Immigrant voter drives paying off

Nearly 30 years after immigrating to Illinois from Mexico, 54-year-old Frederico Gutierrez plans to vote in his first U.S. election.

Gutierrez, who became an American citizen in May, is among at least 11,800 U.S. citizen immigrants in Illinois who have registered to vote in the past six months, according to organizations that have led registration drives. Even more may have registered at local municipal offices and elsewhere.

Immigrants have been courted by activists in mosques, churches, at naturalization ceremonies and through door-to-door campaigns in an effort to get them to the polls for the 2008 presidential election -- part of a nationwide effort particularly reflected in states with rapidly changing demographics.

"We are experiencing an unprecedented era of mobilization among immigrant voters," said Arturo Vargas, the executive director of the Los Angeles-based National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

There's little mystery to the motivation.

Momentum has been building since massive immigrant marches in 2006, when 1 million people -- at least 400,000 in Chicago alone -- took to the streets to tout immigrant rights, stoking heated debates over immigration reform and lending an urgency to involving immigrants in elections.

"The topic of immigration has taken over the public conversation," said Michael Rodriguez, a director at the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, which registered almost 6,300 immigrant voters in Illinois, and has made similar efforts in Maryland, New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere. The nationwide Ya Es Hora (Now is the time) campaign works with Spanish-language television companies like Univision to encourage eligible legal permanent residents to apply for citizenship and vote.

Activists and politicians alike know the importance of Super Tuesday, when seven of the 10 states with the highest Latino populations -- California, Colorado, Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and New Mexico -- hold primaries.

"There are a lot more opportunities in this election, more for immigrants as swing voters," said Juan Jose Gonzalez, who works for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which has registered about 5,600 Illinois voters for Tuesday's primary.

Data on the total number of registered immigrant voters aren't available. Election officials in most states do not ask voters' ethnicity and U.S. voter registration requires only that a person prove citizenship; it does not ask if it was obtained by birth or naturalization.

In Illinois, election officials said the number of voters registered for the primary is at an all-time high in Chicago's suburbs and outer edges -- areas where demographers say the naturalized-citizen population has surged, particularly in metro Cook, Kane, DuPage and Will counties.

The number of naturalized citizens in Chicago's suburbs has grown at least 38 percent, from about 61,050 to nearly 91,235, over a five-year period ending in 2006, according to an ICIRR demographic study using the latest data available.

Immigration activists have targeted those areas for registration and civic dialogue, an effort that seems to have played out most visibly in the 3rd Congressional District -- including southwest Chicago and nearby suburbs -- where Gutierrez lives.

The historically Democratic district, where about 24 percent of the nearly 630,000 residents are Hispanic -- and more than 85 percent of Hispanics are from Mexico -- also encompasses the Chicago area's largest Arab enclave.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Gutierrez filed into a Southwest Side Catholic church along with more than 300 other prospective immigrant voters, mostly Hispanic and Arab, to listen to two candidates answer questions on topics ranging from school funding and health care to foreign policy and immigration. The forum was arranged by religious and immigration groups.

Gutierrez, wearing a headset to hear Spanish translation, mulled over what Democratic candidates Mark Pera and Jerry Bennett had to say. Incumbent Rep. Dan Lipinski did not attend.

"It is important for new citizens to vote, to have more power," Gutierrez said in Spanish.

Dozens of women wearing hijab, a Muslim woman's head covering, and men with thick beards and white caps -- culturally Islamic practices -- were bused to the event by the Arab American Action Network and the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview. The Latino Organization of the Southwest also canvassed neighborhoods by foot and by phone to get people registered.

U.S. Census data from 2006 show 141,000 of the district's residents, or roughly 22 percent, are immigrants. About 61,000 have become U.S. citizens and are eligible to vote, according to Kenneth Johnson, a demographer and professor of sociology at Loyola University in Chicago.

"What we did was basically to knock on doors and make people understand how important it is," said organizer Rosi Carrasco.

But those efforts did not come without challenges unique to an immigrant population.

"As new voters, they are very unfamiliar with the process of voting," said Ricardo Meza, regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "An immigrant voter might be more intimidated by the process."

And while debate over illegal immigration has prompted civic participation, Meza said it also has created fear that has kept some people from registering to vote.

Ameira Matariyeh, a legal advocate for a nonprofit organization that helps battered Arab women, found that while helping to register hundreds of women voters, whom she approached at mosques and community events.

"They'd say, 'My family members will get in the system and they'll get deported,' " she said. "They just didn't want to do it."

Noor Safadi, an 18-year-old high school student who's the daughter of Syrian immigrants, also had to overcome resistance from some of those she helped.

"They think: 'We're immigrants, no one will listen to us,' " she said.

Gutierrez, who worked as a laborer for many years and then at a car dealership, remained undecided about his congressional or presidential votes ahead of Super Tuesday. But he says he knows what he wants in a political leader.

"I feel somewhat confused," he said. "But I want solutions for all the fundamental social problems."