RSSDemocracy program aims to bolster Hispanics’ political clout
Carolyn Hileman - The Voice* | May 1, 2008
By ROXANA HEGEMAN
The Associated Press
WICHITA, Kan. | The dozen immigrants gathered at the Sunflower Community Action’s democracy class repeated the question, slowly and in unison.
“What is the most important right granted to United States citizens?”
Their teacher, Emira Palacios, emphatically led the answering chorus: “The right to vote.”
She earnestly looked at her charges — immigrants both old and young from Mexico, Columbia and Guatemala — as she held up a voter registration form and told them that was the one expectation she had when they became U.S. citizens.
“Fill out this form and register to vote,” said Palacios, whose class is part of a national initiative by immigrant rights advocates to naturalize the estimated 9.4 million legal immigrants in the U.S. eligible to become citizens in time for the November elections.
They’re also targeting the immigrants’ estimated 1.9 million U.S.-born children, now ages 18 to 24, who have not yet registered to vote.
For the next eight weeks, Palacios’ class will repeat that specific question and answer, along with the other questions and answers they must learn before taking the government’s naturalization test.
Palacios will drill them on the difference in meanings between words such as “where” and “what” — critical to getting the answers right. They’ll role-play, in English with volunteers, the personal interviews they’ll have with immigration officials.
“As immigrant groups we could put together great marches, but we soon realized that the real power is the power to vote,” Palacios said in Spanish during an interview.
An estimated 29,000 immigrants are eligible for naturalization in Kansas, with another 5,300 of their U.S.-born children eligible to vote but not registered, she said citing a state-by-state breakdown by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
In Missouri, the number of immigrants eligible for naturalization is estimated at 31,000, with an additional 9,200 of their adult U.S.-born children not yet registered.
Sunflower Community Action and others have been methodically trying to reach those potential new voters before the presidential election.
Hispanic leaders are lobbying government officials to speed the long delays in processing citizenship applications caused nationwide after last year’s application fee increases.
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