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>> 195 Part IV How Are Immigrants Entering the Precincts of Power in New York City and Amsterdam? Part IV. Immigrants and the Precincts of Power Politics are a central element in the urban landscape. The huge influx of immigrants has inevitably changed political dynamics in Amsterdam and New York City, bringing hundreds of thousands of new voters onto the political scene. At the same time, the way immigrants have entered the precincts of power has been shaped by the structure of political arrangements and the nature of the political culture in each city as well as characteristics of the immigrant groups themselves. The focus of the two chapters in this section is on the ability of people of immigrant origin to obtain official political positions—a critical measure of political incorporation. Richard Alba and Nancy Foner (2009) have argued that electoral success by immigrant-origin groups can be viewed as the gold standard for measuring political inclusion, giving individuals from immigrant backgrounds entry into the inner precincts of power and seats at the table when decisions are made, although here we would expand this to include appointment to executive positions. Following Alba and Foner, there are four reasons why success in gaining political positions, through election or appointment, is so important . It is a direct measure of integration into the mainstream in the same sense that entry into high-status occupations is; the occupation of political office by members of an immigrant-origin group often gives the group a voice in government decisions that can directly affect it; and 196 > 197 Amsterdam’s mayor is appointed by the crown after a process of consultation between national party leaders and the municipal council. New York City—like other American cities—has what is called a first-past-the-post system, with single member districts in which voters can cast one vote each and the candidate with the most votes wins. In contrast to Amsterdam, and some other U.S. cities like Los Angeles , New York has a strongly partisan system. If ever there was a “blue” city it is New York. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly six to one. In all but the mayoral race, the main route to winning elected office is through the Democratic Party. Immigrants today, as in the past, have penetrated and become absorbed into the regular Democratic Party establishment by taking over its lower rungs—and then using lower-level positions as stepping stones to higher office, a major prize being a seat in the U.S. Congress. The main power in the city government is the office of the elected mayor, who defines and manages a $68 billion budget. Surprisingly for a liberal Democratic city, since 1989 New York has had a series of Republican mayors who have been elected by forging effective racial coalitions; in the case of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, he also used his enormous personal wealth in his campaigns. New York City also sends a number of representatives to state and federal legislative bodies: in 2011, 65 elected representatives to the New York State Assembly, 25 to the State Senate, and 11 to the U.S. Congress. There is no equivalent in Amsterdam. Because Dutch national elections are not districted, members of parliament have no representative relationship to a city or region. Each system has advantages and disadvantages for immigrant representation —although it is not clear which one, overall, is better in this regard. One way that Amsterdam is clearly ahead, however, is that noncitizens are allowed to vote in local elections after five years of legal residence in the country. In New York, noncitizens do not have the right to vote, a situation that disenfranchises a very significant proportion of the population, especially in light of the continuous large inflow of new arrivals from abroad (nearly a third of the immigrants living in New York City in 2010 came there between 2000 and 2010). If noncitizens could vote in New York City elections, the political impact of immigrant-origin groups would be much larger, enabling them to put more of their own into office and wield more political influence. As of 198 > 199 with political mobilization and electoral success (2010: 28–29). Not only does Amsterdam lack a native minority population with whom immigrants and their adult children can join political forces, but, like the Netherlands as a whole, it has had “little experience with . . . voting rights laws, minority advocacy groups . . . and other politics and organizational strategies intended to help mitigate...

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