Mobilizing Opportunities: The Evolving Latino Electorate and the Future of American Politics

3. Defensive Naturalization and the Opportunity to Mobilize

In the last chapter, I explored the reactive mobilization of Latinos into protest politics as a result of an exogenous political shock, but I suggest that existing studies of minority politics have largely been looking in the wrong place for additional catalysts of political mobilization. By neglecting the proactive mobilization that took place as a result of the convergence of Spanish-language media and Latino organizations, the existing literature misses a piece of the puzzle key to understanding the evolving role of Latinos in American politics. The activation of Latinos into protest politics, according to the established work on social movements and political participation , should have consequences on the nature of Latinos’ engagement in American democracy. However, Browning, Marshall, and Tabb (1984) make a compelling case that if we are to adequately consider the struggle for equality in politics for blacks and Latinos, we must look to their levels of political incorporation in the electoral arena because “protest is not enough.” While noncitizenship does not prevent Latino immigrants from participating in protest politics, it is the primary barrier to the electoral participation of many Latino immigrants. In order to fully consider the evolving Latino electorate, we must begin with an understanding of when there is a change in existing rates of naturalization among Latino immigrants and the catalyst(s) for that change. I draw on multiple sources of administrative naturalization statistics, aggregated at multiple levels of geography, as well as one nationally representative survey of Latinos and a regional survey of Latino immigrants who began the process of naturalization. I explore 3 DEFENSIVE NATURALIZATION AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO MOBILIZE Defensive Naturalization and the Opportunity to Mobilize 55 the convergence of exogenous and endogenous factors that helped transform noncitizenship, one of the most pressing barriers to Latino electoral presence, into a mobilizing opportunity. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the instrumental role of political context for understanding the motivation to pursue U.S. citizenship. I also emphasize the crucial role of endogenous resources within the Latino community in navigating the increasingly complex and bureaucratic process of naturalization. Between March and May 2006, thousands of marches were staged across America to protest the passage of the Sensenbrenner Bill (HR 4437),1 regarded as one of the most punitive anti-immigrant pieces of legislation in the last seventy years. HR 4437 included provisions that would criminalize the presence of undocumented persons in the United States, construct additional fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border, and impose criminal penalties upon anyone who knowingly assisted any individual with an unauthorized immigration status. It is estimated that there were more than 5 million participants in these pro-immigrant marches, making it one of the largest and most widespread civil rights actions in U.S. history (Lazos 2007). Clearly, the scope and size of the pro-immigrant demonstrations make them distinctive. Beyond the levels of participation, however, a unique prevalent characteristic of the marches was the pronounced use of a common slogan, “We Are America,” that would continue well after the demonstrations . While there were non-Latinos at the immigration marches, the word “we” in this message implicitly references Latino immigrants and highlights the integral nature of Latinos in the United States. The first message was further reinforced by the symbolic use of American flags. A second equally important slogan was prevalent during the demonstrations . The slogan, “Today we march, tomorrow we vote,” was powerful because of the message and because, more than other messages, it appeared in both Spanish and English.2 It sent a message to elected officials that while many could not vote now, they would in the near future. In Spanish, it was not only a slogan, but a call to action among Spanish-speaking Latinos for a united social movement. The intent was to spur voter-registration activities among those already eligible, but the slogan also evoked renewed energy among legal immigrants to pursue citizenship. Did Latinos heed this call to action or at least perceive that a unified social movement was possible? According to the first major nationally representative public opinion poll of Latinos in the United States following the pro-immigration marches, 63 percent of Latinos agreed with the statement that “the immigrant marches were the beginning of a new Hispanic/Latino social movement that will go 56 Mobilizing Opportunities on for a long time” (Suro and Escobar 2006:1). If the pro-immigrant demonstrations are...