Immigrant Voter Drive Falls Short by 85%

Source: AP/Yahoo!

After huge immigration protests earlier this year, advocates vowed to capitalize on the energy and register 1 million new foreign-born voters, mostly Hispanics.

But rhetoric has run headlong into reality: Organizers say that, as of last week, they had signed up fewer than 150,000 people.

Who comes here eager to vote? Who immigrates and makes it a priority to take an active part in our flourishing democratic republic?

People who want to become AMERICANS, that's who!

"People were waving signs — 'Today we march, tomorrow we vote' — but that may not be something that's literally tomorrow," said Lionel Sosa, a Republican political strategist who is CEO of Mexicans & Americans Thinking Together, a Web-based nonprofit. "It will be slow, but eventually everyone running for political office will understand that this is a vote to be reckoned with."

The problem with "today we march, tomorrow we vote" is that plenty of these people...
...are here illegally. They can't vote tomorrow -- literally or figuratively -- and that's as it should be.

But here's what really ticks me off. Do they want to register all new immigrants, or just Hispanic ones? They keep talking about immigrants, immigrants, immigrants -- but then you get this crap...

"The 1 million — we were looking at the potential of immigrant voter power," Jones said. "Looking back, we realize ... the immigrant community is complicated — not monolithic."

First off, more than one in three of the nation's 42 million-plus Hispanics are age 17 or younger, 2005 Census data show — too young to vote. And some portion of that population, no one is sure exactly how many, includes illegal immigrants.

*SNIP*

Another hurdle to immigrants voting is that few candidates have developed a rapport with them, said Jorge Mursuli, president of Miami-based Democracia U.S.A., an advocacy group that says it registered most of the new immigrant voters — more than 100,000 in Arizona, Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

"People are interested when they start to see more Hispanic candidates — that gets new voters engaged," Mursuli said.

You may surprised to find out that, despite the fact that my heritage is in the British Isles, I do not need to see "Anglo" candidates to be engaged in the democratic process. Americans will do quite nicely, thank you very much.

That is just plain insulting.

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Illegal Immigration * Voting * Democracy * American * Hispanic