Coalition Plans to Register 500,000 Recent Immigrants to Vote

Posted by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet at 6:00 PM on July 10, 2008.

Washington, DC -- A national coalition of immigrant rights groups, ethnic organizations, and community and leadership organizations Thursday announced a plan to register half-a-million new voters from the ranks of recent immigrants for the 2008 election.

The We Are America Alliance will work in 13 states to register voters and conduct get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day, participants said. The effort is targeting people age 25 and under, new citizens and eligible but infrequent voters. These voters historically have been overlooked by campaigns and susceptible to being disenfranchised.

The We Are America Alliance partner organizations have fought for the rights of immigrants in their respective communities, but this year they are coming together to make voter engagement their number one priority, said Holli Holiday, WAAA Executive Director.

"We will be touching over 1 million immigrant voters going into the fall election and encouraging them to vote come November," said Erica Bernal, senior director of civic engagement for the national Association of Latino Elected Officials Education Fund. "We will spend over $10 million turning out the immigrant vote. This is unprecedented."

The coalition has its roots in the nationwide protests in the winter and spring of 2006 when some 4 million people marched in 120 cities for better treatment of immigrants. Those protests lead many groups from numerous minority communities to form the current voting rights initiative, Bernal said.

In a recent national survey, the alliance found 70 percent of Latino registered voters had voted in their state's 2008 presidential primary, with most saying voting for president was an effective mechanism for changing the political system.

The coalition's agenda includes:

• Offering English and citizenship classes, and naturalization application assistance.
• Registering new voters at naturalization ceremonies.
• Connecting interested community members with local volunteer opportunities during August to prepare for a fall voter registration effort.
• Making phone calls and knocking on doors to encourage the Latino, Asian, and immigrant communities to get out to vote on Election Day.
• Collaborating with ethnic media to distribute information about the voting process, about where to vote on Election Day, and voter ID requirements.

The coalition's partners include: ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now); CHIRLA (Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles); Center for Community Change; Democracia USA; Gamaliel Foundation; ICIRR (Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights); MIRA (Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition); Mi Familia Vota Education Fund; Mobilize the Immigrant Vote; NALEO (National Association of Latino Elected Officials) Education Fund; National Capital Immigration Coalition; NAKASEC (National Korean American Service & Education Consortium); and The New York Immigrant Coalition.

Tagged as: voting, immigrant rights, registration

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of "What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election," with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).