NEW REPORT FINDS LATINO NATURALIZATION DRIVEN BY INTEREST IN CIVIC PARTICIPATION, AFFIRMS EFFICACY OF YA ES HORA ¡CIUDADANIA! CAMPAIGN

Despite a dramatic increase in naturalization application fees in the midst of the recession, Latinos are leading the way in new citizenship applications and shifting the country’s electoral landscape, according to an independent study of the ya es hora ¡CIUDADANIA! (It’s Time, Citizenship!) campaign released today. The ya es hora campaign was launched as the action-oriented follow-up to the mass immigration rallies of 2006 and seeks to mobilize and directly assist eligible legal permanent residents with the citizenship process.

The study, Catalysts and Barriers to Attaining Citizenship: An Analysis of ya es hora ¡CIUDADANIA!, quantifies the successes of the groundbreaking and ongoing ya es hora civic engagement campaign. It analyzes multiyear data from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on the number of naturalizations in different metropolitan areas and compares them to the presence of the ya es hora campaign via local events and media promotion. The study finds that metropolitan areas where the ya es hora campaign was present had higher levels of growth in Latino naturalization applications than areas with no campaign presence; of the top 50 metropolitan areas for naturalization, nearly half saw the number of Latino naturalizations double between 2003–2006 and 2007–2008, when the campaign was launched.

Between 2003 and 2006, there were only five metropolitan areas where Latinos constituted the majority of those naturalized, but within a matter of just two years the number jumped to 11. This was due in part to the ya es hora campaign and the motivation stirred by anti-immigrant sentiment and the marches. The 11 metropolitan areas are Phoenix, AZ; Los Angeles, San Diego, Ventura, Riverside, and Fresno, CA; Miami, FL; Las Vegas, NV; and El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston, TX.

“As these new Americans register to vote in record numbers and become more engaged in our nation’s political life, we will undoubtedly see Latino voters playing a greater role in electing officials and shaping policy on the urgent issues that our nation faces today,” said Janet Murguía, President and CEO of NCLR (National Council of La Raza).

The study also draws on results from a survey of over 800 Latinos who attended ya es hora citizenship events. One in four Latinos cited their primary motivation for becoming a citizen as being “able to vote,” and another 22% cited “legal, political, or civil rights” as their main reason for naturalizing, indicating that about half of the respondents sought citizenship to defend or exercise their rights.

“These figures confirm that coordinated civic engagement efforts such as the ya es hora campaign will continue to make a difference in the future,” said Arturo Vargas, Executive Director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund. “Although there may be challenges along the way, the Latino community continues to show its commitment and desire to overcome hurdles in order become full participants in the American political process.”

The ya es hora campaign continues in 2010 with an aggressive media outreach effort from the campaign’s Spanish-language media partners, including public service announcements, advertisements, and promotion of the campaign’s toll-free bilingual hotline, (888) VE-Y-VOTA, and website, www.yaeshora.info. A series of nationally coordinated citizenship workshops are under way this month in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, New York, Texas, and Virginia in honor of National Citizenship Day (for a full calendar, please click here). The ya es hora ¡VE Y VOTA! campaign to promote voter registration and participation has also begun.

“The Latino community understands that citizenship is the first step to full civic engagement. The next step is exercising their right to vote, and we expect our community to do just that on November 2,” said Ben Monterroso, Executive Director of Mi Familia Vota Education Fund.

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About ya es hora ¡CIUDADANIA!

Ya es hora ¡CIUDADANIA! is an unprecedented national campaign coordinated by an alliance of national and local partners across the United States to inform, educate, and motivate eligible legal permanent residents to apply for U.S. citizenship. The campaign is coordinated by the Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, the NALEO Educational Fund, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), NCLR, and leading Spanish-language media companies Entravision Communications Corp., impreMedia LLC, and Univision Communications Inc.

For more information on the ya es hora campaign, please visit www.yaeshora.info.

From: www.nclr.org

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