is not part of the progressive movement.  Not because their goals aren't progressive, but because their issue is one the rest of the progressive movement could give a damn about.

It has been very obvious to me over the past year that the progressive mainstream is basically afraid of this new movement and isn't welcoming them in.  That has left the immigrant rights movement on their own in terms of voter registration, and yeah, they're tanking.  Plenty of blame to go around, but a lot of blame has to go to Democrats who think it is posture about Republicans "failing to secure the borders," then kind of expecting immigrants rights supporters to just fall into the Democrats' lap without any effort because, well, people of color are supposed to support Democrats and what else are they going to do -- vote for Tom Tancredo's party?

The lack of Hispanic voting is a problem that is not easily solved, even by registering.  When I lived in Phoenix, I registered probably a hundred Latino voters.  At the next election, I got the yellow sheets and found out that eight had voted.  Wha???

What we need is a machine.  And we need to stop disenfranchising voters with felonies committed when they are young and immature in our barrios and ghettos.  In Arizona, over one in four black and hispanic males are inelgible to vote because of mistakes they made whilst kids.  And in a lot of states like AZ and FLA, one class six felony like stealing a bike at the age of 18 makes you ineligible to vote for the rest of you life.

Forget the scare tactic of terrorism, it is THIS disenfranchisement which is keeping a Republican majority, for if these people could vote, we'd be in power.

The democratic party should put more effort into Hispanic registration.Althought Hispanic are conservatives on social issues, most of them wont vote republicans because of the GOP hostility toward hispanic.

The democratic party needs to understand that the only reason California is "hard" blue, is because of the latinoe strangle-hold on the state neck...Look at whats happening in Cali,the state house and senate are prepare to pass a bill that would grant undocumented children, the right to get college funding etc etc..This could have never happened anywhere in the U.S , but because of the latinoe power grab on the state, it is possible to pass such a law.

I have worked on getting Latinos and other new citizens into the electorate since 1994 (Prop. 187) in California. It remains a very slow process. There was a major bulge in new registrations and Latino voting between 1994-1996 and many wanted to claim that this was a community response to the anti-immigrant initiative. But the subsequent leveling off suggests that it was a rather an increase resulting from the 1996 amnesty program which got a lot of CA residents into the citizenship process.

In light of this, I usually counsel that if we want more Latino registration, we have to provide assistance with getting eligible folks through the citizenship hoops as well as just registration.

Then we have to get new citizens to vote. Since the Latino community has exactly the same characteristics as white communities that don't vote (low educational attainment, low wages, youth) that's a real hurdle. It takes serious resources. I've seen recent research that it costs roughly $34 to get a new, low income voter into the process.

Lots to do. It is very much in the interests of all progressives and progressive Democrats to do this work -- these folks are our future.

I don't know if this is related at all, but a recent segment on NOW on PBS discussed laws being passed in a number of states (including FL) that put onerous restrictions on voter registration efforts.  It was pretty upsetting.  I wonder if that's part of the problem here??

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/235/index.h tml

The reason why Cali has become so blue is because the GOP tried to pass this very anti-hispanic bill, prop187.The democrats benefitted from this my sitting on their hands, and they expect the same with the anti-hispanic rhetoric going nationwide.

If the progressive movement were smart, they would've jump  on this opportunity to paint republicans as anti-hispanic and turn states like AZ,CO,NV, who has a strong hispanic ties, as hard blue as California.

Im surprised that the DNC or other democratic donor, didnt donate almost no money to push for hispanic registration, and now, they are whining because it seems like they wont be 1 million new hispanic registration..Well, the dems has no one but themselves to blame for that..You cant expect to take those people for granted by not doing anything to help push the immigration m0vement, then get mad about thing going badly.

How about the DNC or anyone donate $5mil to strongly push for hispanic registartion?..Its not too late, we have 2 months left and can make it happen..2 months is a lot.

Lying may be a hard accusation to prove, but failing to registering people while they were all together marching in cities across the country was just foolish.

''Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote,'' they proclaimed.

Apparently not.

Please, lets be honest.

Legal immigrants have rights. Instead, this movement is about rights for illegals, and about erasing our borders for the benefit of transnational investors and corporate free-traders.

Illegals should be given the boot and not the vote. Furthermore, the illegal employers who hire them and the illegal landlords who shelter them should be held accountable.

If big business and their do-gooder, open border pals on the Left don't want the law enforced against illegals, their employers, and their landlords then why enforce the laws on those who commit other crimes?

Taking this absurd reasoning by the open border lobby to its necessary conclusion means that the nation should tear down its borders and open the jail and prison doors.
 
The lack of strong, consistent enforcement is the crux of the illegal alien problem. If employers and landlords are aggressively prosecuted, illegals will have little reason to cross the border or to remain in the US without jobs or housing. Instead, most illegals will self-deport over time.

In other words, turn off the job magnet attracting illegals to come here in the first place.

Moreover, we need policy objectives that address the failures of "free-trade," and that motivate Mexico to get off the dime and use their common wealth for the common good to create sustainable employment for their citizens.

Legal or illegal, it doesn matter to the hispanic community...Those are just GOP talking point once they are attacked by hispanic for being too hostile to the community.

Being illegal or legal, never mattered to the hispanic community and here's why.

1)Every single "legal"mexican-american,"has" a family member or a close friends thats illgeal, specially if you're mexican.Therefore, fighting for comprehensive immigration reform can only help a loved one become legal.

2)Hispanic are very loyal toward each other and refers to one another as brothers and sister...There's no such war in the hispanic community where the legal hispanic, despise the illegal hispanic..Very,very very loyal to each other..I can tell you because ive lived in an hispanic community all my life.

3)If HR4437 passes into law, it would give police officers, the right to conduct immigration duties such as arresting illegal immigrants..this means that hispanic racial profiling will go up..THIS KIND OF RACIAL PROFILING IS WHAT BRINGS ALL LATINOES TOGETHER, WHETHER YOU'RE LEGAL OR NOT, YOU'RE BE RACIAL PROFILED BECAUSE YOU LOOKS HISPANIC.

Reason #3, is the reason why hispanic sticks together, legal or not.They see this fight as their fight to rage against racism and bigotery.

The hispanic community cant do it along, and this is why the democratic party should help push the immigrants movement garder..Right now, it seems like they are afraid to do so and i dont know why because you'd think they'd learn from prop187 and how it could swing a balanced state into their column forever..California has no chance to ever fall back into GOP hands..Even a republican governor, cant sound to hostile to hispanic in california because he knows what will happen, therefore, you have arnold passing laws for undocumeeted immigrants and refusing to send troops to guard the border LOL.

The point of this thread that has been wandered from is that a golden opportunity to register perhaps hundreds of thousands of new Democratic voters was missed. That's no way to run a political party.

The rate of registration and voting is low in many lower-income and immigrant communities. You can blame some of it on non-citizens and some on a higher percentage of youth too young to vote.

To really get people excited about registering or voting, they have to believe you will make a difference in their lives. This cynicism ("they're all the same") is common enough across the board, which is shown in polling data, the fact of 1/3 non-registered, and the 1/3 of the registered choosing Independent. I'm sure that most immigrants feel that neither the Dems nor the GOP really care about their needs.

The same old republican-lite strategy has been followed by the Democrats with respect to immigration issues, with the message: "we're also against undocumented workers, just not as bad as the Republicans". The Democratic Party in Colorado were called (or blackmailed) into a special session during which they passes "some of the toughest legislation in the country" against undocumented workers.

Well, maybe if instead of feeding the Tom Tancredo talking points, the dems should stand up for vaccinations for everyone, health care for all children no matter what, driver's licenses for safety and ID purposes. If we serve the needs of immigrants, maybe they would trust us long-term.

We can open a new diary about illegal immigrants. I know I had one in the past where you can look up my views on this.  For the record, I am in favor of strict controls against illegal immigrants. It is idiotic to imply that illegal immigrants should have the same rights as legals. If an illegal immigrant is caught, his app should be sent back to the bottom of the pile so he won't be cheating other legal applicants of a spot in the line. Do you know Mexico is a lot less generous with their illegal immigrants? Talk about a hypocritical country.

Anyway, regardless of my opinion,  I do agree with Matt that the key issue at hand is not capitalizing on a captive crowd to register many that will hopefully vote predominantly democratic. It is a lot more cost effective to do it this way than checking people up on the phone or sending people door to door.

The major problem within the immigrants movement is, they really dont have a leader to push them to the polls..Someone like, lets say, jesse jackson or Al sharpton,althought those guys arent really respected outside the black community, but they can push african americans to the polls.The hispanic community doesnt have anyone close to sharpton or jesse.

I was thinking, maybe they should recruit a major star hispanic MLB baseball player, to be their spokesman..Maybe someone like albert pujols or Alex Rodriguez..Those 2 are well respected, and well known latinoes in the U.S..Id rather alex because he's fluent in english and spanish and would be perfect to push young latinoes to the voting booth.

The politics of registration makes this tricky. Have a voter registration booth at an immigration-rights march, and guess what Lou Dobbs will say.

Doesn't matter that the people registering are US citizens: immigrant rights has been warped (in the public perception) into illegal immigrants marching for more illegal immigration.