LOS ANGELES — The number of Mexican-born immigrants who became U.S. citizens swelled by nearly 50 percent last year amid a massive campaign by Spanish-language media and immigrant advocacy groups to help eligible residents apply for citizenship, according to a new government report.
Despite historically low rates of naturalization, the number of Mexicans who became citizens increased to 122,000 from 84,000 over the previous year, with California and Texas posting the largest gains. Salvadorans and Guatemalans also showed significant increases at a time when the overall number of naturalizations declined by 6 percent.
At the same time, the number of citizenship applications filed doubled to 1.4 million last year, the report by the U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics found.
The surge, which represents the largest year-to-year increase in Mexican naturalizations this decade, came amid pitched national debate over immigration reform. In their report last week, U.S. immigration officials cited the campaign by Spanish-language media, along with a desire to apply before steep fee increases took effect, as two major reasons for the jump in naturalizations.
“Immigrants are tired of the tone and tenor of the immigration debate, which they feel is humiliating and does not recognize their contributions,” said Rosalind Gold of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund in Los Angeles. “That climate has fueled their desire to have their voices heard.”
New citizens echoed those sentiments. Erika Lorena Rivera, 30, came to Los Angeles from Mexico at age 1, became eligible for naturalization a decade ago but only decided to take the plunge last October — along with four relatives. Rivera, a supervisor for a hair accessory firm, said she was offended by what she perceived as growing anti-immigrant bias and was moved to apply for citizenship after hearing advertisements about it on TV.
“I became a citizen to have full rights and vote for a president for the first time,” said Rivera, adding that she and her her family all plan to vote for Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama.
The surge in new Hispanic voters could affect the political landscape in November, analysts said. Louis DiSipio, a University of California at Irvine political science professor, said one of the biggest potential effects could be in Florida, a key battleground state that posted 54,500 new citizens last year. Although the ethnic Cuban population there has dominated the Hispanic political landscape and tended to vote Republican, he said, more of the newer immigrants are coming from South America and trending Democratic.
For the first time this decade, more Hispanics were registered as Democrats than Republicans — 35 percent to 33 percent as of this spring, according to Gold.
Beyond November, the swelling Hispanic numbers will continue to recast the political landscape for local elections, DiSipio said. He said increased Hispanic naturalizations in the late 1990s, thanks to a 1986 amnesty for illegal immigrants, had helped California Democrats gain an 800,000-plus voter edge and that similar gains could occur with the newest surge.
Gold said new Hispanic citizens have higher voting rates than long-time Mexican-Americans, with more shallow political allegiances. As a result, she said, their votes are still up for grabs for those elected officials willing to work hard to reach out to them. In addition, she said, the proportion of Hispanic voters identifiying themselves as independents is growing.
After Mexicans, the largest number of new citizens came from India, Philippines, China, Vietnam and the Dominican Republic, the Koreas and El Salvador.
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