Will Immigrants Clinch the 2008 Election?

Fontera Norte-Sur
October 27, 2008

What a tremendous difference one year can make.  Only 12 months ago, many Washington-centered pundits and media myth-makers predicted that immigration would be among the hot issues for US voters in the 2008 elections. In fact, as the US presidential campaign moved beyond the primaries, immigration was decidedly consigned to the rear of the publicly-debated agenda, at least in English-language media.

Yet in a largely unnoticed way, immigration could well prove the determinant issue in 2008, especially if the race defies the polls and tightens at the end between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. A new study prepared for the Washington D.C.-based Immigration Policy Center (IPC), a non-profit immigrant advocacy group, outlines the potential power immigrant voters could wield in elections this year and beyond. According to the report authored by Rob Paral and Associates, “The New American Electorate,” naturalized citizens and their children constituted nearly one in nine registered US voters by 2006.

“The immigrant vote is going to have an unprecedented impact on this election up and down the ballot,” predicted Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, during a telephone press conference late last week. The emergence of a new electorate, Sharry said, “changes not only American politics but creates a tremendous momentum toward immigration reform.”

The IPC study found that “New Americans,” as the organization defines post-1965 immigrants and their children, now make up more registered voters than the 2004 election victory margins in 16 states including the key battlegrounds of Nevada, Florida, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.
IPC Director Angela Kelly told Frontera NorteSur and other media by phone that the economy and other bread-and-butter issues top the list of concerns for immigrant voters, as well as other US residents, but that immigration justice is an ideological and personal touchstone for the new electorate.

“Immigration is a threshold issue for us, which defines whether candidates respect us as a community,” Kelly said.

Since the massive pro-immigrant rallies of 2006, citizenship and voter registration drives sponsored by the We Are America Alliance and other organizations have encouraged more than one million people to swear oaths of citizenship and have inspired more than 500,000 to sign voter registration forms, according to organizers.

The Alliance credits its partners for registering more than 128,000 new immigrant voters in the swing states of  New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada.

On a different level, Spanish-language media including the Univision television network and Los Angeles’ La Opinion newspaper have played critical roles in encouraging immigrants to become citizens and to become registered voters.

Last week, the Alliance announced it was promoting early voting and its Get Out the Vote campaign aimed at “one million new Latino, Asian and immigrant voters who are poised to make a difference during the November 4 election.”

Some analysts point to anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies for inspiring much greater political interest in immigrant communities. “A lot of it you could definitely attribute to the anti-immigrant stance,” said Efrain Escobedo, senior director of civic engagement for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund (NALEO).
Democrats or Republicans?

Recent polls by NALEO and others show Obama far ahead of rival McCain in the preferences of the Latino electorate, which includes large numbers of new immigrant voters.  According to Tuyet G. Doung, director of the Asian American Justice Center, about one-third of Asian American voters remain undecided, though many are leaning towards the Obama camp. Of an estimated population of nearly 15 million people, more than 7 million Asian Americans are eligible to vote this year, Doung said.

“We are a moving a growing force,” Doung said. “We are a force to contend with, and we are a force for immigration reform.” Asian Americans, she added, are now “highly engaged” in the political process.

In Escobedo’s view, the new immigrant vote is one of “opportunity,” which is not firmly moored in either of the two major parties that must earn votes based on concrete actions which address immigrants’ concerns. Latino immigrants have shown shifts from party to party in recent years, he said.

Apart from the Obama- McCain contest, immigrants could cast pivotal votes in local races and state ballot propositions, according to Escobedo and other activists. In Orange County, California, for instance, the large Vietnamese immigrant community “can turn things one way or another,” Doung affirmed.
The 2008 Swing Vote?

Strategically located in swing states, immigrants could mark the decisive ballots in the presidential election.  Colorado and New Mexico, states where newer Latino immigrants have been adding their names to voter rolls in increasing numbers, are two big prizes. In Colorado, immigrants could also be important judges of the Mark Udall-Bob Schaffer race for the US Senate. A survey conducted by Public Policy Polling earlier this fall, reported Democrat Udall leading Republican Schafer among Latinos by a margin of more than three to one.

Schaffer advocates deporting more undocumented residents with criminal records, limiting the number of relatives who can join immigrant family members in the US and militarizing the US-Mexico border.

In New Mexico, meanwhile, “New Americans” could wind up being the decisive force if data from the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections are considered.  In 2000, Democrat Al Gore beat Republican George W. Bush by 336 votes. Four years later, President Bush defeated Democrat Kerry in New Mexico by about 6,000 votes. According to the We Are America Alliance, 58,217 new immigrants are on the voter rolls in the state.

The major presidential candidates have made the once-forgotten Land of Enchantment a must stop in their campaign itineraries, with both Obama and McCain visiting New Mexico 6 times each during the campaign so far.

Vice-presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin have likewise undertaken the now-obligatory journey to New Mexico; former Democratic presidential primary contender Hillary Clinton drew more than 2,000 people to an October 25 pro-Obama rally in Sunland Park, a small but growing border community with a high percentage of Latino immigrants. Clinton was preceded on the campaign trial in Sunland Park one week earlier by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. On October 28, Michele Obama is scheduled to visit the town of Las Vegas in northern New Mexico.

In an unusual set of circumstances, New Mexico’s congressional delegation-save for the Senate seat held by Democrat Jeff Bingaman- is for grabs this year. Perhaps the most highly contested race is for the 2nd Congressional District in southern New Mexico, an area that encompasses Sunland Park and other Dona Ana County communities where immigrant voters could give an important edge to the victor. In District 2, centrist Democrat Harry Teague is up against conservative Republican Ed Tinsley in a battle for a seat that has been in Republican hands for decades.

Teague and Tinsley both regard illegal immigration as a national security issue, but differ in important respects to the solution. Tinsley unequivocally opposes “amnesty” for undocumented residents, whom he blames for creating educational and social service burdens, while Teague supports a path to citizenship similar to the one advocated by Obama. Unlike Tinsley, the southern New Mexico Democrat maintains a web page in Spanish.

Obama, meanwhile, revived the practically moribund immigration issue at an October 25 rally in Albuquerque attended by a huge crowd estimated at between 20-45,000 people. Gathered on a cold but calm fall evening and jamming the University of New Mexico and its surrounding neighborhoods with rainbow streams of supporters, the Obama fest was the largest political event certainly in recent memory and perhaps ever in the state.

In Albuquerque, a McCain rally featuring the candidate himself drew between 1,000 and 1,500 people on the same day, according to estimates.

To the enthusiastic applause of a majority non-immigrant crowd, Obama criticized opponent McCain for stepping back from proposed immigration reform. Blasting the use of immigration as a “wedge issue” to divide Americans, Obama said a “path to citizenship” for undocumented residents was a necessity. The Illinois senator advocated citizenship for undocumented residents who pay fines, wait in line behind legal applicants and learn English. Further, he vowed to work with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to guarantee “secure borders” and comprehensive immigration reform.

Interestingly, Obama’s revival of the immigration reform issue wasn’t even mentioned in a front-page Sunday edition story in New Mexico’s largest daily. The Albuquerque Journal, however, included immigration among issues of comparison between Obama and McCain in a separate section of the same issue. In a front-page story on October 27, the University of New Mexico student-run New Mexico Daily Lobo also ignored Obama’s pro-immigration reform comments.

By raising the immigration again in the waning days of the 2008 campaign, Obama re-visited an issue which was once framed as paramount by the US media but later relegated to the back burner as the US economy crashed and burned throughout the year. And for most of the 2008 campaign, immigration reform was a hot potato for both McCain and Obama.
Move Over Ohio Soccer Moms, Indiana NASCAR Fans

Immigrant advocates like Angela Kelly contend that the dominant molders of US public opinion have missed a sweeping story about new political demographics and electoral forces reshaping the nation’s political map.

“The campaigns, pundits and press have spent this entire election cycle searching for a new and weighty voting bloc,” Kelly said in a recent press statement. “Their search is over. Step aside Soccer Moms and NASCAR Dads.  New Americans are ready to vote. This group has been decades in the making and they are certain to flex their muscles this year.”

America’s Voice Frank Sharry also took issue with a media he said was largely oblivious to a new political narrative. “This is not about the same old patterns of the past but an enlarged electorate,” Sharry said.

The Southwestern states and Florida will be “key to who can win the presidency in the future,” insisted the immigrant rights activist.

Additional sources: New Mexico Daily Lobo, October 27, 2008. Article by Michael Westervelt. Albuquerque Journal, October 25 and 26, 2008. Articles by Jeff Jones, Michael Coleman, Colleen Heild and Rene Romo.  El Paso Times, October 26, 2008. Article by Darren Meritz. New Mexico Independent, October 21, 2008. Article by Heath Haussamen. We Are America Alliance, October 20, 2008.  Press release. El Diario de El Paso, October 19 and 26, 2008.  Articles by Nancy Gonzalez.  La Voz de Nuevo Mexico/EFE, October 3, 2008. Harryforcongress.com Edtinsleyforcongress.com

Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin
American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New
Mexico

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