UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL: Report: Electoral clout of new citizens
Gaurav Ghose | October 20, 2004

Washington , DC , Oct. 20 (UPI) -- President Bush and Sen. Kerry can only ignore the new immigrant voters at their own peril.

Based on U.S. Census data from the 2000 election, a report released Wednesday by the Immigration Policy Center shows that of the 10.7 million adult new citizens in the country, 6.2 million were registered to vote and 5.4 million actually voted. Although the new citizens in general have lower voter turnout than natives, new citizens who are registered to vote have higher rates of voter turnout than natives who are registered to vote, the report says.

"With the presidential race in a virtual tie, immigrant voters now have the potential to be the deciding factor in one of the potent elections ever," said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of Service Employees International Union, in his opening remarks at the release of the report.

The votes of new citizens are particularly important in 'battleground' states such as Arizona, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington, where victory or defeat in an election my be decided by relatively few votes, the report points out.

How fast the immigrant population is growing might not matter to the whole population, but looking at the perspective of when these new citizens grow in our electorate, it is important to know how they are casting an influence on the overall electorate, said Rob Paral, a fellow at the Immigrant Policy Center who authored the report.

"If I am an elected official, I probably know my old voters, I probably know the people who voted in the last election. ... I am worried about the new players stepping out to the field -- I wonder who they are, are they young, are they old, are they immigrants, are they not," Paral said. "I want to know some characteristics about these new people and the extent to which these new players are stepping out to the field. ... One out of five of the net new voters walking into the voting booth are new citizens."

According to the report, while there was 30-percent growth in the number of naturalized foreign-born citizens in the four-year period from 1996 to 2000, there was a 20-percent increase in the number of registered voters and a 24.7-percent increase in the number who voted in the 2000 election. In comparison, the number of native-born citizens registered to vote increased by 0.7 percent and the number of native-born voters rose by 4.7 percent.

And among these growing number of foreign-born naturalized U.S. citizens, the report adds, the Latinos and Asian/Pacific Islanders stand out in terms of their increasing size and power as voters.

According to the report, the voter-turnout rates of whites, Latinos and APIs are much closer when one considers people registered to vote. In 2000, 83 percent of Latinos who were registered actually voted, and 78.6 percent of APIs who were registered did so. Both these rates were close to the turnout rate of 86.4 percent among whites who were registered to vote.

And this year's election is expected to see an unprecedented number of new citizens and other eligible immigrant voters, Medina said.

"This is a critical election for all Americans and especially for new American voters," Medina said. "In this environment where the electorate is so evenly divided, much has been said but little understood about the Latino and API voters and their potential impact on the electoral outcome in November. That is why this report is so timely and relevant to the blue and red states debate."

It is to the credit of various nationwide grassroots coalitions that immigrant communities are working hard to increase civic participation and mobilize voter registration and voting on the day of the election among these new citizens.

The New America Opportunity Campaign and its Immigrant Vote 2004 project in 34 states, Medina said, has resulted in registration of 750,000 new voters, and the number is expected to grow in states where registration has not closed yet.

"Over the next two weeks, we plan to work to turn out more than 2 million new citizen voters on November 2," Medina said. "While the pundits are talking about the undecided, about NACSAR voters and security moms, we will be working in our communities to ensure that the new citizen voters go to the polls because staying home is not an option."

The Asian Pacific Islander American Vote campaign is more engaged than ever before to turn out the vote in this year's election, said Janelle Hu, national director of APIA, adding that it has been found that there is a direct correlation between registration and political participation in the APIA community. In the 2000 presidential election, 83 percent of registered APIAs voted, Hu said.

"Immigrants, young and old, are not only registering to vote but they are organizing, volunteering and making sure that friends and families are registered and voting on November 2," Hu said. "There are APIA Voter projects in over 20 states and 25 cities nationwide."

Besides the feverish political activities taking place in states with high population of APIAs such as California, New York and Illinois, APIA communities are taking part in vigorous voter-mobilization efforts in states such as Nevada, Minnesota and Washington, where the APIA population increased substantially in the past decade, Hu added.

A recent poll of APIAs across the nation shows that one-third of APIA voters will be first-time voters, predominantly from immigrant communities, and 20 percent of this community is undecided, Hu said.

Immigration is not [the only] issue for APIAs, Hu said, but jobs, education, healthcare and hate crimes, particularly among South Asians, are more important, and hence candidates have to convincingly address these latter issues.

While bread-and-butter issues like jobs and education are the most salient of all issues to the Latino community, it is not true that they are unconcerned with immigration issues, said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, director of state and local policy at the National Council of La Raza, the largest national constituency-based Hispanic organization and the leading voice in Washington, D.C., for the Hispanic community.

"Immigration is an issue of a different kind in many ways," Martinez De Castro said. "It is a significant issue because it serves as a test for the Latino community of how a candidate or a party feel about the Latino community."

And echoing Hu, Martinez De Castro said Latinos and immigrants are ready to work with those that "will work with us." And that means, she said, Latinos are willing to support members of different parties if they take an active position in action on the issues that the community care about.

An April to June 2004 poll among Latino adults shows that while 45 percent of Latino registered voters identified themselves as Democrats, 20 percent identified as Republicans and 21 percent as independents.