IPC In The News |
Their coordinated efforts have been a success, with more than 280,000 new citizens being registered to vote. This year, with tight congressional races for state Assembly and Senate elections, their goals are to demonstrate the impact of that voting bloc, which already counts more than 1 million registered voters in New York, according to a new study by the Immigration Policy Center.
Wendy Sefsaf, communications director for the American Immigration Council, said there is no proof illegal immigrants come here to have children, only anecdotal stories in articles and newspapers.
“There’s no absolute proof someone would come here and have a baby,” said Ms. Sefsaf. “That baby couldn’t do anything for you until it’s 21 years old, and then sponsor you for permanent residence which could take 10 to 20 years. It’s an imagined problem.”
Ms. Sefsaf also questioned Mr. Metcalfe’s claim the 14th Amendment is being “misapplied” because the original debates around the amendment talked about both rights for African-Americans and for Chinese immigrants.
“It was very purposely passed and set up to take into account both African-Americans and immigrants,” she said. “It’s being applied exactly as it was intended.”
She said illegal immigrants primarily come to the United States for economic reasons, not to have children here.
“It’s almost invariably for economic reasons. We do have a broken immigration system, and we do need to address it comprehensively and fix it, but these patchwork solutions don’t get us anywhere near where we need to be to fix the system,” said Ms. Sefsaf.
The US is "pursuing a lopsided approach of border-enforcement only and placing the highest priority on prosecuting nonviolent border-crossers rather than dangerous criminals," Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based advocacy group, told the ISN.
“The higher-education issue is hot everywhere,” said Benjamin Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Council, a policy group in Washington. “It’s a backdoor way of making immigration policy.”
The report calls these voters "New Americans." They include recent immigrants and their children, coming largely but not entirely from Hispanics and Asian countries.
Walter Ewing is senior researcher at the Immigration Policy Center. He says in terms of voting habits, New Americans have one thing in common.
"What you can assume about this voting group is that they're going to respond to candidates who seem to be positive about immigration, since that is either themselves of their parents. And that does not seem to fall along party lines."
Ewing found that between 1996 and 2008, the number of new American voters increased more than 100 percent, and is likely to keep growing.
But Ewing says these voters tend to be forgotten by politicians, even though in California they accounted for more votes than the margin by which now President Barack Obama beat John McCain.
As of 2008, "New Americans" were one in ten of all registered voters in the country, according to a new Immigration Policy Center report. Two-thirds of those are naturalized U.S. citizens and a little over one-third are the American-born children of immigrants, primarily from Latin America and Asia.
Transcript:
Good morning, I’m Elizabeth Wynne Johnson; this is Power Breakfast from Capitol News Connection.
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A new report out today offers an updated snapshot of a profound shift in electoral demographics.
EWING As of 2008, New Americans were one in ten of all registered voters in the country. That’s 15 million registered voters.
What’s a “New American”? Walter Ewing, senior researcher at the Immigration Policy Center, breaks it down: roughly two-thirds are naturalized US citizens; a little over one-third are the American-born children of immigrants, primarily from Latin America and Asia. Since the Census Bureau first started collecting this data in 1996, the total number of ‘New American’ voters has jumped more than one-hundred percent. As of 2008, they had the numbers to play a pivotal role.
EWING We did identify states in which the number of New American registered voters was greater than the numbers of votes by which either Obama or McCain won the state… That was the case in FL, CA, TX, NC, NJ, GA, VA, AZ, MO, NV, IN and Montana, even.
To identify New Americans as a voting “bloc,” however, has its limits.
EWING They’re a “bloc” in the sense of having a personal connection to immigrant experience – but that doesn’t mean they all vote the same way.
Candidates – especially those in close elections – would do well to take heed of one over-arching characteristic.
EWING It is likely, given their personal connection to the immigrant experience, that these voters are not going to take very kindly to political rhetoric that demonizes immigrants – because that’s going to be either themselves or their parents.
‘New Americans’ also make up a growing percentage of registered voters overall.
Immigration Policy Center released a study today contending that “new Americans,” defined as recent naturalized citizens and U.S.-born children of immigrants from Latin America and Asia since 1965, are becoming increasingly powerful in elections as their numbers grow. In 2008, these groups made up about 10 percent of the voting population, a number that grew by more than 100 percent since 1996, according to the report.
“Immigration is a Rubik’s Cube really; in order to solve the puzzle, you can’t just be focused on one side of it,” [the Immigration Policy Center's Mary] Giovagnoli says. “What we’ve done is focus exclusively on one side of the puzzle, the interior-border-enforcement side of things.” [...]
Americans are justifiably frustrated that 11 million unauthorized immigrants now live in the United States. Yet the majority of them would have preferred to come legally; there was simply no way under current immigration laws. Moreover, most of them are working, paying taxes, and buying US goods. Other than lacking legal status, most are law-abiding residents. Many are married to US citizens, with children who are citizens.
The problem is that they are often willing to accept low wages and poor working conditions, which creates unfair competition for US workers and gives unscrupulous employers an unfair advantage over law-abiding employers.
We could continue on the same path we have pursued for two decades: spending more money on enforcement and passing increasingly harsh laws in an attempt to drive unauthorized immigrants out. But despite the billions of dollars we’ve spent building walls, hiring border patrol agents, and detaining and deporting hundreds of thousands, the unauthorized population hasn’t decreased significantly.
Instead of “enforcement only,” we should offer unauthorized immigrants a chance to come forward, register, pay a fine, learn English, pass background checks, and legalize their status.
Legalizing them would inject a new level of certainty into their lives, allowing them to invest more in themselves and their communities. Legalized immigrants will earn more, pay more taxes, consume more, buy houses, start businesses, and contribute more to the economy.
Americans want real solutions to the problem of unauthorized immigration that are practical and fair. Enforcement alone has failed. We need comprehensive immigration reform that includes a legalization program.
– Michele Waslin, senior policy analyst, American Immigration Council’s Immigration Policy Center
Immigrants in Illinois hold a considerable amount of voting clout, according to a new census study to to be released Thursday by the Immigration Policy Center in Washington.
Wendy Sefsaf, with the American Immigration Council, says the study found more than six million voters registered in Illinois, and one in ten of those voters is either an immigrant or a child of an immigrant. That's well over a half-million potential voters, and Sefsaf says they could be a powerful force - if they get out and cast ballots on election day next month.
"Absolutely. I mean when ten percent of all registered voters in Illinois are immigrants or the children of immigrants, they certainly have a big political muscle that they can begin to use."
Sefsaf says studies showed that immigrants did have a big impact on the last Presidential election.
"So we know that they can actually swing elections in key districts and in key states."
