Thousands of new citizens have voice in 2012 elections

As many as 4,000 new Massachusetts citizens could be casting their ballots in the upcoming elections, an opportunity granted to recently naturalized residents after the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Group conducted the largest voter registration of naturalized citizens in the group’s history.

“This is a very encouraging turnout — the biggest we have had by far,” said Franklin Soults, communications director for MIRA.

Soults said MIRA officials attended more than 20 new citizen meetings throughout the state to help these naturalized Americans register to vote.

“We found a tremendous eagerness among new Americans to register to vote because they are very aware of the upcoming election and the heated rhetoric around immigration,” Soults said.

Political rhetoric surrounding the immigrant population that discriminates and scapegoats them encourages more immigrants to register to vote, Soults said.

“By going to these events, we had a captive audience where new citizens were unregistered and were particularly affected by the political climate out there,” he said.

Soults said new citizens feel an obligation to vote in order to give voice to the immigrants, like themselves, who do not yet have a right to vote.

“As new Americans who have just been through the immigrant experience, they want to speak up for their immigrant brethren who are here and don’t have the ability to vote,” Soults said.

About 12 percent of registered voters in the Commonwealth are naturalized citizens or children of immigrants, according to the Immigration Policy Center.

Six percent of eligible Massachusetts voters are Hispanic, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Pew reports that there are 299,000 Hispanic eligible voters in Massachusetts, making it the state with the 11th largest population of eligible Hispanic voters.

Naturalized citizens could significantly affect election outcomes, said Sara Brady, policy director at MassVote.

“State elections here are won by margins of 100 [votes] or less with some frequency,” Brady said. “So, I think it [naturalized citizens voting] certainly can have a lot of influence.”

About 89 percent of registered immigrant voters came out to vote in the 2008 election, according to a study by Rob Paral and Associates, a research organization.

This rate is almost identical to the 89.7-percent voting rate of native-born citizens, even though there are about 10 percent fewer registered naturalized voters.

“Studies shows that people who register as new citizens participate in as large [of a] percentage, if not larger, than the native-born population,” Soults said.

MassVote also worked to help encourage new citizens to register to vote, Brady said.

The organization works every year to register new voters, but this year was particularly successful, Brady said.

Brady said in one day in front of the TD Garden, MassVote registered 1,000 immigrants.

“In a lot of cases, new citizens have been living in the U.S. for a very long time,” she said. “They have been following the political process for quite a long time. Overall, people are really excited to have the opportunity to cast a ballot.”

The Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers, a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, worked with MassVote over the fall to encourage and assist voter registration among the immigrant population, particularly in the Portuguese-speaking community.

“We have helped more than 200 new voters register this fall,” said Lois Josimovish, the director of development and communication for the organization. “We always have a special effort around the major elections.”

Brady said MassVote hopes that 2012 will have the highest turnout of new citizen voters ever seen in Massachusetts.

“It is important for our democracy and our elected officials to be as representative as we can,” Brady said. “New citizens are a new portion of our population that need to have their voices heard at the state, national and local level.”