 |
Home | Search | Browse | About IPO | Staff | Links |
|
Home | Search | Browse | About IPO | Staff | Links |
|
BOOKS Developing a Latino electorate LATINOS COULD BECOME A SIGNIFICANT POLITICAL FORCE AS IMMIGRANTS BECOME CITIZENS AND VOTE Review essay by Rob Paral Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New Electorate by Louis DeSipio, University of Virginia Press, 1996. After the 1993 elections, 20 municipal officials took office in Cicero, Melrose Park and Summit. These winning candidates were Republican and Democrat, male and female, veterans and novices. But while Latinos make up more than 30 percent of the population in each of these Chicago suburbs, only one Latino was elected.
Indeed, there are few Latino elected
officials in municipal government in the
Chicago suburbs, though the Latino
population there is booming. During
the 1980s, the number of Latinos in the
suburbs grew 11 times faster than the
non-Latino population in that region.
Latinos increased their ranks by almost
80 percent, while the number of non-
Latinos grew by just 7 percent. Yet only
a half-dozen or so Latino elected officials can be found representing the
280, 000 suburban Latinos.
Latinos are making somewhat better
political inroads in Chicago: More than
one in five Chicagoans is a Latino and
seven Latino aldermen sit on the 50-
member Chicago City Council.
Explaining the shortage of Latino
elected officials and the limited impact
of the Latino vote may seem simple: As
a group, Latinos vote at rates dramatically lower than whites or blacks. Only
about 27 percent of Latino adults are
registered voters in Illinois, compared
to 66 percent of all whites and 65 percent of blacks.
But the low rate of Latino electoral
participation results from circumstances more complicated than a simple
failure of Latinos to show up at the voting booth. Fully 40 percent of Latino
adults in Illinois are not U.S. citizens,
compared to about 2 percent of whites
and 2 percent of blacks.
The fact that many Latinos are
immigrants who have not yet become
citizens is routinely lost on political
observers. Low Latino voting is often
(and ridiculously) ascribed to cultural
predispositions. In reality, Latino voting turnout largely reflects a structural
impediment: the process of becoming a
U.S. citizen.
Louis DeSipio, author of Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New
Electorate (published by the University
of Virginia Press, 1996), maintains that
Latinos could become a significant
force in American politics if they are
given the proper incentive to become
citizens and register to vote. DeSipio,
an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, argues that both
Democrats and Republicans should
take an interest in harnessing this
potentially huge block of voters, who
could become the fifth new electorate in
this century, following women, European ethnics, African Americans and
18-to 20-year-olds.
DeSipio draws upon two detailed
national surveys of the Latino population to make his case — the National
Latino Immigrant Survey and the
National Latino Political Survey, both
funded by the Ford Foundation and
both of which DeSipio helped implement. (For the record, DeSipio and I
are friends; we both worked in the
Washington, D.C., office of the National Association of Latino Elected and
Appointed Officials.)
He delineates Latino nonvoters into
three groups: registered citizens who
don't vote, nonregistered citizens and,
the largest group, noncitizen immigrants. Drawing on the survey data,
DeSipio points out that the first two
groups do not offer a large pool of
potential new voters, as their low
socioeconomic status is a powerful,
negative influence on their likelihood of
voting.
The third group — the noncitizens
34 ¦ October 1996 Illinois Issues
— also have low socioeconomic status.
But, DeSipio writes, many of them have
key characteristics predisposing them
to vote once they become citizens. For
example, some 34 percent are active in
community organizations and 45 percent were politically active in their
home countries.
DeSipio argues that a massive,
national citizenship campaign targeting
these noncitizens would foster a sense
of Latino unity and purpose, and translate into a serious political movement.
The momentum created by hundreds of
thousands of immigrants joining the
polity would spur all Latinos toward
greater political participation,
culminating in a Latino
electorate taking its place
among the major new electorates of this century. In Illinois, naturalization could
potentially create 275, 000 new
Latino voters.
DeSipio's book breaks
new ground in zeroing in on
the noncitizens as potential
voters. His analysis goes far in
explaining political change in
the half-dozen states —
including Illinois — that are
receiving large numbers of
Latino immigrants.
The two major political
parties in America are capable
of mobilizing Latino noncitizens to become citizens. DeSipio gives examples of the
Democratic Party winning the
partisan loyalty of earlier
waves of immigrants by assisting them with the naturalization process. Unfortunately,
neither party today makes a
comparable attempt to gain
the allegiance of new immigrant voters.
President Bill Clinton has
made an effort to promote
U.S. citizenship to immigrants
through a Citizenship USA
campaign managed by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service. Recently, the
Clinton Administration has
been criticized for pushing the
program too fast in an effort
to create Democratic voters.
Both Republicans and Democrats
have a stake in promoting Latino citizenship drives. The survey data DeSipio
analyzes find both right- and left-leaning tendencies among Latino noncitizens. Many Mexican noncitizens, for
example, oppose abortion and support
capital punishment. At the same time,
they support an activist governmental
role in job creation.
These Latino noncitizens must cross
the hurdle of naturalization before they
can register to vote. Naturalization is
the voluntary process by which legal
immigrants become U.S. citizens. In
general, applicants for naturalization must have resided in the United States
for five years, have good moral character and prove to the INS that they
speak English well and understand how
the U.S. government works. It costs
applicants $95 to apply for citizenship.
Latinos are less likely than other
immigrant groups to naturalize. While
about 44 percent of Polish and 61 percent of Filipino immigrants in Illinois
have become citizens, only 24 percent of
Mexican immigrants and 25 percent of
Guatemalan immigrants (the second
largest Latino immigrant group) have
completed the citizenship process.
Historically, several factors have
limited the number of Latinos becoming U.S. citizens.
Low levels of formal education prevent many Mexican
immigrants from passing the
INS test in English and
civics. Only one of four Mexican noncitizens in this state
has a high school degree.
Proximity of Mexico to the
United States is another
factor: Both Mexican and
Canadian immigrants are
among the least likely of all
immigrants to naturalize.
Also, there have been few real
incentives for immigrants to
naturalize.
About 50, 000 legal immigrants come to Illinois each
year. This immigration combined with low naturalization
rates has caused the noncitizen population to steadily
grow in Illinois. Approximately 550, 000 noncitizens of
all ages live in Illinois, with
about 40 percent of them
coming from Latin America.
The Latino noncitizens are
characterized by relatively
low levels of education, as
noted. They have poverty
rates higher than the native
population, lower incomes,
and are more likely to work
in the service and manufacturing industries.
Not surprising, given their
impetus to emigrate in search
of work, noncitizens are
more likely to be in the labor
For More Information
LATINO VOICES: MEXICAN, PUERTO RICAN AND
CUBAN PERSPECTIVES ON AMERICAN POLITICS, by
Rodolfo 0. de la Garza, Louis DeSipio, F. Chris
Garcia, John Garcia and Angelo Falcon (Westview
Press, Boulder, Colo., 1992). Presents and analyzes
the findings of the National Latino Political Survey.
NEW AMERICANS BY CHOICE: POLITICAL PERSPEC-
TIVES OF LATINO IMMIGRANTS, by Harry Pachon and
Louis DeSipio (Westview Press, Boulder, Colo.,
1994). Presents and analyzes the findings of the
National Latino Immigrant Survey.
1996 NATIONAL DIRECTORY OF LATINO ELECTED
OFFICIALS, published by the National Association of
Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education
Fund (NALEO Educational Fund, Los Angeles,
1996). The standard reference guide to the number,
location and type of Latino elected officials nation-
wide.
1996 LATINO ELECTION HANDBOOK, published by
the National Association of Latino Elected and
Appointed Officials Education Fund (NALEO Edu-
cational Fund, Los Angeles, 1996). Provides "Races
to Watch" and Latino voting statistics for states,
including Illinois.
Illinois Issues October 1996 ¦ 35
force than the native-born Illinoisan.
About 78 percent of Mexican nonciti-
zens are in the labor force (meaning
they are employed or actively seeking
employment) compared to only 66 percent of the general population.
The noncitizen Latino population,
then, grows apace in Illinois, integrated
into the economy but not the
polity.
The gap
between Latino
population size
and political
influence
becomes more
sharply obvious
with each election cycle. If
Latino noncitizen adults
became citizens
and voted in the
three suburbs of
Cicero, Melrose
Park and Summit described
earlier, they
would increase
voter turnout by
more than 40
percent in each
locale.
Latinos
clearly have the
potential to exercise substantial
influence in
numerous
municipal races.
This influence
could also begin
to sway the outcome of General
Assembly races
in the suburbs.
For example, more than 13, 000 nonciti-
zens — the majority of them Latino —
reside in the suburban state Senate districts of Republicans James "Pate"
Philip, Steve Rauschenberger and
Marty Butler.
In statewide elections. Latino influence continues to be small. The margin
of victory separating two candidates
now must be extremely narrow — about
2 percentage points — for Latinos to constitute a "swing vote." (A group
forms a swing vote if it is large enough
to affect election results when voting as
a block.) In the 1990 gubernatorial
election, each candidate needed every
Latino vote he could garner: Gov. Jim
Edgar carried the election with less
than 51 percent of votes cast.
In the 1994 gubernatorial race,
meanwhile, Edgar carried 64 percent of
the vote, effectively rendering the
125, 000 Latino votes immaterial. Every
Latino voter could have voted Demo-
cratic and the election result would
have remained the same.
Earlier, I noted that historically
there have been few concrete reasons
for legal immigrants to become citizens.
But when President Bill Clinton signed the massive welfare reform bill on
August 22, he and the bill's Republican
sponsors made most legal immigrants
ineligible for a host of governmental
programs. As one example, only U.S.
citizens will now be eligible for food
stamps in time of need. With a stroke of
his pen, Clinton may have created the
most powerful
incentive yet for
immigrants to file
their citizenship
papers. The welfare bill's provisions have already
spurred a surge in
citizenship applications.
Anti-immigrant
rhetoric employed
by both parties
(though most
notably by prominent Republicans
such as Pat
Buchanan) also
has energized
immigrants to vote
as a way to protest
this scapegoating.
House Republicans in Washington recently
passed a bill making English the
official language
of the United
States. Most immigrants see this
measure as xenophobic, and Latino
immigrants' applications for U.S.
citizenship are
destined to
increase in this
climate.
The challenge to both political parties is to harness this nascent interest,
promote it further and reap the partisan
allegiance of a growing block of new,
politically active Latino U.S. citizens.
Rob Paral is senior research associate at the
Latino Institute in Chicago. He recently completed
an extensive study of immigrants' use of welfare in
Illinois.
36 ¦ October 1996 Illinois Issues
|
|
This page is created by Sam S. Manivong, Illinois Periodicals Online Coordinator |
