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Gaps emerging in US census outreach to immigrants

Census Finds Huge Growth in Hispanic Voters

Latinos Drive Record Surge in U.S. Naturalizations

Big Turnout of Latino Voters Boosted Obama

Time for Latino Voters to Reach Their Potential

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Gaps emerging in US census outreach to immigrants

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the government is fumbling some efforts to assure immigrants that U.S. census data won’t be used against them, including gaps in outreach and foreign language guides that refer to the decennial count as an investigation.

With the launch of the head count weeks away, the Census Bureau’s outreach has been falling short in at least a dozen major cities, such as Chicago, Dallas, New York, San Jose, Calif., and Seattle, according to a report released Monday by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Many of their states are on the cusp of gaining or losing U.S. House seats and face a redrawing of legislative boundaries that may tilt the balance of political power.

The report generally praises the Census Bureau for improved efforts since 2000. But noting the large ramifications of even a small undercount, AALDEF is critical of the Obama administration. The legal group cited the government’s refusal to give fuller assurances that census data would be kept confidential and to suspend large-scale immigration raids during the count , as was done in the 2000 census. AALDEF said it wasn’t ruling out legal action to get stronger guarantees.

“We are running the risk of a real undercount,” said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. “The next few weeks will be critical.”

The Census Bureau is printing instruction guides and sample forms in dozens of different languages for use in community help centers, since one in five residents speak a language other than English at home. But there have been errors due to poor translations, including material for Vietnamese speakers that describe the census as a “government investigation.”

Other gaps included a lack of specialists for the Bangladeshi community in Detroit; the nation’s third largest Korean-American population in Chicago; and the south Asian and Cambodian groups in Philadelphia and Rhode Island. In Virginia, when groups cited a need for census specialists for their Korean and Vietnamese communities, the agency responded by hiring someone who spoke Chinese.

Responding, the Census Bureau has emphasized it is devoting a large amount of its $133 million ad campaign to racial and ethnic audiences, including television spots in 28 different languages. It also worked with more than 150,000 business and community groups, hoping to build trust in its message that filling out the 10-question census form is safe and easy to complete.

To encourage participation, Census Director Robert Groves on Monday visited neighborhoods along the U.S.-Mexico border near Laredo, Texas. As many as half the residents were missed there in 2000 because they had little knowledge of English and feared being turned over to immigration agents.

Other trouble spots:

Latino groups are worried the Census Bureau’s ad campaign may neglect communities with higher numbers of immigrants in poverty. Census-takers also may be less adept in navigating some areas because of an agency requirement that employees be U.S. citizens.

In 2000, the Census Bureau noted for the first time an overcount of 1.3 million people, due mostly to duplicate counts of more affluent whites with multiple residences. About 4.5 million people were ultimately missed, primarily lower-income minorities.

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Source: www.philly.com

Census Finds Huge Growth in Hispanic Voters

The Census estimates that there were 9.745 million Hispanic voters in 2008, compared to 7.587 million in 2004 — an increase of 28.4%. Overall, an estimated 131.114 million Americans voted in 2008, compared to 125.736 million in 2004, an increase of just 4.3%. Another way of looking at it: there were 5.4 million additional votes cast in 2008 compared to 2004 and about 2.2 million of them were cast by Hispanics.

The data are more meaningful when you think in terms of regions. In 2008, dramatically more Hispanics voted in the Northeast, the South, the West Coast and the Mountain West. While Hispanic voters still are concentrated in the Southwest, they are a rapidly growing political force in every part of the country, except perhaps the Midwest.

The gain was particularly dramatic in California, where there were 2.08 million Hispanic votes in 2004, and 2.96 million in 2008 (which is 21% of all votes in California). (This rapid gain dovetails with the sudden pro-Obama shift in many of California’s red districts.)

Percentage-wise, this gain is nothing compared with the gain in Georgia, though; although Hispanic votes are only 3% of the vote there, they shot up from 26,000 to 128,000 votes from 2004 to 2008. Overall, this has to be seen as good news for Democrats — when a group that makes up half of all new voters polls in your favor by a 2-to-1 margin (Obama polled at 67% in exit polls among Hispanics).

It’s also worth noting that the 5 million increase also included 2 million more black voters and 600,000 more Asian voters — meaning, if you do the math, hardly any gains at all came from white voters. In terms of age groups, young voters (18-24) were the only group to show a statistically significant increase in voting rates (but they still remained the group with the lowest turnout: 49%).

However, the increasing Hispanic numbers were also driven partly by increased participation: the voting rate (the percent of persons of that race who voted) among Hispanics went up 4%, the same percentage that it went up among African-Americans.

It remains to be seen whether Hispanics continue to increase their participation rate (their voting rate was still only 49%, compared with 66% for non-Hispanic whites and 65% for blacks). But even if their voting rate falls off, growth among the Hispanic population will still make them a larger and larger proportion of the pool of voters.

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Source: Crisitunity, Swing State Project

Latinos Drive Record Surge in U.S. Naturalizations

Nearly half of the record-setting 1 million new U.S. citizens sworn in last year were Latino immigrants — a 95 percent increase among that ethnic group from the previous year, according to an analysis by an Hispanic advocacy organization.

Department of Homeland Security data shows the number of immigrants naturalized in the U.S. grew from about 660,000 in 2007 to more than 1 million in 2008 — an increase of roughly 58 percent. The Houston metropolitan area saw more than 28,000 naturalizations last year, an increase of roughly 54 percent from 2007.

Nationally, Latino naturalizations jumped 95 percent from about 237,000 in 2007 to 461,000 in 2008, according to the analysis released Tuesday by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. NALEO used data from the DHS’ Office of Immigration Statistics, counting immigrants who hailed from predominantly Spanish-speaking countries as Latinos.

Sociologists cited a number of factors for the naturalization increase, including the desire to vote in the historic 2008 presidential election and a rush to beat a naturalization fee increase in summer 2007. The increase in naturalization applications also coincided with a high-profile outreach campaign with the slogan, “It is time — Citizenship!” which was supported by organizations including NALEO, unions and many in the Spanish-language media.

Nestor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas, said the growth in naturalization applicants was expected based on the level of legal immigration to the U.S. in the 1990s. More than 9.7 million people were admitted as legal permanent residents during that decade, he said, roughly 80 percent of them from Latin America and Asia. Although it takes only five years for a green-card holder to be eligible for citizenship, many historically have waited to take the oath.

Rodriguez added that some new citizens may have been spurred to action by the fee increase that took effect in July 2007 and raised the cost of a citizenship application from $330 to $595.

Tom Janoski, an associate professor of sociology from the University of Kentucky who has researched international naturalization trends, said some new citizens may have been driven to apply because of a fear of deportation in many immigrant communities.

“One factor that causes people to naturalize is that they’re scared,” Janoski said.

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Author: Susan Carroll

 Source:  Houston Chronicle

Big Turnout of Latino Voters Boosted Obama

By Miriam Jordan of The Wall Street Journal
Record turnout among Hispanic voters helped push Barack Obama over the top in an election that signals the emerging political clout of the nation’s fastest-growing demographic group.

About 10 million Hispanics cast a ballot, up from 7.8 million in the 2004 presidential contest, accounting for 8% of the national voting public, exit polls show. Latinos voted for Sen. Obama over Sen. John McCain nationally by 66% to 32%, marking a dramatic shift toward Democrats from 2004, when more than 50% supported Sen. John Kerry and 40% voted for President Bush.

More important, this election shattered the perception that Latino voters only have a powerful impact in their traditional stronghold of the Southwest. While Latinos were key to Sen. Obama’s victories in both Nevada and New Mexico, where he lost the non-Hispanic white vote, their support also was crucial in hotly contested states such as Virginia and Pennsylvania, where Latinos now represent about 5% of the voting population. In Florida, this election marked the first time that a Democratic presidential candidate won a majority of the Latino vote.

This newfound clout is only expected to increase in the coming years, as the growth of the Hispanic population outpaces that of the rest of the nation. In 2016, Hispanics are expected to number about 60 million, up from 45 million today. And though Hispanics voted overwhelmingly Democratic this time around, they are likely to be courted heavily by both parties in the future. “Twenty years from now Latinos will be twice as important as they are today,” says Matt Barreto, a political science professor at the University of Washington who does Hispanic polling. He also noted that in the next presidential election, Latinos would emerge as an influential voting bloc in more states, such as North Carolina and Georgia. “Within the next decade, Latino voters could become decisive in several second-tier states,” says Prof. Barreto.

About one in five new voters were Hispanic, many of them immigrants who responded to a mass mobilization drive by Hispanic media and community groups to get out the vote. That energized Latino voters, who showed up at the polls in higher percentages than other newly registered voter groups. Relative to 2004, the total number of registered Hispanics soared by 144% in Nevada, 35% in Colorado, 34% in Florida and 30% in New Mexico.

In Florida, where 14% of voters are Latino, 57% of Hispanics backed Sen. Obama compared with 42% who favored the Democratic candidate in 2004, as the influence of older, conservative Cuban-Americans was eclipsed by young Cuban-Americans and South and Central American immigrants.
In the battleground state of Colorado, the Latino vote represented 17% of the voting public, with 73% of Latino voters supporting Sen. Obama. In New Mexico, Latinos constituted 41% of the voting population and 69% of them supported Sen. Obama. In Nevada, the Latino vote was 16% of the voting population, with 78% of them backing the Democratic candidate.

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Source: The Wall Street Journal

Time for Latino Voters to Reach Their Potential

By Gebe Martinez - La Prensa San Diego: Elections are a time of accountability, a time when the values of presidential candidates are judged by voters and when incumbents are forced to defend their records and rhetoric against ambitious challengers. This year, unlike any previous election year, an entire group of voters also will be held accountable: Latinos.

After years of being viewed as the “sleeping giant” — the group whose voter turnout never comes close to matching its voting-age population — the Hispanic vote is expected to be a force this year on Election Day.

Hispanic leadership coalitions, Spanish-language media, and the presidential candidates have spent tens of millions in an unprecedented grass-roots effort to mobilize the Latino vote in as many as 13 states, coast to coast and in the Midwest. In four of those states — Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Florida — the Latino vote is large enough to determine the outcome of the presidential contest on Nov. 4.

That is, if Latinos vote.

“If, in this election, we do not turn out and vote, then we are the dog that’s all bark and no bite,” warned Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. “If we don’t do it now, then my question is, ‘When are we going to do it?’”

The foundation has been laid for a record Latino voter turnout of 9.2 million, including 2.6 million Hispanics who will be voting for the first time. In the 2000 presidential election, 5.9 million Latinos voted, and in 2004, there were 7.6 million Latino votes cast.

Despite the rising numbers, this year’s Hispanic vote projection is not good enough, Vargas emphasized recently during a meeting with Latino political activists. “That is an embarrassment, because there are 17 million Latinos who today could vote because they are U.S. citizens at least 18 years of age,” the Latino leader said. “Our challenge is to reach the native-born Latino — the Chicano, the Puerto Rican — those of us born here, who do take the right to vote for granted.”

In 2004, Hispanic turnout was only 47 percent, compared with 60 percent for African-Americans and 67 percent for non-Hispanic whites.

Why haven’t Latinos voted more often? Hispanic leaders maintain that one of the biggest blocks to Latino voting is the misinformation given by election officials and poll workers. Organizers are combating that problem by urging Latinos to vote absentee or to call a toll-free telephone bank to get instructions and learn their voting rights.

Like other voters, Hispanics are worried about the economy, jobs, health care, education and the Iraq war. Unlike other voters, they are disproportionately affected on all of these fronts. They have not forgotten that the first U.S. soldier killed in the Iraq war was an immigrant who had illegally entered the country as a child. There also is an underlying current of fear shared by Hispanics, regardless of citizenship status, because of the anti-immigrant sentiment that has spread across the country in recent years, according to polls. Like other voters, they want a sensible solution.

The presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, are begging for Latino support. They have saturated the Spanish-language media with advertising and dispatched volunteers to cultural festivals and citizenship ceremonies from California to Florida to enlist voters.

“If you have any doubt about whether you can make a difference, just remember how, back in 2004, 40,000 registered Latino voters in New Mexico didn’t turn out on Election Day. Sen. [John F.] Kerry lost that state by fewer than 6,000 votes,” Obama often reminds Latino audiences.

The Obama campaign pledged to spend $20 million to court the Hispanic vote. The McCain campaign will not say how much it is spending but argues Obama needs to spend more because he is not as well-known as McCain in the Latino community, according to McCain spokeswoman Hessy Fernandez.

McCain won 70 percent of Arizona’s Latino vote during his last Senate reelection effort, but in his presidential campaign, he has been severely criticized by Latino leaders for backing away from his own immigration bill that would have offered undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. Whether McCain can garner the same level of Latino support in his home state is unknown, Fernandez conceded, but “John McCain is going to work for it” there and everywhere else.

Besides the presidential race, the Latino vote could affect other major contests, such as Senate races in Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Texas and Virginia.

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Source: Politico