Immigrant voters could be ‘sleeping giants’ in Ohio
Record numbers of immigrants will be voting in this year’s general election, due to an increase in the number of new Americans, as they’re often called, becoming citizens in recent years.
More than 54,000 Ohio immigrants became naturalized citizens between 2014 and 2018, with that number expected to exceed 62,000 by the end of this year, according to a June report by the National Partnership for New Americans, a Chicago-based coalition
“Immigrants and refugees perceive the current administration as one that is
of immigrant advocacy organizations.
“If immigrant voters, if newly naturalized citizens go out and vote or send in mail-in ballots, they could sway the outcome of the presidential election,” said Diego Iñiguez-lópez, the partnership’s policy and campaigns manager.
It’s not clear, however, which way they might sway the election. Immigrant voters are a diverse group, immigration experts say, and their voting decisions tend to be nuanced.
The state has a total of 267,000 naturalized citizens, hailing mostly from Bhutan, India, China and Somalia, according to the partnership’s report. Nationwide, roughly 10% of U.S. voters are immigrants, according to Pew Research Center estimates based on U.S. Census Bureau data.
But there is no such thing as the “immigrant vote” because immigrants don’t vote in a block like some other populations, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.c.-based conservative think tank that has argued for restricting immigration to the U.S. for years.
Immigrants, he said, are arguably more different from one another than native born populations because of the various countries from which they come and the varied reasons they left their homelands, he said. They also have differing socioeconomic status.
“Naturalized citizens in Ohio are extremely diverse,” said Iñiguez-lópez. “It’s one of the top states where immigrants originally from Africa can have the most electoral impact.”
Ohio’s naturalized citizen population is also very young and majority women, he said.
The National Partnership for New Americans partnered with Global Cleveland to produce a profile of state’s new American voters, and it shows Ohio as one of the top 15 states where the immigrant vote will play a significant role in election outcomes nationally and locally, Joe Cimperman, president of Global Cleveland, an organization that welcomes immigrants, said in a statement.
Having the potential for 54,000 votes from new citizens in Ohio in this year’s election is significant, especially when considering some of the close votes of previous elections, Iñiguez-lópez said. Just consider, he said, that President Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin each by less than 50,000 votes in 2016.
“There are numerous states across the country … where the margin of victory in the 2016 presidential election or the margin of victory for congressional races is smaller than the number of recently naturalized citizens,” Iñiguez-lópez said.
Immigrants, especially those from Latin American countries, have historically voted for Democrats, Iñiguez-lópez said, but it’s far from a sure thing.
“The question for this time is whether the conventional Democratic issues that generally immigrants
not friendly to them, as one that wants to make the process more complicated.”
Diego Iñiguez-lópez, policy and campaigns manager for the National Partnership for New Americans
agree with are the ones that will be deciding people’s votes,” Krikorian said, citing how coronavirus and civil unrest may impact immigrant voters this year.
“It’s very possible that the usual right-left orientation of immigrant voters isn’t going to be as important,” he said.
Many immigrants are socially conservative as they come from countries with more traditional values on gender, abortion and families, Krikorian said.
“What you’re seeing among a lot of those people is a kind of recoiling from the assault on traditional culture that were seeing from the left,” Krikorian said.
Immigrants also tend not to be one-issue voters, Iñiguez-lópez said.
Still, many immigrants may have recently naturalized so they can vote in this election, he said, potentially an indication that they care about the issue of immigration and Trump’s near dismantling of the country’s legal immigration system.
“Immigrants and refugees perceive the current administration as one that is not friendly to them, as one that wants to make the process more complicated,” he said. “So what we’re seeing is that voting is one of the main factors for people naturalizing, among other factors. … People have made explicit relationships between their interest in voting and the current president.”
Sara Abou Rashed, 21, was born in Syria and is of Palestinian descent.
Now a Northwest Side resident, the local poet will vote Tuesday for the first time in a presidential election, and she said it feels momentous.
“I know that I’ll walk out thinking I did something about who I’d like to see represent the United States,” she said. “It’s really about coming together and adding your tiny little voice, your little vote to millions across the country.”
Abou Rashed cares about local governance, education funding and issues that impact marginalized people, she said.
As an Arab American, it’s hard to find someone to represent all the issues that are near to her heart, she said. Although not “thrilled” with either candidate, Abou Rashed said she plans to vote for Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
“The main thing I’m looking for in this election is humanity,” she said. “I’ll vote for Joe Biden, but I’ll also be first to demand he change his decisions on some things or he pushes for a better agenda.”
She has a special interest in the issue of immigration and hopes that family separation at the border will end.
Krikorian, however, doesn’t think immigration issues play as big of role in the vote of many citizens as some people think.
“I’m skeptical there’s very many immigrants who think of themselves as immigrants when they are voting,” he said, adding that because immigrant voters are citizens, they are no longer directly impacted by immigration policies.
It’s more likely, Krikorian said, that immigrant voters will be focused on the same issues that impact the everyday lives of all Americans, such as health care.
Historically, immigrant voters don’t turn out to vote in as high of numbers as U.s.-born voters, said Neil Ruiz, associate director of global migration and demography at Pew Research Center.
That fact, along with language barriers and other factors, like understanding how and when to register to vote, may account for why candidates don’t always pay attention to the population, Iñiguez-lópez said.
Yet the number of eligible immigrant voters almost doubled from 12 million in 2000 to 23.2 million in this upcoming election, Ruiz said.
It’s a reason candidates and parties should pay attention to them, Iñiguez-lópez said.
“Naturalized citizens are political sleeping giants,” he said.
dking@dispatch.com; @Danaeking