NEWS
Latino Activists Put Faith in Ballots
By Teresa Watanabe
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 10, 2006
Has the immigrant rights movement fizzled?
At a national Latino conference that drew hundreds to downtown Los
Angeles last week, movement leaders emphatically said no.
Although Congress has stalled action on broad immigration reform and
Labor Day marches failed to mobilize wide support, activists said they
were only now beginning to roll out the next stage of their battle: a
massive effort to produce 1 million new Latino voters and U.S. citizens.
"Now is not march time," Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest
Voter Registration Education Project in Los Angeles, said Saturday.
"We're mobilizing voters. That's the big deal."
But immigration control advocates say the marches last spring doomed
activists' efforts by alienating most Americans and strengthening
support for stronger border control and opposition to legalization.
"The mass sea of illegal aliens bearing foreign flags and hostile
placards really produced a pronounced backlash, from which they've never
recovered," said John Keeley, spokesman for the Washington-based Center
for Immigration Studies.
The movement's fate is in question just months after hundreds of
thousands of immigrants and their supporters startled the nation by
pouring into the streets to protest a House bill that would criminalize
undocumented immigrants and those who support them. Buoyed by their
success, they helped push the U.S. Senate to pass a landmark bill
increasing visas and offering legalization to many of the nation's
estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Since then, some activists acknowledge, their ranks have become
demoralized as congressional action on the issue stalled over the summer
and recent marches have fallen flat.
In Los Angeles, for instance, police estimated that only about 1,500
people turned out for a Labor Day weekend rally that organizers had
predicted would draw as many as 50,000. And Cecilia Munoz, a vice
president of the National Council of La Raza, said some immigrants were
reluctant to risk their jobs to march because the likelihood of
legalization and other reform does not appear imminent.
"A lot of people feel a loss," immigrant activist Oscar Garcon said
Saturday at the National Latino Congreso, which was billed as the most
comprehensive gathering of Latino leaders in nearly 30 years. "They say,
'We demonstrated, we came out by the millions, but what did we change?'
"
But he and others said a movement cannot fairly be measured by the size
of its marches or its early setbacks, and some experts agree.
Louis DeSipio, a UC Irvine associate professor of political science and
Chicano/Latino studies, said it was premature to dismiss prospects for
broad immigration reform.
He said such aims could take years to achieve. The 1986 amnesty for
illegal immigrants, for instance, took a decade to pass and did so
abruptly, just as most members of Congress thought the provision dead.
DeSipio said movements cannot be built from marches alone.
"It's good they've moved away from the marches," he said. "Marches can
get people's attention, but it doesn't necessarily get a higher
percentage of the community involved in civic participation. That's what
things like get-out-the-vote and voter registration drives do."
DeSipio said the ferment over immigration could in time lead to a surge
in Latino voters similar to the one after the 1994 passage of
Proposition 187. The measure would have denied health benefits to
undocumented immigrants had it not been overturned in the courts.
The number of legal residents who became U.S. citizens increased from
434,000 in 1994 to more than 1 million in 1996; and Latino registered
voters in California increased from 1.6 million in 1996 to 1.9 million
in 2000, according to the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed
Officials Educational Fund in Los Angeles.
Activists argue that some preliminary data offer evidence of another
surge. According to U.S. immigration statistics, the number of
citizenship applications increased by 41.5% in May over last year, a far
larger increase than in previous periods.
"This is one of many issues, and it's going to take time, but it will
come," said Cristina Basurto, 32, a member of Women of Earth, a social
justice organization, who attended a small rally after the conference
Saturday near downtown. "I think people still have it in their hearts
and still want to fight for what they believe in."
The number of new Latino voters grew by 35,000 in Los Angeles County
from March to August, helping to boost their share of the electorate
from 20% to 24% over last year, according to an analysis of Los Angeles
County registrar-recorder data by the Latino officials' organization.
Marcelo Gaete, the organization's senior program director, said his
staff used a surname dictionary to determine how many of the county's
new voters were Latino.
Keeley, however, said the political landscape proves his point: A
get-tough stand on immigration is a winning political message.
In Pennsylvania, for instance, he said Republican Sen. Rick Santorum is
rapidly closing what had been a double-digit deficit in the polls in his
race against his Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Robert Casey
Jr., by campaigning with a tough immigration message.
He also said congressional hearings on immigration and local town halls
during the summer recess have convinced many legislators that
constituents see border control as a top priority.
As a result, he said, "the chances are less than zero" of winning
legalization this year.
Some Latino activists, including UC Riverside ethnic studies department
Chairman Armando Navarro, agree that the movement for immigrant rights
has lost steam. He said internal squabbling, a lack of leadership and a
failure to organize immigrants for long-term political change had
squandered their gains of the spring.
DeSipio and others, however, said activists had already scored a
significant victory by so far stopping the House bill, especially the
provision that would criminalize undocumented immigrants and those who
aid them, from becoming law. Elements of that bill, including border
enforcement measures, however, may still pass.
Now, activists say, they are gearing up to launch what they envision
will be a long-term effort to mobilize Latino voters for elections this
November and, more important, in 2008.
Two organizations — the Service Employees International Union and the
Southwest Voter Registration Education Project — have raised $7 million
for national voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts.
The National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials plans to
include 150,000 voter registration cards in La Opinion later this month
and help sponsor another major workshop at the L.A. Convention Center to
help immigrants apply for citizenship. A July workshop produced about
1,300 completed new citizenship applications, Gaete said.
Spanish-language radio DJs, who helped turn masses out for marches, have
also begun to actively promote voter registration and citizenship
efforts. Renan Almendarez "El Cucuy" Coello took his "Votos por America"
campaign to 10 cities over two weeks last month.
DeSipio cautioned, however, that it was easier to register voters than
to get them out to the polls.
"There's certainly the potential there," he said, "but it will require
sustained investment and a lot of hard work."
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