votamos.' ('Today we march, tomorrow we vote.') Well, this is mañana."

Latinos comprised almost 6 percent of voters nationally in the 2006 midterm election. But Latinos make up close to 9 percent of eligible voters, and their participation still lags behind voter turnout in other racial and ethnic groups.

Ramos' group partnered with the National Council of La Raza and major Spanish-language newspapers and television networks to motivate hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speaking immigrants who are legal permanent residents to become naturalized citizens.

The number of applications received by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services passed 1.1 million for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, up 55 percent from the year before. Citizenship petitions continued to surge even after the 69 percent fee increase went into effect at the end of July.

Annual citizenship applications have only exceeded 1 million twice before in the last century - in 1996 and 1997 - after the passage of California's Proposition 187, a measure widely viewed as anti-immigrant by Latinos, who were spurred to become voters.

Now the nonpartisan Latino advocacy groups hope to encourage the new citizens, as well as young U.S.-born Latinos and those who are infrequent voters, to get registered and go to the polls. To do so they're combining grassroots organizing with a stepped-up use of the airwaves.

"There will be local coalitions of organizations working together, and the media will be laid on top of that," said Lindsay Daniels, coordinator of NCLR's Latino empowerment and advocacy project. "We'll be giving people information about voter registration, why it's important, what the steps in the process are, explaining absentee voting, talking about deadlines, understanding voting machines, and giving information about where to go in the community to get help."

Spanish-language media, such as the Univision network, have an excellent track record in providing such public service information to their viewers, said Daniel. And many new citizens, although they know English, are still more comfortable getting news in Spanish.

The nation's immigration reform debate, and the desire for a more inclusive immigration policy, has motivated Latin American immigrants to naturalize in large numbers, said Louis DiSipio, a professor of political science at UC Irvine with a focus on Latinos and politics.

"It's a very clear parallel to the mid-'90s," said DiSipio. "We're going to see a couple more years of churning on immigration (legislation). And the constant news reports of somebody saying something offensive about immigrants encourages Latinos to apply for naturalization and to turn out in high numbers."

While immigration is an issue that pushes Latinos to vote, said NALEO's Ramos, polls have shown it's not the main concern Latino voters use in evaluating candidates.

"No. 1 is education, followed by jobs and the war in Iraq," he said. "The Latino community is not homogenous. We've matured as a voting community ... and this is not a population that either of the parties can take for granted."

So far, however, the presidential candidates, campaigning in states like New Hampshire and Iowa with few Latino voters, have paid little attention to their concerns. Earlier primaries in New York, California and other states with large Latino populations may give those voters a little more clout in the presidential race, but they're more likely to play a decisive role in swing states like New Mexico and Florida, said DiSipio.

"In state and local elections, it's quite possible you'll get a couple new Latino members of Congress," he said. "But I see Latino political gains as more gradual. Over the last 20 years, there have been dramatic gains, but they've not come at one single point."

That's not deterring Galarza, however. She got help with her citizenship petition from the Oakland-based Spanish Speaking Citizens' Foundation, a partner with NALEO and NCLR in the naturalization and voter campaigns, and she's bent on using her new franchise.

"There are so many of us immigrants," she said. "We're here, and this is our home. I think they should become citizens, so they can vote and be heard."

Applications for U.S. citizenship
2006: 730,600

2007: 1,132,000

Fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

Email Tyche Hendricks at thendricks@sfchronicle.com.
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Can someone vote after they've applied for citizenship but not yet become a citizen?

Originally Posted by ourcountrynottheirs

Can someone vote after they've applied for citizenship but not yet become a citizen?

Good question, I do not know. I would hope that you couldn't vote until you were actually a citizen.

I would have every single one of these applicants stand there with police on hand ready to ARREST and JAIL ANY APPLICANT THAT WAS NOT A US CITIZEN ALONG WITH THE PERSON GIVING THEM PERMISSION TO VOTE

Guys
if we work hard enough this year the only votes
those OBL canidates will get is the criminal ones

"I really want to make a difference," said Galarza, who came here from Mexico at the age of 6. "My main concern is the war, because I believe it's messing up the economy. The second one would be immigration, to help some of the people who've been here a long time that don't have any documents."

Ok- I agree that the war in Iraq is a main issue of concern. BUT, "Helping people who've been here a long time that don't have any documents"?- This goes to show where their priorities lay. To help their own people until they are all ONE HISPANIC NATION. Never mind about being a citizen, learning the history and culture of America, assimilating, learning about the Constitution and our laws.