Building Voting Power in California for Immigration Reform

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA)

The Political Context

For over a decade immigrant rights organizations have engaged in a protracted rollercoaster battle to reform our broken and cruel immigration laws.  This decade’s long fight began soon after the passage of the 1996 IllegalImmigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, or IIRIRA.  This law, passed by President William Clinton, enacted new bars to legal admission into the United States, punished immigrants who remained undocumented with severe fines and penalties for remaining in the United States without legal status, and set into motion policies that have helped balloon the undocumented population in this country. 

The 1996 federal IIRIRA law was a response to California’s 1994 Proposition 187 battle in which the state sought to curve undocumented migration by denying undocumented immigrants access to education and health and human services.  The Proposition was seen as an attack on not just the undocumented community but on the whole of Latinos and Asians or anyone that looked foreign.  Proposition 187 was fought through political and legal pressure, resulting in the courts declaring Proposition 187 unconstitutional.  Nonetheless, the threat of the enactment of Proposition 187 in California prompted the mass acquisition of citizenship by long-time legal permanent residents and the political involvement by young Latino and Asian Californians.

In 1994, during the height of the Proposition 187 fight, over 2.6 million immigrants who had been granted legal status as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 were now eligible for citizenship, and  many immediately sought it.  The political climate created by Proposition 187, and the citizenship eligibility by 1986 amnesty recipients together with the streamlining of the naturalization process through the government’s Citizenship USA program contributed to a record breaking 1,045,000 becoming citizens in 1996.  These new citizens and newly-involved California voters punished the Republican Party, under whose leadership Proposition 187 was authored, by voting them out of state power.  Not until 2003, in a recall election, did Californians return a Republican, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to power.  Governor Schwarzenegger however is moderate in his views of the undocumented and is a proponent of comprehensive immigration reform and of the contributions that immigrants of all status make to the California economy.  The state legislature remains in the control of the Democratic Party and most candidates for statewide office have until 2010 opted against openly anti-immigrant rhetoric as part their campaign.  The cautionary tale of California’s experience with Proposition 187 is one  in which the Republican Party lost a potential base of Latino, Asian and new-citizen voters because of their foray until into xenophobic and racist politics that offended a significant number of California’s electorate. 

The Threat to Immigrant Rights and Immigration Reform

Now in 2010, members of the Republican Party seek to update and reframe the Proposition 187 story.  The new story that Republicans want to tell is that the effects of Proposition 187 were temporary in nature and that appealing to Latino and Asian voters’ social conservative side will neutralize any harm done by anti-immigrant and anti-Latino/Asian rhetoric.  In light of the most recent national debate on comprehensive immigration reform and Arizona’s SB1070 law, a sequel  to Proposition 187, Republican candidates in California are once again using anti-immigrant and anti- immigration reform rhetoric to compel voters to their side in the California gubernatorial, Senate and state office races. 

The primary election within the Republican Party focused almost entirely on each candidate’s tough stand on immigration and whether or not they supported Arizona’s SB1070 law.  The anti-immigrant rhetoric was fierce and in the end both the Gubernatorial Republican candidate, Meg Whitman, and U.S Senate Republican candidate, Carly Fiorina, exceeded themselves aligning themselves against comprehensive immigration reform as a solution and in their support of anti-immigrant policies.  It is clear that California’s two votes in favor of comprehensive immigration reform could be reduced to just one if Carly Fiorina is the victor in 2010. Additionally, there are even candidates for statewide office that are running on purely anti-immigrant platforms as is the case of Tim Donnelly, a self proclaimed Minuteman, who is running for state assembly in the 59^th district. See: http://laist.com/2010/06/29/assembly_candidate_wants_to_bring_a.php.  One other state assembly candidate running on a pro-SB1070 platform is Mayor Allan Monsoor of Costa Mesa.  Mayor Allan Monsoor is famous for his initiation of the “rule of law” city resolutions that support SB1070 and seek a tough stance on undocumented people living in their municipalities.

Electoral Opportunity to Make a Difference for Immigrant Rights and Immigration Reform

In 2010, it is critical that the political outcome in California demonstrate that being pro-immigrant and standing on the side of inclusion and diversity is a winning electoral asset.  Furthermore, it is critical that in 2010, as in 1996 and 2008, new citizen and Latino/Asian voters make a difference in not only the outcome of the election but also in the tone and rhetoric of the campaigns.  The following are but a few statistics recently reported by the Immigrant Policy Center that demonstrate the importance of the immigrant electorate to California politics:

• 44.6% of immigrants (or 4.4 million people) in California were naturalized U.S. citizensin 2008(up from 31.2% in 1990)—meaning that they are eligible to vote.
• 24.4% (or 13.2 million) of all registered votersin California are “New Americans”—naturalized citizens or the U.S.-born children of immigrants who were raised during the current era of large-scale immigration from Latin America and Asia which began in 1965—according to an analysis of 2006 Census Bureau data by Rob Paral & Associates.
• The Latino share of California’s population grew from 25.8% in 1990, to 32.4% in 2000, to 36.6% (or 13.5 million people) in 2008.  The Asian share of the population grew from 9.2% in 1990, to 10.9% in 2000, to 12.4% (or 4.5 million people) in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• Latinos comprised 21.4% (or 3 million) of California voters in the 2008 elections, and Asians 9.7% (or 1.3 million), according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  The number of Latino and Asian voters is one million more than the margin of victory (3.3 million votes) by which Barack Obama defeated John McCain. In 2010, the power of the Latino vote is even more promising  as Latinos now represent an estimated 23.8% (3.97 million) voters according to Catalist Online and California Voter Files
• In California, nearly nine-in-ten (or 89% of) children in immigrant families were U.S. citizens in 2007, according to the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at the University of Albany.

Furthermore, in critical areas in which there will be competitive races for both state and federal elected office the pool of voters includes large amounts of new-citizen voters.  The following are numbers from Rob Paral’s report to Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrant Rights (GCIR) entitled The Integration Potential of California’s Immigrants and their Children, published in 2008. 

·         Los Angeles County San Gabriel Valley/Pasadena- 77,163 (eligible to naturalize) 195,578 (naturalized immigrants)

·         San Fernando Valley 63,304 (eligible to naturalize)  110,694 (naturalized immigrants)

In 2008, as a Director for the Steering Committee of Mobilize the Immigrant Vote, CHIRLA implemented its nonpartisan Get Out the Vote Program for the Presidential Election, outreaching to 8,611 new or infrequent voters and bringing 5,956 to the polls.  In the precincts where CHIRLA was active voter turnout increased an average of 18.25%.

In 2010, CHIRLA plans to more than double the outreach results of only 2 years ago, and almost double its turn out results, with no substantial increase in staffing or infrastructure.  This is partly due to the increased capacity that the national immigration reform campaign has produced in our staff and member leaders but it is also because we feel more the urgent need for wide-scale outreach to immigrant voters in California during this election cycle, and in the years to come.

If there is any truth to the conventional wisdom that “As California goes, so goes the nation,” than the battle for immigrant rights and immigration reform must be fought now, in this state.  It is only by demonstrating in California that new-citizen voters can make the difference in the fight for immigrant rights and in the effort to prevent the use of immigrant stories as fodder for the racism and xenophobia that seems to be infecting our national political debate.