Arizona immigrant rights advocates hope to get out the Hispanic vote to combat the state's anti-immigration policies, taking a play from the playbook of California immigrant rights advocates, who used the same tactic more than a decade ago, The L.A. Times reported.
As our Los Angeles immigration lawyers have reported on our California Immigration Attorney Blog, immigrant rights advocates continue to pressure California politicians, most recently by issuing scorecards on how well elected officials are doing in representing Hispanic voters.
Immigrant rights advocates in Arizona are going door-to-door to turn out the vote, registering some Hispanic residents who have been U.S. citizens for decades but have not voted. One 60-year-old resident said he registered after his 39-year-old daughter, a Phoenix native, was stopped by officers multiple times and asked in broken Spanish to say where she was born.
Advocates hope opposition to Arizona's new immigration law -- which permits law enforcement to stop and question suspected illegals and take those without proper paperwork into custody -- will galvanize the Hispanic vote.
The same thing happened in California after the passage of Proposition 187 in the 1990s. That law sought to withhold public education and social services from illegal immigrants and was ruled unconstitutional in federal court. The active Hispanic voice in California politics has been a primary reason for the shift in support toward more compassionate reform measures supported by many California politicians.
After Proposition 187 passed in California, more than 1 million California Latinos became citizens. The uprising changed the entire political landscape of the state, pushing it solidly into Democratic hands and pushing the crackdown on illegal immigrants onto the margins of political issues in the state.
"It's the same energy I saw with 187," said Ben Monterroso, a Service Employees International Union official who spearheaded voter registration in California in 1994 and now oversees the Arizona operation. "People are saying enough is enough."
Perhaps the Republican party will have to lose big there as well. More likely, it will find its office holders have all manner of compassion for the plight of Arizona's Hispanic residents when it becomes evident that to do otherwise will mean losing an election.
The new immigration law is popular among Arizona residents, except among Latinos, who oppose it by a margin of more than 80 percent. Nearly 1 in 5 of the state's voters are Hispanic.
The Los Angeles immigration attorneys at HOWARD | NASSIRI offer confidential appointments to discuss your rights. Call 1-800-872-5925 or contact us through this website.
