Legal Commentary

Immigration Rallies Focus On Getting Out the Vote

By Jeralyn

Another facet to today's immigrant rights marches (Received by e-mail from America's Voice, which doesn't seem to have a website for me to link to]:

Immigrant rights supporters from coast to coast have been registering voters and helping people become citizens in unprecedented numbers—increasing civic participation in key states and Congressional districts in this exciting election year.

...This year’s rallies are just one snapshot of the intense voter mobilization effort around the country that we believe will play a central role in the 2008 election cycle. Already there has been a surge of immigrant voter participation in the early primary states that will likely spell doom or reward for politicians who seek to use anti-immigration as a wedge in the election.

Some quotes: [More...]

• Organizers have been focusing their efforts since then in less visible ways: pressuring Congress for immigration reform legislation, registering foreign-born citizens to vote and encouraging legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens. A record number of naturalization applications were filed last year. [San Francisco Chronicle, 5/1/08]

• "If we don't make our voice heard to the electorate, then there's no point," said Ricardo Serrano, outreach coordinator of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights for the Northwest suburbs, prior to the march. "We're trying to move away from, 'just come and march and this is the one thing you do this year for immigration reform.' "[Chicago Daily Herald, 5/1/08]

• "We hope policymakers will look at this data to see who is in their district and how to best serve their interests," said Daranee Petsod, executive director of Grantmakers Concerned With Immigrants and Refugees, a Sebastopol, Calif.-based organization. "With these numbers, immigrants can invigorate our democracy." [Los Angeles Times, 4/29/08]

• "While the breadth of activities will be significant, most eyes are turned toward the November election," said Rich Stolz, a coordinator with Fair Immigration Reform Movement, which oversees activist groups across the country. "We've been calling on the candidates to prioritize immigration." [Associated Press, 4/29/08]

• Speaking Spanish, Bermudez, the group's founder and director, says he's looking for registered voters to sign a petition for an opponent of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. But he also wants those in the lobby to know this: Together with Hispanics around Arizona, they have political power. "The most positive thing we can do is make sure everybody who is a U.S. citizen is registered to vote and everybody who is registered to vote comes out to vote," Bermudez says. [Tucson Citizen, 4/30/08]

• The county employment development corporation study, conducted by its chief economist Jack Kyser, analyzed three industries thought to employ high numbers of immigrant workers -- fashion, food and furniture manufacturing -- and found that about 10,000 businesses created nearly 500,000 direct and indirect jobs and produced $18.3 billion in annual wages. If 15% of those firms left -- and several are being aggressively wooed by out-of-state business recruiters, Kyser said -- the region would lose nearly 75,000 jobs, the report found. [Los Angeles Times, 5/1/08]

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 01, 2008 (boomark / email).