New Immigrant Communities: Finding a Place in Local Politics 9781626373976

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NEW IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES

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NEW IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES Finding a Place in Local Politics Kristi Andersen

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

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Published in the United States of America in 2010 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU  2010 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Andersen, Kristi. New immigrant communities: Finding a place in local politics / Kristi Andersen. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58826-722-1 (hc: alk. paper) 1. Immigrants—United States—Political activity. 2. Political participation— United States. I. Title. JV6477.A53 2010 323'.0420869120973—dc22 2010006849 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments

vii ix

1

Introduction

1

2

Immigration and Local Environments

5

3

Understanding Political Incorporation

21

4

Assessing Incorporation in Six Cities

31

5

The Role of Political Parties

49

6

Community Organizations as New Channels for Political Incorporation

71

7

The Geopolitics of Immigrant Incorporation

89

8

Conclusion

103

Bibliography Index About the Book

117 125 133

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Tables and Figures

Tables 2.1

Economic, Political, and Demographic Characteristics of Six Cities

9

4.1

Naturalization and Time in the United States by State

33

4.2

Naturalization Rates by City and Origin

35

4.3

Overall Summary of Political Incorporation Measures

44

6.1

Functional Categorization of Organizations Studied in Six Cities

76

8.1

Summary of Factors Facilitating Political Incorporation

104

Figures 2.1

Location Map of the Six Cities

10

4.1

Naturalization Rate for Six Cities and Their States

34

4.2

Political Responsiveness by Level of Government

46

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Acknowledgments

It has been an interesting challenge to plunge into the literature on immigration and immigrant incorporation. Years ago, when writing about the New Deal–era party realignment, my research suggested that the Democratic Party constructed a new and winning coalition in part by attracting voters from the groups that had produced a groundswell of immigration from the 1890s to the early 1920s. I had spent some time with historical studies of urban political machines and conducted some analysis of voting patterns in immigrant-rich cities such as Chicago. Returning to some of that research, I wondered what the current story was: How were political parties (institutions that had changed markedly since the New Deal) responding to the new wave of immigration at the end of the twentieth century? The sociological literature, centered primarily around the concept of assimilation, was extensive and sophisticated, and seemed to build seamlessly on the research based on the earlier waves of immigration. But this tradition didn’t pay much attention to the political behavior of immigrants. I quickly learned that this gap was being filled by the labors of a whole new generation of brilliant young scholars (as well as some, like John Mollenkopf and Martin Shain, who had been producing first-rate research about immigrants and politics for years). Being instructed and inspired by much younger people has been a terrific experience. I am happy to acknowledge my intellectual debt to these scholars, some of whom were kind enough to visit the Maxwell School and others whom I enjoyed meeting at conferences and workshops, starting with my colleague and friend Elizabeth Cohen. These scholars include Janelle Wong, Irene Bloemraad, Karthick Ramakrishnan, Reuel Rogers,

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Acknowledgments

Christina Wolbrecht, Rodney Hero, Jane Junn, Peggy Levitt, Dan Tichenor, and Michael Jones-Correa. I received support for this research from the Carnegie Corporation and, at Syracuse, from the Maxwell School’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan Institute for Global Affairs, directed by Peg Hermann. I had wonderful research assistance, first and foremost from Brett Heindl, who conducted most of the interviews, and also from Jessica Wintringham (who conducted the Syracuse interviews), as well as John Mero, Camilla Olson, Gina Bugiada, Gae Hee Song, Hannah Allerdice, and Emily Thorson. I am also grateful to various Maxwell faculty and graduate student colleagues. Many, from several departments, were participants in the Immigrant Incorporation Working Group, and I have benefited enormously from talking and working with Erika Wilkens, Hector Ortiz, Jeff Stonecash, Stuart Brown, Jamie Winders, Audie Klotz, Alison Mountz, Prema Kurien, Dave Richardson, Payal Banerjee, Amy Lutz, and Vernon Greene, among others. More recently, with another group of colleagues, in the teamtaught Maxwell undergraduate course “Critical Issues for the United States,” I have been reading about, discussing, and teaching immigration policy, and this has helped me locate my research within a larger political and policy context. I am grateful on that score to John Western, John Mercer, Heather Pincock, Dave Richardson, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Amy Lutz, and Bob McClure. Finally, I am most appreciative to all the people who shared information and ideas about immigrants and civic life in Syracuse, Lansing, Waco, Fort Collins, Chico, and Spokane. In particular I thank those who participated in our conference “Empowering Immigrant Groups,” whose experiences and ideas appear in the last chapter of the book.

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1 Introduction

At the turn of the twentieth century, Polish immigrants arriving in

Chicago or Italian immigrants arriving in Buffalo could turn to a dense network of mutual aid societies for help in establishing their families in a new and difficult environment This network included local churches and local representatives of political parties. The party organizations “presented themselves to the immigrants in immediate, personal terms. The bosses were gregarious human beings whose power was based on personal relations with people around them . . . [the boss] frequently helped the people out in times of need . . . [and] asked only for a vote on election day” (Kantowicz 1975, 41). But in the early part of the twenty-first century, a Mexican American community leader in Los Angeles stated that if you stopped someone on the street and asked them to direct you to the local office of the Democratic Party, they would “look at you with bewilderment: ‘What is this crazy guy talking about?’” (Wong 2006, 51). Nevertheless, community organizations play an important role in easing immigrants’ struggles in a new place today, just as they did a century ago. These organizations, however, have a more distant relationship with political parties than their early twentieth-century counterparts, and often a closer relationship with local, state, and federal governments. I am concerned about the implications of these changes for the ways that immigrants to the United States acquire the attributes they need to become full participants in the US political system: knowledge and understanding of the explicit and implicit rules for political involvement, an understanding of their rights, the motivation to participate, and the political skills to do so.

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New Immigrant Communities

In 2004, when this study was begun, the Census Bureau estimated that the United States was home to about thirty-one million foreignborn adults over the age of eighteen.1 The majority of these are noncitizens, none of whom can vote except in local elections in a few places2 and many of whom are reluctant to participate in almost any sort of political activity for fear of drawing the attention of federal agencies, a particular danger in the post-9/11 world. Imagine placing these denizens on a continuum from undocumented, short-term, or circular immigrants at one extreme to long-naturalized citizens at the other end. There may be disagreement about where to draw the line, but most Americans would agree that our political system is benefited if the people toward the latter end of this continuum are full participants in US political and civic life. Conversely, the political system’s stability and its very democratic values are threatened if high rates of immigration produce large numbers of nonparticipating, unrepresented, disengaged residents. New arrivals to the United States settle in places with varied political and social characteristics. This book is concerned with how immigrants move toward a situation where they have a “place at the table” in local politics; that is, their organizations and their leaders are consulted, their members are seen as valuable constituents, and their interests are seen as part of the political calculus. Traditionally, immigrants to the United States have concentrated in a relatively small number of gateway cities, and much of the research on political incorporation of immigrants, historical and contemporary, has focused on these cities. Though the traditional gateway cities are still popular destinations for immigrants to the United States, newcomers are also settling in states and cities that have experienced little recent immigration. This exploratory research examines the following midsized cities: Chico, California; Fort Collins, Colorado; Lansing, Michigan; Spokane, Washington; Syracuse, New York; and Waco, Texas. I draw primarily on the results of interviews conducted in each city with elected officials and people who managed their campaigns; political party leaders; and directors and staff members of organizations that provided services to immigrant groups, advocated for immigrant rights, or were otherwise relevant to understanding the position of immigrant groups in that city. This book has four primary goals. First, I hope to connect my research to the substantial new research being produced on the political behavior and political incorporation of immigrants. As well, I hope to help develop an argument that focuses on incorporation as a

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Introduction

3

process involving groups and organizations that takes place in particular political contexts, as an important supplement to approaches that focus primarily on individual attitudes and behaviors. Second, given that midsize cities are immigrant destinations as well as the larger metropolitan areas that are more typical research sites, this study serves a descriptive function: it attempts to provide a basic sense of the immigrant experience with civic and political life in these six cities. The information gathered with regard to each city is broad, nonexhaustive, and oriented toward constructing a general overview, rather than a systematic and detailed picture, of immigrant groups’ situations. Third, the book tries to answer the question that motivated me to undertake the research in the first place: to what extent have nonparty organizations replaced parties as the primary institutional political socializers of immigrants, and what are the implications of this change? Fourth and most important, though this study is not designed to rigorously test hypotheses, I do attempt to make comparisons among the cities as to the progress and success of immigrant incorporation, and to suggest attributes of both the context and the immigrant groups that might account for variation in political incorporation. Some of the aspects of place that may differentially shape immigrant incorporation include the political and geographical isolation of the city, the historical existence of a significant refugee stream among the city’s immigrants,3 and the types and strengths of the connections among immigrant-related organizations and among these organizations and other civic and political organizations in the community. My research suggests that the fundamental step of naturalization is facilitated by community organizational capacity that is sometimes based partially on organizational spillover from refugee programs. The next step of group representation in decisionmaking seems to be related to the strength of the connections between immigrant groups and the larger community, paticularly in the form of political allies and supportive organizations. Notes 1. US Census Bureau, Foreign-Born Population of the United States, Current Population Survey—March 2004, Detailed Tables (PPL-176). 2. In parts of Maryland, including Tacoma Park, noncitizen residents can vote in local elections. Legislatures in San Francisco and Washington DC are considering similar measures. In New York City, parents with children in the

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New Immigrant Communities

public schools were able to vote in school board elections before 2004. Information about the immigrant voting rights movement can be found at the Migration Information Source, http://www.migrationinformation.org/USfocus/ display.cfm?id=265. See also Hayduk 2004 for a comprehensive discussion of immigrant voting rights. 3. A refugee is a person who has been forced from his or her home, crossed an international border for safety, and has well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The US State Department Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration helps refugees settle in the United States through agreements with local nonprofit agencies. Other immigrants may enter the United States legally using work visas or for family reunification visas; still others enter without documents, or overstay their visas. Refugee policy is discussed further in Chapter 7.

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2 Immigration and Local Environments

In the nineteenth century, patterns of immigration to the United States were varied. Scandinavian and German farmers settled throughout the Midwest and into the Northwest; Mexicans populated the southern border areas; French Canadians moved into New England; and as the century progressed and the nation became increasingly industrialized, newer immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe concentrated in a relatively small number of gateway cities. Though the traditional gateway cities are still popular destinations for immigrants to the United States, newcomers are now also settling in states and cities that have experienced little recent immigration. Singer uses historical trends in foreign-born populations to develop city gateway categories, as follows with examples of each:

• Former gateways, Cleveland and Buffalo • Continuous gateways, New York and Chicago • Post–World War II gateways, Los Angeles and Miami • Emerging gateways, Atlanta and Washington DC • Re-emerging gateways, Seattle and the Twin Cities • New destinations or pre-emerging gateways, Salt Lake City, Raleigh-Durham (2004) Much of the research on political incorporation of immigrants, both historical and contemporary, has focused on the traditional gateway cities.1 Immigrants to these places, particularly in cities that have long been immigrant destinations, typically join established communities or have easily available models of other established immigrant communities. Such areas of concentrated settlement “offer new 5

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arrivals support, familiarity, and linguistic and cultural ease into a new society” (Singer 2008, 5). This situation created the historical pathways for political incorporation, facilitated by concentrations of ethnic businesses and homeland cultural and social organizations, and by urban political parties’ interest in tapping into new populations. But over the past few decades, more affordable multifamily housing in suburbs has created immigrant infill, whereas gentrification in city downtown areas has brought higher-income people back to the cities and opened up suburban housing to new groups (Hardwick 2008, 44). These trends, combined with the growth of employment centers outside of central cities, mean that in the areas that Singer calls “twentyfirst century gateways,” many immigrant groups are increasingly living in suburbs rather than in the traditional urban ethnic enclaves. This trend has attracted the attention of a number of scholars (see Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008b; Jones-Correa 2005). Zelinsky and Lee suggest the term heterolocalism to refer to situations in which immigrant groups are dispersed, with residences and workplaces widely separated, but where ethnic community ties are maintained, in part through modern technology (1998). The concept of heterolocalism is applicable both to the newer, suburbanized locales and to the smaller cities studied in this book. None of the six cities has neighborhoods that look like traditional ethnic enclaves; groups tend to be dispersed throughout the central cities and sometimes the suburbs. Heterolocalism has important implications for thinking about political incorporation. While the growth of Internet-based groups may allow mobilization of ethnic groups at a regional or national level, the fact that immigrant groups are dispersed throughout a metropolitan area means that the traditional localized means of political incorporation, such as voter registration drives, precinct leaders, and neighborhood organizations, are decreasingly important. It also means that it is more difficult for state or local political parties to reach out efficiently to new groups, when they live not in a compact neighborhood, but possibly in a number of different voting districts or even in different towns. For these reasons, it is important to focus on the understudied situation of immigrants in smaller metropolitan areas and to inquire about the process of incorporation in these places. Moreover, focusing on medium-sized cities allowed me to make a reasonable attempt to acquire at least basic information and knowledge about all the relevant institutions in a particular locality—political parties, unions,

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churches, neighborhood centers, and advocacy organizations—that served, organized, or advocated for immigrants. In these metropolitan areas, which have populations of approximately 100,000 to 500,000, foreign-born residents comprised between 4 percent and 10 percent of the total population.2 In my selection among cities in this range of size and percent of foreign-born, I also took into account the timing of immigration to the city. Length of residence in the United States is a strong predictor of an individual immigrant’s propensity to naturalize, principally because the foreign-born must reside in the United States for seven years before they are eligible for naturalization. Only by going through the naturalization process can an immigrant acquire full political rights.3 Therefore, the proportion of an immigrant group’s population that is institutionally ineligible to participate in formal politics will likely be quite important to that group’s level of political incorporation. For this project, I looked at the percentage of each Metropolitan Statistical Area’s (MSA) foreign-born population that had arrived between 1990 and 2000, and considered only MSAs whose percentage was within one standard deviation above the average among all MSAs. The attempt to hold constant several significant demographic characteristics resulted in a pool of thirty-eight MSAs. From these, cities were selected based on their variation on three other characteristics: (1) the diversity of the immigrant population, (2) the structure of the MSA’s economy, and (3) the MSA’s relative affluence. The extent to which a city’s foreign-born population comes from a variety of different countries of origin will, arguably, impact the ways that political and civic actors attempt to mobilize the city’s foreign-born population. We might expect such actors to see homogeneous immigrant communities as large potential voting blocs, while seeing heterogeneous groups as too splintered to be worth the effort of mobilizing. In designing this research, I assumed that before an immigrant group could become a viable candidate for mobilization, it would have to pass some sort of numerical threshold or reach a critical mass. Once it crossed this threshold, it would be more likely to produce indigenous political entrepreneurs, be better able to organize, and be better able to articulate its interests to and attract the attention of political actors. Based in part on pilot research conducted in Syracuse, New York, this threshold was set at 1,000. Thus, I looked for cities with one or more foreign-born groups of at least 1,000 members.4

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Some of the MSAs selected for study had strong manufacturing bases and others had more clearly service-based economies; the final selection also took into account their relative affluence based on household income distributions.5 Affluent areas with higher tax bases might be more likely to create public programs to incorporate immigrants, but might also reflect a more conservative and potentially anti-immigrant public opinion. Areas with manufacturing-based economies might be expected to have a stronger labor union presence, which could increase the likelihood that immigrants would be actively incorporated into the political system. In summary, the cities in this study were comparable on four dimensions: (1) the size of the metropolitan area with 100,000 to 500,000 MSA population (with Syracuse slightly larger);6 (2) the size of the immigrant population at 4 to 10 percent of the total population; (3) the proportion of temporary or transient residents, such as college students, in the metropolitan area with the cities chosen being close to the national average on this dimension; and (4) the timing of the city’s immigrant population’s arrival in the United States being close to the national average in terms of percentage of foreign-born immigrants arriving between 1990 and 2000. The cities varied in terms of the diversity of their immigration streams, the bases of their economies, and their relative affluence. Table 2.1 provides basic demographic and economic information about the six cities (census data is for Metropolitan Statistical Areas).

Data Collection GuideStar data, Internet searches, and city directories were used to develop a list of immigrant-related organizations in each city. In addition, I identified local journalists and academics whose writing suggested that they might be likely sources of information about the area’s immigrant communities and contacted them to get general background information about city politics, local organizations, and possible informants. Subsequently a research assistant conducted fifteen to twenty unstructured interviews (averaging about an hour) with either elected officials or people who managed their campaigns or staffed their offices; political party leaders; and either heads or staff members of organizations that provided services to immigrant groups, advocated for immigrant rights, or were otherwise relevant to understanding the

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Table 2.1 Economic, Political, and Demographic Characteristics of Six Cities

Immigrant Diversity

7.7

38.9

Heterogeneous

251,494

4.3

54.2

Homogeneous

447,728

4.6

57.6

Heterogeneous

Spokane, WA

417,939

4.5

48.8

Heterogeneous

Syracuse, NY

732,117

4.3

40.4

Heterogeneous

Waco, TX

213,517

6.1

45.6

Homogeneous

Mexico, Laos, Thailand Mexico, Asia (varied origins) E. Europe, China, Korea, India, Vietnam, Middle East, Africa, Caribbean, Cuba, Mexico Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Asia, Vietnam, Central America (including Mexico) Germany, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, China, Korea, India, Vietnam, Middle East, Africa, Caribbean Mexio, Asia (varied origins)

Economy

Wealthc

Republican

Service

Low

Republican

Mixed

High

Democratic

Mixed

Average

Republican

Service

Average

Democratic

Mixed

Average to High

Republican

Mixed

Average

Source: Census 2000, Summary File 3. Tables P1, P23, PCT19, P49, P53, and P52. Notes: a. Significant groups are year 2000 population of 1,000 or more; b. Party control is based on average presidential vote 1996, 2000, 2004, and control of city government in 2004; c. Wealth is based on median household income and families living in poverty.

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Party Controlb

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Chico-Paradise, CA Ft. Collins– Loveland, CO Lansing– E. Lansing, MI

Percentage Foreign-Born

Significant National/Regional Origins of Foreign-Borna

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MSA Population

Percentage Arriving 1990–2000

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position of immigrant groups in that city. These interviews took place in the spring and summer of 2004, with the exception of Syracuse.7 They were primarily focused on acquiring information about the relationships among immigrant groups, local governments, political officials and candidates, and relevant nongovernmental organizations. We also scrutinized the cities’ and counties’ websites, in particular to assess the apparent level of attention paid (symbolically and in terms of programs and opportunities) to immigrants and diversity, as well as to determine the number of immigrant-stock residents in elective and appointive office. We examined media coverage of issues related to immigration, immigrant groups, and minority politics in each city; in particular we followed up on some of the events or controversies mentioned in the interviews. The following sections provide overviews of the history and economy of each city and describe the nature of the immigration streams that they have experienced historically and were experiencing in 2004. In these overviews, I have also tried to convey a sense of the political system in which new residents found themselves. Figure 2.1 shows the geographic location of the six cities within the continental United States.

Figure 2.1 Location Map of the Six Cities

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Chico Chico, the most populous city in Butte County, California, is a cultural, economic, and educational center in the northern Sacramento Valley. About 90 miles north of the state capital, Sacramento, the city sits between the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the east and the Sacramento River to the west. It is home to California State University–Chico and Bidwell Park, one of the largest municipal parks in the United States. The original inhabitants of the Chico area were the Mechoopda Maidu Indians. The first Europeans came to the area in the 1830s. The federal government signed a peace treaty with the Mechoopda Maidu and other tribes in 1851, but this did not prevent the removal of over 460 Indians from the area in 1863 to a reservation on the east side of the Coastal Range. Fewer than 300 survived this Koncow Trail of Tears. General John Bidwell, a member of one of the first wagon trains to reach California, was among several miners who discovered gold in the Feather River in 1848, and although the heart of the gold rush was south of Chico, this discovery encouraged prospectors to come to Butte County and made Bidwell’s fortune. He bought thousands of acres, opened the first store in Chico, founded the city in 1860, and served as its representative in Congress. Bidwell and others helped to develop the agricultural economy of the upper Sacramento Valley. Agriculture is still important in the region and includes production of almonds, walnuts, rice, and various types of fruit. Bidwell also encouraged the development of the area by donating land for homes as well as churches and other public structures; his land also formed part of the state Normal School founded in 1887, which is now California State University–Chico. The local economy is heavily dependent on service industries. The largest employers include the local school district, the state university, a community college, county government, and a medical center. The Chico metropolitan area had a population of about 212,000 in 2000, and it is a relatively fast-growing metro area, although relatively poor: its median income in 2000 was only $29,300. The racial/ethnic makeup of the area is predominantly white (approximately 80 percent), with very few African Americans. About 4 percent of the population in 2000 was Asian, and 12 percent Hispanic. Butte County’s proportion of foreign-born residents (about 8 percent) is also much lower than that of the state as a whole. In general, Chico

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(like the surrounding areas of northern California) is far less minority-dominated than the Bay Area and southern California, although the diversity of Chico’s population has been steadily increasing in recent years. Some refugees, including Hmong refugees in the years just before this study was conducted, have been resettled in Chico. Chico is a charter city whose city council consists of seven nonpartisan council members each elected at-large in even-numbered years. The mayor is chosen by and from among the council members and serves for two years. In 2004 Chico’s representatives to the state legislature and to Congress were Republicans, and Butte County voted for George Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Fort Collins About 65 miles north of Denver, on the front range of the Rockies, Fort Collins was promoted in the 1870s as an agricultural settlement. It was on the site of an abandoned military post, Camp Collins, where land developers subdivided lots, constructed irrigation canals, and established a successful settlement (originally called Fort Collins Agricultural Colony). Colorado Agricultural College (later Colorado State University) was established in 1879, providing “farmer’s institutes,” as well as conventional classes, which were predecessors of the cooperative extension program (Abbott, Leonard, and Noel 2005, 124). Immigrants to the Fort Collins area in the mid-nineteenth century included French traders; English and Scots, who had experience in mining; some Japanese, who were recruited to work on local railroads; Swedes, who worked in the stone quarries of Larimer and Weld counties; and large numbers of German Russians, who were descendants of German peasants who settled in the Russian steppes in the eighteenth century, later immigrating to the western United States in the 1870s and to the South Platte River Valley to work in the sugar beet industry. The sugar beet farms, and later the factories, also drew some Japanese workers. Immigrants from Mexico came to this valley in the early twentieth century to work in the sugar beet fields. Mechanized farming eventually forced many of these people into urban areas, where they often worked in the sugar beet processing industry. The Great Western Sugar Company developed a Spanish colony for Mexican American workers in Fort Collins, supplying the materials and allowing the workers to build their own homes, which they would own if

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they remained for five years.8 Nevertheless, through the early years of the twentieth century, little power or influence was attained by immigrants. For example, a 1904 publication of the Chamber of Commerce, Fort Collins, Colorado: A City of Achievements and Opportunities, provided detailed descriptions of the more than 100 businesses then operating in the city. The origins and affiliations of business owners and managers were included; none were immigrants.9 The years after World War II saw rapid population growth in the area of Colorado running from Pueblo in the south to Fort Collins in the north, which now contains a substantial majority of the state’s population. Fort Collins grew from 25,027 in 1960 to more than 118,000 in 2000. Some of this growth was due to high-technology firms (for example, Kodak and Hewlett-Packard) locating large plants in the area. As with the other front range cities of Greeley, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, major employers in Fort Collins include manufacturing firms, military installations, space and technology research and development companies, and higher education. Fort Collins is the wealthiest of the six cities, with a median household income of over $44,000, significantly higher than any of the others, and has the lowest rate of families living below the poverty line. Its county, Larimer, was one of the most Republican-voting counties in the country, as measured by presidential voting from the 1960s to the 1990s; it remained Republican after 2000, but the vote in 2000 and 2004, with just over half for Bush, presaged the state’s shift toward the Democrats in 2008. Fort Collins has a mayor and a sixmember district-based city council.

Lansing Lansing and its environs are home to a highly culturally and economically diverse population of immigrants. Among midsized metropolitan areas, defined as less than one million, greater than 250,000, the Lansing–East Lansing metro area (hereafter referred to as Lansing) is one of the top ten for refugee resettlement, with over 5,300 settled there between 1983 and 2004 (Singer and Wilson 2006, 11). Lansing hosts a number of immigrant groups, including Koreans, Indians, Chinese, Mexicans, and Cubans. Lansing is also home to a large community of about 3,000 foreign-born Muslims and their US-born children. Within the Muslim community are large numbers of Somali,

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Iraqi, and Afghan refugees. Lansing also contains an older community of about 2,500 resettled Indochinese (mainly Hmong) refugees. Finally, Lansing’s relatively small population of foreign-born Mexicans coexists with a vibrant, well-established Mexican American population. Intermingled with Lansing’s sizable number of refugees and recent immigrants are an affluent set of foreign-born professionals, health-care providers, and academics affiliated with Michigan State University (MSU). Finally, the city also has a sizable African American population that coexists, sometimes awkwardly, with the area’s Hispanic and immigrant groups. As a whole, Lansing is moderately well-off, with a median household income of about $35,000 and a poverty rate of about 13 percent in 2000. Traditionally, jobs in the automobile industry made the area a target for white and African American migrants from the southern United States, and later for Mexican Americans; General Motors still employed over 10,000 workers in Lansing early in the decade. Central Michigan also has a long history as an agricultural area. Many of the area’s Mexican Americans first came to the area as migrant farmworkers and remained there because of the job opportunities available in the automobile industry. Agriculture continues to draw a large number of seasonal Mexican farmworkers. Today, however, the largest employers are the Michigan state government (Lansing is the state capital) and MSU. Education, health services, and social services constitute the largest share of the economy. Lansing is the least Republican of the six cities: George Bush received just over 40 percent of the vote in 2004. It is governed by a mayor and an eight-member city council (four elected by district and four at-large).

Spokane Washington became a state in 1889. By that time Spokane (then Spokane Falls), only a decade old, contained about 19,000 people. It was a transport center for wheat, lumber, lead, and silver. Three railroads connected Spokane to places west of the Cascades by this time; this made Spokane the dominant city in the so-called Inland Empire. The railroad companies actively promoted settlement, sending agents as well as literature to Great Britain and northwestern Europe (Ficken and LeWarne 1988, 60). Growth was impressive during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. But “while there were indeed

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many foreign-born newcomers, most had lived in other states, and there were in the Inland Empire few communities which had any distinct ethnic or cultural identities.” Most immigrants were eager to assimilate (Clark 1976, 68). The rebuilding after a devastating fire in 1889 was financed by men who had made money from mining companies, and a construction boom followed, creating banks, office buildings, department stores, and other commercial developments. Growth slowed after the turn of the century: rail traffic declined, the Grand Coulee Dam brought prosperity to other communities, and whereas most cities in the state were growing in the middle of the century, Spokane was losing population. In 1974 the city hosted Expo 74, an environmentally themed exposition for which old railroad tracks and facilities downtown were torn up and the riverfront made more accessible. With a median household income in 2000 of about $37,000, Spokane is moderately prosperous, but has experienced a sluggish local economy for several decades. Its economy suffered from a devastating deindustrialization during the 1970s and 1980s and now relies heavily on agriculture and extractive industries like mining and forestry. Spokane has had and continues to have a great variety of immigrants. The early twentieth-century building boom was fueled by Irish Catholic immigrants, who supplied much of the construction labor. Between 1900 and 1910, Spokane’s population more than doubled. Irish and other ethnic enclaves developed, including small groups of Finns, Italians, Germans, and others. Japanese immigrants, routinely discriminated against, constituted a significant portion of Spokane’s population by the advent of World War II and the internment camps.10 Black migration to Washington responded to World War II shortages: the black population grew fourfold between 1940 and 1950. This era also produced migration from Mexico. As farmworkers enlisted in the military, the need for field workers grew, and in 1942 a bracero agreement between the United States and Mexico allowed border crossing by Mexican workers on a temporary, wartime basis. This program declined after 1948, but farmers in the Spokane area continued to recruit Chicano Mexican and Mexican American workers from other areas in the United States. Like Lansing, Spokane hosts a large number of refugees: about 6,800 have been resettled in the metro area since 1983 (Singer and Wilson 2006, 11). Many of these are Indochinese and Hmong refugees who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s. More recently, however, a sizable population of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian refugees has also

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arrived in the area. Originating in the small, persecuted enclaves of evangelical Protestants in the former Soviet Union, they came to the United States under the sponsorship of US evangelical churches and eventually migrated to Spokane, a city whose ethnic makeup and climate reminded them of home. Spokane is also home to a small number of Mexican-born immigrants and to a larger community of Mexican Americans. The city has a very small African American community: only 1.5 percent of the population. Interestingly, Spokane also has a very prominent Japanese American community, many of whom were forcibly relocated to the area during the Japanese internment during World War II. Nevertheless, the area is overwhelmingly white and is the least racially diverse among the six cities. Politically, the sort of disciplined party machines that characterized eastern or midwestern cities never took root in Spokane or other Washington cities. One historian states that “[s]uch attempts were clear in Seattle, Spokane, or Olympia, but not for long: the state was too new, the cities too flexible, too unpredictable in their energies, and they lacked the kind of helpless immigrant population which in other instances gave bosses their base” (Clark 1976, 108). Spokane’s city government was altered in 2001 from a council-manager form, which had existed for forty years, to a strong mayor-council form. The city council consists of six members; two from each of three districts.

Syracuse Syracuse, which began as three small salt-producing towns in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, grew rapidly with the construction of the Erie Canal in the 1820s and the arrival of the railroads in the 1830s. The city’s salt works supplied most of the United States’ needs until about 1870, when the industry declined, and the city began to develop a more diversified economy. Auto parts, china, pharmaceuticals, candles, electrical machinery, air conditioners, beer, and shoes are among the products manufactured that provided the mainstays of the central New York economy in the twentieth century. Declines in production, loss of jobs to other areas, and plant closures have pushed the central New York economy away from manufacturing and toward a more diversified, service-based economy since the 1970s. The largest employers now include Upstate Medical University, Syracuse University, and insurance companies. Upstate New York is often seen as struggling economically, but in terms of

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household income and poverty level, Syracuse was second only to Fort Collins among this group of cities The first sizable group of immigrants to Syracuse was the Germans, who constituted about a quarter of the approximately 4,000 Syracuse citizens in 1840. Irish workers were recruited to work on the Erie Canal and the railroads in the 1820s and 1830s and stayed to work in the factories. In midcentury many Syracuse residents were involved in resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law and in support of the Underground Railroad. Toward the end of the nineteenth century came a surge of Italian immigrants, along with smaller numbers of Poles, Jews, and other Eastern Europeans. In 1902, The Political Blue Book of Syracuse provided detailed biographies of the city’s mayor, twenty elected aldermen, and the men occupying fourteen appointed positions at City Hall (such as treasurer, assessor, and clerk). Of these men seven of the thirty-five had been born abroad, in England, Ireland, or Germany. This was similar to the percentage of the Syracuse population that was foreignborn. By the end of the nineteenth century, Italian immigrants were growing more numerous, and the Italian American Lincoln Republican Club (which is still in existence) was formed at the suggestion of a non-Italian lawyer who mobilized Italians to support his favored candidate for mayor in the 1924 election.11 By the mid-twentieth century, the Germans and Irish had largely assimilated; there were still remnants of Italian and German neighborhoods, however, as well as ethnic organizations, albeit with aging members. Immigration was seen as a historical phenomenon until the last decades of the twentieth century when Syracuse again saw steady streams of immigrants. In 2000, the foreign-born constituted 7.6 percent of the city’s population. Of these 11,000 immigrants, almost 60 percent had entered the country between 1990 and 2000. These included significant numbers from Eastern Europe (particularly Bosnia and Herzegovina), Italy, China, India, Cuba, Jamaica, Canada, and over a thousand Vietnamese, the latter now joined by growing numbers of Hmong and Burmese. Syracuse is also home to some groups of African refugees: Sudanese, Somalis, and others. Many of the foreignborn in Syracuse are refugees (which also includes their families, who often come later through the family reunification program), since several agencies in Syracuse receive federal funding to help with refugee resettlement. The 2000 Census estimated approximately 8,600 Hispanics within Syracuse, although these people are not primarily recent immigrants. About 15 percent of the foreign-born in Syracuse

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in 2000 were from Latin America, whereas almost 43 percent were Asian. Syracuse is governed by an elected mayor and a nine-member Common Council, five of whose members are elected from districts, and four of whom (plus the council president) are elected at-large. In 2004, the mayor was a Democrat, who as president of the Common Council automatically became mayor when the former mayor, a Republican, left to take a federal job, then was subsequently elected in 2001. Since 1969, Democrats have held the office of mayor except for the years 1993–2001, and the Democrats generally have a Common Council majority. The Onondaga County Legislature, on the other hand (which consists of nineteen members, only four of whom come from the city of Syracuse), is dominated by the Republicans; the elected county executive in 2004 was also a Republican, who served for nineteen years. The state assembly representatives from Syracuse tend to be Democrats; the state senators are usually Republicans, as was Syracuse’s member of Congress in 2004. In general, the city leans Democratic, but the surrounding suburbs tend to be Republican. Particular election contests, such as the one in 2002 for a redistricted assembly seat, are often competitive. Perhaps because so many of Syracuse’s newcomers are refugees— over 3,800 resettled in Syracuse between 1983 and 1999—media coverage of immigrants is almost uniformly positive. The Syracuse PostStandard regularly publishes stories of the American Dream variety about Somali or Cambodian families who are making their way in a new country. There are often stories and photos of new arrivals at the airport being greeted by representatives of resettlement organizations and churches. The Sudanese Lost Boys, a number of whom came to Syracuse, have received a good deal of friendly publicity. In a summer 2008 special insert in the paper detailing resources, entertainment, businesses, and events in central New York, one of the lead articles was headlined “Thousands of refugees enhance Syracuse’s diversity” (Huynh 2008).

Waco In the mid-nineteenth century, after its founding in 1849, Waco was the center of the flourishing east-central Texas cotton plantation economy. Its citizens, mostly of English, Scotch, and Irish descent, who often were emigrants from southern states, were generally supportive

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of the Confederate cause, and, in fact, a number of Confederate generals hailed from Waco. The city was characterized by conflicts and animosities during Reconstruction, though its economy revived quickly as it came to be a debarkation point for settlers headed west and a transportation hub: thousands of cattle were driven to market over the suspension bridge across the Brazos River, and railroad lines carried cotton products, wool, and hides. In the late nineteenth century numerous Czech and German immigrants arrived in the area. The racial composition of the city shifted after World War I when rural blacks migrated to Waco, and in the 1920s the city was a center of Ku Klux Klan activity, which was directed against Catholics and Jews as well as blacks. Cross-border migration of Mexicans also increased substantially between 1900 and 1930. Waco’s declining economy was aided by New Deal programs and, eventually, by a renewed demand for cotton products during World War II, when a number of defense industries were also established. Mexican Americans constituted less than 5 percent of the county’s population through the 1950s, but the percentage began to rise in the 1960s and 1970s, as more people migrated to join family and friends already in the area. In the 2000 census, there were over 13,000 foreign-born in the metro area, almost 10,000 of whom had been born in Mexico. The Waco area is heavily Republican; Bush received almost two-thirds of the vote in 2004. The city is governed by a mayor and five-member City Council, elected by district. Waco maintains and supports a number of active neighborhood associations.

Notes 1. See, among other works, Foner 2000; Foner 2001; Jones-Correa 1998; Kasinitz 1992; Mollenkopf 1999; Waldinger 1996a, 1996b. 2. I began with the 280 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), as defined by the Office of Management and Budget and the Census Bureau; Census 2000, Summary File 3: Table P1-Total Population; Summary File 3: Table P23: Year of Entry by Citizenship Status for the Foreign-Born Population. 2000 Summary file, available at http://factfinder.census.gov/. 3. Naturalization is the process by which a qualified foreign national (a lawful permanent resident who has been in the United States for at least five years) can become a US citizen. Applicants for naturalization must demonstrate “good moral character,” as well as knowledge of the English language and the history of the United States. A naturalized citizen has all of the rights and responsibilities of a US citizen.

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4. Census 2000, Summary File 3: Table PCT19: Place of Birth for the Foreign-Born Population. It should be noted that as groups have been in the United States longer, this census statistic underrepresents the size of the group, which will eventually include second- and third- as well as first-generation immigrants. 5. Data from Census 2000, Summary File 3: Table P49: Sex by Industry for the Employed Civilian Population 16+ Years; SF3: Table P53: Median Household Income in 1999; and Summary File 3: Table P52: Household Income in 1999. 6. Syracuse was the site of a pilot study and had an MSA population in 2000 of 732,117; the population criterion for selecting cities was developed later. 7. The Syracuse study was conducted as a pilot study in the winter of 2002–2003 (see Andersen and Wintringham 2003). As can be seen in Table 2.1, the Syracuse MSA is somewhat larger than the others. In addition, some of the information collected differs a bit from our later protocols. 8. http://history.fcgov.com/local_history/Topics/contexts/post.htm. 9. http://history.fcgov.com/archive/chamber/indexchamber.php. 10. Washington state legislation in the 1920s prohibited alien ownership of land, a law explicitly directed against Japanese farmers (Ficken and LeWarne 1988, 133). 11. http://www.lincolnrepublicanclub.com/clubhistory.

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3 Understanding Political Incorporation

Putting aside the normative positions that may be associated with

metaphors such as “melting pot” or “tossed salad,” questions about the processes by which immigrants become members of a new society are important in an age of migration. To begin to answer some of these questions—at least in the relatively narrow context of the present study—we can begin by defining some terms. Assimilation is usually understood as the process by which individuals are absorbed into and adopt the dominant culture and society of another group (if there are sufficient numbers of immigrants, of course, they may well be inducing changes in the host society at the same time). With regard to immigrants, the questions have to do with how immigrants move into the mainstream of society and gain full access to the opportunities, rights, and services available to the members of the mainstream. Commonly used indicators of assimilation, particularly in the US context, include such things as linguistic competence, educational achievement, rates of home and business ownership, and intermarriage. Thus, social science research on immigrant assimilation has often focused primarily on the extent to which immigrants succeed economically, how they and their children fare in a new educational system, and whether and to what extent they intermarry or are otherwise socially assimilated. Traditional straight-line theories of assimilation (for example, Gordon 1964) have given way to theories of segmented assimilation (for example, Alba and Nee 1999), which suggests a more complicated process, with immigrants assimilating at different rates and in different ways (including, sometimes, downward into a minority underclass) depending on such things as their race, country of origin, and socioeconomic status. Certainly, understanding 21

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the factors that shape identity choices made by black immigrants from Caribbean nations (Waters 1999) or the reasons that second-generation Mexicans consistently underperform educationally relative to other Latin American immigrants (Lutz 2007) is as important for policymakers as it is for sociologists. Much of this research, however, pays little attention to the political realm or to questions about civic and political involvement of newcomers. And assimilation does not necessarily imply political involvement: certainly my colleague, a Canadian economist who has resided in the United States for many years, or my British son-in-law, who has lived here since 2002, are assimilated in the sense that sociologists use the term, but neither one has naturalized, and, therefore, neither participates in electoral politics. European scholars of immigration commonly use the term integration to refer to the process of immigrants becoming full participants in the host country’s political system. Jean Tillie, for example, suggests that there are at least three aspects of political integration: (1) trust in democratic institutions, (2) adherence to democratic values, and (3) political participation (2004, 530). Although the concept of political integration is used to characterize groups (for example, to ask whether Turks are more politically incorporated than Moroccans in a particular city), as Tillie’s conceptualization suggests, the level of integration of a particular immigrant group depends on the attitudes and behaviors of individual members of that group and also seems to presume a high level of assimilation. Political incorporation, as the term has been used by American scholars of immigration, and as I am using it here, differs significantly from the concepts of assimilation and integration. If we follow Tillie’s argument whereby an immigrant is integrated if he trusts the system, accepts its values, and participates, then integration seems to presume assimiliation. But if political incorporation is used to denote the acquisition of political voice and political power, theoretically political incorporation may take place prior to or coincidentally with assimilation. It is not logically subsequent to assimilation (or to integration, as defined above) and has less to do with acquired attitudes or shared values. Finally, it is a concept that instructs us to look not only at the characteristics and behaviors of individual immigrants, but also (perhaps more importantly) at the way that the political system gives or fails to give voice to new groups. A recent book makes this distinction: “Collective dynamics involving community organizations and ethnic groups can be thought of as processes related to civic and political group-based incorporation, whereas dynamics

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involving individual participation and attitudes can be deemed relevant to questions of civic and political assimilation” (Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008, 14).

Assimilating or Integrating Individuals Behavioral political scientists usually try to understand immigrant political behavior by focusing on individuals. This research typically relies on individual-level survey data and sees decisions to naturalize, register, vote, or otherwise participate in politics as essentially individual decisions. The theoretical underpinning for this approach is the resource model of political participation as elaborated by Verba, Schlozman, and Brady that suggests that political involvement is a function of resources such as time, money, and civic skills; political engagement and motivation; and recruitment or mobilization (1995). There is a good deal of recent research in this tradition that aims to explain present-day immigrants’ decisions to naturalize, register, and vote. Just as socioeconomic characteristics, particularly education and income, are important predictors of political participation among the general population, having a higher income and more education make citizenship acquisition more likely among immigrant groups as well (for example, Portes and Rumbaut 2006, chap. 6; Yang 1994). When resource-based approaches are used to study voting turnout among the US foreign-born population, it appears that, with some caveats, similar models predict voting turnout for the nativeborn and the foreign-born (see Bass and Kasper 2001). Some researchers find that the standard socioeconomic variables behave somewhat differently for immigrants; other scholars argue that one should take into account immigrant-specific factors such as country of origin, length of time in the United States, and English language proficiency. Jane Junn analyzes the 1990 Citizen Participation Survey (CPS) and 1993–1994 Texas A&M Minority Survey and finds that different predictors are important for different groups; for example, traditional socioeconomic status (SES) factors are less important for Asian Americans, whereas home ownership and party affiliation are more important.1 She also shows that SES predicts system-directed activity, like voting, better than direct participation, like protest (1999). Using the CPS 1996 data, Bass and Kasper find that naturalized citizens who have been longer in the United States and those who are older and with higher education and income are more likely

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to vote (2001). Similar findings about the acquisition of partisanship are presented by Cain, Kiewiet, and Uhlaner (1991). Wendy Cho’s analysis, based on a 1984 survey of California residents, finds that the variables that traditionally explain voter turnout (age, education, socioeconomic status) do not explain the voter turnout of immigrants (1999). Minnite and Mollenkopf conclude that both individual characteristics (age, education, property ownership) matter for voting, but that context does also, for example, living among better off and better educated people as opposed to living in the midst of many unregistered immigrants (2001).

Incorporating Groups I pursue a somewhat different approach here, considering political incorporation not in individual terms, but at the group level. Group identities and group interests are central to political struggle and political decisionmaking; though certainly at some level the decision to involve oneself in civic or political life is an individual decision, we know that these decisions are always shaped by other people and institutions. Thus it is important to ask about the extent to which particular groups of immigrants are or are not incorporated into US civic and political life. This is not a new or controversial argument, but it is the case that much of the social science research on these issues has been conducted by collecting and analyzing data collected at the individual (or sometimes family) level, even if the arguments are being made and conclusions drawn about the political status of groups. 2 Bloemraad argues similarly that individual-level approaches “imply that politics is driven by purely individual action . . . yet mobilization occurs most readily through personal contact and social interaction, that is, through social ties and organizations rather than through impersonal appeals or spontaneous engagement” (2006b, 65). She takes from this (as have other scholars of political participation, including Verba, Schlozman, and Brady [1995]) the important role of workplaces, voluntary organizations, and churches in providing skills, connections, and information useful for political participation. I use this insight in a slightly different way: to justify a focus not on the individuals who acquire the resources, but on the institutions that try to provide them. One can think of many indicators of the extent to which a group is included in our democracy: the group’s naturalization, registration, and

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voting rates; the extent to which the group can make its demands and interests known; the extent to which members of the group serve in elective and appointive office; and the density of civic and voluntary associations within the group. Just as sociologists have approached immigrant assimilation and acculturation from various conceptual viewpoints, political scientists have debated both the meaning and measurement of incorporation. A legalistic definition might see inclusion as dependent on naturalization and voting. Yet it is legitimate to criticize this way of defining incorporation on several counts. Many native-born US citizens do not vote, of course, and even more importantly, politics neither begin nor end at the voting booth. Most of us would agree that political participation also includes such activities as writing letters to public officials, organizing with others to change local policies, or joining marches or demonstrations. One can engage in these activities and others without registering or voting. The line between incorporation into politics and incorporation into politically relevant elements of civil society is a fine one. It is not always clear where one ends and the other begins. The activities of various community organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and religious groups often have political overtones, are politically relevant, or impart political skills. This consideration is particularly important given the increasingly central role of community groups and other nongovernmental organizations in the process of immigrant incorporation. If we conceptualize incorporation as a group-based process, individual-level attributes can take us only so far; institutional factors also make a difference. European literature on immigrants pays much more attention to the politics, policies, governmental structures, and other aspects of the settlement context (see, for example, Ireland 2004; Koopmans and Statham 1999). Bloemraad’s recent book makes a strong case that cross-national variation between Canada and the United States in immigration policy has a substantial impact on both the symbolic and material resources available for immigrants as they struggle to develop a political voice (2006b). Similarly, place-toplace variation in the United States may have a similar impact, as we see, for example, in Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad (2008, Part 1). The following section reviews briefly the arguments for considering a range of local contextual variables in developing explanations of immigrant political incorporation. Four broad contextual factors that might be expected to shape incorporation are: (1) local and state policies and practices, whether related directly to immigrants or not;

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(2) structural attributes, such as the existence of electoral districts and the rules surrounding voter registration; (3) the political predispositions and preferences of a locality; and (4) the civic capacity or organizational density of an area.

Contextual Factors and Incorporation The current situation in the United States is one in which the federal government has, arguably, abdicated its responsibility to make immigration policy, and thus states and localities make their own policies on a myriad of issues including hiring sites, housing code enforcement, acceptance of Mexican consular identification cards, police department policies on cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security, and the ability of undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. Hazelton, Pennsylvania, for example, passed legislation in 2006 prohibiting landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants. Some thirty states have passed laws making English their official language. Arizona suspends or revokes business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. An Oklahoma law passed in 2007 makes it a felony to transport or shelter illegal immigrants. It also denies illegal immigrants driver’s licenses and public benefits such as rental assistance and fuel subsidies. At the other end of the spectrum, Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Detroit, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Portland are among the so-called sanctuary cities that have instructed their law enforcement personnel and other city employees not to notify or cooperate with the federal government when they become aware of undocumented immigrants. The policies of states and localities on immigrant-related issues thus vary widely and constitute very diverse contexts that undoubtedly help to shape immigrants’ attitudes toward government and motivation to participate in civic and political activities. Bloemraad suggests that different national policies work at the symbolic or interpretive level “affecting understandings . . . of immigrants’ legitimate political standing” and at the material or instrumental level “enhancing the ability of newcomer communities to mobilize and participate politically” (2006b, 4). I would certainly argue that local policies and practices also produce a range of opportunities and constraints that shape immigrant groups’ abilities to organize and attain political power.

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A second set of contextual variables has to do with the rules of the electoral game. It has long been argued that district elections for local legislative bodies will likely produce more minority representatives (assuming some residential concentration) that, in turn, may help encourage the creation and effectiveness of ethnic organizations. And a narrower focus on the ways that states and localities encourage or discourage voting and other forms of participation also reveals contextual variation. Oliver proposes a number of ways of assessing the restrictiveness of a state’s registration laws, including how soon before a general election registration is required and the criteria for obtaining an absentee ballot (1996). Another aspect of local context that may affect immigrant incorporation is the constellation of partisan positions and public opinion about immigration and racial/ethnic diversity. Ramakrishnan and Lewis found that variation among California cities in their pro- or anti-immigrant policies and practices was significantly shaped by the partisanship and ideological orientations of city council members (2005). For example, cities with more conservative council members or with a less Democratic electorate were much less likely to provide translations of public documents (28). The existence of organized anti-immigrant groups (see Chapter 7) may have mobilizing or demobilizing effects on immigrants’ civic and political involvement. Finally, and particularly important to my argument in this book, what might be called the civic landscape is a significant aspect of the place to which immigrants come. It has always been the case that secondary organizations, including political parties, churches, homeland associations, and advocacy groups, have played important roles in processes of immigrant assimilation and incorporation. Deufel’s research compares responses to new immigrants across several small cities in the Midwest and South (2006). He concludes that “in the face of weak government responses, receptivity to immigrants relies on civic resources, including volunteers, past experience in solving community programs, networks of leadership within the community” (iv). Cities and towns across the United States vary widely in their organizational capacity. A recent study of the impact of residential mobility on political participation finds significant variation across US counties in the density, diversity, and wealth of civic organizations (Ortiz 2009, chap. 5). Montana and Iowa, for example, have three times the organizational density, measured by nonprofit organizations per inhabitant, as Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia. Ortiz finds even greater differences among counties, even those in the same state, in terms of the numbers,

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types, and resources of their civic organizations. These differences in the organizational life of communities clearly are an important part of the context of political incorporation.

Are Smaller Cities Different? Our knowledge of immigrants’ lives in the United States has, historically, emerged from research conducted in the big, immigrant-destination cities where new arrivals settled during most of the twentieth century. But changes in the labor market since about 1990 have created a whole array of new immigrant gateways, including rural areas and small towns in states unaccustomed to immigrants, cities where groups of refugees have been settled, suburbs of metropolitan areas, rural areas, and smaller cities like the ones in this book. Size may have a number of effects independent of the contextual factors discussed above. In recent research on naturalization patterns and participation, Bueker suggests that “Community size has implications for the number of contacts an individual has, the composition of social networks, his choice of acquaintances, and the potential density of the community” (2006, 121). Available research generates competing hypotheses about possible impacts of size on political incorporation. Living in smaller communities may tend to produce situations in which immigrants are relatively isolated and powerless. The sort of all-encompassing ethnic enclaves sometimes found in big cities, with clear geographic boundaries and local businesses run by coethnics, are far less likely to exist in smaller cities, and immigrants are forced to deal more frequently with nonethnic neighbors and businesses. Strong ethnic enclaves can encourage political participation, both because of multiplicity of ties and group pressures as well as the increased ability of parties and candidates to target the community (Barreto 2005; Jones-Correa 2001; Karpathakis 1999). Moreover, immigrant groups in larger metropolitan areas are much more likely to be represented politically by members of their own group, which may result in a sense of empowerment as well as attention being paid to group concerns. Finally, if larger populations create the possibility of larger social networks and thus more opportunities to build politically relevant connections, it is possible that for immigrants in a smaller city building cross-group alliances is more challenging (Bueker 2006, 126–127).

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On the other hand, bigger cities may make contacting or being involved with local governments more difficult. Governments are more bureaucratized and there are a greater number of formal rules; urban residents may feel more distant from the political system. Concentrated immigrant enclaves in large cities have been found to reduce English-language skills and economic integration (Chiswick and Miller 2005). And large groups of immigrants often contain high numbers of noncitizens, thus making it less likely that parties and candidates will target the group for mobilization. Finally, some research has found that Latino voters in precincts with lower densities of Latino neighbors voted at a higher rate than those living in higher-density Latino areas. In these ways, large residential concentrations may help to suppress or slow political incorporation (de la Garza, Abrajano, and Cortina 2008, 98). These six cities are not characterized, in general, by large ethnic enclaves or a high degree of residential segregation. Their size may mean that it is relatively easy to become familiar with the relevant issues and players. But at the same time, as shown in Chapter 7, their size decreases the likelihood of organizationally viable groups representing or serving immigrants and helping to mobilize them. The lack of ethnic enclaves and the relatively small size of immigrant groups also raise interesting questions about immigrant identities. Work such as that of Rogers suggests that, in essence, Caribbean immigrants are able to make choices among identities (whether black or immigrant) given the diverse social context of a large city like New York (2006). Such choices may not be available in Lansing or Chico. An important characteristic of the political/governmental context for incorporation has to do with multiple jurisdictions, and this may be particularly important in smaller cities. Political incorporation into an area with multiple and overlapping jurisdictions, as is the case in both suburban settlements and in these small cities, presents problems not associated with thinking about political incorporation into big-city politics. For example, the studies collected in Browning, Marshall, and Tabb are generally able to assume a single governmental entity formulating policies and creating opportunities for citizen participation (2003). But immigrants dispersed throughout a smaller metropolitan area must deal with several school districts, the county government as well as the city government, and possibly suburban towns as well. This makes learning about and attempting to influence local politics and government much more challenging.

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Hypotheses focusing on size of city and thus requiring systematic comparisons between large and small cities cannot be tested here, since the six cities do not vary substantially in size, but I hope that this study might be suggestive for future research along these lines. My point in this chapter is that in addition to size, the nature of the place matters. A community’s location, its political leadership, educational levels, community resources, and history result in very different contexts. An example of this is the extremely different responses of two Texas suburban communities to new immigrant populations: Plano has tried to reach out to immigrants and to see their inclusion in the cultural life of the community as positive; whereas in nearby Farmers Branch, the local government was considering ordinances prohibiting rentals to undocumented migrants and making English the city’s official language. Brettell suggests that educational and income differences, differences in the composition of the immigrant groups, as well as the orientations of local political leaders have much to do with creating these very different contexts in these two Texas communities (2008).

Notes 1. Lien also finds that factors influencing participation in the majority are not the most appropriate for explaining Asian American participation (1997, 130). 2. Leighley makes a cogent argument about the fact that the use of national surveys has meant that the impact of individuals’ political environments has not been thoroughly studied (2001, 6–7).

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4 Assessing Incorporation in Six Cities

If incorporation is the process of becoming a part of a community’s

political practices and decisionmaking, how can we make comparisons among places or groups as to whether or to what extent incorporation has been achieved? For an individual, becoming a naturalized citizen is perhaps the most basic step and is an indicator that has been used to make historical comparisons among groups and over time (cf. Gavit 1922; Vallely 2005; Bloemraad 2006a, 2006b).1 Registration and voting are other commonly used indicators of political participation, but in situations where survey data is not available, it is challenging to estimate registration or voting rates for particular groups by using aggregate analysis. In this chapter, I consider instead three factors: (1) naturalization rates, (2) representation of immigrant groups in governmental institutions, and (3) local government responsiveness to immigrants.2 In the subsequent chapters, I explore the roles of political parties and of immigrant-related organizations and the impact of a number of contextual factors on the processes of immigrant incorporation in these six cities. The density and concentration of communities, the existence of organizational networks, the existence of political entrepreneurs in the new communities, the incentives to create cross-group coalitions, and the receptiveness of local political parties—among other factors— will shape the ways that immigrants are involved in politics.

Naturalization Naturalization is required to vote in the vast majority of elections in the United States, to run for office, or, sometimes, to serve on local boards 31

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or commissions. It should be noted, of course, that naturalization does not by itself guarantee full access to the political system. As Clarke, van Dam, and Gooster point out in a study of naturalization in European countries, members of racial or ethnic minorities, even when they are formal citizens of the society in which they live, “are often seen ultimately as ‘outsiders’ or ‘foreigners’” (1998, 47). In the current post-9/11 context, even an immigrant with a green card or legal visa may think twice about participating in demonstrations or signing petitions, although they would have every right to do so. There are a number of ways that noncitizens can participate in politics and civic life, including organizational membership, protests, boycotts, and contacting officials; as well, noncitizen voting was common in the past and is allowed in some locales today (see Gavit 1922, 217–218; Hayduk 2004). Nonetheless, naturalization frequently has been seen as an indicator of political commitment to one’s new country and as an indicator of the extent to which newcomers are welcomed and integrated into the host society (Bloemraad 2006b). Time in the United States is the primary predictor of the decision to naturalize, but even controlling for time in the country, naturalization rates vary greatly by country of origin. This has been historically demonstrated: during the 1920s, naturalization rates for those in the country more than five years were 92 percent for Swedes, 57 percent for Russian Jews, and 20 percent for Greeks (Gavit 1922, 211). Similarly, in 1990, among those who had lived in the United States for twentyone to twenty-five years, naturalization rates for nationalities ranged from 89 percent for Koreans to 34 percent for Mexicans (Bloemraad 2006b, 38–39). And it matters where immigrants end up. In the United States, states vary a great deal in the extent to which immigrants have naturalized, and. not surprisingly, this is highly dependent on the average length of time immigrants have been in the United States. Table 4.1 groups states according to their naturalization levels and shows the percentage of immigrants who are recent arrivals (between 1990 and March 2000). The states are grouped by quintiles of their overall naturalization rate, from lowest to highest. Whereas Table 4.1 demonstrates that, in general, the states with more established immigrant communities have higher naturalization rates, there are clearly other factors at work. Among the states with over 50 percent of the foreign-born having arrived since 1990, for example, the rate of naturalization varies from 43 percent for North Dakota to 26 percent for North Carolina. At the other end of the spec-

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Assessing Incorporation in Six Cities Table 4.1

33

Naturalization and Time in the United States by State

States Grouped by Naturalization Rate

Percentage of Foreign-Born Naturalized

Average Percentage Foreign-Born Entering 1990–2000

Range of Percentage Entering 1990–2000

Quintile 1: AR, AZ, DC, CO, GA, IA, NC, NE, TX, UT

26.2–32.9

55

46.1–62.4

Quintile 2: AL, CA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, MN, NM, NV, OK, OR, SC, TN, WI

33.1–39.5

49.8

36.9–58.8

Quintile 3: DE, FL, MA, MD, MI, MO, MS, ND, NJ, NY, SD, VA, WA, WY

40.3–46.2

45.6

37.8–55

Quintile 4: CT, LA, NH, OH, PA, RI, VT

47.1–53.6

38.1

34.8–42.2

Quintile 5: AK, HI, ME, MT, WV

53.8–60.1

33.4

28.3–39.7

Source: 2000 Census, SF 3, Table GCT-P10.

trum, among states with predominantly more settled immigrant populations of fewer than 40 percent since 1990, there is Hawaii with 60 percent naturalization rate and Maine with 55 percent versus Rhode Island with 47 percent and California with 39 percent. Most research aimed at explaining variations in naturalization rates, as suggested above, has focused on group characteristics, for example, the consistent variations in naturalization by sending country, and on individual attributes. There has been some attention paid to the impact on naturalization rates of California’s Proposition 187 (a 1994 ballot initiative designed to prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving social services, health care, or public education from the state) as well as the similar mid-1990s federal legislation, all of which changed the incentive structure for naturalization. But, in general, there has been little focus on political-geographical variation in naturalization or in other measures of incorporation. Much as Bloemraad argues that USCanadian differences can be illuminated through an institutional approach (2006b, 12), it seems reasonable to suggest that cross-state or cross-city variations within the United States are worth studying. Figure 4.1 shows the overall naturalization rates in 2000 for the six cities and for the states in which they are located.

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Figure 4.1 Naturalization Rate for Six Cities and Their States, 2000

60%

Naturalization Rate

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

Ca l

ifo rn ia Co /C hi lo co ra do /F t. Co M lli ich ns ig an /L an Ne sin w g Yo rk /S yr ac us e Te x W as /W as hi ac ng o to n/ Sp ok an e

0

States

Cities

Source: US Census, 2000, Table P23.

It is worth noting that all of the cities have higher naturalization rates than their states as a whole, and that the rank ordering of states according to the extent to which their foreign-born residents have naturalized is not consistent with the rank ordering of the cities. The variation between states is narrow, less than ten percentage points; whereas the variation among the cities is quite broad: from Syracuse’s 53 percent to Waco’s 28 percent.3 Some portion of this variation might be due to variations in the timing of immigration to each of the six cities, but the six cities are relatively similar in this regard: on average a little less than half of their immigrants entered the United States prior to 1980, about a third since 1990, and the remainder between 1980 and 1990.4

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Because these cities vary in the makeup of their immigrant populations, it makes sense to examine naturalization rates among more or less comparable groups.5 Table 4.2 compares naturalization rates for the 1980–1990 arrivals and the pre-1980 arrivals, by city and, if there are more than 1,000 members of the group in the city, by country or region of origin. There are a number of interesting comparisons here. First, as has been found in previous research, likelihood of naturalization increases with length of time in the United States. The average levels of naturalization among these groups in these cities are 71 percent for pre1980 immigrants and 53 percent for 1980–1990 immigrants. There is one exception to this pattern: a somewhat higher rate of naturalization among the 1980–1990 arrivals in Chico, for which the contentious immigration politics of California during the 1990s may be responsible. Second, as we have come to expect, there are large group differences: specifically, Mexicans are less likely to naturalize than other immigrants. Third, and most relevant to the present research, there are clear differences among the six cities, though the patterns defy easy explanation. City differences for European immigrants are quite a bit larger among more recent arrivals. The opposite is true for Mexicans, who have greater city-to-city differences in naturalization rates for the pre1980 immigrants. Group comparisons must be made at a very general level: Asians include various nationality groups, and even Mexican immigrants may vary from city to city in their class or occupational backgrounds. Nonetheless, some of the differences are striking. For

Table 4.2

Naturalization Rates by City and Origin Chico

Pre-1980 Mexican European Asian 1980–1990 Mexican European Asian

37.4%

Ft. Collins

63.2%

73.4% 41.8%

32.4%

66.6%

Source: US Census 2000, PCT 20.

Lansing

Spokane

Syracuse

54.1% 77.8% 74.4%

81.3% 82.9%

82.9% 76.8%

29.9% 58.5% 62.4%

41.9% 66.6%

44.8% 56.2%

Waco

43.2%

24.8%

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example, whereas almost two-thirds of long-established Mexican immigrants in Fort Collins are citizens, only a little more than a third of the comparable group in Chico has naturalized. Lansing and Spokane show quite different naturalization rates for newer European immigrants. Though explaining these differences is not my goal here, the existence of such variability is consistent with situations in which local parties are not widely organizing and facilitating naturalization, but rather where group-specific organizations vary in their capacity for incorporation as well as their focus on naturalization. In other research, I found that density of civic organizations, along with time in the United States, has a significant impact on naturalization rates (Andersen 2008, 34).

A Note on Voting Passel estimated that at mid-decade only about 35 percent of immigrants were eligible to vote, that is, were both citizens and had registered to vote (2006).6 The size of the usual survey samples used by scholars to study voting and other forms of political participation and their lack of questions on nativity make it difficult to systematically assess immigrant voting rates in particular locales. It should also be noted that naturalization and voting are explained by different models: for example, Bueker found that living in a nonmetropolitan area or one with few other immigrants increased the probability of naturalization, but decreased the probability of voting (2006, 138–139; see also Jones-Correa 2001). With regard to the restrictiveness of their election laws, the cities demonstrate some degree of variation. Focusing on the election of November 2004 in these six sites: California allowed registration up until October 18, 2004; Washington allowed registration until October 18 in person, but until October 2 by mail; the remaining four states closed voter registration on October 4. New York is among the states that place the most restrictions on absentee voting. Colorado and Michigan are among the states that Oliver says have “expanded eligibility” for absentee ballots, whereas California, Texas, and Washington have basically adopted “universal” eligibility for absentee ballots, lifting all restrictions (1996). Thus, in a crude manner, one could rank these states in terms of ease of registration from least to most restrictive in the following way: California, Washington, Texas, Michigan, Colorado, New York. These rankings do not demonstrate any meaning-

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ful association with naturalization rates, nor do they correspond to the states’ relative rankings on turnout in the 2004 election. If we wanted to make reliable empirical comparisons among these six cities as to the electoral mobilization of immigrant groups, in the absence of survey data we would need detailed voting records at the precinct level, and we would need to be able to isolate precincts with high concentrations of immigrant-stock populations. This is made more complicated by the difficulty of mapping electoral divisions onto census tracts. But due in large part to the relatively small size of these cities and their lack of immigrant enclaves, unlike the situation in larger metropolitan areas, there are very few census tracts in these cities with high concentrations of immigrant populations. Only one census tract, in Lansing, had a population of more than 50 percent foreignborn. Two of the cities (Fort Collins and Spokane) had only two or three tracts with even 10–20 percent foreign-born. Lansing and Syracuse (the oldest and densest of the cities) did have a few census tracts with higher concentrations (20–50 percent) foreign-born. But without much more investment in data collection and analysis, I would not feel comfortable making between-city comparisons with this kind of voting and registration data. Thus, registration and voting are not used as indicators of political incorporation.

Descriptive Representation Many scholars and advocates have argued that a key ingredient to improving political participation is to ensure that elected officials share similar backgrounds and experiences as the constituencies they represent, whether based on class, gender, race, or ethnicity. Proponents argue that descriptive representation would noticeably improve the deliberative aspects of democracy and would improve underrepresented groups’ feelings of political efficacy and trust (Chaney and Fevre 2002). First, representatives from these communities would bring new insights and innovative thinking to discussions of emerging issues related to these communities (Mansbridge 1999). Additionally, they would ensure that minority concerns make it onto the public agenda in the first place (Phillips 2000). Moreover, descriptive representation improves deliberation on specific minority issues by giving voice to the various perspectives within each minority community on that particular issue (Mansbridge 1999). Finally, research has shown that having coethnics in political office is associated with increased political mobi-

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lization and higher participation on the part of that group (Leighley 2001, chap. 3). On a more basic level, descriptive representation reduces political alienation among racial and ethnic minorities and increases their trust in democratic processes, thereby improving democratic institutions’ legitimacy (Mansbridge 1999). “By appearance alone, statements, or symbolic gestures” descriptive representatives “send cues to their coethnic constituents that they will be more responsive to their needs” (Pantoja and Segura 2003, 443–444). Pantoja and Segura find that among Latino voters in Texas and California, descriptive representation increased their sense of political efficacy, voter turnout, and trust in government. Bloemraad takes as an important indicator of immigrant incorporation the significant difference between the United States and Canada with regard to foreign-born representation in the national legislature: the United States, with 11 percent foreign-born residents in 2000, saw less than 2 percent of congressional seats occupied by nonnatives, whereas Canada, with 19 percent foreign-born, had 15 percent foreign-born members of the House of Commons (2006, 3). In the present study, I was interested first in the extent to which members of minority and immigrant groups had been elected to office in these cities. Though our interviews and media searches occasionally brought to light instances in which immigrants had run for office unsuccessfully, holding office, rather than running for office, was the focus of the investigation. I made an effort (by using information on local government websites) to find, to the extent possible, representatives of immigrant groups who served on appointive boards and commissions. Arguably the existence of immigrants on such bodies speaks more to the responsiveness of the local government than to the level of political organization of the immigrant groups—but since government officials typically search for possible appointees from among people who have been active in local civic groups and associations, who have the necessary political and organizational skills, and who are seen as representing their groups, I think appointive office should also be seen as a form of descriptive representation. In other words, if we define immigrant political incorporation as a situation in which new groups have a “place at the table” politically, then it is also important to assess the extent to which members of immigrant groups have been either appointed or elected to public office.

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I examined the websites of city and county offices and agencies to identify members of immigrant groups who had been elected or appointed to office. It should be noted that the structures of city and county governments vary significantly. In some places, city clerks are elected; in others, they are appointed. Some cities have few elected officials and many appointed officials. Some cities rely more heavily than other cities on volunteer commissions and boards. And there are additional limitations to this approach. Names (particularly, but not only, women’s names) are not always reliable indicators of people’s ethnicity. It is impossible to determine wheather, say, someone named Rodriguez is an immigrant or a member of a family that has lived in the United States for generations. So this estimate of representation should be regarded as a crude indicator (on the other hand, I would argue that resulting errors are probably randomly distributed across the six cities, so that cautious comparisons are possible). Whether local legislators are elected on a district or at-large basis might be expected to have an impact on representation. Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad found that of the six California cities they studied, the one with district elections (San Jose) appeared to allow for higher political visibility of Latino organizations (2008, 69). However, all the cities in my study, except Chico, have some form of district elections on the local level.7 Lansing’s system is mixed (four at-large, four district), and the other three cities have district-based elections.8 Thus variation in the basis of local elections is not a promising explanation of levels of incorporation. The Immigrant Representation column in Table 4.3 provides the percentage of immigrant group members, as far as could be determined from names, in city and county elected and top appointed positions, and the following paragraphs supply narrative background for these numbers.9 Chico did have a Vietnamese City Council member and several Hispanics in appointive positions (Planning Commission Board, Assistant Director of Public Works, Assistant School Superintendent), but, in general, very few Hispanics or Asians occupied positions on commissions and committees (some of which had members elected, some appointed). As in Texas, there were substantial numbers of Latinos serving in the State Senate and the State Assembly. The Fort Collins mayor at the time of our study was a fairly conservative Mexican American. There were a number of Hispanic members of volunteer boards and commissions including the Affordable Housing Board, Citizen Review Board, Human Relations Commission,

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and Landmark Preservation Commissions. Two Larimer County magistrates were Hispanic, but there were no Hispanics on the City Council (seven members), the School Board (ten members), or in any of the county offices, other than the magistrates. Lansing’s mayor, Tony Benavides, was Latino and was elected in part based on a coalition of Latino and black voters. There were no Hispanics or other immigrant group members on the City Council. Of the nine members of the Board of Education, one was Hispanic. Two members of the Ingham County Board of Commissioners were Hispanic, as was a Circuit Court Family Division Judge. Appointed members of advisory boards include people with varied ethnic backgrounds: Japanese, Mexican, Syrian, Afghan, and Vietnamese. In Spokane, there were no elected officials from immigrant groups. There were a fairly large number of appointees from a range of immigrant groups, including Hispanics and people from the Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, Hmong, and Native American communities. For example, the Policy Advisory Committee had members representing the Hispanic Business Professionals’ Association, the Native American Community, the Russian American Communication Agency, the Vietnamese Community, and the Spokane Hmong Association. Others served on the Aging and Long-Term Care Board, the Human Services Advisory Board, the Youth Commission, the Human Rights Commission, the Regional Transportation Council, and the City/County Historic Landmark Committee. In Syracuse the most visible minority official was the Puerto Rican president of the Common Council, a strong advocate for the Hispanic and minority communities. The Commissioner of Community Development was Hispanic, as was one school board member The city/county Human Rights Commission included a Chinese American member, an African American, a Native American, and a Latina, but I found no elected or appointed members of the Vietnamese, Bosnian, or other immigrant or refugee communities. In Waco, of the six members of City Council, one was Latino. The seven-member school board had one Latino member. Other Latinos included a Justice of the Peace, the Chief of Police, and the Assistant City Manager. At the state level, about a fifth of the state assembly was Hispanic. The McLennan County officeholders, including auditor, clerk, tax assessor, treasurer, and sheriff, were all Anglos. It should be noted that several people interviewed in Waco pointed out that many of the minority officeholders were appointed, and that because these

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people are viewed as hand-picked by power brokers, they are not necessarily viewed as meaningfully representing the community.

Interest Representation There has been a good deal of research on interethnic coalitions in urban politics, including the comprehensive work by Browning, Marshall, and Tabb (2003) and work by Kaufmann (2003), Sonenshein (1993), and others. These scholars stress the importance of the development of inclusive rather than exclusive identities, the difficulties of panethnic coalitions, and the critical role of leadership in attaining such goals as representation in elective office, access to city employment, appointments to head agencies, enforcement of antidiscrimination laws, and equitable allocation of city services (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 2003, 10). This book touches on these issues in Chapters 6 and 7, but it is fair to say that the sort of power or power-sharing that groups such as African Americans in Los Angeles might aspire to (see Sonenshein 2003) are much more distant goals for the immigrant groups in these six cities. Browning, Marshall, and Tabb define political power in the context of minority groups as follows: They know they have achieved power when they wrest concessions from an unwilling city hall, when they win office against determined opposition, when they succeed in forming a coalition that defeats an incumbent group, when their coalition is able to change the policies and personnel of city government, and when they are able, over a period of years, to institutionalize the changes they sought. (2003, 10)

In these cities over the past decade or so, the election of Tony Benavides in Lansing is the only instance of a situation in which a coalition specifically promoting minority rights and new policies acquired electoral power. Nonetheless, in much more incremental ways, through organizational lobbying, connections with elected officials, a few key appointments, and sympathetic media coverage, these six cities have all made small moves toward recognition, and perhaps incorporation, of immigrant groups. This means more attention paid in school systems to English as a Second Language (ESL) programs and needs of immigrant children; the creation of signs, documents,

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and announcements in languages other than English; cultural and linguistic sensitivity on the part of policymakers and bureaucrats; and public presentation of the city and area as hospitable to newcomers. How do the six cities compare on these dimensions? To what extent are the needs and preferences of immigrant groups represented in local government decisions and policies? Influence can occur at many stages in the policy process, and groups and organizations may have varied political goals. Local governments differ greatly in their willingness and ability to reach out to new groups; news accounts across the nation over the past several years have described some cities that have designated themselves safe zones for immigrants and others that have created English-only policies or tried to make it illegal to fly non-US flags. Just as Jones-Correa found in the suburbs of Washington DC, school officials in these six cities were often receptive to the needs of immigrants. For example, we were told by people in Lansing and Spokane about the favorable orientation of school districts. Lansing public schools have been “very receptive” to suggestions about Muslim cultural practices and preferences, and Spokane’s city school district was described as being helpful, establishing an Equity Office to provide more resources to local immigrants and refugees and their families with children in public schools.10 This is consistent with the recent findings by Ramakrishnan and Lewis, who surveyed local government officials in California and found that the local school district was their most frequent source of information about the conditions and needs of immigrant residents (2005, 18). Brettell’s research on immigration in the Dallas metropolitan area describes outreach efforts in Plano, a suburban town with over 20 percent foreign-born residents in 2005, particularly on the part of the school district and the local library system (2008, 75–77). A recent controversy in a small town near Spokane, however, demonstrates that the sort of “bureaucratic incorporation” described by Jones-Correa, which I believe does generally characterize these six cities also, may not always occur. In late 2003 in Brewster, Hispanic students were told by the principal that “their future would likely be that of their parents, working in the orchards.” The principal, frustrated by fights in the school, called twenty-seven Latino students to a meeting and “told the students that their Washington Assessment of Student Learning scores were lower than those of Anglo students, they showed less respect for one another than Anglo students, and they were bringing one another down.” They were not allowed to leave the meeting room without signing a behavior con-

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tract agreeing to various disciplinary actions, including expulsion, if there were further violations of rules. Parents were not informed; a letter had been drafted but not sent “because of difficulty getting it translated into Spanish.”11 In Fort Collins—whose mayor in 2004 was a conservative Hispanic Republican—the city library has a bilingual section, bus routes are published in Spanish, and city council meetings provide translation.12 The Waco-McClennan County Public Health District partners with the Community Race Relations Coalition to educate people about health disparities, although at the same time there has been resistance from the city government and the schools to distributing materials in Spanish as well as English. The Government Responsiveness column in Table 4.3 represents a considerable simplification of this aspect of political weight. I tried to arrive at the extent of local government responsiveness in two ways. One was simply a fairly crude ranking based on the available information from official sources, media accounts, and informants as to the difficulty faced by immigrant groups when they deal with local government officials and agencies. The other was a slightly more systematic attempt to assess governments’ posture from data available on the webpages of local governments. For each location, I looked at a range of local city, county, and school district websites. 13 Each was coded as to whether they had pages in languages of the city’s immigrant groups; mentioned immigration or immigrants positively; mentioned ethnic/racial diversity positively; identified an office or staff member to deal with immigrant-related issues; offered staff diversity training; contained links to immigrant or refugee groups; or evidenced special programs to recruit immigrant employees. Taken together, these two approaches yield the ordinal scale in the last column of Table 4.3. The third column contains an indicator whose construction is discussed above in the Naturalization section, but it should be noted that because it uses names of elected and appointed officials, it does not distinguish between immigrants and native-born members of immigrant ethnic groups. This summary presents a complicated picture, suggesting that “incorporation” is multidimensional and context-dependent. Syracuse, for example, has the highest overall naturalization rates, and Lansing and Spokane (as well as Syracuse) have relatively high rates for 1980–1990 arrivals (all of whom should presumably have had sufficient time to naturalize). Nevertheless, Syracuse lags in representation and, to a lesser extent, responsiveness, whereas Lansing is high on both those measures. It should be noted that the responsiveness measure here looks

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Table 4.3

Chico Fort Collins Lansing Spokane Syracuse Waco

Overall Summary of Political Incorporation Measures Overall Naturalization Rate

Naturalization Rate, 1980–1990 Arrivals

Immigrant Representation in Local Government

Government Responsiveness

37.8% 39.5% 34.6% 43.0% 53.0% 28.2%

38.9% 50.9% 55.1% 53.8% 58.4% 35.4%

4.4% 10.9% 17.8% 12.3% 5.4% 11.9%

medium low high low medium medium

Sources: Naturalization rates from 2000 Census. Immigrant representation and government responsiveness based on examination of city and county websites (see text).

at local government (county, city, and school district). In some cases, Spokane, for example, the state-level responsiveness is relatively higher. At the other end of the spectrum, Chico’s immigrants have been slow to naturalize and are not significantly represented in local government, but the city government—with at least some progressive elected officials— reflects greater openness to immigrant concerns than one might expect. Waco’s naturalization rates are similarly low, but this city has somewhat higher representation and government attention to immigrant concerns.

System Responsiveness and Level of Government A recent study of government responsiveness to immigrants in almost 300 California municipalities provides a dismal view of local government responsiveness. Ramakrishnan and Lewis find that overall, “communication between immigrants and elected officials is quite limited, and immigrants’ influence in local politics is perceived to be low in most cities” (2005). But other recent work provides a sense of how local government institutions and practices may provide more or less fertile ground for immigrant mobilization and political action. Gleeson shows how local institutional context shapes the ways that immigrants’ labor rights are—or are not—protected, and illustrates clearly how specific aspects of local rules and institutions, such as the existence of accessible legal resources and the strength of state labor standards, create opportunities for union pressure. Comparing Houston to San Jose, she finds that despite weaker labor protections and more hostile public opinion toward immigrants in Texas, the absence of a responsive state

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government “encourages civic coalition building with local government actors to fill this vacuum” (2008, 118). In a sense, the discussion in this chapter has been moving from conceptually simple indicators based on aggregated information about individual behavior, such as naturalization, to more complex and hardto-measure indicators that focus on the intersection of group behavior and system response. All tap into the extent to which immigrant groups are making use of the political resources they possess: Are they naturalizing, registering, voting, forming organizations, running for office, or attaining appointive government positions? Ultimately, of course, the expectation is that higher levels of incorporation according to these measures will result in local political systems that are more open to and responsive to their newest residents. But the term political system and the idea of a responsive political system is not a simple one in our complicated federal system. Immigrant groups—or any groups with common political interests—have multiple jurisdictions and levels of government to deal with. In these six cities, there are city councils and mayors, county commissions, a range of city and county agencies, city and suburban school boards, state legislatures, state agencies, and congressional representatives. Making a similar point, the authors of a California study who interviewed only city elected and appointed officials acknowledge that with their particular research design they “do not examine a number of public services of concern to immigrant communities, such as public education, health care, and the provision of welfare.” Immigrant communities “may be invisible to municipal agencies in a particular city yet active in school board politics or on county-level decision-making bodies” (Ramakrishnan and Lewis 2005, 6). This is a particularly important point to keep in mind when studying smaller cities. In a larger city, the municipal government administers social programs; controls law enforcement; provides for utilities, such as trash pickup; and provides parks and recreation sites. In smaller cities, such as those studied here, the situation is more complicated. Immigrant groups may not all live in the city itself, but in nearby suburbs, or, as in Chico, unincorporated areas; they may be spread between a number of school districts and other municipal entities (fire and water districts, for example). In these situations, county government, rather than city government, is likely to be an important provider of services and point of contact. This means that government responsiveness must be a multifaceted concept. It became quite clear during this project that, at the very

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least, we should distinguish among levels of government when trying to understand the ways that government personnel and agencies dealt with immigrant groups. Sometimes these groups and their organizations had most success with the city council; in other cities, a state legislator or a member of Congress was helpful even in the absence of much responsiveness at the local level. Figure 4.2 represents a rudimentary attempt to portray government responsiveness by level: local, county, state, and federal. In the ideograms presented, the vertical dimension represents the level of government (city government, county government, state agencies and representatives, and national government with reference specifically to the area’s congressional representatives). The horizontal dimension indicates, in a general way based upon discussions with local informants and on surveys of media reporting on immigrant-related issues, politicians’ and bureaucrats’ willingness to engage in constructive discussions on immigrant or refugee issues and their general awareness of immigrant challenges and concerns, with a wider horizontal line indicating greater responsiveness. Based on our research, Syracuse is the place where the different levels of government seem to be all on the same page. The area’s

Figure 4.2 Political Responsiveness by Level of Government

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member of Congress, a long-serving Republican, was praised by all our interviewees as sensitive and proactive with regard to immigrant constituents’ concerns. Officials at the state, county, and city level were evaluated in a similarly positive way, though as we will see in the following chapter, this positive relationship did not involve the local parties or candidates engaging in much systematic outreach to immigrants as potential voters. Lansing governments are viewed in a similar way, and, in general, as even more responsive. In contrast, in Chico and Fort Collins, immigrant groups had some allies on the city council, but felt that they were ignored by state and congressional representatives. The situation was reversed in Spokane, where we heard a number of stories about the often inadvertent insensitivity of local decisionmakers, but where there was active support for immigrants at the state level, for example, a state-level Commission for Hispanic Affairs. Waco offers a more complex picture: there are a number of Hispanic local officeholders and a city government that actively encouraged neighborhood associations, but indifferent state legislators, and then a congressman whose office was seen as very helpful and responsive.

Notes 1. The importance of naturalization has increased since mid-1990s legislation moved toward limiting access to public benefits and rights to those who are citizens. “Even so, few public policies promote naturalization. No notice is sent to refugees and immigrants when they become eligible to naturalize. Comparatively little public funding underwrites language and civics classes to help legal immigrants pass the citizenship exam” (Fix, Passel, and Sucher 2003). 2. There is a good deal of research that contributes to explaining variations in the voting rates of immigrant groups. Some is discussed in Chapter 3. Much of this research focuses on individual-level variables, including Junn 1999; Bass and Kasper 2001; Cho 1999; and Minnite and Mollenkopf 2001. Other research emphasizes the impact of contextual variables, including Jones-Correa 1998; DeSipio 2001; Pantoja, Ramirez, and Segura 2001; and Ramakrishnan 2005. 3. It should be noted that the overall naturalization rates perhaps obscure interstate differences among particular groups. For example, Jones-Correa found that Latin American immigrants in California had a significantly lower likelihood of being naturalized than their counterparts in other states (2001). 4. The variation among the cities in terms of timing is fairly small. Syracuse has a somewhat larger proportion of recent immigration; Waco has a larger proportion of 1980–1990 immigrants. Thus without Syracuse, the

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proportions of immigrants arriving since 1990 have only a ten percentagepoint range. 5. European immigrants to Syracuse are from Southern and Central Europe (Italy, Germany) and more recently from Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Poland, former Yugoslavia). In Spokane, aside from Germans, the Europeans come from Russia and Ukraine; in Lansing, the immigrants are from a number of Western and Eastern European nations. With regard to Asian immigrants, both Lansing and Syracuse have significant populations from China, Korea, and India, whereas those two cities, as well as Spokane, have large (more than 1,000) groups of Vietnamese. Chico’s Asian immigrants are Laotian/Hmong and Thai. 6. Browning, Marshall, and Tabb argue that electoral strategies proved more productive than protest strategies for African American and Latino political progress (1984); but as Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad point out, electoral mobilization has “limited utility” given the inability of many immigrants to vote, as well as the lower turnout rates of foreign-born compared to native-born citizens (2008, 11). 7. Chico has another barrier to the representation of minority groups: many live in an unincorporated area adjacent to the city, which has neither city services nor council representation, and many Hmong live in a small rural town outside the city. 8. A number of people we spoke with in Waco described how changing from at-large to district elections in the 1980s (as a result of a lawsuit) almost immediately increased the number of black and Latino city council members (and possibly of other black and Latino elected officials). 9. The number of positions surveyed ranged from 155 in Spokane to 42 in Waco. 10. Interview with a Michigan State University researcher who has studied Muslims in the public school system; interview with Spokane-based member of the state Hispanic Affairs Commission, February 27, 2004. 11. Spokesman-Review, February 1, 2004. 12. Interview with the Fort Collins mayor, May 25, 2004. 13. These included the webpages of the mayor’s office, community services, police department, county sheriff, city school district, human services, board of elections, personnel department, and public health department.

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5 The Role of Political Parties

How US political parties were dealing with a new wave of immigra-

tion was the question that led me to initiate this project. My previous research had made the case that the Democratic Party in the late 1920s and early 1930s had built a winning and durable electoral coalition, in part by attracting immigrants and the children of immigrants (Andersen 1979). Much has changed since the New Deal, of course, but shouldn’t we expect to see similar efforts by parties in a situation with similar inflows of potential new voters?

Parties and Immigrant Political Incorporation in the Early Twentieth Century To place the current situation into historical context, it is useful to look at the roles that parties played in the political incorporation of the last big wave of immigrants to the United States, which began in the late 1900s, peaked in the first two decades of the twentieth century, and was curtailed by the quota-based immigrant control legislation of the 1920s. For most of the nineteenth century, there had been virtually no controls on immigration. Not until 1876 did the Supreme Court rule that immigration was a federal responsibility. Even after that point, the rules governing naturalization and voting were lax, allowing local parties to fairly easily mobilize immigrants. In fact, in ten states prior to 1910—primarily in the South and Midwest—immigrants were permitted to vote if they merely declared their intention to become citizens (Gavit 1922, 217).

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US history has long contained a popular image of machine politicians providing coal, food baskets, and patronage jobs to immigrants in return for votes. “Long before many [immigrants] fully understood what it was to be an American, they knew quite well what it meant to be a Democrat or a Republican,” claims historian Steven Schier (2002, 16). More than a century ago, Henry Jones Ford, in The Rise and Growth of American Politics, argued, essentially, that the incentive structure that pushed political parties to mobilize immigrants by helping them with material needs, providing a rudimentary political education, and allowing them access to a party-controlled career ladder played an important role in assimilating the newcomers. In coordinating the various elements of the population for political purposes, party organization at the same time tends to fuse them into one mass of citizenship, pervaded by a common order of ideas and sentiments, and actuated by the same class of motives. (1898, 306)

Ford’s view was echoed in the work of mid-twentieth century political scientists like Robert Dahl and Raymond Wolfinger, who used the Downsian economic model of party behavior to explain why urban machines reached out to immigrant voters. Dahl describes how, in New Haven, parties “made it easy for immigrants to become citizens, encouraged [them] to register, [and] put them on the party rolls” (1961, 34). In other words, as Valelly says, political parties “subsidized the naturalization/voting sequence—through providing advice, personal assistance, and material incentives for naturalization and participation to foreign-born residents” (2005, 7). And to mobilize and secure the votes of these residents, parties recruited precinct leaders and other party workers who “shared the race, religion, and national origins of their constituents” (Allswang 1977, 28). Because the late nineteenth century was a period of high turnout (at least in the North), a party organization’s success depended on turning out more voters than the opposition. So, in a general sense, they did have an interest in new potential voters, where they settled, and whether or not they were allowed to vote. But there are corrections that should be made to this picture. Erie’s critique of the urban machine literature argues that only the Irish were wholly politically incorporated; that incorporation took a long time and met resistance; and that parties only acted to mobilize potential voters if they were in a competitive situation. Hegemonic parties had little need to reach out to immigrants (1988). Certainly it

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is the case that many of the parties’ constituents were less than sympathetic to foreigners, and party organizations generally had no particular commitment to diversity or inclusion. Their outreach was instrumental, committed to preserving the status quo and their own privileged position. They were often quite resistant to thoroughgoing incorporation of immigrants. Erie describes how New York’s Lower East Side, occupied around the turn of the century primarily by Italians and Jews, was represented by Irish politicians well into the 1930s (100). Jones-Correa, in Between Two Nations, provides a good discussion of the traditional views of the parties as mobilizers of immigrants and the more recent revisionist views, but concludes overall that the political parties of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did provide channels for the incorporation of immigrants, particularly—and in agreement with Erie’s point—in situations in which there was electoral competition between parties (1998). The point about competition might also be extended to less urban areas. Immigrant political incorporation in more rural areas has not been the subject of much research that I can find, but in a highly partisan, highly mobilized era, it is reasonable to assume that parties that were not urban machines also played an important role in immigrant incorporation. Luebke’s study of German immigrants in Nebraska suggests that this was the case. Using 653 biographies of German Americans produced between 1880 and 1890, he finds that the vast majority— over 75 percent—professed a party loyalty, that they were remarkably active in politics, and that over 30 percent had held some sort of governmental or partisan office. In a number of counties where Germans had settled, “German names were comparatively common on Democratic party lists” of county central committees and convention delegates (1969, 125). Germans ran for state offices during this period as well. Notably, “Democrats were also particularly active in getting German immigrants to take out papers declaring their intentions of becoming American citizens” so that they could vote (136). Of course this does not imply that other groups and organizations played no role in the processes of assimilation to US civic and political life. Sterne reminds us that “for many of America’s newcomers, the path to the polity led not through the machine headquarters . . . but rather through a network of civic associations” and places of worship (2001, 34). Moreover, in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, concerns about the impact of immigration on US society produced not only anti-immigrant spokesmen and initiatives,

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but also generated a number of institutional programs (run by states, cities, and corporations as well as various community groups) to “Americanize” immigrants. Efforts were made to acculturate, assimilate, and incorporate immigrants into US society and politics through the public education system and citizenship training programs. Partly in reaction to the new streams of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe beginning roughly in the 1880s and partly as a function of the general progressive drive toward rationalization, laws and practices were tightened. The federal government assumed more control over immigration, and in all but two of the ten states mentioned above that had allowed immigrants to vote prior to 1910, aliens’ voting privileges were revoked via constitutional amendment. By the late 1920s, the heavy flow of immigration had been effectively restricted to a trickle by federal legislation imposing national quotas. At that time, most of the immigrant-stock population had either been in the United States long enough to pursue naturalization, or were the second-generation offspring of immigrant parents. These developments supported the efforts of urban machines to both enfranchise and organize Italians, Jews, and Poles in their local communities, and also presented the opportunity to expand the ethnic electorate at the national level. It was the Democratic Party, plainly in the minority at the end of the 1920s, that capitalized on the potential of foreign-stock voters. After the 1928 election, in which Republican Herbert Hoover defeated Democratic nominee Alfred E. Smith in a landslide, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) sent letters to Democratic state and county chairmen, convention delegates and alternates, and congressional candidates, asking for their analysis of the political situation and suggestions to strengthen the party. Many of his correspondents urged the effective organization of women, young voters, and immigrants. Where there had been active organizations of women (in Washington, Kansas, and Kentucky) or young people (in Indiana and Iowa), the impact of mobilizing new voters had been positive. Many correspondents urged stronger emphasis on these groups, indicating that the Republicans had done a better job, particularly among women, during the 1928 campaign. Several correspondents, including officials from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, recommended educating and organizing immigrants.1 Though the common understanding of the New Deal realignment includes the near-unanimous movement of immigrant voters to the Democratic column, this process was neither quick nor simple. In 1932, the New York Times examined the foreign-language press and

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found it split evenly in support of FDR and Hoover. Of over 1,000 publications, they found 163 explicitly backing FDR and 152 supporting Hoover. A few supported Norman Thomas or other candidates, a few hundred were politically independent, and many were nonpolitical. The lack of a clear majority for either the Democratic Party or Republican Party persisted within specific ethnic groups; German, Italian, Hungarian, and Russian papers, for example, were evenly split, though some groups were more consensual, such as Czechs for Roosevelt and Scandinavians for Hoover.2 Gamm describes in detail how the different ethnic groups of Boston (Italians, Jews, blacks, Yankees, and Irish) behaved electorally in the 1920s and 1930s and shows how the movement toward the Democratic Party was strongly differentiated by ethnicity (1989). In 1932 the Democratic National Committee (DNC) distributed more than three million pieces of foreign-language literature throughout the United States—in Italian, German, Polish, Russian, French, Yiddish, Hungarian, Slovene, Czech, Norwegian, and Swedish.3 Four years later, the DNC created a naturalized citizens’ bureau with eighteen units, each targeting a different nationality group. An Italian American caravan toured the state of New York during the 1936 presidential campaign staging rallies and speeches, aided and organized by state and local Democratic leaders.4 They worked through groups such as the American Labor Party, which provided a mobilization channel for particular categories of voters, including “radical political groups whose foreign-born members were not attracted to any of the major parties” (Spencer 1976, 142). The Progressive National Committee included naturalized citizens’ bureaus in many states, and conducted a good deal of activity among foreign voters by advertising in foreignlanguage newspapers and sending out appropriate speakers (224). Nationality clubs provided another linkage between party elites and elected officials and immigrant groups.5 Ethnic-group organizations helped with registration and get-out-the-vote drives and provided key endorsements and support. For example, the organizational and geographic density of Chicago’s ethnic groups allowed Anton Cermak’s Democratic organization to more easily educate and mobilize foreignborn citizens in Chicago.6 Thus, the movement of immigrant communities toward the Democratic coalition after 1928 was a result of a number of factors, including the Great Depression, but it was also significantly shaped by intentional behavior on the part of national, state, and local Democratic leaders who saw the addition of these groups to their electoral coalition as, on balance, advantageous.

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Parties and Immigrants in the Early Twenty-first Century Between the Great Depression and the early 1970s, immigration to the United States dropped to a negligible rate, before starting to rise slowly, then much more steeply in the 1990s. From the perspective of change in the electorate, this meant that between 1940 and 1970 the population of potential voters changed primarily as a result of generational replacement—the process by which younger adults replenish the loss of older voters from the electorate. In contrast, since 1990, millions of immigrants, who are potential new voters, have been added to the population and will continue to increase the size and change the composition of the electorate as they are naturalized. If the incentives structuring party behavior now are similar to those that encouraged early twentieth century parties to recruit immigrant supporters, we should expect present-day Democrats and Republicans, nationally and in the localities where immigrants have been settling, to be pursuing these potential new supporters—with the caveat that such efforts would be more likely in competitive situations. But the consensus of the research on parties and immigrant incorporation is that this outreach is happening sporadically at best. Jones-Correa’s study of Latin American immigrants in Queens, a borough of New York City, gives evidence of this shift. Jones-Correa’s research indicates that, “Rather than lowering the costs for marginal political players, the Queens Democratic Party . . . raises them.” Jones-Correa explains, “If actors are at the margins of electoral politics, as immigrants are, then they are ignored; if political players rise to the challenge of the machine, they are thwarted. Only if the new political actors succeed in mobilizing themselves on their own does the party organization attempt to bring them into its cycle” (1998, 70). Similarly, in her research on community organizations in New York City and Los Angeles, Wong finds that, “political machines and party organizations today are no longer the driving force behind minority immigrant political mobilization” (2006, 52; see also Rogers 2006). Several major changes in the civic and political environment have combined to dramatically change the parties’ incentive structure, and their response to this altered environment has implications for the relationship between parties on the one hand and immigrants and immigration policy on the other hand. First, as scholars such as Skocpol and Putnam have demonstrated, civic life in the United States has changed its character in the past 150 years. Mass membership

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groups of all sorts—Lions Clubs, PTAs, American Legions, Knights of Columbus—played important roles in local, state, and national civic and political life from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, but have declined since then in membership and significance (Skocpol 2003). Political parties were mass-membership organizations as well, and the same social and demographic changes in leisure-time activities, residential patterns, and family life that weakened fraternal organizations also weakened local party organizations and party-connected clubs (Putnam 2000). Second, progressive reforms diminished parties’ control over material resources. Battles over the control of patronage and campaign finance scandals led to civil service reforms beginning in the 1880s, which had the effect of reducing the number of patronage jobs under the control of local party leaders. The patronage jobs at the disposal of most local parties are now severely constrained, and to the extent that institutions provide for immigrants’ material needs, these are likely to be a combination of state and local welfare systems and nonprofit service providers. Reforms also allowed states to exercise more control over parties with the introduction of the Australian (secret) ballot, beginning with Massachusetts in 1889 and spreading to most other states by the end of the 1890s, and with the adoption of the direct primary, which started just after the turn of the century and was adopted in most states by the 1920s. Such reforms, as well as changes in political practice brought about in part by women’s suffrage, moved both parties away from the mass-mobilization, militaristic style of campaigning toward a more educational style of campaigning.7 These changes have had the effect of reducing the control of local party organizations over material resources, such as jobs, and political resources, such as nominations for office. Third, technological changes (the rise of mass-media campaigning, direct mail, and Internet-based strategies) have reduced the person-to-person contact at the heart of traditional campaign methods, while weakening of party control over nominations has made electoral politics more candidate-centered, with candidates raising their own funds and building their own campaign organizations, rather than relying on party organizations. The national party organizations now have larger professional staffs but they serve primarily as providers of services and funds to candidates. This has tended to produce local party organizations that are more transient and less institutionalized than those in the first half of the twentieth century (Ware 1985).

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How have these changes affected parties’ behavior, particularly their behavior with regard to immigrant groups? Rosenstone and Hansen, among others, make it clear that parties increasingly act strategically to target those whose behavior is predictable, and thus who are already participants in the political system (1993). The new technologies and the data sources available to the parties and to candidates’ organizations make it possible for them to succeed in a lowturnout era, by fine-tuning appeals and targeting supporters, while ignoring large blocs of nonregistered, nonvoting, or unpredictable voters. In the kind of low-turnout political environment that characterizes most elections, particularly local elections, in the United States today, parties’ incentives are quite different than they were a hundred years ago. A party or a candidate can develop a fairly reliable estimate of the votes needed to win an election, and may have no particular interest in going beyond that number. Rather, data can be utilized and resources targeted economically to win by turning out known supporters and working to convince swing voters if necessary. Thus, we have a situation where local party organizations are weak or nonexistent except at election times, and where the short-term goals of winning elections can be accomplished without long-term organization-building strategies. This incentive structure also has the effect of further marginalizing new voters, who have little voting history and therefore produce uncertainty, or those with fewer resources. It should be noted that the 2004 and 2008 election cycles saw what some heralded as a return to “ground wars” as opposed to “air wars”: the parties, responding initially to Howard Dean’s insurgent campaign in the 2003–2004 Democratic primary season, invested more resources in voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote work. And Dean’s chairmanship of the DNC involved shoring up, via additional funds and staff, the state party organizations. But despite signs of some reinvigoration of state and local organizing capabilities, state and national campaigns are still heavily dependent on mass-media advertising and direct marketing and still focus on turning out known supporters, those who have a long voting history, and swing voters. Registering and mobilizing new voters—let alone keeping those voters actively involved in the party between elections—is not on the agenda of most party organizations. As Wong argues, “There are few incentives in the U.S. political system encouraging parties to target low-propensity voters” particularly given that Asian American and Latino citizens have lower registration and turnout rates than blacks or whites (2006, 5).

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That said, the attention paid to the Latino vote—at the national level and in key states—has been increasing over the past two decades. In part this is due to the large Latino populations in states such as California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New York, the election of Latino representatives in these states, and the emergence of state and national organizations of Latino lawmakers. In addition, Latino voters have been regarded as swing voters. Moreover, at the national level, political parties are not silent on either questions of interest to immigrants and new citizens or on issues of immigration and citizenship. Both national parties typically discuss immigration in their platforms. In 2004, while this study was being conducted, both parties’ stances on issues related to immigration and the resulting rhetorical choices were similar, welcoming the newest Americans, endorsing family reunification, and stressing the importance of English as a common language. Party platform differences included a commitment by Democrats to restore welfare benefits to legal immigrants and Republicans’ endorsement of more funding for border control. The Democrats broadcast a weekly radio address in Spanish, and their website included a voter outreach page listing leaders and contact information for African Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, Latino/Hispanic Americans, and “Ethnic Americans.” The Republicans had launched a monthly Spanish-language television show in May 2002. The first show focused on ways to reduce the school dropout rate of Latinos and increase the number of Latinos in college. The Republican Party also advertised a Hispanic Training Program for recruiting and training candidates. George Bush’s 2000 campaign targeted Latinos, and he was able to increase the Republican share of the vote from 21 percent in 1996 to 35 percent in 2000. His early 2004 proposal to institute a guest-worker program for undocumented immigrants was widely seen as an effort to appeal to Latino voters, and some exit polls suggested that the Latino Bush vote was as high as 44 percent in 2004.8 In 2004, examination of the websites of the parties in states with significant numbers of recent immigrants, including California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Arizona, and New Mexico, suggested both symbolic and material efforts to reach out to immigrant groups, and suggested also that there may be a good deal of variation among states and state parties. Whether or not party organizations are attempting to mobilize immigrant groups, we would expect first- and second-generation immigrants, even those who vote, to be less embedded in the party system and less loyal to their preferred party than native-born citizens,

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who have had a lifetime of experience with parties and party divisions. Thus, differences in partisan affiliation between immigrants and natives are not surprising. In the 2002 General Social Survey, for example, 29 percent of immigrants consider themselves independent, rather than Republican or Democrat, while only 18 percent of those born in the United States identify as independent. An October 2002 Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that unregistered Latinos, who are most likely to be recent immigrants, were overwhelmingly identified as independent.9 The absence of strong partisan ties is a function of both the strength of mobilization efforts made by the political parties themselves and the relatively brief exposure most immigrant voters have had to US elections. Again, this means that politicians are faced with some uncertainty—anathema to campaign strategists—in dealing with the votes of these new groups. Rather than groups of voters with a history of registration, consistent voting patterns, and predictable preferences, politicians and parties now contend with new voters who have neither crystallized political preferences nor strong partisan affiliations. Thus, at the local level, there is much evidence (as described by Jones-Correa, Wong, and others) that parties are opting out of the systematic work of encouraging naturalization, facilitating registration, and getting out the vote among immigrant groups. Focusing not on immigrants per se but on Latino voters in the eight states with the largest Hispanic populations, de la Garza finds that both parties ignored Latinos. “With the exception of Democratic efforts in California in 1996, during these years [1988 through 1996] neither party systematically implemented GOTV [Get Out the Vote] campaigns targeting Latinos” (2004, 101). Jones-Correa’s study of Latin American immigrants in Queens makes a similar argument: neither major party in New York City has mechanisms to integrate noncitizens into the political process. “For those who are citizens, voter registration is rarely encouraged by local machine politicians. Partysponsored registration at any time other than the quadrennial presidential election years is practically nonexistent” (1998, 70). Rogers explains the lack of Democratic Party outreach to Afro-Caribbean immigrants in New York City, “an obvious potential support for the party,” with high naturalization rates, substantial numbers, and residential concentration, by the lack of competitive pressures from the Republicans (or from intraparty factions), encouraging a strategy of benign neglect, a term that might be used to characterize the rela-

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tionship between parties and immigrants in most of the six cities in this study (2006, 92–110).

Parties Opting Out: A Case Study of Local Politics in Syracuse A brief case study of Syracuse, New York, can provide a picture of this sort of benign neglect and a concrete example of how local political parties have abandoned their traditional role with regard to new groups.10 Syracuse, like many midsized US cities, has seen steady streams of immigrants over the last decade. In 2000, the foreign-born constituted 7.6 percent of the city’s population. Of these eleven thousand immigrants, almost 60 percent had entered the country between 1990 and 2000. The Syracuse foreign-born included significant numbers from Eastern Europe (particularly Poland, Ukraine, and the former Yugoslavia); Italy; a scattering of Caribbean and Latin Americans; significant numbers from China, Korea, India, and almost 1,700 Vietnamese.11 For the most part, immigrant groups in Syracuse are not highly visible to local politicians and party leaders, though state-level shifts in this regard may be percolating down to the local level. A local Republican leader, while acknowledging that the party had not taken any initiatives to help immigrants naturalize, pointed to then-governor Pataki’s efforts to create a good relationship with the Latino community and talked about first efforts to reach out to the Latino community in Syracuse. This experience was important, and in the next campaign, one Republican Party official said he intended to have Spanish-language materials ready. The party leaders we talked to were aware of the Spanish Action League and the Southeast Asian Center in Syracuse, as well as the various other agencies providing assistance to immigrants. They sometimes attended citizenship classes or visited the organizations’ headquarters, but these visits were made with the intention of making some initial contact with new voters rather than urging people to naturalize, register, or vote.12 Party officials mentioned no ongoing programs or initiatives in this regard. Republicans described the Vietnamese as “probably Republican” in philosophy, but party leaders admitted that they had not done a very good job with voter registration, suggesting tables in malls, for example, but acknowledging that their get-out-the-vote efforts were limited to regular voters.13

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A Democratic county legislator agreed that politicians reach out to voters who have voted for them in the past: “I guess when a politician says ‘a constituency,’ our constituency that we have embedded in our mind are those people who are out there voting.”14 The registration and voting rates of the areas with significant concentrations of immigrants are lower than those of the city as a whole. In 2000, Onondaga County Board of Elections data show that the rate of voter registration, which is the percent of those over eighteen years old registered, for the city of Syracuse was 53.7 percent, compared with 39.4 percent for people residing in census tracts with a high concentration of immigrants. Similarly, over the elections from 1994 to 2000, the average percent of registrants who voted was lower for those residing in heavily immigrant areas at 36.5 percent as compared with Syracuse as a whole, which was 44.7 percent. Another local Republican officeholder told us that when the local party conducted voter registration drives aimed at registering new voters, it introduced a great deal of uncertainty into the outcome. Indeed, due to some losses in those areas, party leaders have retreated from registration and mobilization strategies. In this regard, party organizations do not casually reach out to new voters. Rather, they calculate the contribution that potential new voters are likely to make to a victory by the party’s candidate relative to the costs of attempted mobilization. Building up a long-term relationship with a community requires substantial time and effort, and may not be deemed worthwhile. Speaking particularly of the Vietnamese community, a leader of one of the nonprofits we spoke with said, Political parties don’t try as hard as they should, in my opinion, to get to this community. There are almost 5,000 people here, many of them are citizens, many of them feel very grateful to this country for allowing them to come here, and so would vote. But candidates don’t stop around here. It’s an untapped population, in terms of politics.15

In this case, the language barrier adds to the challenge: “I think there are a lot of potential voters, and it’s easier to go after ones that speak English if you speak English.”16 Immigrants are not particularly visible to local party leaders and politicians because party leaders are accustomed to dealing with established groups; because their overall numbers are not great; and, perhaps more importantly, because they are so heterogeneous. The situation might be different in a city with a similar proportion of immigrants, but

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with less diversity among the new arrivals. But, in Syracuse, those people we talked with who are associated with immigrant communities believe that the parties almost completely ignore the immigrants and refugees.

Local Parties and Immigrants I have cited research that finds that political parties generally are failing to take the first steps toward mobilizing immigrant groups, which would require systematically encouraging and facilitating naturalization and voter registration, and have used Syracuse as an illustration of the parties’ unwillingness to reach out to immigrant groups. Similar claims can be made about parties in the other five cities. In general, political parties—by which I mean both local party organizations and candidate organizations—simply do not see encouraging naturalization as part of their responsibility, nor, apparently, as providing a potential electoral advantage. In interviews with party leaders, elected officials, and officials’ staffers at the city, state, and congressional levels, it was clear that local parties did not work to facilitate naturalization in the ways that were common a hundred years ago. While some elected officials’ constituent services to immigrants in their districts included help with immigration and visa problems, this was on a case-by-case basis and in no instance represented a proactive stance or general provision of support for naturalization. Party and candidate organizations are barely more involved in registration drives. The response to questions about voter registration was, essentially, that “somebody else does it.” A Texas congressman’s campaign staffer was vague on registration or GOTV activities: “In the past we worked with the Democratic Party and other organizations to do a comprehensive get out and vote effort.” What organizations? “Well, there are a few loosely affiliated local groups that just kind of flow together to do a get out and vote effort.”17 Party officials sometimes implied that candidate organizations were more likely to conduct voter registration drives. But for these organizations, strapped for time and resources, encouraging nonvoters, including immigrants, to register was low on their list of priorities. A Colorado state senator said she had had a bilingual volunteer go door to door on Election Day to get out the vote, but that her campaign did not have the capability to mount voter registration drives.18 Candidates or elected officials would sometimes mention that “the party” did that sort of thing. But not atypical was the

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leader of the Onondaga County (Syracuse) Republican Party. Though he had raised the party’s level of activity in terms of fundraising and recruiting candidates, when asked about voter registration efforts he admitted, “We haven’t done as good as we should. . . . We have some plans to do it this year. I have a couple people who, once the weather clears, are going to be prepared to start going out and start running some booths and tables.”19 A Michigan State Senate staffer was one of several political operatives who went into detail about how elected officials decide to target their campaign strategy and which groups they’ll try to mobilize. He described a database of potential voters with name, address, socioeconomic data, and ethnicity, if known. With data from the Board of Elections, likelihood of voting can be estimated, and this shapes targeting decisions. With scarce resources, the rational decision is to target precisely those people who are known supporters or swing voters, and who have a history of voting. The databases make it possible to target individual voters rather than organize neighborhoods by finding local leaders and encouraging them to mobilize their neighbors.20 It was clear that in most cases, officials had been elected primarily by their own efforts—sometimes in nonpartisan elections—or with very little organizational support by their parties. This reflects the shift, discussed above, toward more candidate-centered elections and toward candidates taking responsibility for their own campaigns. The director of the Americanization League of Syracuse, which provides various services to immigrants, was mostly positive about his relationship with offices of congressmen, senators, and other officials, but saw that they were not paying much attention to new groups as constituents. “The elected officials around this community are very good. I’d like to see some of them once in a while show up and say something at the Naturalization Board. I mean, a new citizen is potentially a new voter.”21 A new citizen is also a potential new campaign donor, and in some cities, candidates’ outreach may include getting to know specific immigrant families or individuals who might be the source of campaign donations. In the three cities of Lansing, Fort Collins, and Chico, politicians spontaneously distinguished resource-rich immigrants from their poorer compatriots. Two different staffers in Lansing explained that reaching out to Arab Muslims (of whom there are many in the Lansing area) and Indians is different, given that the latter are often doctors, college professors, or professionals. “We approach them dif-

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ferently. We try to form a relationship with them individually, to meet their family and friends. It’s a much more long-term strategy.” 22 Similarly, in Fort Collins there were some foreign-born employees, both Indians and Chinese, of high-tech companies who had been approached to give campaign donations. And finally, a California politician’s staff member mentioned an active group of Sikhs as an “exception” to the generalization about inactive immigrants. They are farmers and have concerns about crop supports and agricultural policy. They call, write letters, meet with their representative, and, perhaps most importantly, donate to his campaign.23 More generally, how did elected officials describe their outreach to immigrant groups? They often mentioned that they made a point to speak to or visit immigrant communities at election time and to maintain some contact with group leaders in immigrant communities. But, in general, the responses of party leaders, elected officials, and their staff members to questions about dealing with immigrant groups had to do with reaching out in a fairly minimal way, such as making sure that there were Spanish-language books in the libraries, publishing informational pamphlets in appropriate languages, or, perhaps, supporting the institution of a Human Rights Commission. A staff member for a California official said that they had published a newsletter in Spanish, had a Spanish version of their webpage, and attempted to make some of the office’s publications available in Spanish. Whether these practices result in any long-term relationship between parties and ethnic groups, or whether they are part of a path to greater political influence, depends heavily on the extent to which the immigrant communities are characterized by ongoing, viable, politically sophisticated organizations, a question taken up in Chapters 6 and 7. Certainly a strong organizational base is usually necessary for the emergence of viable candidates from immigrant groups. In these cities, slate-making, which carries with it the possibility of choosing people who represent various ethnic groups, is not normally done by party organizations. Candidates from immigrant groups need to have extensive community connections, outside allies, fundraising capability, and a strong political drive. If the districts are sufficiently homogeneous, district elections may, of course, increase the odds of ethnic politicians’ success. For example, Waldinger argues that the institutional structures of Los Angeles and New York—for example, the party systems, at-large versus district-level representation, and the traditions of ethnically bal-

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anced slate-making—have meant that New York immigrants are more easily incorporated than those in Los Angeles (1996a). De la Garza, Abrajano, and Cortina also make the point that the institutional characteristics of a state, including party competition, position of unions, and party structures, impact mobilization of Latinos (2008). In general the immigrant populations in these cities are too small and/or too scattered to produce a strong electoral effect of this sort. Waco, for example, previously had large local electoral districts drawn to “intentionally exclude minority representation.”24 In the mid-1970s, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the League of Women Voters, and others filed a class-action lawsuit against the city to change the districting practices. They won and managed to elect the first minorities to city council the following election, though at least one interviewee believed that there still seemed to be a glass ceiling for minorities, who could sometimes win in their own districts, but not in community-wide or at-large elections. Finally, it does not appear that the level of party competition has much of a systematic impact on the extent to which local parties are interested in attracting immigrant voters. None of these cities were completely dominated by one party—that is, none were in the situation described by Jones-Correa in Queens, or of the entrenched Democratic Party in Edison, New Jersey, that feels no need to reach out to the growing Indian and Chinese populations in the community (Aptekar 2008). In no case was the city council completely composed of one party, and even when that was almost true, in Syracuse, for example, the constituencies for state-level offices were larger, more diverse, and more competitive.

Explaining Parties’ Inertia Politicians’ and parties’ lack of interest in mobilizing new populations is consistent with the research of Jones-Correa, Wong, and others. Clearly, the lack of resources (and, possibly, the perceived need to use resources for advertising) may discourage party organizations from undertaking intensive voter registration drives. It is also the case that mounting outreach efforts introduce uncertainty to situations where local parties may have a very accurate knowledge of the demographic and geographic parameters of their support base. The fact that in these smaller cities the immigrant groups are absolutely

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and relatively fairly small means that the payoff for introducing such uncertainty may not be sufficient to outweigh the costs. Interviews with elected officials and their staffers illustrate this reasoning. The Michigan state senator’s staffer cited above offered a common description of databases of potential voters and targeting strategies that emphasize likely voters and make the best use of scarce resources. Although politicians frequently used the sleeping-giant metaphor to talk about the Hispanic electorate in general and in their districts, they also frequently pointed out that Hispanics’ numbers were small, their voting turnout was low, and they weren’t organized as a community. Repeatedly, politicians termed immigrant groups “not visible.” This was particularly true when immigrants were dispersed through the metropolitan area, rather than in identifiable ethnic neighborhoods (see Leighley 2001 on the impact of residential concentration or dispersion).25 But the response of “invisibility” was clearly not justifiable simply on the basis of numbers. With 27 percent of Waco’s residents classified as Hispanic by the 2000 Census, for example, their low impact on local politics was explained by their low voter turnout (some of them are, of course, noncitizens), perceived transience, and lack of organization. Scarce resources and an aversion to political uncertainty may explain a good deal of parties’ passivity with regard to mobilizing potential immigrant voters. But I believe that some ingrained beliefs about how immigrants should behave, or, sometimes, how they are imagined to have behaved in the past, are also important here—possibly in explaining parties’ behavior, and certainly in allowing them to rationalize their behavior. This argument, though not always explicit, has several layers. First, there is often an explicit denial that immigrants are any different from other groups, and thus there is no reason to offer them extra services or make particular efforts to woo them politically. Especially in situations where seats were safe, elected officials and their staff members were quick to say that immigrant groups were “just like any other group.” A California staffer said, for example, that he tries to view Hispanic and Hmong groups similarly to how he views growers or right-to-lifers—as groups that have specific interests and perspectives, entitled to the same services as other constituents. He attends their events, meets with their leaders, learns about their issues, and lets them know that he cares about their concerns. But, “We don’t solicit their involvement. If they come to us,

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we’re happy to help out, but we don’t see it as our job to go out and offer them services.”26 In Spokane, local politicians were perceived as paying very little attention to immigrant issues, but local leaders described their approach as promoting economic development for “everyone,” rather than dealing with specific groups. That point of view—they are just like everyone else—is justified by one or both of two assumptions: first, that it is the individual’s obligation to register, gather political information, and vote, and he or she shouldn’t need to be prodded or helped; and second, that US politics is group-based politics, and if groups aren’t organized, they can’t expect to have much political impact. A City Council member in Chico when asked if he encouraged naturalization and voter registration, in general and among immigrant groups in particular, said that he didn’t. Parties may do some of it, but “if you’re a resident of a particular community [you have a] responsibility to be active in the community, to vote, but [you can] choose not to be active.”27 The individualistic assumption was often used to criticize particular immigrants for their lack of English skills or lack of interest in assimilation. This was particularly true of a number of relatively conservative officeholders and staffers in Fort Collins, who put emphasis on the need for Mexican immigrants to assimilate before they could be welcomed into the political system. In the particular context of Fort Collins, this argument was often used to distinguish Mexican immigrants from the more settled Mexican Americans, who were described as “just like us” and as having issues indistinguishable from the Anglo community. The group-politics assumption could be used to blame immigrants for not organizing, or more commonly, to explain immigrants’ lack of visibility. In several instances, politicians had trouble coming up with names of organizations that they might contact to reach out to immigrants. This is consistent with the findings of Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad, who conducted a more systematic study of six California cities and found that immigrant or ethnic organizations were not seen by public officials as important advocacy groups. These groups seemed largely invisible to decisionmakers, who tended to mention instead “established mainstream groups such as the Rotary Club, local chambers of commerce and homeowners associations” (2008, 59). In contrast to the lack of immigrant advocacy organizations that politicians perceived in Chico and Fort Collins, a Michigan state assemblyman’s staff member reported that his district’s Latinos and some of the Middle Eastern immigrants—he mentioned Chaldeans from Iraq in

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particular—tended to be working class, and the Democratic Party, he said, hoped to maintain the support of these groups via its close working relationship with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the United Auto Workers (UAW). Finally, even though it may be fair to claim that political parties, in general, do not make it a high priority to attract new supporters from these immigrant communities, the existence of connections to the parties can serve to educate group leaders and members about the advantages of getting involved in elections and presenting themselves as a significant constituency. In Waco, for example, an organization now called the Latino Women’s Coalition was formerly Latino Democratic Women. They have conducted voter registration drives in local high schools and the Hispanic churches of St. Frances and Sacred Heart and also done some door-to-door voter registration. In fact, Waco is probably the city with the closest connections between immigrant communities and the parties via the Latino Women’s Coalition, officeholders, and a chapter of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, a Hispanic branch of the national party.28 In this context it is worth noting that although Waco has a low naturalization rate and a relatively weak network of immigrant-related organizations, Hispanics are reasonably well represented in local government, as well as in the state legislature.The analysis of the city and county website and information about the citysponsored neighborhood programs suggest that in Waco immigrants have been able to work through both political parties to help them move toward political incorporation. Bloemraad finds that a number of Toronto-area Portuguese Canadians have run for and won elective office at all levels, including school boards, city councils, and the provincial legislature, compared to no Portuguese Americans in elective office in the Boston area. She concludes that, “a stronger and more competitive party system, greater ideological diversity between parties, and more localized nomination procedures assist immigrants in Toronto more than those in Boston. Campaign finance regulations make launching a campaign more expensive in the United Sates than Canada” (2005, 205–206). Competitive parties, she suggests, allow more people to run for office and more options for winning party nominations and increases interest in politics and parties’ attempts to reach out to new voters. On the other hand, Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad find that in six cities in California, there was “no clear relationship between the level of party competition in a city and the political presence enjoyed by ethnic organizations” (2008, 68).

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The six states under consideration are all above the national mean in terms of conventionally measured party competition using the Ranney index. 29 In the 2004 presidential election, Lansing was Democratic by a comfortable margin; Syracuse was more precariously Democratic. All the other cities voted for Bush, led by Waco where the Republican plurality constituted a huge 32 percent of the total vote. The remaining cities—Spokane, Chico, and Fort Collins—voted Republican, but with much smaller pluralities of 5–12 percent of the total vote. Overall, the parties in these states and cities are fairly representative of the broad majority of state and local parties. Both major parties have a presence, but, as we have seen, this presence is mostly evident during election campaigns; these are not well-institutionalized organizations engaging in recruitment and mobilization. Where the parties are, arguably, a bit stronger as in Waco and Lansing, this may have resulted in somewhat greater representation of immigrant groups in local offices. Where parties are weak, self-recruitment is the norm, and representation is lower.

Notes 1. “National Political Digest” in papers of Democratic National Committee (DNC), FDR Library. 2. New York Times, November 7, 1932, 11. 3. New York Times, August 7, 1936, 6; Letters to Jim Farley, DNC Library and Research Bureau Papers, 1932 campaign, box 866, FDR Library. 4. Rochester Daily Chronicle, October 19, 1936, 1; Buffalo Evening News, October 16, 1936, 37. 5. Peel’s study of political organizations in New York City found that even those groups that were not explicitly political, but rather were social, fraternal, recreational, or civic, “gradually, almost unconsciously, acquire political interests and attitudes reinforcing a common nationality as a bond of union. . . . These groups then become relevant to political leaders” (1935). 6. In contrast, in Buffalo, New York, the Democratic Party had a difficult time forging cross-ethnic coalitions in part due to the failure of Buffalo’s divided Italian population to support community-wide institutions, both political and nonpolitical (Yans-McClaughlin 1977, chap. 4). 7. These transitions are well described by McGerr (1986) and Ware (1985). 8. Leal et al. (2005) cast some doubt on the 44 percent figure, estimating the Latino vote in 2004 at about 39 percent. In any case, the Bush Latino vote in 2004 was up over 2000. Bush and Kerry together spent over four million dollars on Spanish-language advertising (McCann, Connaughton, and Nishikawa 2009, 3).

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9. Washington Post, October 4, 2003, A8. But it should be noted that those Latinos who are registered voters are heavily Democratic, according to a Pew Hispanic Center Study in 2006 (42 percent, compared to only 20 percent Republican), and that this proportion had been fairly constant since 1999. 10. For an expanded version of this case study, see Andersen and Wintringham 2003. 11. US Census, 2000. Summary File 3. PCT19, Place of Birth for the Foreign-Born Population. 12. Vice-chair, Onondaga County Democratic Party, interview February 26, 2003. 13. Ibid. 14. Democratic County legislator, interview February 26, 2003. 15. Interview with the director of the Refugee Resettlement Program, Syracuse, October 7, 2002. 16. Ibid. 17. Interview with staffer for Texas congressman, March 30, 2004. 18. Interview with Colorado state senator, May 12, 2004. 19. Interview with chair of Onondaga County Republican Party, February 23, 2003. 20. Interview with staff member of Michigan state senator, January 23, 2004. 21. Interview with Americanization League director, February 23, 2003. 22. Interview with staff member of Michigan state senator, January 23, 2004. 23. Interview with congressional staff member, April 29, 2004. 24. Interview with local political activist, March 25, 2004. 25. Nevertheless, residential concentration doesn’t appear to be sufficient to create group visibility. Syracuse had more census tracts with over 10 percent foreign-born than the other five cities, but politicians there did not exhibit a particularly higher level of consciousness about the immigrant groups in these areas. 26. Interview with representative of California politician’s district office, April 29, 2004. 27. Interview with Chico City Council member, April 27, 2004. 28. Interview with Republican Party official, March 26, 2004. 29. Described in Gray, Hanson, and Jacob 1999, p. 105. The Ranney Index measures the level of competition between the parties in a state based on party control of the governorship and the state legislature.

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6 Community Organizations as New Channels for Political Incorporation If parties are no longer seeing it as in their interest to incorporate

and mobilize immigrants, it is important to ask about the extent to which other types of organizations have taken on the tasks associated with immigrant political incorporation: encouraging and facilitating naturalization, promoting voter registration, educating people about issues and participatory channels, and providing them with resources and motivations to participate. Though certainly local parties frequently played a central role in connecting immigrants to the political arena, mutual aid societies, fraternal societies, homeland associations of all types, unions, settlement houses, churches, and a huge variety of other community organizations also provided ways for new residents to acclimate to their new communities and, eventually, to develop the skills necessary for political influence. “It was through these institutions that many immigrants became aware of the problems and possibilities of American politics and from them that they stepped into the electoral arena” (Sterne 2001, 50). The difference between the situation in the early twentieth century and that in the early twenty-first century lies in the extent to which political parties structured channels of participation and influence in the earlier period. If immigrants stepped into the electoral arena after building their skills and knowledge in community organizations, they did so by becoming involved in party precinct organizations or party clubs. If they have a desire to step into politics today, they will find the electoral arena much more complex. In a given city, for example, rather than parties organized down to the neighborhood level and in control of city government, jobs, and nominations, immigrants will likely find much weaker and less fully organized parties, where 71

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access to electoral office may go through party factions or individual candidates’ or officials’ organizations. At the same time, they will find that nonparty organizations may provide them with alternative channels of political influence, through their connections with other organizations, state or local elected officials, or with state or local government agencies. Parties, in most places, no longer have exclusive control over admission to the political arena. Coterminous with the changes affecting political parties, other developments since the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act have meant that nonprofit 501(3)c organizations are positioned to play an increasingly significant role in the overall integration of immigrants to the United States. The federal government’s antipoverty efforts in the 1960s and 1970s involved contracts with nonprofit service providers and neighborhood organizations to help reduce poverty and encourage community development; and the general move toward privatization, which accelerated beginning in the 1980s, further enlarged the role of local organizations in providing services to disadvantaged groups. Service-providing organizations may not have political empowerment as a central mission; nonetheless, Bloemraad describes four means by which organizations may foster political incorporation: (1) they gather and disseminate information, (2) represent and advocate for a group, (3) mobilize individuals to participate, and (4) teach skills that promote political participation (2006b, 83). Political parties do all these things as well, but with significant differences in goals and techniques. In particular, parties—at least in a two-party system—need to represent and advocate for a much broader and more inclusive group. And, despite their ability to engage in targeted mobilization, as discussed in Chapter 5, parties are engaging in more universal mobilization than the typical advocacy organization. Wong argues similarly that community organizations, whose missions are not primarily political—rather, their goals include advocacy, rightsprotection, service provision, cultural preservation, and so on—do not generally engage in mass mobilization. “Instead, they rely on limited mobilization, which involves the recruitment of limited numbers to take part in political action, often relating to a specific issue or concern” (Wong 2006, 9; see also de Graauw 2008). At least two implications follow from this: political incorporation via community groups rather than parties may be organized around specific issues and a narrower range of skills; and may allow, for better or worse, for the persistence of identity politics.

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Incorporative Functions of Community Organizations I am talking here about a very broad range of organizations, with a variety of organizational forms, goals, and resources. Organizations in the six cities about which some information was gathered include unions, religious groups, ethnic associations, advocacy groups, legal assistance groups, business groups (for example, Chambers of Commerce), and neighborhood associations. These organizations and others, like those described more systematically in the cities studied by Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad, take on a wide variety of roles in helping immigrants find out about, succeed in, and engage with US society and politics (2008). Labor unions, following years of ignoring immigrants or supporting anti-immigrant legislation through their desire to protect the jobs of their members, have recently begun to shift their position. The AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) decided several years ago to begin making efforts to organize immigrants; and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), with its Justice for Janitors movement in particular, has organized large numbers of immigrant workers and, in so doing, has encouraged political participation. Religious organizations have historically provided and now currently provide immigrants with social services, mechanisms for maintaining ethnic ties, and opportunities to develop civic skills. At the same time, churches vary dramatically in the extent to which they take explicitly political positions or even encourage political participation on the part of their members. Recent work by Foley and Hoge is an example of the explicit and implicit inculcation of civic skills by a range of Washington DC churches that serve immigrants (2003). There are at least three other types of organizations that are important features in the landscape of current immigrant politics and political involvement: local, largely service-providing, nonprofit) organizations; ethnic voluntary organizations; and groups explicitly organized to mobilize immigrant or ethnic voters. There are many examples of the growth of organizations based in Latino and Asian communities of larger cities. Browning, Marshall, and Tabb, for example, describe the “dense networks of community organizations” in the Chinese American communities of Bay Area cities, “focusing on health, education, job training, employment, housing, civil rights and self-sufficiency issues” (2003, 28). In this case, a number of leaders of these groups have moved on to serve as elected officials.1

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Wong’s work illustrates the reach of some of these groups, for example, a Los Angeles organization that provides legal education, including help with citizenship applications, to over 40,000 immigrants annually. Wong says, “While not every community-based organization has an explicitly political agenda, many leaders see their organizations as having a political role in immigrant communities” (2002, 24). Certainly in providing assistance with finding jobs, obtaining social services, and naturalizing, groups such as these are playing an important role in the process of civic, if not political, incorporation. Recent research on immigrant nonprofits in San Francisco, for example, makes the point that the organizations’ staffs, when they bring immigrant clients along to meetings of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to appeal for more funds, communicate to their clients “that immigrants’ continued enjoyment of nonprofit services in a climate of funding cuts partly depends on their participation in the local allocative process” (de Graauw 2008, 335). Ethnic voluntary organizations play many roles in immigrant communities, from maintaining home country ties—often at the town or village level—to raising money for political causes related to homeland politics, preserving cultural traditions, and protecting the civil rights of group members. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) in New York City, for example, has provided housing, job, and naturalization process assistance to immigrants and has been involved in local politics in Chinatown (Lin 1998). Finally, voter-education groups often target immigrants, sometimes in response to particular threats such as Proposition 187 in California. Ramakrishnan’s recent research investigates the mobilizing activity in 1994 and 1998 of groups such as the Southwest Voter Research and Education Project (SVREP), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), and the Salvadoran American Legal and Education Fund, all of which targeted newly registered voters, many of them first generation (2005, chap. 6). In late 2003, the Houston Coalition for Immigrant Rights began a campaign to persuade immigrants to register in time for the 2004 election, and the organizers pointed out that they may have an easier time now that Mexico allows dual citizenship. The coalition included the SEIU, three Central American immigrant rights groups, and a youth group.2 SVREP dispatches organizers to work with church and civic groups to register and activate Latino voters in states in the South, Southwest, and the West. “The hope is to work with these people

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through three election cycles, eventually turning them into habitual voters.” It is hard to imagine a clearer statement of incorporativist intentions. “We do what political parties used to do two generations ago,” says Antonio Gonzalez, president of SVREP (Freedman and Johnson, 2002, 10–11).

Organizations and Political Incorporation Because political parties no longer invest time and energy to link new groups to elected and appointed officials, and because most US local and state governments do not have explicit policies fostering political incorporation, the voluntary sector becomes a critical site, where individuals and families are able to acquire the knowledge and skills to be able to navigate and interact with the larger society and, particularly, with the political and governmental systems. The research of Verba, Schlozman, and Brady has demonstrated at the individual level how civic associations build these skills and resources (1995). Here I am concerned with the capacity of the relevant groups and their ability to move collective activity in an explicitly political direction. In this section, I describe and categorize the immigrant-related organizations in the six cities, paying particular attention to the extent to which they take on incorporative functions, either deliberately or as a consequence of other activities. Table 6.1 contains an overview of the range of organizations in each city. It should be noted first that purely social organizations, which in these cities are often loosely organized and somewhat transient, were not included in this research; and second, that many organizations could have been classified in more than one category. Of the categories in Table 6.1, legal services organizations are those offering free or inexpensive legal services, sometimes specifically to immigrants, but often more broadly. These are groups like California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) in Chico, Columbia Legal Services in Spokane, or the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network in Fort Collins. Organizations categorized as having a primary mission of advocacy are those that focus on particular issues or causes; they may use insider strategies, such as lobbying and educational campaigns, or outsider strategies, such as protests and boycotts, or both. Examples of these include Fuerza Latina, in Fort Collins, which was founded specifically to advocate for immigrants’ rights and is “an organization of immi-

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Table 6.1

Functional Categorization of Organizations Studied in Six Cities Number in Category

Chico

Ft. Collins

Lansing

Spokane

Syracuse

Waco

Legal Rights and Servicesa

2

1

1

2

0

0

6

Advocacyb

4

2

2

1

1

2

12

Capacity Buildingc

4

3

2

6

6

3

24

Human Servicesd

4

5

5

8

4

4

30

1

0

0

3

1

1

6

15

11

10

20

12

10

78

Business

e

Total in City

Notes: a. Legal services: visas, civil and criminal law, pro bono cousel; b. Advocacy: lobbying, protest, partisan politics; c. Capacity building: organizing, leadership training, social capital development; d. Human services: charities, social welfare, public health, recreation; e. Business: chamber of commerce, professional associations.

grants for immigrants”; the Waco branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC); and the Xicano Development Committee in Lansing. Capacity-building organizations, many of which were based at local universities, focused on providing organizational support and leadership training—examples of these include the Migrant Education Program at Michigan State University (MSU) and the National Hispanic Institute at Colorado State University (CSU). Human services organizations constituted the largest category and included refugee service providers; public health programs; community centers; and many churches whose primary function, with regard to immigrants or refugees, was the provision of social assistance, such as food banks, job training, child care, and mental health counseling. Groups such as the Inland Empire Hispanic Association in Spokane or the Central Texas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce were classified as business organizations. At a basic level many of these organizations and agencies provide assistance for immigrants to begin to live and work in a new society. These needs must be met before much effort can be invested in collective goals or political participation. Additionally, these groups bring people together and thus maintain and create social ties.

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Beyond this, as Bloemraad notes, many groups whose primary mission is service-providing also create places and house people who can provide vital information about the polity’s rules and regulations and local and national issues and actors. “They concentrate social resources, they bring people together on a regular basis, and because they offer a measure of permanence, they facilitate sustained collective action over time” (2006b, 62). Only a few organizations reported initiating or participating actively in efforts to naturalize immigrants or register voters. A good example of this is in Syracuse, which is a bit unusual in having a nonprofit organization that provides services to both refugees and immigrants. The Americanization League was founded in 1916 as a resettlement agency. It currently has three staff members, is funded by the Onondaga County Legislature, and is given space by the Syracuse City School District. The organization is specifically focused on assisting immigrants with the process of obtaining permanent residency through the naturalization process and in dealing with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). As for voter registration, they do have voter-registration forms to fill out “if someone asks for it.”3 Voter-registration activities, on the part of community organizations, were usually connected with national or statewide organizational efforts (on the part of organizations such as SVREP). Of the seventyeight organizations about which we have at least some information, fewer than ten appear to include voter registration, voting, or other forms of participation as even a secondary part of their mission. Many groups did report that they “encouraged” naturalization or registration, or—even more weakly—“had forms available” for voter registration. Churches and mosques in Waco, Lansing, and Spokane occasionally set up voter-registration tables after services, and service-providing groups may set out literature about government programs or voter-registration brochures; unions often do the same. At election times, organizations, such as the Northside Azatlan Community Center in Fort Collins, the Spanish Action League of Syracuse, or the Hmong Cultural Center in Chico, occasionally schedule meet-the-candidate forums. The provision of information is a critical function of immigrantserving organizations, which is made much easier and more effective if a locale is home to some sort of ethnic media, whether newspapers, radio, or TV. In 2004 these six cities were home to only a few media outlets, including at least two weekly radio programs (Bosnian in Syracuse; Hmong in Chico), but only one newspaper, Tiempo, in Waco.

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Information gathering and diffusing can and does shift to representing and advocating. “As information flows change direction, moving from the immigrant community to the mainstream, those who provide information about the community become de facto representatives” (Bloemraad 2006b, 89). This often happens when government agencies or politicians want to know about groups’ opinions. And when organizational actors take on this responsibility of advocacy, it can evolve into mobilization of the community and instruction in political skills. For example, in early 2004, anticipating the 2004 election and Muslims’ perceptions of discrimination, the American Muslim Center in Lansing set up voter-registration tables at the mosque after services and made efforts to publicize this within the community. In Chico, a staff member of CRLA mentioned that they planned to encourage members of the Latino and Hmong communities to attend an upcoming meeting soliciting public comment on county housing policies.4 In Syracuse, organizations reported having engaged in lobbying efforts around issues having to do with immigration policy, for example, protesting the post-9/11 reduction in quotas, and involving members of the immigrant communities with activities such as letter-writing.5 Immigrants sometimes want more political involvement, whereas service-providing agencies do not see their role as facilitating political action. Every year, Lansing’s Lutheran Refugee Services (LRS) arranges a summer retreat in Maryland for the Sudanese boys resettled in Lansing. At one such retreat, several of the boys were disappointed that despite being so close to Washington DC, the retreat organizers had not set up any meetings with elected officials. The boys had wanted to meet with their representatives personally to push for greater US involvement in resettling Sudanese people living in refugee camps. Instead, they decided to skip the retreat’s official functions and to write a collective letter to their representatives to publicize recent attacks on the refugee camps.6 Thus an important indicator of a group’s incorporation might be the extent to which they have developed the capacity to build organizations and have actually developed an organizational infrastructure. In large cities with a large immigrant population base, this might include business groups, churches, service-providers, political advocacy groups, and cultural associations. In these small cities, the organizations are fewer and weaker. Bloemraad attempts to construct a measure of group organizational capacity, counting the organizations associated with the Vietnamese and Portuguese immigrant com-

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munities in Boston and Toronto. She includes churches, social service and advocacy organizations, and ethnic media (2006b, chap. 5). She is primarily concerned with testing hypotheses about the effects of the much greater government support for immigrants in Canada as compared with the United States, and, secondarily, within the United States, for refugees as opposed to other immigrants. In the six cities studied here, though I did not search out and catalog organizations as systematically as Bloemraad did, organizational capacity appeared to vary widely between localities and immigrant groups. In Spokane, for example, there were at least three active organizations doing refugee resettlement work, and each one targeted a different subsection of the local refugee population. World Relief worked mainly with the Russians, the International Refugee Council of Spokane worked mainly with Hmong refugees, and Catholic Charities devoted most of its attention to Mexican nationals. In addition, there were numerous service and professional organizations within Spokane’s Hmong and Mexican/Hispanic communities, while the Russians and Ukrainians were almost solely organized around evangelical Protestant churches. Syracuse’s refugee resettlement groups, on the other hand, worked with many national origin groups, and churches seemed somewhat less important as focal points of immigrant communities. In Lansing, rather than a large number of small or medium sized organizations, most of the services available to local immigrants and refugees went through a few large organizations. Services to Mexicans and Mexican Americans went through one large community center, Cristo Rey. There were three main organizations providing services to refugees, and they also appeared to specialize in particular countries of origin and age groups. Muslims in Lansing were mainly organized around the mosque. The local Hmong population appeared to have some degree of internal organization, but they had very little contact with the Greater Lansing community. Fort Collins resembled Lansing in this respect because its Mexican and Hispanic communities were organized around just three main organizations: an advocacy group (Fuerza Latina), Northside Aztlan Community Center, and El Centro Student Services at CSU. Finally, Waco’s and Chico’s immigrant groups revolved around a number of small, interconnected organizations. Chico’s Hmong were divided into at least two branches, one based in Chico and the other in nearby Oroville. Both branches developed parallel organizations including central governing bodies, for example, the Chico Hmong

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Association; community centers; and veterans groups. Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Chico had very little access to social services and showed little apparent internal organization, but drew some support from social justice and legal aid groups. Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Waco both appeared to be well organized with a number of mutual assistance organizations, a local chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, several Spanish-language media outlets, churches, and a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Nevertheless, cooperation between the two groups was limited. The differences within and between cities suggest the difficulty of determining the organizational density of a given city. If measured in terms of the number of organizations working in an immigrantissue sector,7 a city with a large number of small organizations offering a few ad hoc services would have a higher organizational density than a city with three or four main organizations that each offered a wide range of services. Ideally, accounts of organizational density would take into account the breadth and depth of services offered, in addition to the number of organizations in each city. In attempting to suggest some explanations for the variations among these six cities in government responsiveness—or, from a slightly different point of view, variations in the political success of immigrant groups—I focus in the remainder of this chapter on the concept of organizational capacity. I pay particular attention to two factors that characterize organizations that seem to do a good job at disseminating information, advocating, mobilizing, and imparting political skills: strong leadership and political connections. In their study of community development organizations on the US-Mexican border, Fredericksen and London argue that leadership is a “crucial component” of organizational capacity (2000, 233). The existence of relationships among organizations is not among their indicators of organizational capacity. I would argue, however, that such connections may help newer, smaller, less institutionalized groups to obtain funding, attract volunteers and supporters, and meet their space needs—all of which do constitute common indicators of organizational capacity.

Leadership Experience and Skills In addition to statewide, regional, or national organizations that may focus on mobilization and/or involve local organizations in specifi-

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cally political action, local groups may take on a more political cast if their leaders have a history of political activism. Four examples follow from Lansing, Waco, and Spokane. In Lansing, a staff member of the Cristo Rey Community Center—which provides the Latino community with services including supplemental food programs, English as a second language (ESL) classes, and after-school programs—was involved in campus activism when he was a student at MSU, in particular with the Chicano political organization Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), which is also active at Colorado State. He then organized in the early 1990s on behalf of farmworkers and civil rights, and formed a Hispanic community center in Detroit at which he focused on “low-intensity organizing” or capacity building. He and his connections were crucial to the 2003 mayoral victory of Tony Benavides, which is discussed in more detail below.8 Another Lansing resident with political experience—he had been a political reporter—directs the Refugee Development Center (RDC) and, among other plans, wants to expose students in its after-school program to politics. These teenagers, who are both native-born and immigrants, have formed an organization with a mission statement and goals. “We’re going to start introducing the kids to political organizations around the city and different leaders, how to get them hooked up with them and get to know them.” The notion is that the kids have better English skills and more time than adults and that therefore political socialization may be able to go from children to parents.9 A community leader with a history of activism works to connect immigrants to the political system via parties and elections in Waco, the only one of our six cities to have an established media outlet based in an immigrant community.10 The Hispanic weekly newspaper, with articles and advertisements in a mixture of English and Spanish, has been published since 1982. Its publisher/editor is a long-time activist and argues convincingly that the existence of Tiempo provides the Latino community with a ready-made connection to decisionmakers. Organizations like LULAC or the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce rely on Tiempo to promote their campaigns or events. The editor spoke explicitly about the importance of building coalitions with other groups (blacks and working-class whites), of working with elected officials, and of developing a unified “voice” for the Mexican American community. Moreover, the paper serves not only to disseminate information but as a community focal point: “every time there’s

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an election, our office is used for a meeting, for voter registration . . . [and] we’ve involved Democratic and Republican and Green party representatives to work on voter-registration drives.”11 Another older Hispanic activist, now occupying an elected county position in Waco, talked about how he and his compatriots fought in the 1970s to get the first Hispanic on the school board, the city council, and the county commission; but they discovered that “having one voice on a board of six or seven doesn’t get you anywhere. You need to have influence over other [non-Hispanic members] and candidates. You need to mobilize the Hispanic vote. So, now it’s customary, it’s pretty much a practice . . . the different folks running for political office do seek out . . . Hispanic votes and influence. . . . [But] in my opinion, voter participation is not up where it needs to be.”12 Finally, the business association in Spokane, AHANA, which stands for African American, Hispanic, Asian, Native Americans, has made explicit attempts to influence the local political process through the parties. This is challenging; many authors, including Bloemraad (2006b, 231) and Sonenshein (2003), have discussed the difficulty of sustaining panethnic coalitions. AHANA’s director is a Vietnam veteran who returned to the University of Washington after his military service, where he began his extensive experience as an advocate and union organizer. In his view, politicians in Spokane make almost no mention of immigrant communities and tend to gloss over their concerns by saying that they’re trying to deal with the entire Spokane community’s interests, not just those of a few small groups. Even though AHANA does receive some funding for operating costs from the city and county, the day we interviewed its director, the mayor’s office had held a conference on economic development in Spokane, but failed to invite anyone from the minority community until the last minute. To improve this situation, AHANA has tried to consolidate minority groups’ power and to develop closer relations with local politicians. This is complicated by the fact that many members of the minority communities don’t vote because they don’t think politicians care about them and don’t think politics is relevant to their lives. AHANA has put together a candidate forum to advance the minority community’s concerns to local candidates. 13 And in July 2005, AHANA approached local Democratic leaders, saying that Democrats should be more supportive of the organization because the two groups share political and social values. “Addressing the June luncheon meeting of the Spokane Democratic Business and Professionals group, [the AHANA executive director] said local

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Republican candidates were more aggressive than Democrats in seeking assistance from AHANA. . . . All agreed that communication and interaction between Democrats and AHANA can be improved. AHANA’s mission is consistent with traditional Democratic principles.”14

Organizational Allies and Political Connections Ramakrishnan and Viramontes, in their investigation of civic participation of immigrants in California, make the argument that ethnic organizations are disadvantaged relative to mainstream organizations, in terms of visibility, staffing, resources, and ability to obtain funding (2006). Particularly if groups receive public funds, Bloemraad argues, it may be more likely that a group will join an “umbrella organization devoted to immigrant and refugee issues”; in the Boston area, such a coalition was Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy (2006b, 173). In these smaller cities, receipt of public funds may make it more likely for groups to join nonimmigrant coalitions for similar reasons: technical support, help in applying for further funding, and the ability to mobilize around shared issues. This suggests that coalition building, umbrella organizations, and outreach by mainstream organizations are particularly important if these immigrant-support organizations are to succeed in fulfilling their missions. More specifically, providing their clients and constituencies with the information, motivations, and skills needed to participate in the civic and political life of their community will also be facilitated by the construction of organizational connections. Organizational capacity within immigrant communities can be boosted when institutions and groups construct helpful links with larger umbrella groups and with well-positioned individuals and organizations. The immigrant groups in these cities are not large enough to be automatically politically relevant and are residentially dispersed in most of the cities. A plurality of the immigrant-related organizations are service-providers with the others being primarily cultural or economic (see Table 6.1); thus their leaders may not see political mobilization—via naturalization, registration, and voting—as a major goal. Even if immigrant groups have come together in an organization, have elected officers, planned and executed projects, raised funds, perhaps rented a space, they may not see any connection between their organizational goals and the political system. For example, in Chico neither

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the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce nor the Hispanic Resource Council have been involved organizationally in politics or had much connection with elected officials. An explicit statement about the disconnect between business organizations and politics came from a Waco member of the board of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce: “I got involved when a friend of mine brought me into the Chamber a few years ago. . . . I didn’t want to be in a political organization, I wanted to be in a business organization that promoted businesses . . . and wanted to stay away from politics.”15 When organizations do want to advocate for immigrants’ rights, mobilize members to act politically, or change policy, they benefit from being formally or informally linked to other organizations. If these organizations operate at the state level, the linkage also has the consequence of allowing the local groups to work on state-level policies and campaigns. One small success story in this regard involves a fairly new Fort Collins organization, Fuerza Latina, which describes itself as “an organization of immigrants for immigrants.” This group, the winner of Fort Collins’s 2004 Human Relations Award, sponsored workshops on employment rights, initiated visits from staff of the Mexican Consulate, and worked in support of a controversial ordinance to bar city employees from asking an individual’s immigration status without just cause. But Fuerza Latina had only a few dozen active members, and though they received at least one grant and a fair amount of media attention, they operated on a shoestring. The organization benefits from its position within the Center for Justice, Peace, and Environment (CJPE), an umbrella organization. This organization administered Fuerza Latina’s grant and provided resources to fund leadership training and an activist conference. Moreover, through CJPE, Fuerza Latina is connected with a network of organizations operating at the statewide level, such as the Rocky Mountain Immigration Advocacy Network, the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, and the Colorado Progressive Coalition. In Washington as well, immigrant groups are sometimes able to seek and receive more assistance at the state level than at the local level. The Washington State Hispanic Affairs Commission is an advisory group established by the governor’s office to provide the state’s Hispanic residents with input into the governor’s decisions. It also sets the governor’s legislative agenda for Hispanic issues. The commissioner from Spokane, who is also involved in the Hispanic Business and Professional Association, makes efforts to channel information and resources from the state level down to local groups.16

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Statewide organizations advocate for immigrants’ rights and provide pro bono legal services for immigrants in both Washington through Columbia Legal Services and in California through CRLA, and staffers of these organizations are often a resource for smaller, local organizations. Lansing and Syracuse are the only cities among the group with much of a union presence. In Syracuse, union members are predominantly public service employees, and most of the immigrant and refugee employment is in nonunionized manufacturing and service sectors. In Lansing, on the other hand, it is fairly clear that the immigrant communities benefit from the union presence. Unions are important, said several of our informants, especially the United Auto Workers (UAW), because General Motors employs many immigrants in the Lansing area, and membership happens along ethnic/kinship channels. The SEIU, which has organized state employees and many local government employees in Michigan, is also strong. Union membership among immigrant groups provides organizational skills and facilitates cooperation among different Latino groups, such as Mexicans and Cubans.17 As well, Democratic Party connections with the unions mean that immigrants in Lansing have a higher likelihood than immigrants in the other cities of forging links to political parties.18 Whereas unions are less important allies in Syracuse, that city does reveal a dense organizational network of people and organizations who work with refugees and immigrants. Business interests, organized through the Metropolitan Development Association (MDA), work closely with the service-providing groups to identify, train, and support potential new employees. The MDA reported working with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) trying to get immigrants into apprenticeship programs, and describes the union as welcoming toward this idea.19 All the organizations deal regularly with the local congressman’s office; they consult with one another; refer people to one another; and set up cooperative endeavors, such as the MDA having the School District’s Refugee Assistant Program purchase vans and hire drivers to get immigrants to jobs. Fennema and Tillie argue that “interelite strategic trust,” which this situation in Syracuse may illustrate, may help build general social trust, and, thus, organizational and community capacity (2001, 36). In most of these cities, the local colleges and universities were significant providers of liberal sympathizers, funding, and/or programmatic resources for immigrant groups. This was least true of

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Waco, where Baylor is viewed as quite conservative and did not seem to be perceived as particularly relevant, and Spokane. Bloemraad also argues for the importance of institutions of higher education in providing potential leaders in immigrant communities with “political interests and networks” (2006b). She describes how young Vietnamese in Boston became involved in college ethnic organizations, which provided both insider ties to fellow Vietnamese, as well as connections to outside social and political groups. “In this way,” she says, “universities’ and colleges’ tolerance—and outright assistance—to multicultural groups provides a setting within which political learning and organizing takes place” (209). California State University–Chico, CSU in Fort Collins, Syracuse University, and MSU in Lansing, however, are important sources of allies. At Cal State–Chico, student volunteers set up an ESL tutoring program for immigrant/migrant parents, which was held while their children were attending catechism classes; the church provided space and publicity. They added a citizenship emphasis when they found that people wanted English skills to pass the citizenship test. In Fort Collins, CSU hosts the National Hispanic Institute Collegiate Leadership Network. Syracuse University hosts Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which includes a focus on gathering data about federal immigration enforcement, and many members of the university community have provided support for the Detention Task Force of the Central New York Labor-Religious Coalition. Syracuse University has also supplied volunteers to Catholic Charities’ Refugee Resettlement and Refugee Youth Outreach programs and to InterFaith Works’ refugee resettlement programs. It is difficult to sustain organizational momentum, of course, when it is based on student volunteers; but student organizations— including Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA), which exists at both Cal State–Chico and CSU—and other organizations have helped with voter registration and “Get Out the Vote” drives. Universities can also bring together leaders of community groups and other practitioners with researchers and teachers, encouraging connections and new thinking about immigrant-related issues. For example, Cal State–Chico sponsored an all-day conference “about and for members of the Hmong community” on campus in March 2003. The conference was addressed by the highest elected Hmong official nationwide, Mee Moua, a state senator from Minnesota, and by the first Hmong attorney in California. The University’s Center for Economic Development, in conjunction with

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the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, sponsored a Hispanic Marketing Conference later the same year. 20 MSU has a number of programs focusing on migrant workers, and researchers have also received funding to support projects in the Muslim community. The College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) holds intensive twelve-week courses to help local farmworkers (Chicanos, Mexicans, Cubans, Haitians) obtain their general equivalency diplomas (GEDs) so that they can find better jobs in other sectors of the economy. MSU has received grants from the federal Department of Education to develop programs “to assist migrant youth and adults with completion of their high school degree and enhance their educational and career opportunities.” The MSU Families and Communities Together program, called the FACT program, is a partnership among MSU faculty, MSU extension, and community groups to help solve pressing social needs. It has funded a research project on “Muslim Immigrants: Social, Cultural and Religious Issues of Youth, Families and Schools in the Greater Lansing Area.”21 These accounts suggest strongly that the growth of organizational and civic capacity on the part of new immigrant groups can be fostered by ties with larger federated organizations. They also provide evidence that the existence of multifunctional institutions, such as universities, can help strengthen organizations. Universities in these cities developed educational, research, and public outreach programs that provided both symbolic and material support to immigrants and immigrant advocates. Because government support is relevant only for refugee-related organizations and only for relatively circumscribed purposes, and because groups are small, the existence of such alternative allies is critical.22

Notes 1. Also see research by Hung, which documents the substantial recent growth of Asian American nonprofit groups (including religious, cultural, and service agencies, and activist associations) in eight metropolitan areas (2002). 2. Houston Chronicle, October 16, 2003, A21. Attention to immigrants’ rights was an issue in the mayoralty election in Houston during November and December of 2003. 3. Director of Americanization League, February 23, 2003. 4. CRLA staffer, April 27, 2004.

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5. Catholic Charities staff member, interview November 4, 2002; also mentioned in Refugee Assistance Program interview. 6. Interview with Lutheran Refugee Services director, February 3, 2004. 7. This would also have to adjust for the size of the foreign-born population living in that city on a per capita basis. 8. Interview with Cristo Rey Center staff member, January 27, 2004. 9. Interview with director of Refugee Development Center, January 30, 2004. 10. An interview with a faculty member at Gonzaga University in Spokane suggested the importance of ethnic media (or the lack thereof): She said that immigrant groups (Russians/Central Asians, Vietnamese, Hmong) are reasonably well organized internally but are not on the politicians’ radar. They don’t come up in the local newspaper or TV news; issues about migrant farmworkers are addressed and publicized at the regional, not local level. Interview with Gonzaga faculty member, February 12, 2004. 11. Interview with publisher of Tiempo, March 26, 2004. 12. Interview with Democratic activist and elected official, March 30, 2004. 13. Interview, AHANA director, Fenruary 20, 2004. 14. From website of Spokane Democrats (http://www.spokanedemocrats .org/index.cfm?page=ahana.cfm), accessed August 11, 2005. 15. Interview with member of the board, Waco Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, March 25, 2005. 16. Interview with member of Hispanic Affairs Commission, February 27, 2004. 17. Interview with faculty member in Latino/Chicano Studies program, MSU, January 19, 2004. 18. Interviews with staffers for assembly member and state senator, January 23, 2004, and January 28, 2004. 19. Interview with assistant to the VP, MDA, November 4, 2003. 20. Chico Enterprise-Record, March 16, 2003, and August 8, 2003. 21. Information from Michigan State University website. 22. A similar point, about the importance of liberal allies, is made by Browning, Marshall, and Tabb (2003, 22).

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7 The Geopolitics of Immigrant Incorporation

There is abundant evidence that various aspects of the settlement context shape immigrant political incorporation. These include the size of an immigrant-receiving city; the timing and pace of immigration; its ethnic and racial composition; the state of its economy, including such factors as unemployment levels and nature of available jobs; the city’s location relative to bigger cities, other immigrant settlements, and the state capital; the structure of local governments; the practices and attitudes of local bureaucrats; and the size, diversity, and wealth of a locality’s civil society. Among other factors, the racial and ethnic composition of a locality, its economy, and its proximity to an international border have been shown to have an impact on opinions on immigration and on stereotypes about immigrants. These opinions, in turn, are likely to constrain the policies and behaviors of local governments toward newcomers.1 A recent Pew Center report on immigration-related attitudes used a nationwide survey and independent samples in five cities: Phoenix, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; Chicago, Illinois; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; and Washington DC (2006). This study found striking differences in attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy among residents of these five cities. Similarly, analysis of the 2004 General Social Survey reveals significant regional differences on the agree-disagree questions: “Immigrants are generally good for the American economy” and “Immigrants take jobs away from people who were born in America,” with respondents in the South having the most negative opinions about the impact of immigrants, whereas those in the western states responded significantly more positively.

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Different places in the United States have experienced immigration very differently, in terms of pace, impact, and type of immigrants. For example, African immigrants, who might be expected to be viewed via particularly negative racial stereotypes, are concentrated in cities that are only recently drawing large populations of immigrants. Undocumented immigrants are concentrated in the border states and in large metropolitan areas like New York and Los Angeles (Passel 2006).2 An additional stream of foreign-born US residents, that is, refugee resettlement involving two million refugees since 1980, has also shifted from large to smaller metropolitan areas (Singer and Wilson 2006). Additionally, how immigrants are received, and, therefore, how they are perceived by natives, are highly dependent on the kinds of organizations that help to integrate refugees and immigrants. For example, the author of Building the New American Community, sponsored by the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Migration Policy Institute, concludes that dense organizational networks are critical to facilitate integration (Ray 2004). Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad, examining California cities, suggest that larger cities may provide more points of access to the levers of government (2008). They also discuss the possibly complicated relationship between local and state government policy relating to provision of services and support for immigrants. Such support, for example, language classes, may help facilitate political participation on the part of immigrants, but may also privilege service-providing organizations over advocacy organizations. They find more immigrant-related organizations in places with ethnic business enclaves; though again geography matters: How dispersed is the group residentially, and do members typically have access to cars? History matters as well: cities’ histories of racial and ethnic relations, experiences with immigrants, traditions of volunteerism, and historical support of taxation to support government programs make a difference in the opportunities available to immigrants (Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008, 24). Some of the other contextual factors they discuss, such as party strength and competition, and local government responsiveness, have been dealt with above (in Chapters 5 and 4, respectively). In this chapter, I focus on three particular aspects of place that appear to have an impact on both the resources available to immigrant and immigrant-serving organizations and on the symbolic resources that affect immigrants’ understandings of citizenship and their ability and willingness to participate in the political process. First, particularly relevant to these smaller cities, is the issue of size

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and isolation. While size of city is relatively constant among these sites, their proximity to other cities, to state capitals, to places where national or state organizations have their headquarters, does vary and does seem to make a difference for immigrant incorporation. Second, organizational spillover and program slippage—specifically in cities that have had or continue to have substantial amounts of refugee resettlement—can help to create resources for the mobilization of immigrant groups. A third factor, which is particularly relevant in terms of symbolic resources, is the existence of anti-immigrant attitudes and, especially, organized anti-immigrant sentiment.

Geographical Isolation A hundred years ago, immigrants settled primarily in inner cities, eventually moving also into the suburbs surrounding those cities. These settlement patterns facilitated coalitional behavior among immigrant groups and connections between immigrant organizations and other kinds of organizations, such as political parties, unions, civic associations, and business groups. The dispersion of immigrant groups to new areas, without established immigrant enclaves, makes it more difficult to build and sustain social, economic, and organizational connections. Geographical isolation exacerbates this situation.3 Groups that have the provision of social services as their primary mission, as suggested above, may encourage voter registration, but do not typically focus on political organization. Organizations that can be characterized as capacity-building (for example, Chico’s Hispanic Resource Council, Lansing’s Refugee Development Center, Syracuse’s Southeast Asia Center, and El Centro at Colorado State University [CSU] in Fort Collins) are often concerned with organizing the community and building leadership, but less often with specifically political skill-building. California organizations, such as the Central Valley Partnership for Citizenship (CVP), have general commitments to encourage naturalization and to “assist migrants, immigrants, and refugees organizing to claim their rightful place in the civic, cultural, and economic life of the Valley”; 4 others, like California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), are more concerned with protecting the rights of immigrants and poor people. A CRLA staff member based in a town near Chico discussed the recent recognition by CRLA that attention should be paid to developing the political skills and strengths of immigrants, rather than just dealing with their

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legal issues. “We ought to think about how we can encourage our clients to develop their own political power. They need to know that whether or not they are citizens, they have a right to communicate with government officials.”5 But at this point, the idea was merely at the talking phase. The push to engage in more explicitly political activities often comes from statewide or regional organizations that have the resources, for example, legal staff and money to hire student interns, to work on registration drives, grassroots lobbying, or other political activities. In 2004 the Fort Collins area was among the targets for voter registration on the part of the Center for Justice, Peace, and Environment (CJPE), which worked with the Colorado Progressive Coalition (CPC) to register voters. CJPE found that there were over six thousand people in the Fort Collins area who were eligible to vote but not registered, of whom 1,600 were Latino. They planned to set up tables, engage in door-todoor education, and distribute mailings to voters to educate them about the issues, including issues related to immigration. In fact the CPC/ CJPE efforts were lauded during the 2004 campaign by truemajority .org as particularly effective.6 Thus the political activity levels of local organizations often depend on the choices made by state-level organizations as to where to organize, and the leaders of the statewide groups may not feel that small or isolated cities are worth the effort. For example, the major organizations that focus on Latino communities seem to be completely absent in the area north of Sacramento where Chico is located: there are no local chapters of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), La Raza, United Farm Workers (UFW), or the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). These organizations cannot afford the field staff to cover such a large, sparsely populated area, and the fact that the area is so overwhelmingly white and conservative may help shape their decisions about where to focus their efforts.7 When this research was being conducted, Columbia Legal Services (CLS) was in the process of closing its Spokane office. The organization relied heavily on state funding, and statewide budget cuts had forced CLS to close several of its local offices. In this context, people in Spokane talked about the fact that “everything was in Seattle,” just as those in Fort Collins complained about the distance to Denver, where many advocacy organizations had their headquarters. The disadvantages of geographical isolation were felt mostly in the western cities: Chico, Spokane, and Fort Collins. Syracuse and Lansing are located in much more densely populated areas; both are

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accessible to the state capital and other population centers. Though driving distances in Texas are long, Waco is less than a hundred miles from Fort Worth, Dallas, and Austin. The staff member at CRLA in Chico who was quoted above regarding a focus on citizenship observed that the organization had a sister organization in Sacramento, the California Rural Legal Systems Foundation, and pointed out that citizenship and immigration is one of their areas of focus. “And we work with, we collaborate with them and, so when we do get issues involving immigration or citizenship we . . . refer, but it [is] pretty distant, and sometimes it is . . . here’s a phone number, go call these people.”8 Similarly, in Fort Collins, the Catholic Charities office does not have staff or resources specifically devoted to immigration or refugee issues, but if someone comes to them with an immigration question, they usually refer them to the Immigration Office at Catholic Charites’ Denver headquarters. But Denver is at least an hour away, so these services are a little more difficult for Fort Collins residents to access. “People from the Denver office sometimes come up to Fort Collins to give workshops, but it doesn’t happen very often.”9 More recently, the establishment of the small advocacy group Fuerza Latina has been a help to those trying to provide services to immigrants, but it has had to look to organizations in Denver like the Rocky Mountain Immigration Advocacy Network, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, and Colorado Progressive Coalition for support. Though problems associated with geographical isolation were mentioned much less frequently in Waco, Lansing, and Syracuse, they surfaced sometimes even in these cities. One MSU faculty member in Lansing said that even though the city is only an hour west of Detroit, that distance can undermine a sense of continuity or common interest that might exist between immigrants dispersed among the two cities.10 And it should be noted that challenges of limited resources, city size, and geographical distance constrain immigrant advocacy activities even in more densely populated places, such as the California cities studied by Ramakrishnan and Lewis (2005). In Syracuse, the founder and former director of the Refugee Resettlement Program pointed to the related issue of the size of the immigrant population. Where there are more refugees, for example, in Minnesota, Hmong and Laotians are involved in “much more political activity; they recognize that they have power.” But the relatively small population in Syracuse means that “politicians are not going to bother.”11

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In addition to illustrating the challenges to mobilization presented by geography, this discussion is consistent with Skocpol’s argument in Diminished Democracy that “democratic leverage” to confront a variety of political problems “can only be addressed with concerted national commitment.” Building better local organizations and organizational capacity is not sufficient (2003, 258).

Refugee Resettlement US policy on refugees, which has always been closely connected with foreign policy considerations, was developed after World War II to deal with displaced persons in European camps. But until 1980, this policy consisted mostly of ad hoc executive and legislative decisions relating to particular groups of refugees—mostly those fleeing communist regimes. For example, the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 did authorize an array of assistance services to refugees, but this legislation was restricted only to Cubans. In 1975, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) money allowed the Defense Department to transport and house the first wave of Vietnamese refugees. Finally, Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980, which sought to specify criteria for refugee status as well as the obligations of the federal government to support refugees. It also set up procedures by which state governments wanting access to federal funds allocated for refugee resettlement were required to designate a responsible state agency and appoint a refugee coordinator. Since 1980, the federal government has provided hundreds of millions of dollars each year to states, individuals refugees, and nonprofit organizations that contract to provide services.12 In considering the question of the pathways to immigrant political incorporation, it is particularly significant to note, as Bloemraad does, three important consequences of US refugee policy. First, the federal government has encouraged the development of a special refugee bureaucracy, at the national, state, and sometimes local levels of government. Second, the policy “promoted the creation of a grassroots infrastructure through MAAs [Mutual Assistance Organizations] and other organizations receiving grants or contracts for refugee resettlement” (Bloemraad 2006b, 131). Third, Bloemraad suggests that unequal government treatment may create invidious distinctions in people’s minds with regard to the legitimacy of particular immigrant groups.

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Thus whether or not a city has had significant streams of refugees may be important because refugee resettlement creates organizational spillover. Refugees are entitled to government-funded assistance— delivered via nonprofit organizations such as World Relief and Catholic Charities—from their moment of arrival until they achieve some self-sufficiency; US State Department goals say that should happen within 135 days of their arrival. These organizations provide resettlement and housing assistance, social services (Medicare, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF], Supplemental Security Income [SSI]), help with status adjustment, and job placement assistance. They also offer classes in English, US history, and civics in preparation for the citizenship exam. The existence of these serviceproviding institutions, and their usually strong connections with state and local social welfare and educational bureaucracies, may spill over and benefit economic immigrants, in addition to refugees. Bloemraad’s comparison of Portuguese and Vietnamese immigrants in the United States and Canada suggests that “government support, including funding, technical assistance and normative encouragement, plays an important role in building immigrant communities’ organizational capacity” (2006b, 2). This spillover effect is both material and symbolic. Organizations involved in refugee resettlement may broaden their mission to serve nonrefugee immigrants, and people who work with refugees may develop organizational skills, legal knowledge, and political connections, which can be useful to other immigrant groups. In addition, I believe that the positive media treatment given to refugees may have the effect of adding legitimacy not only to the particular refugees— for example, in Syracuse, where there were numerous stories about the Sudanese Lost Boys resettled locally—but to other refugee groups and to immigrants more generally. This possibility is countered by Horton who describes how a medical community in New Mexico, in the context of a general need to allocate scarce resources, perceives Cuban refugees as hard-working, self-reliant success stories and Mexican immigrants, often, but not always, with undocumented status, as passive, less educated, and drains on the system (2004). But based on information gleaned in these six cities, I would cautiously suggest that positive impressions and media coverage of refugees may be generalized to other immigrants and may help to create more positive public opinion. Material and symbolic spillover effects are most clearly seen in Spokane, where the refugees are estimated to constitute almost 50

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percent of the recently arrived foreign-born; Lansing, where refugees make up just under 30 percent of the recently arrived foreign-born; and Syracuse, where refugees are about 20 percent of the larger foreign-born population (Singer and Wilson 2006). Lansing, for example, has a very diverse array of immigrants, including people from Cuba, Bosnia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. The Refugee Development Center (RDC) of Lansing, associated with a Lutheran church, offers programs in American Lifeskills (including driving) and also sees as its mission educating the larger community about the refugees’ experiences and talents. The staff of the RDC has been entrepreneurial in terms of fundraising and has explicitly tried to provide refugees with “an opportunity to begin to create social capital in a very safe environment for them.”13 Lansing refugees (and other immigrants, to a lesser extent) are also served by Catholic Charities. A number of these organizations combined forces in 2003 to produce a cookbook called A Taste of Freedom: A Culinary Journey with America’s Refugees. This was sold locally and regionally and proceeds donated to refugee services. The personal accounts accompanying the recipes present the struggles of refugees in narratives that are very similar to the “immigrants reaching for the American dream” stories that have traditionally been used to construct Americans’ understanding of the melting pot. Spokane also had inflows of refugees, including Vietnamese and Hmong, as well as a number of Russian and East European evangelical Protestants. As the numbers have ebbed, at least one of the refugee resettlement agencies (Catholic Charities) shifted its mission to serve farmworker communities, helping these people, as well as refugees, to navigate the social welfare bureaucracy, to adjust their immigration status, and to naturalize; their biggest clientele is no longer Russian, but Hispanic. One of the most frequent services that they provide is to help immigrant women leave abusive Anglo husbands without losing their permanent resident status.14 Syracuse’s refugees include significant numbers from Eastern Europe, particularly Bosnia and Herzegovina, and over a thousand Vietnamese, the latter now joined by growing numbers of Hmong and Burmese. Syracuse is also home to several groups of African refugees including Sudanese and Somalis. The people and organizations who work with refugees and immigrants in Syracuse form a dense organizational network. Business interests, organized through the Metropolitan Development Association (MDA), work closely with the service-providing groups to identify, train, and support potential new

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employees. Businesses were also drawn into the letter-writing and lobbying campaign initiated by the refugee resettlement agencies—two dozen agreed to write letters or make calls to Washington objecting to the post-9/11 restrictions on refugees.15 Neither Waco nor Fort Collins, among our six cities, have significant numbers of refugees, and thus lack some of the organizational resources, both human and material, that have been useful in developing immigrant communities in the other four cities. Chico is home to a number of Hmong refugees, including secondary migrants, but they are served primarily by voluntary agencies in Sacramento. Interestingly, in Waco the local congressman’s office seems to provide many of the services that, in Spokane, Lansing, or Syracuse, are provided by the refugee organizations, and which spill over to nonrefugee immigrants. The office had a staff person with some training in immigration law, who spoke at local community centers and deals with visas, status adjustment, and citizenship problems.16 Thus I would suggest that a city’s history as a substantial refugee resettlement area not only increases the likelihood that immigrants and refugees will have their material needs met, but also creates an organizational legacy that may be used, depending on the goals and skills of the groups involved, to encourage and empower immigrant groups. Additionally, although this claim would be difficult to support empirically, the existence of substantial numbers of refugees may increase public sympathy for nonrefugee immigrants.

Anti-immigrant Mobilization In addition to geographical isolation and organizational spillover, the six cities differ on another important dimension of the sociopolitical context in which immigrants find themselves: the extent to which public opinion is generally sympathetic to immigration and immigrants. Organized anti-immigrant groups, as well as random hate crimes or instances of discrimination, may provoke counter-organization among immigrants and their liberal allies or may instead have a repressive impact on the organizational capacity of immigrant groups. We saw evidence of both effects among our six cities. The discussion that follows deals primarily with Fort Collins, Chico, and Spokane, where interviews and media research indicated that incidents of actual or perceived discrimination, problems with law enforcement, and related controversies have been particularly significant.

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In Fort Collins, the larger political context is one that might reasonably be expected to have a repressive effect on immigrant political activity. There are a fair number of Mexican Americans in local government agencies and a number of prominent Mexican American statewide politicians. Nevertheless, there is also a very strong presence of anti-immigrant and English-only sentiment at the local and statewide level. Tom Tancredo, who until 2008 represented a nearby congressional district, was a leading spokesman for the anti-immigration position in Congress. In fact, many Republicans, and certainly those who want to reach out to Latino voters, distanced themselves from Tancredo. He introduced legislation for an “immigration moratorium,” headed the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, and is associated in Colorado with the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR). In 2002, he asked the government to deport the family of an honors high school graduate in Denver.17 The Fort Collins member of Congress in 2004 was Marilyn Musgrave, also a Republican and a close ally of Tancredo, whose website stressed her commitment to border security, elimination of visas to foreign nationals of nations such as Iran and North Korea, and her opposition to Matricula Consular cards.18 The mayor of Fort Collins in 2004, Ray Martinez, was a Mexican American Republican and a strong supporter of Tancredo. He actively opposed the efforts of immigrant rights groups like Fuerza Latina. Local officials have remarked that Mexican immigrants would need to learn English before they could participate in politics and be considered American. Few of the City Council members in 2004 appeared to be consistently supportive of immigrant rights and immigrant organizations. Two city commissions were formed in the early part of the decade and stirred up a good deal of controversy by bringing up issues of racism. The Human Relations Commission attempted to bring up issues of racism and immigrant rights and made a number of specific proposals to the City Council. When the City Council refused to act on any of the proposals, the chair and cochair of the commission resigned in protest. They later withdrew their resignations, on the condition that the city pay more attention to racism and discrimination. Some of the organized anti-immigrant activity seemed to come from a surprising part of the political spectrum: environmental groups who blame immigrants for local environmental damage and excessive population growth. This issue has been played out at the national level in the Sierra Club, which has had conflicts over elections to its Board of Directors in recent years around positions on “unsustainable levels of

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immigration” as a contributor to environmental degradation. 19 Environmental groups in Fort Collins have seen the same conflicts; some local activists believe that these groups had been “infiltrated and taken over” by anti-immigrant groups who care little about the environment but wanted to use the environmental “brand” to legitimize antiimmigrant arguments.20 In any case, environmental groups in Fort Collins have, in fact, taken positions against population growth that are sometimes explicitly anti-immigration.21 This atmosphere, plus the heightened suspicion of foreigners and immigrants since 9/11, may have had two somewhat contradictory effects in Fort Collins. On the positive side, reaction to such positions has helped encourage support for the organization of Fuerza Latina and the voter registration drives of the Colorado Progressive Coalition and the local CJPE (of which Fuerza Latina is a part). On the negative side, it creates divisions among potential allies, legitimizes anti-immigrant stances, and may also make the sort of organizing engaged in by Fuerza Latina seem radical or anti-establishment. In Chico, there is no organized anti-immigrant movement, though there have been a number of hate crimes committed against Hmong and some feeling that the police have not been very aggressive in prosecuting these crimes. One example from several years ago involved Hmong families near Chico who farmed and sold their produce at a roadside stand. This farm stand was intentionally burned down in May 2002. In the past, one of the family members said “we’ve had people in trucks tear through the rows of ripe berries, throwing things and shouting.” Other incidents around the same time included a white man attacking a Hmong man returning from a fishing trip; the assailant was charged only with public intoxication.22 The California Coalition for Immigrant Reform, a rabidly anti-immigrant organization, exists at the state level, with links to conservative talk shows and to members of Congress, but doesn’t have local organizations and thus does not have the same impact on Chico as the Colorado groups do on Fort Collins. Spokane has also suffered hate crimes over the years, and the city is not far from the headquarters of Aryan Nation and other white supremacist organizations, but there is little sense that there is organized anti-immigrant or racist sentiment in Spokane. People in Waco, Lansing, and Syracuse mentioned particular incidents, for example, a radio contest insulting to Mexicans in Lansing several years ago, but there was not a sense of ongoing problems or opposition. Informants in every city mentioned the dampening effect on immigrant participation or involvement produced by the post-9/11

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atmosphere, and, more specifically, the Patriot Act and government actions, for example, requiring registration of Muslim men and investigating anti–Iraq War activities. One of our informants, a refugee with legal permanent resident status (and US undergraduate and law degrees) said she found herself thinking twice before doing any sort of protest work. Before the Patriot Act, she said, she encouraged her newly naturalized clients to go out and vote and told everyone to participate in civic activities. Now she tells them to be careful who they associate with and what form their protest takes, since the consequences for noncitizens can be detention and deportation.23 Similarly in Fort Collins, we were told by staffers at the Northside Aztlan Community Center (NACC) that post-9/11 fears have made hiring more difficult as both state and federal governments require more information about each prospective employee. Even if they are just applying to be a summer basketball referee, they have to submit to a background check, drug test, and hand in an I-9 (immigration status check). Both staff and clients are sometimes hesitant to fill out forms in the first place because so many family and friends live under ambiguous immigration or employment status; now, all the securityrelated paperwork just makes it more difficult.24 Aside from the general anti-immigrant feelings that were seen to be a result of the 9/11 attacks and still seemed evident in 2004, widespread anti-immigrant sentiment was most common in those cities that had a substantial population of Mexican migrants—who are easily presumed to be undocumented immigrants. In general, it is fair to say that geographical isolation and the presence of undocumented residents will make stepping into the electoral arena more difficult for immigrants, the former because it deprives immigrant organizations of opportunities for collaboration and support from statewide or national organizations, the latter because it legitimizes negative treatment of all immigrants by local governments and creates a fear of rocking the boat on the part of all immigrants. These negative consequences may be somewhat offset by the material and symbolic organizational spillover that results from a city’s experience as a refugee resettlement center.

Notes 1. Some of the literature on contextual effects on immigrant opinions includes Tolbert and Hero 2001; Oliver and Wong 2003; Scheve and Slaughter 2001; Hood and Morris 1997; Money 1999; Burns and Gimpel 2000.

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2. Hood and Morris find that in areas where the ratio of undocumented migrants is higher than documented migrants, increased contact perpetuates stereotypes and increases anti-immigration sentiments. In areas where the ratio of documented migrants is higher than undocumented, increased contact increases support for increased immigration (1997). 3. For example, see the recent study of immigrants in Nebraska, which had the largest percentage increase in immigrants of any midwestern state between 1990 and 2000, and where there are now substantial groups of Latino immigrants in very small cities and towns (Gouveia and Powell 2007). 4. Central Valley Partnership (CVP) website, www.citizenship.net (accessed August 12, 2005) 5. Interview with staffer at California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), April 27, 2004. 6. Interview with director of Center for Justice, Peace, and Environment, May 25, 2004 (by late September of 2004 the CJPE website cited 550 new registrants in Fort Collins). 7. Two of our cities, Spokane and Waco, have chapters of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Waco’s has existed for some time; Spokane’s was formed in 2004 apparently in response to perceptions of discrimination against Hispanics in a school district near Spokane (discussed in Chapter 4). 8. Interview with CRLA staff member, April 27, 2004. 9. Similar distance issues were voiced with regard to the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (RMIAN), which has forty to fifty attorneys mostly in the Denver area. 10. Interview with sociologist at MSU, December 3, 2003. 11. Interview with former director of Refugee Resettlement Program, Syracuse, January 13, 2003. 12. Bloemraad has a good overview of refugee policy (2006b, 126–132); see also Singer and Wilson 2006. 13. Interview with director of Refugee Development Center, January 30, 2004. 14. Interview with director, Refugee and Immigrant Services, Catholic Charities, Febrauary 23, 2004. 15. Interview with Catholic Charities staff member, November 4, 2002. 16. Interview with staff member in local congressional office, March 25, 2004. 17. Denver Post, September 13, 2002, p. A-01. 18. These cards are issued by the Mexican government through its consulates to Mexican nationals residing outside of Mexico regardless of their emigration status. A number of US states and municipalities and many businesses accept the Matricula Consular cards as identification, and this practice has generated controversy. 19. See, for example, Miguel Bustillo and Kenneth R. Weiss, Election Becomes a Fight over Sierra Club’s Future,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 2004; and Kenneth R. Weiss, “Sierra Club Members Vote to Stay Neutral in the Immigration Debate,” Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2005.

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20. Interview with local activist, May 17, 2004. 21. As an illustration of the division between the social justice community and the environmentalists, one of our interviewees told us about a recent city council meeting. The rules are that each speaker is allotted three minutes, but if they need a translator they get six minutes. A local environmentalist spoke for three minutes and was told he was out of time. Frustrated, he blurted out, “Too bad I don’t speak Spanish like those people.” Interview with Center for Justice, Peace, and Environment member, May 25, 2004. 22. Chico News & Review, May 9, 2002; www.asianweek.com (accessed on July 25, 2005). 23. Interview with staff member of Columbia Legal Services (CLS), February 26, 2004. 24. Interview with Northside Aztlan Community Center (NACC) staff members, May 27, 2004.

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8 Conclusion

The conclusions to this book fall into two distinct categories. First, there are answers—at least provisional answers—to the research questions laid out in the introduction; these are the focus of the next section, Explaining Political Incorporation. The other conclusions come from the people who work with immigrants every day in Waco, Lansing, Syracuse, Fort Collins, Chico, and Spokane, providing services, engaging in advocacy, and making political connections. Based on their deep knowledge and their varied experiences of successes and failures, they can provide us with some valuable insights about what works to activate and mobilize immigrant groups and to create for them a place at the table in local politics. Their contribution is in the From the Trenches section.

Explaining Political Incorporation Though each of these cities has its own immigration story, rooted in its own history, geography, and economy, I believe there are some patterns here that will be worth following up in future research. The data in Table 8.1 suggests that high naturalization rates, which, in turn, eventually help groups to become visible and significant to political decisionmakers, are assisted by either a more diverse and numerous set of organizations dealing with immigrants or the existence of a refugee stream with attendant organizational spillover (and these two variables overlap). Levels of representation, on the other hand, are heightened in situations in which immigrant groups have strong allies in unions and other progressive organizations, 103

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including universities, or in the relatively rare cases where local organizations are part of federated structures; and, as in the case of Waco, where parties attempt to recruit immigrants as candidates. In examining these six cities with relatively small immigrant populations, I found that the many and varied organizations that serve, advocate for, and sometimes mobilize immigrants and refugees were frequently resource-poor, isolated, and overwhelmed with demands and tasks. Their primary goals were not explicitly political, though they certainly tried to influence local decisions and local institutions. Yet these are the institutions that are often immigrants’ and refugees’ first connections with US civic life, and may be the organizations that help them learn English, connect them with employers, advise them on their immigration status, provide venues for them to meet local officials, and connect them with nonimmigrant neighbors to work on community issues. It is oversimplifying the situations to make a black-and-white distinction between the immigrant experience in 1904 and the immigrant experience in 2004 in regard to the ways an immigrant was linked to political and civic life. Certainly, mutual benefit associations, homeland cultural and sports groups, charities, settlement houses, and other kinds of organizations were important in 1904. Nonetheless, it is a significant difference that well-organized, competitive political parties existed in almost all locales, and, in many of those places, parties saw the mobilization of immigrants as an important organizational goal, whereas today, parties are much less likely to be vibrant grassroots organizations, and the incentive structure

Table 8.1

Summary of Factors Facilitating Political Incorporation Dependent Variables

Chico Ft. Collins Lansing Spokane Syracuse Waco

Independent Variables

Naturalization

Representation

Organizational Capacitya

Refugees?

Allies

low medium medium medium high low

low medium high medium low medium

medium medium medium high low low

nob no yes yes yes no

weak medium strong medium weak weak

Notes: a. Number of organizations, diversity of organization functions; b. Chico has some refugees, but refugee programs are administered from Sacramento.

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within which they operate does not encourage them to reach out to new groups of potential voters. Two implications of this shift are illustrated by the six-city study described here. One is that groups and organizations that contribute to the political incorporation of immigrants in these cities intersect with governments and the policy arena in more diffuse ways than parties did in 1904. In the past, parties and their local leaders focused on strategies to win elections and control governments. To accomplish these tasks required reliable ground troops, who were well-connected activists at the neighborhood level and whose loyalty was often cemented through the awarding of jobs in local government, and voters who could be counted on to turn out and support the party’s candidates in election after election. This situation created incentives for the party to encourage and facilitate naturalization, registration, and voting. Today, attenuated party organizations still want their candidates to win elections and still want to shape local government policymaking. But the extent to which they control government operations has been minimized by the expansion of civil service; in the low-turnout environment of the twenty-first century, elections are won by targeted campaigns that turn out just the number of predictable supporters needed to win. The incentives encourage sticking close to the data, avoiding uncertainty, and strategically deploying resources. Present-day community organizations have multiple sorts of connections with governments: they may receive local, state, and federal grants; they may have government contracts to help settle refugees; they may be advocating single-policy issues or promoting the interests of particular immigrant or ethnic groups; they may be focused on helping clients navigate government bureaucracies; they may seek to promote local ethnic businesses. But for the most part, their environment does not provide strong incentives to mobilize immigrants electorally. For example, an organization may well advise their members or clients to naturalize for a host of reasons, many of which have nothing to do with participating in civic or political life. They may even help with the process, for example by providing English and citizenship classes, but if this activity results in more of their members or clients gaining citizenship, it doesn’t benefit the organization in the same way that high levels of naturalization benefited Tammany Hall. There are exceptions to this, of course: de Graauw describes instances in which immigrant nonprofits in San Francisco mobilized their clients to attend and participate in Board of Supervisors’ meet-

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ings, with the goal of making sure that funding for the services the organizations provided—for example, English classes—was maintained (2008, 335–336). But such targeted mobilization may not generalize; it may not produce a broader conception of the benefits of political participation. One could argue that this changed situation has advantages: it may help individuals acquire a variety of political skills, such as organizing protests, writing letters, dealing with bureaucrats that are important in today’s politics, rather than merely the capacity to participate in electoral politics. But to the extent that voting and understanding the power of the vote is the basic building block of our democratic system, I think that the present system is less supportive of participatory democracy. Because of this targeted mobilization engaged in by many immigrant nonprofits, immigrants may be seen primarily as clients or service-receivers, and as only narrowly and sporadically involved political actors. For example, take the situation as described by Ramkrishnan and Lewis in their study of California cities: Immigrants in California are thus largely unseen and unheard in City Hall. Even when they are heard, immigrants and immigrant organizations lack influence when compared to well-organized actors such as neighborhood associations, developers, and public employee unions. (2005, 37)

The point is that parties and immigrant groups traditionally had a mutually useful exchange relationship, where attention was paid to group concerns across a range of policy arenas, in return for votes. In the twenty-first century, whether or not immigrant groups are attended to depends somewhat on their size and somewhat on the predispositions and ideologies of those in power; this responsiveness is often narrowly limited to particular problems or issues. The second implication has to do with the nature of these organizations. They are, in general, freestanding local organizations, not part of larger organizations or federations. The exceptions discussed here are the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), and the Southwest Voter Research and Education Project (SVREP), which are national organizations with local branches (or regional, in the case of SVREP). There are certainly other similar federated organizations across the nation. But, as we have seen, many smaller cities, such as the ones in this study, have not been organized or targeted by

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these organizations. Skocpol’s historical research on US associational life argues that the federated, translocal character of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century associations contributed significantly to their efficacy and to the civic skills of their members. “Federations were especially vital in building an American democracy in which ordinary people could participate, gain skills, and forge recurrent ties to one another—not just locally but also across communities, states, and regions” (2003, 124). Though Skocpol does not discuss political parties, a similar argument applies to party organizations during the same period: they provided channels of upward mobility, allowed local organizations to share resources, and exposed local Democrats and Republicans to broader constituencies and issues at the state, regional, and national level. It follows that success in the task of political incorporation, especially in places like the cities in my study, is significantly dependent on connections. Immigrant communities in these smaller cities need to be able to make connections: with other immigrant and nonimmigrant groups, with liberal allies, and with the political system. Being in a city that has served as a refugee resettlement point seems to add to this bridging capacity, as does the existence of large research universities and statewide organizations that may have the resources to encourage and fund political action. These allies can also help when localities are characterized by anti-immigrant sentiment or organizations. Parties can provide similar resources, but this did not happen anywhere except possibly in Waco and to some extent in Lansing. Coalition building, whether with party organizations or other types of groups, exposes a group’s members and supporters to the goals and strategies of other organizations, and, thus, may help to compensate for the targeted mobilization of nonprofits. Participating in coalitions can serve to mobilize immigrants for a broader range of political activities and provide them with a broader range of political skills than might be available in one organization. Finally, my research shows that individuals who have had experience as student activists, organizing labor, or working in electoral campaigns may help provide the capacity for groups to make explicitly political linkages. Thus the ability to build coalitions and forge connections, both within the community and with groups outside the community, is critical. Similar conclusions were reached by the author of Building the New American Community, sponsored by the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Migration Policy Institute (Ray 2004). That project also focused on smaller cities—Lowell, Massachusetts;

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Nashville, Tennessee; and Portland Oregon—and one of the main findings was that coalitions were “vectors for integration.” “Relative to large gateway cities,” these small cities, the report finds, “tend to have less fully developed institutional relationships and networks that facilitate integration.” Building coalitions by “engaging the resources of several levels of government and their agencies, businesses, private organizations and a broad spectrum of community-based partners” characterizes the difficult road to the political incorporation of immigrant groups (2004).

From the Trenches In October of 2004, I convened a one-day workshop and invited practitioners from each of the cities to meet in Washington DC. I hoped they would benefit from and contribute to a discussion about the challenges of involving and empowering immigrant groups in US civic and political life.1 At the workshop, we discussed some of the preliminary findings of the study, shared insights into local politics, and worked to develop and organize our thoughts about increasing the political participation of immigrant communities. The workshop was organized by faculty and graduate students from Syracuse University, but the emphasis was on the concrete experiences of people in the field, and on the group’s thinking about best practices. I can think of no better way to conclude this book than to communicate some of the arguments that these smart, hard-working, committed people from varying backgrounds developed on that sunny autumn day. In writing up the summary of this conference for the participants, we organized our conversations into three themes: (1) fostering and sustaining civic and political engagement, (2) strategic planning, and (3) institutionalization. 2 Overall, we were aiming toward a better understanding of how immigrant groups could be actively and productively connected to the political system. Fostering and Sustaining Active Civic and Political Engagement How can we work to get—and keep—members of immigrant communities actively involved in civic and political life? Differences within communities often complicate organizing efforts, including conflicts

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between recent immigrants and those native-born, and between different generations. There was no silver bullet here, but innovative approaches abounded. Some of the organizational strategies that proved effective in various contexts were from the traditional repertoires of social movements: for example, Todd Mireles, a Lansing community organizer and campaign field director for a successful mayoral campaign, encouraged what he called “low-intensity, personto-person organizing.” Rather than organizing quickly around hot issues, he said, take time to meet people, understand their issues, help them identify their interests and talents, and “set up a template for community action.” This is difficult, many of the other participants said, when we are often reacting to crises without the opportunity to plan for the long term. The importance of connections and coalitions was reflected in many of the participants’ stories. Vincent Delgado, who directed the Refugee Center in Lansing, talked about this in two ways. He argued that simply by creating a physical space where all the disparate refugee communities could come together, “you’re starting to build some networks and social capital doing that.” Moreover, the center had recruited over sixty native-born US volunteers to work each week. In order for the refugees to begin to understand the civic and political life in Lansing, it’s important to introduce them to “people who know the system.” In contrast, he said, “the networks they [usually] get introduced [to] through the social service organization are networks within the communities which are important, but they’ll also find on their own generally anyway. And so what we’ve been trying to do is try to introduce the refugees [and] their children, to other wider, more mainstream networks.” John Kefalas, a Catholic Charities staffer and former community organizer in Fort Collins (who was subsequently elected to the Colorado State Legislature), told us a story about building an unlikely coalition between working-class and middle-class Hispanic neighborhood organizations and much wealthier residents in a nearby area, who worked together successfully to move the location of a proposed highway bypass for long-haul trucks. Also in Fort Collins, Raul Pastrana, a young immigrant who was instrumental in founding Fuerza Latina, found, somewhat to his surprise, that gay and lesbian groups were valuable allies. “They’ve gone all over the place, in order to get their issues out, and by doing that they do the one-on-one we were talking about. . . . They were persecuted more

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than any other. And now at least they know how it feels, and now we’re getting together.” The physical isolation of these smaller cities—and perhaps as important, the perceived distance between, say Fort Collins and Denver, or Spokane and Seattle—only accentuates the challenge of figuring out how to connect with other groups to exercise political influence. Atieno Odhiambo, who was a staff attorney with Columbia Legal Services (CLS), had worked in Spokane but had just been transferred to Seattle when CLS closed its Spokane office. “The way this works in Washington state,” she said, “having lived on the east side and also now living on the west side, it’s like everything happens on the west side, everybody’s concerned about the west side. The east side is like a whole other country, so it’s really divided by the Cascade Mountains . . . even in our organization we’d be fighting to get anything from our head office. And because we’re way on the east side, you know, nobody really cared.” The organization’s work on implementing an amnesty provision enacted by the Clinton administration before leaving office was able to bring many immigrant groups together: “It was really amazing to see all different groups of immigrants, finally coming together in one group. . . . I think it was amazing for the immigrant groups themselves to turn around and look at each other and say, oh, it’s not just the Latinos who are undocumented, it’s just about everybody . . . and we took the opportunity to help people fill out immigration forms, informed people about voting and getting involved in the political process too.” Engaging people in politics depends on effective communication. Everyone had stories about learning what sorts of communications methods worked, when people would show up for meetings—or not— what sorts of arguments would be persuasive. We heard over and over again that success came from contacting people in their natural gathering places, including churches, mosques, restaurants, and sporting events; and how different methods of communication worked for different people. Muslim women in Lansing and Hispanic women in Waco? Phone trees. Busy Indian doctors? Faxes; they are too busy to check their email, but will read faxed meeting notices and send them on to others. Young people in Fort Collins? Email. Hispanics in Spokane? A monthly emailed Hispanic Affairs update, said Yvonne Lopez-Morton. She went on, “But what I’ve done is make sure that the people on my list, they know that they’re responsible for getting that word out. . . . We have a parish . . . most of the Hispanic speakers go to this particular parish. Well, the person I send that to is their connection for making

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announcements after mass or during mass or during the ESL [English as a Second Language] class.” Strategic Planning and Sustainability It quickly became apparent in our conversations that though these sorts of tactics and ideas were a useful starting point for our discussion, we couldn’t talk about achieving broader organizational, programming, and outreach goals without raising issues of strategy and sustainability. How can organizations set realistic goals? How can they search for and acquire resources? Develop leaders? Sustain organizational focus? In this context, the biggest challenge is often balancing such long-term goals with shorter-term practical limitations.

We asked the conference participants to share both signal successes, such as events, projects, or outcomes they were proudest of; and—though we avoided using the term “failures”—situations where challenges had been difficult to surmount. From the latter experiences, in particular, we collectively distilled some recommendations that sound familiar to anyone who has worked with social movements or service-providing organizations: avoid the temptation to take on too many goals, which leads to ineffectiveness; find ways to break the organizational mission into manageable, smaller goals; and work to contextualize clients’ problems as more than isolated events. Because the organizations represented at our conference were usually struggling to meet their payroll, doing too many things at once, and perhaps too often operating in reactive mode, it makes sense that the collective wisdom in the room repeatedly stressed the need to build relationships with mainstream organizations and media outlets outside a crisis moment and be prepared before the next political fight or situation actually develops. In part because all of the talented people around this particular table worried about taking on too much and burning out, we talked quite a bit about leadership development. Some of the best practices in this context, like those above, were fairly widely applicable, but some dealt with the specific challenges of groups that serve and seek to mobilize immigrants. For example, some suggested that it could be a source of inspiration to chronicle the stories and experiences of older activists to record how they managed to keep their causes and organizations moving forward. Particularly when working with young people, participants stressed education as a key to the development of strong leaders, to internal cohesion—even when intergroup

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conflict exists, and to the ability to participate in and contribute to the opportunities of a host society. “Education, education, education, for them to be a good citizen in this country, they have to have a good education, they have to participate in everything that the country needs them to be,” said Vang Xiong, a cofounder of the Spokane Hmong Association and member of the Spokane Human Rights Commission. Xiong and several other participants stressed that despite possible inefficiencies, it’s important to include a range of immigrant community members in meetings with public officials and media representatives, both to expose officials to a broader section of the community and to develop leadership skills. He told of times when he and Ben Cabildo of AHANA had taken “buses loaded with Asian and Pacific Islanders from Spokane to enjoy the statewide [Asian Pacific Islander meetings] and just look at Olympia. And that is to take our people right into the nest of the system to see that part of the system so they know what it looks like, they know how to feel what’s right and what can they be productive with, should they have interest in making change.” Institutionalization With institutionalization, a group’s organizational structure, formal and informal rules, guiding principles and values, and routine practices, become increasingly established and accepted both internally and as part of the society. Of particular importance to these advocates was building public awareness, including information dissemination and marketing, and challenging stereotypes and misinformation about immigrant communities. This includes outreach to and engagement with other institutions, including political parties, the media, and law enforcement. Again, participants stressed the desirability of developing positive relationships with the media that are not crisis- or needcentered; being a resource person for interpreting issues affecting the immigrant community; sharing information; developing a knowledge of news practices and needs. For example, does the local paper have a “diversity” beat? Or is their coverage organized by neighborhoods? Supporting immigrant and minority news sources is a means to connect with new immigrants and offers connections, once these sources become part of the community news establishment, to the mainstream media and community decisionmakers. Websites are important for some organizations, and using the Internet can identify possible coalition partners and create organizational links; the Internet can

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also allow groups to “shift scales” and participate easily in national— as well as local—communities. Ben Cabildo was passionate on the need for more organizational training and for collaborative relationships as a way to build strong organizations: “The issue of apathy, you know, it’s really lack of organizational training, people are hesitant to participate because they don’t want to be laughed at because they don’t know how. So I would look at that. That’s an issue for us, so what we’re doing is we’re doing a lot more partnerships . . . there are so many issues that we need to address, with things we can’t do. So we use, we leverage our partnership with different organizations, to do those type of things, and we work as an outreach to try to refer people in our community to them.” Connecting to the Political System All the people in this conversation had some involvement with local and extralocal politics. Among their experiences were running for the state legislature, building a strong grassroots organization that helped to elect a Mexican American mayor, encouraging Hispanic community members to put themselves forward for unfilled Democratic Party precinct positions, participating in voter-registration drives, and running and winning a City Council seat. They often felt frustrated, however, at their communities’ political invisibility. As we have seen, elected officials and candidates continue to overlook the potential electoral power of immigrant communities and to dismiss them as not interested, not registered, or unlikely to vote. In this context, registration drives, which the local parties rarely engage in, become crucial, as does long-term organizing to habituate people to voting, working in campaigns, and speaking up in a variety of ways. For a variety of reasons, establishing these links to politicians and political institutions is a difficult and frustrating task, although everyone around the table knew it was necessary to empower the people they cared about. Dan Nguyen-Tan, the only nonwhite City Council member in Chico, described his outreach to the Hmong community in Chico when he first ran for office. Dan, who is Vietnamese, told a Hmong acquaintance who offered his support that “what he could do that would be of benefit to his community is to actually organize voter registration and a candidate forum to introduce, not only myself, but other candidates running for local office to his community, because they’ve never done that before. And I didn’t want

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them to just be supporting me because I happen to be of Asian descent just like them. I wanted them to really, you know, begin mobilizing, organizing; they’ve never done that before. So, I work with them very closely to help organize a candidate forum for them, and it was the first time they’ve ever done that, where they’ve hosted a candidate forum, whereas almost all the local candidates were [there], city council, county supervisor, and judicial officers came to a candidate forum that was attended by a couple hundred members of the Hmong community. They had a bilingual interpreter. It was incredible to see the community organized.” This was an inspiring story. But later on, Dan recounted his frustration at the fact that this effort at educating the community about local politics and encouraging their participation really wasn’t sustainable. Though he worked with the Hmong to get them funding for a cultural center and to get a member of the community on the police advisory board, he was disappointed that they didn’t show interest in another candidate forum, failed to reapply for their funding in the second year, and were too reluctant to agree to participate on various city boards and commissions. He explained this as due in part to the fact that when the one or two people who seemed to be the most sophisticated about the necessity for building a long-term organization went on to other projects, there was no backup. Of course, political organizing is not the primary mission of these organizations, so it takes time and energy away from other tasks. In Fort Collins, said John Kefala, “there’s a lot of good work that’s being done, but most of it is in direct service work. A lot of communitybased organizations, charities, where I work, most of the resources go to providing to the needs of the people. And yet there’s that component that I was doing which is about empowerment, which is about policy, which is about advocacy, which is about social justice. Well, that’s sort of the exception to the rule, I mean, there’s not a lot of resources available for social advocacy and social change.” Vincent Delgado, from Lansing, also talked about the shift from service-providing to advocacy. “We’re doing capacity building, giving skills to people, which is kind of a halfway step there. The other organization was providing service. With government funding, by the way, which, of course, precluded us from doing a lot of active organizing. But now, the way I look at it is that there will be another issue, you don’t need to wait for another issue to come up, you can prepare now. . . . Refugees and immigrants need to be educated beforehand because by the time the issue comes up, it’s too late, I mean, it’s

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already over, if they’re not educated in terms of how they can respond to this.” There are particular challenges, of course, inherent in organizing refugees and immigrants, including generational and ethnic conflicts, differences between new and longer-term immigrants, and, according to Karen Keyworth, of the American Muslim Council in Lansing, getting people to “let go of the issues from their country of origin.” She felt that local Muslims had voted for Bush because they believed he was committed to a two-state solution in Palestine. She went on, “I kept trying to explain to them you can’t vote on one issue overseas. You are Muslims who live here, and everything he represents is going to affect you here. And they just didn’t hear it at all, so they’re, like they’re voting on a foreign issue that, you know, messed us up anyway, and I couldn’t get them to really see the other aspect of it—that they had to look at health care and taxes and education and all these other issues. So that’s my goal, getting them to identify themselves as Americans first and vote and react according to American issues.” All of the participants in the conference worked with people who were marginalized in many different ways—undocumented immigrants or people who lived with or were related to undocumented immigrants; refugees who had endured deprivation and trauma; men and women with limited English skills; people new to their communities and to the unwritten rules and expectations of the US political system; and the economically struggling. The challenges these leaders and activists faced in building organizations that could be effective advocates and channels of political access for the groups they served were daunting. A recent experience has reminded me that immigrants do not have to be vulnerable or marginalized in the above ways to have difficulties gaining political influence. Through a friend, I was invited to meet with a middle-aged Chinese American couple in Syracuse who have built a consulting business that has been written up in the local newspaper as a success story. Active in their church as well, they were very explicit about wanting to know how to get their community involved in local politics. This is hardly a marginalized community, consisting largely of doctors and other medical professionals, university-affiliated researchers, and similar well-educated professionals. The challenges, they felt, included distrust of politics and politicians, stemming from their experiences in China or their parents’ experiences; ignorance about how political decisions affected people’s everyday lives; and focus on family and child-rearing to the exclu-

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sion of community concerns. In the end, the projects we agreed to work on sounded a lot like what John Kefalas, Raul Pastrana, Yvonne Lopez-Morton, Vincent Delgado, Dan Nguyen-Tan, and the others talked about in Washington: create a space where people can gather and events to bring them together; determine what issues motivate people; build a sustainable organization; invite politicians to meet with the group; and tell stories about successful outcomes that resulted from community efforts and involvement.

Notes 1. The conference was funded by the Carnegie Corporation and the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, and was held at Syracuse University’s Greenberg House in Washington DC. 2. Each of the Maxwell participants—Jamie Winders, Brett Heindl, Erika Wilkens, and Kristi Andersen—wrote a summary of one of the four workshop sessions, based on recorded transcripts and notes. Wilkens wrote the overall summary, on which this discussion is based.

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Anti-immigrant mobilization: and counter-organization among immigrants and liberal allies, 97; environmental groups blaming of immigrants, 98–99; repressive impact on organizational capacity of immigrant groups, 97 Assimilation: commonly used indicators of, 21; and political involvement, 22; process of individuals absorbed into dominant culture, 21; segmented, theories of, 21–22 Brewster, Washington, behavior contact for Hispanic students, 42–43 Cal State–Chico: all-day conference for Hmong community, 86; ESL tutoring program for immigrant and migrant parents, 86 California, descriptive representation among Latino/Latina voters, 38 California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), for developing political skills and strengths of immigrants, 91–92 Chico: agricultural economy of, 11; barriers to minority groups representation, 48n7; economy depending on service industries,

11; foreign-born residents, 11–12; government of, 12; hate crimes against Hmong, 99; Hispanics and Asians occupying commissions and committees, 39; history and founding of, 11; immigrant groups revolving around small organization, 79–80 Cities: as Democratic or Republican in 2004 presidential election, 68; organization spillover and program slippage in cities with substantial amounts of refugee resettlement, 91; small moves toward recognition of immigrant groups, 41–42. See also specific city Civic engagement: differences and conflicts within communities, 108–109; fostering and sustaining, 108–111; and innovative approaches, 109 Civic organizations, roles in immigrant assimilation and incorporation, 27–28 Coalition building, goals and strategies of other organizations, 107 College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), courses to help local farmworkers, 87 Community organizations: families in, 1; inculcation of civic skills by churches serving immi-

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grants, 73; immigrants’ move into electoral arena, 71; incorporative functions of, 73; information-gathering and diffusing shift to representing and advocating, 78; leadership experience and skills, 80–83; and mass mobilization, 72; and political parties, 1; present-day, multiple connections with governments, 105–106; provision of information and ethnic media as critical function of, 77; types, 73–75; voter-registration activities connected with national or state-wide efforts, 77 Democratic Party, lack of outreach to Afro-Caribbean immigrants in New York City, 58–59 Descriptive representation: appointive office seen as form of, 38; and improvement of deliberative aspects of democracy, 37; and minority issues, 37; and political alienation among racial/ethnic minorities, 38; and underrepresented groups’ feelings of political efficacy and trust, 37 Electoral mobilization, “limited utility” of, 48n6 Ethnic voluntary organizations, roles in immigrant communities, 74 Federations, in building of American democracy, 107 Foreign-born population: attempts to mobilize, 7; as percent of total population, 7 Fort Collins: citizenship of longestablished Mexican immigrants in, 36; conservative Mexican American mayor of, 39; environment groups against population growth, 99; feeling of being ignored by state and

congressional representatives, 47; high-technology firms in, 13; Hispanic members of volunteer boards and commissions, 39–40; history of, 12; strong presence of anti-immigrant and English-only sentiment in, 98; targeted for voter registration, 92; Fuerza Latina, as organization of immigrants for immigrants, 84 Gateway cities: creation of, 28; immigrant concentration in, 2; research on political incorporation of immigrants, 5–6; traditional, categories of, 5 Geographical isolation: challenges of limited resources, city size, and geographical distance, 93; disadvantages of, 92–93; dispersion of immigrant groups to new areas, 91; settlement patterns facilitating coalitional behavior between immigrant groups, 91 German immigrants, role in immigrant incorporation, 51 Group organizational capacity, attempts to construct, 78–79 Houston Coalition for Immigrant Rights, campaign to persuade immigrants to register, 74–75 Human Relations Commission, and issues of racism and immigrant rights, 98 Immigrant groups: assistance at state level versus local level, 84; county government as provider of services, 45; cross diversity of immigrant population, 7; cross-group alliances, 28; distinguishing among levels of government, 46; elected officials’ description of outreach, 63; ethnic politicians’ success in

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homogeneous districts, 63–64; expectations of first- and second-generation immigrants, 57–58; fear of federal agents, 2; as full participants in political system, 1; large groups with high numbers of noncitizens, 29; in larger metropolitan areas/cities, 28, 45; living in suburbs and unincorporated areas, 6; as multifaceted concept, 45–46; multiple jurisdictions and levels of government, 45; number of foreign-born adults over age of eighteen, 2; opportunities and constraints on organizing, 26; problems dispersed through smaller metropolitan area, 29; questions about immigrant identities, 29; recent research on political behavior in, 23–24; relatively isolated and powerless groups in smaller communities, 28; strong organizational base necessary for viable candidates, 63; symbolic and material efforts to reach out, 57; traditional localized means of political incorporation, 6; understudied in smaller metropolitan areas, 6–7; union membership among, 85 Immigrant nonprofits: immigrants seen as clients or servicereceivers, 106; targeted mobilization engaged in, 106 Immigrant political incorporation: aliens’ voting privileges revoked via constitutional amendment, 52; civic capacity or organizational density of a locality, 26; contextual factors to shape incorporation, 25–28; creation of naturalized citizens’ bureau, 53; difference between US and Canada in regard to foreignborn representation, 38; ethnicgroup organizations’ help with

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registration and get-out-the-vote drives, 53; factors impacting opinions on immigration and stereotypes about immigrants, 89; federal government’s control over immigration, 52; findings of Pew Center report on immigration-related attitudes in five cities, 89; General Social Survey (2004), 89; incentive structure marginalizing new voters, 56; institutional programs to “Americanize” immigrants, 52; local and state policies/practices in, 25, 26; minority immigrant political mobilization and parties incentive structure, 54; in more rural areas, 51; movement of immigrant communities toward Democratic coalition after 1928, 53; New Deal realignment and movement of immigrant voters to Democrats, 52–53; new streams of southern and Eastern Europe in 1880s, 52; 1920s and 1930s movement toward Democratic Party, 53; other types of organizations taking on tasks associated with, 71; parties and immigrants in early twenty-first centuries, 54–59; partisan positions and public opinion on immigration and racial/ethnic diversity, 27; political predispositions and preferences of a locality, 26; population of potential voters between 1940 and 1970, 54; Republicans’ recommendation for educating and organizing immigrants, 52; role of community groups and other nongovernmental organizations in, 25; structural attributes, 26; uncertainty of dealing with votes of new groups, 58 Immigrant voting rates, difficulty of assessing, 36

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Immigrants: apprentice programs for, 85; desire for political involvement, 78; local colleges/universities as providers of funding, 85–86; organizations serving and advocating for, 104 Immigration: experienced in terms of pace, impact, and type of immigrants, 90; as federal responsibility in 1876, 49; immigrants’ permission to vote in prior to 1910, 49; policy: incorporation of immigrants in, 5–6 Institutionalization: established and accepted internally and as part of society, 112; and support of immigrant and minority news sources, 112–113 Justice for Janitors movement, 73 Labor unions, efforts to organize immigrants, 73 Lansing: approach to distinguished resource-rich immigrants, 62–63; diverse population of immigrants in, 13–14; favorable orientation of school districts in, 42; foreign Mexicans in, 14; government of, 14; Hispanic members on Board of Commission, 40; Latin community’s provision of various services, 82; Latino mayor of, 40; material and symbolic spillover effect, 95–96; median household income, 14; presidential voting from 1960s to 1990s, 13; programs in American Lifeskills, 96; rapid population growth in, 13; refugee resettlement in, 13–14; responsiveness of, 47; union presence in, 85; varied ethnic background of appointed advisory board members, 40

Larger cities: local and state government policy relating to provision of services and support, 90; and point of access to levers of government, 90 Latino mobilization, and institutional characteristics of state, 64 Latina Women’s Coalition, registration drive of, 67 Local elections: increasing over past two decades, 57; low-turnout political environment characterized by, 56; Local governments, outreach to new groups, 42 Local organizations, freestanding, 106 Local parties: encouraging nonvoters to register, 61–62; failure to facilitate naturalization, 61; national decision to target known supporters or swing voters, 62; new citizens as potential new campaign donor, 62; officials elected primarily by their own efforts, 62; response to questions about voter registration, 61; shift toward candidate-centered elections, 62 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA): foreign-born population arriving between 1990 and 2000, 7; migration from between 1940 and 1950, 15; population growth between 1900 and 1910, 15; refugees resettled in, 15–16; structure of its economy and influence, 7; variety of immigrants in, 15 Mutual aid/benefit societies: for establishing immigrant families, 1; importance of, 104 National/regional organizations, with local or regional branches, 106 Naturalization: and access to the

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political system, 32; California’s Proposition 187, 33; community size implications, 28; dependent on average length of time in US, 32; eligibility for, 7; as indicator of political commitment to newcomers, 32; process of, 7, 19n3; percentage of recent arrivals (1990–March 2000), 32; propensity to naturalize, 7; rank ordering of states, 34; research explaining variations in, 33; states with established communities, 32–33; time as primary predictor of decision to naturalize, 32; traditional localized means of, 6; variation between states versus variation among cities, 34 Naturalization rates: and California’s Proposition 187, 33; civic organizations’ impact on, 36; interstate difference among particular groups, 47n3; of 1980–1990 arrivals and pre1980 arrivals by city, 35; percentage of naturalized foreignborn, 33tab4.1; for pre-1980 Mexican immigrants, 35; required for voting and running for office, 31–32; research aimed at explaining variations of, 33; of six cities and their states, 2000, 34fig4.1; of states with more established immigrant communities, 32–33; and time in US by city and origin, 35tab4.2; varied by country of origin, 32 Noncitizen residents: participating in politics and civic life, 32; voting in local elections, 3n2 Nonprofit organizations: as ethnic voluntary organization groups to mobilize immigrant/ethnic voters, 73–74; positioned to play significant role in overall integration, 72

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Organizations, immigrant-related: advocating for immigrant rights, mobilization, or policy change, 84; capacity building, 76; categorized as having primary mission of advocacy, 75–76; connection between organizational goals and political system, 83–84; description and categories of, 75; legal services offering free or inexpensive services, 75; providing assistance for immigrants to live and work in new society, 76–77; as service providers, 83; voluntary sector as site to acquire knowledge and skills, 75; and success dependent on connections, 107 Plano, outreach efforts on part of school district and library system, 42 Political engagement: coalition between working-class and middle-class Hispanic neighborhood organizations with wealthier residents, 109; fostering and sustaining, 108–111; of gay and lesbian groups, 109–110; importance of connections and coalitions of participants’ stories, 109; low-intensity, person-to-person organizing, 109 Political incorporation: concepts of assimilation and integration, 21–22; conceptualized as group-based process, 24–26; contextual factors in, 26–27; creation of ethnic organizations, 27; creation of historical pathways for, 5–6; and concepts of assimilation and integration, 22–23; data collected at individual level, 24; data on rates of high naturalization assisted by diverse organiza-

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tions or refugee stream with organization spillover, 103; debate on meaning and measurement of incorporation, 25; district elections for minority representation, 27; education of group leaders on election, 67; explicit denial that immigrants are any different from other groups, 65–66; four broad contextual factors to shape; 25–28; explanations of, 103–108; group identities and interest in, 24; at group level, 24–26; group-based process, 24–26; group-politics assumption used to explain lack of visibility, 66–67; groups not incorporated, 24; immigrant decisions to naturalize, register, and vote, 23; indicators of group inclusion, 24–25; individualistic assumption used to criticize lack of English skills, 66; ingrained beliefs about how immigrants should behave, 65; institutional factors, 25; means by which organizations may foster, 72; mobilization through social ties and organizations, 24; multiple jurisdictions, 29; policies of states and localities on immigrant-related issues, 26; registration and voting, 37; US federal government abdication of responsibility, 26; voting turnout native-born and foreign-born, 23–24 Political integration, process and aspects of, 22 Political mobilization: coethnics associated with, 37–38; explaining parties’ inertia toward, 64–67 Political participation: and elected officials sharing of backgrounds and experiences, 37; resource model of, 23 Political parties: campaigns depend-

ent on mass-media advertising and direct marketing, 56; electoral competition between, 51; groups and organizational role in assimilation to US life, 51–52; hegemonic party oureach to immigrants, 50–51; immigrant political incorporation of late nineteenth century, 49–53; incentive structure pushing immigrant mobilization, 50; institutions providing immigrants’ material needs, 55; interest in new potential voters, 50; mechanisms to integrate noncitizens into political process, 58; mobilization of immigrants as organizational goal, 104–105; movement toward more educational style of campaigning, 55; as much weaker and less fully organized parties, 71–72; national, and discussion of immigration in platforms, 57; need to represent and advocate for more inclusive group, 72; nonparty organizations with alternative channels of political influence, 72; party organizations and control of government, 105; party platform differences and endorsements, 57; progressive reforms and material resources, 55; subsidized by naturalization/voting sequence, 50; technical changes reducing person-to-person contact, 55; targeting those with predictable behavior, 56; transit and less institutionalized local party organization, 55; 2004 and 2008 election cycles viewed as “ground wars” as opposed to “air wars,” 56; viewed as mobilizers of immigrants, 51; weakened local party organizations and party-connected clubs, 55 Political power, defined in terms of minority groups, 41

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Political system: challenges in organizing refugees and immigrants, 115; connecting to, 113–116; frustration at communities’ political invisibility, 113; links to politicians and political institutions, 113–114; and marginalization of participants, 115; shift from service-providing to advocacy, 114–115 Post–9/11 impact, effect on immigrant participation or involvement, 99–100 Refugee Act of 1980, criteria for refugee status and federal government obligation to support refugees, 94 Refugee resettlement: material and symbolic spillover effects, 95–96; shifted from large to smaller metropolitan areas, 90 Refugees, positive media treatment given to, 95 Refugee policy, US, 4n3, 15–16; three important consequences of, 94 Representation: and district elections at local level, 39; impact on local legislators elected on district or at-large basis, 39; and Latinos serving in State Senate and State Assembly, 39 Republicans, get-out-the-vote efforts limited to regular voters, 59 “Sanctuary cities,” for undocumented immigrants, 26 Six city study: assessing incorporation, 31–47; data collection for, 8–10; empirical comparisons as to electoral mobilization of immigrant groups, 37; explanation for variations in government responsiveness, 80; organizational capacity variation between localities and immigrant groups, 79; overview of, 9–19; political incorporation of

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immigrants in intersecting cities, 105; ranked in ease of registration from least to most restrictive, 36 Smaller cities: coalitions as “vectors for integration,” 107–108; issue of size and isolation, 90–91; need to make connection with other immigrant and nonimmigrant groups, 107; physical isolation and challenge to connect, 110; public funding for group to join nonimmigrant coalitions, 83 Spokane: active organizations doing refugee resettlement work in, 79; active support for immigrants at state level, 47; AHANA business association’s attempt to influence local political process and consolidate minority groups’ power, 82; candidate forum to advance minority community concerns to local candidates, 82–83; city government of, 16; deindustrialization of 1970s and 1980s, 15; difficulty of sustaining panethnic coalitions, 82; early history and growth of, 14; few public policies promoting naturalization, 47n1; hate crimes in, 99; immigrants’ eagerness to assimilate, 15; favorable orientation of school districts, 42; large number of appointees from range of immigrant groups, 40; median household income (2000), 15; migration from Mexico, 15; mission shift to serve farmworker communities, 96; population growth of 1900 and 1910, 15; Puerto Rican official as advocate for Hispanic and minority communities, 40; refugee resettlement in metro area, 15–16; variety of immigrants in, 15 State-level organizations, and political activity levels of local organizations, 92

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State registration laws, assessing restrictiveness of, 27 Strategic planning and sustainability: building relationships with mainstream organization and media outlets, 111; leadership development, 111–112; and sharing of signal successes, 111; situations with challenges, 111 Student organizations, help for voter registration and “Get Out the Vote” drives, 86 Syracuse: agencies providing assistance to immigrants, 59; Americanization League in, 77; businesses working closely with, 96–97; case study of local politics in, 59–61; diversified service-based economy, 16–17; early politics in, 17; first efforts to reach out to Latino community, 59; first immigrants to, 17; government and politics of, 18; immigrant and refugee streams, 1990–2000, 17–18; language barriers, 60; media coverage of immigrants, 18; network of people and organizations working with refugees and immigrants, 85; party leaders’ retreat from registration and mobilization, 60; political responsiveness by government level, 46–47; registration and voting rates in areas with concentration of immigrants, 60; significant numbers of foreign-born refugees in, 59, 96; size of immigrant population, 93; union presence, 85; varied ethnic backgrounds of Human Rights Commission, 40 Syracuse University, hosts of Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), 86 System responsiveness: and level of government, 44–47; institutional context shaping immigrants’ labor rights, 44; indicators focused on group behavior and

system response, 45; and level of government, 44–47; local government institutions as ground for immigrant mobilization, 44 Texas: absence of responsive state as encouragement to civic coalition building, 44–45; descriptive representation among Latino/Latina voters, 38; suburban communities responding to new immigrant populations, 30 Voter-education groups: mobilizing activity in 1994 and 1998, 74; targeting newly registered voters, 74 Waco: coalitions with other groups, 81–82; connections between immigrant communities and parties, 67; cotton plantation economy of, 18, 19; Czech and German immigrants’ arrival in, 19; election of first minorities to city council, 64; Hispanics in state assembly, 40–41; Hispanic weekly newspaper in English and Spanish, 81; immigrant groups revolving around small and interconnected organizations, 79–80; Latino members of City Counsel, school board, and various other offices, 40; low naturalization rates with higher representation and attention to immigrant concerns, 44; Mexican Americans’ migration to, 19; need for influence over non-Hispanic members and candidates, 82; New Deal programs in, 19; Reconstruction conflicts in, 19; well-organized Mexicans and Mexican Americans in, 80

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About the Book

How do US immigrants, who settle in places with varied political

and social characteristics, find a place at the table in local politics? In particular, how do arrivals to smaller, less-established immigrant communities become politically incorporated? Drawing on rich interview data and cases from across the United States, Kristi Andersen compares communities to reveal what types of environments provide opportunities—and challenges—for recent arrivals. Kristi Andersen is professor of political science at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. She is author of After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics Before the New Deal and The Creation of a Democratic Majority, 1928–1936.

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