By Xinhua,
Los Angeles : Immigrants are gaining voting strength in California, as potential immigrant voters and their children could make up nearly one-third of the state’s electorate by 2012, according to a study released Tuesday.
The study commissioned by a California immigrant support group is seen as a political road map to maximize the state’s pro-immigrant vote, the Los Angeles Times reported.
It also underscores efforts to intensify political and civic action to help immigrants better integrate into society and win comprehensive legislative reforms, which have long stalled in the U.S. Congress, the newspaper said.
The analysis was conducted by Rob Paral, a Chicago demographer who charted a similar political road map in Illinois. It was based on 2006 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Homeland Security.
According to the study, immigrant voters and their teenage children, who are overwhelmingly Latino and Asian American, made up about one-third of the electorate in California state Assembly and Senate districts held by Democrats and about one-fifth of Republican districts.
Los Angeles County dwarfed all others with about 2.7 million potential pro-immigrant voters — naturalized U.S. citizens, legal immigrants eligible for citizenship and their children ages 12 to 17. Statewide, the total was nearly 7.7 million.
“We hope policymakers will look at this data to see who is in their district and how to best serve their interests,” said Daranee Petsod, executive director of Grantmakers Concerned With Immigrants and Refugees, the organization that commissioned the study.
“With these numbers, immigrants can invigorate our democracy,” Petsod said.
The new political road map is one of the tools that immigrant advocates plan to use in intensifying campaigns to win legal status for illegal immigrants, more family and work visas, and other measures to comprehensively reform the country’s immigration system, the report said.