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>>One of the things I've found is
that even though this population
for the most part lacks citizenship.
The relative new comers to the United States many
of them lack legal documentation but even those
that have working papers their not yet naturalized.
Nevertheless, though, they're remarkably attentive
to American politics and especially issues related
to immigration and wall building and the like.
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In general commentators of every stripe recognize
that the Latino vote is very much a swing constituency.
Okay, so, the partisanship is not very well hardened
and crystallized.
There seems to be a lot of potential to go back and forth
between the political parties and maybe some reluctance even
to participate in the first place, a certain amount
of distancing between that block
and conventional American politics.
Well, the same is true what I found
with the immigrant population so if we sort of narrow it
down that block to look just at recent immigrants many
of whom are not naturalized they still have a voice
that can be activated.
There's some reluctance to take part but what I found
in my own research is that when asked
if they had any direct participation
in the immigrant's rights mobilization
from 2006, half did.
Okay, as a follow up I asked for those
who did not directly become involved I asked did a close
family member or friend take part, half of those said yes.
Okay, so we're talking about just this enormous outpouring
of participation and statistically now you can link
that participation to activity during the general elections
in 2006 and presumably a lot of the energy will spill
over into the general elections of 2008 so that even people
who lack citizenship still find their voice out there.
They get active in all kinds of ways encouraging people
who can vote to vote, knocking on doors.
Some of them go out like that to protest but more
of them participate in just everyday conventional kinds
of ways.
So, there's this sort of subtext in the American electorate
that I think can at certain localities
at least play an important part in a pivotal election season.
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