By Mallory St. Claire, 17; Pratik Cherian, 16; Max Gabovitch, 15; and Becky Mangan, 13
Published: June 16, 2008
Click here for Y-Press roundtable with Latino youth.
Pollsters and analysts love to identify voting blocs, using them to explain voting trends and to make projections. The Latino voting bloc has been repeatedly analyzed, often getting credit for swaying elections, such as the 2004 presidential contest in which incumbent George W. Bush defeated U.S. Sen. John Kerry.
According to the 2006 U.S. Census, 47 million Hispanics live in the United States, and they account for 15 percent of the U.S. population – definitely a force to be reckoned with.
However, their impact as a voting bloc is less impressive. According to the Census, Latino voters made up only 6 percent of the electorate in 2004 elections. Part of the reason is that 44 percent of this population are non-citizens, and thus not eligible to vote.
Still, 6 percent of the popular vote is substantial. But to have an effect, the bloc must vote largely as one, and that presupposes that these citizens – who have roots in a wide range of countries – value the same issues and support the same candidates. And that just doesn’t seem to be true.
Rosa Fernandez , 23, is a recent graduate of Wellesley College. She was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to the U.S. at age 14. She lives in New York City, and she and her twin sister are U.S. citizens, but her mother and older sister are not. She listed her biggest concerns, in order: immigration, the Iraq War, the economy and education.
Ana Montalban was born in Cuba and emigrated to the U.S. in 1970, at age 6. Since then she has become a U.S. citizen, raised a family and worked a range of jobs, first as a receptionist and paralegal and then as an office administrator. She now teaches limited English language students at a high school in Rhode Island.
Montalban’s top concerns are, in order: “education, then the economy and illegal immigration.”
While these women’s top issues are similar, they are not identical. Furthermore, it doesn’t appear they plan to vote for the same presidential candidate: Fernandez is leaning Democratic, while Montalban favors Republican John McCain.
The Immigrant Voting Project, a collaborative effort designed as a resource and network about noncitizen immigrant voting, recently completed surveys and focus groups in New York City. The study found that immigrants’ political concerns often mirror those of “ordinary” Americans, especially if they have been in this country for a while.
“They care about safe and clean streets,” said project codirector Michele Wucker, who is executive director of the World Policy Institute. “They want good schools. They want reliable transportation. They want good health care. I mean, those are things that Americans care about very, very much.”
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, most Latinos share the goal of having their children grow up to have better lives than they have had, and this includes access to good education, housing and health care. But they are split on opening U.S. borders to immigrants and granting citizen status to those who have entered the country illegally.
Neither Fernandez nor Montalban supports giving illegal immigrants voting privileges or automatic citizenship. They would like a more solid border and a clear-cut policy showing immigrants already in the U.S. how they can attain legal status.
Wucker agrees that the current policies of arrest and deportation – as well as restricting financial aid for students of illegal immigrants – devastate immigrant families. “It’s hurting them badly. It’s limiting their opportunities for education. It’s making it harder for them to fit in with their peers. It’s hurting their family’s economic status. It’s limiting their sense of opportunity, of the idea that there is justice and there is a possibility of succeeding.”
Despite the outcry against these policies, they don’t seem to be forging a cohesive voting bloc of Latinos. Neither Wucker, Fernandez nor Montalban sees much truth or power in “the bloc” in this presidential election, at least not yet.
“I think it’s a lot more complicated than the media portray it, and I think that a lot of people who are voting for Barack Obama or who wanted to vote for Bill Richardson are taking a lot more factors into consideration than just their ethnic background,” Wucker said. “I think [the ethnic bloc] is a bit of a straw man that the media put out there.” 
For example, actress America Fererra is a supporter of Hillary Clinton. Though Fererra is Latino, she says she joined the campaign to involve youth in the political process, not to make Clinton the favored Latino candidate.
Montalban warned politicians about viewing Latinos as a single entity, pointing out that “Hispanics come from so many different countries.”
With the rise of youth participation in the 2008 election, many groups are focusing on the youngest Latino voters, not only candidates but those most concerned with civic engagement of all Americans. And some are dismayed at what they see.
CIRCLE, the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at the University of Maryland, which researches the civil and political activities of Americans ages 15 to 25, reports that Latino youth ages 18 to 24 have the lowest voting turnout of any ethnic group – 33 percent in 2004.
Fernandez said these youth may have troubles other than voting on their minds. “There are a lot of challenges to trying to incorporate themselves into American society,” she said. “There are language barriers, education, society. If you are poor and you go to a poor school in your neighborhood. I mean, what are your chances?”
However, Wucker said immigrant youth might become more civic-minded because of the harsh immigration policies.
“I think that the increased attention to immigration policy and the increased political mobilization in Latino communities over the last couple of years ultimately will turn out to be a very positive thing in terms of motivating immigrant youth to become more involved in the political process,” Wucker said.
One movement working toward that end is Democracia U.S.A., which promotes Hispanic civic engagement throughout the nation.
Mario Munoz, 16, who is from Cuba and now lives in Miami, should give Wucker some hope for future voters. Though he can’t vote yet, he is enthusiastic about the political process – Y-Press first interviewed him at a civic engagement conference last year in Washington D.C.
“Since I haven’t been here very long, I don’t really have a political view,” Mario said. “I don’t have a side that I’ve picked because I don’t fully understand [the process] yet and I want to learn as much as I can before I take a side.”
But that doesn’t mean he isn’t paying attention. “I’ve been here for one election, and I did my research and I listened to the speeches, and then I looked at the votes and I saw which guy had the best perspective and which of them was going to be better for my community,” he said.
“Even though I couldn’t vote … I did my research and I picked the one I liked best.”
