IMMIGRATION: Latinos take on citizenship skills at Inland workshop
A Riverside workshop to guide immigrants through the citizenship-application process is the latest effort by national organizations to increase the number of Latino voters in the Inland area.
The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials has sponsored similar workshops in Los Angeles County for years, said Angelica Peña, who helped organize the Riverside training.
The Thursday, Jan. 17, event in Riverside was Los Angeles-based NALEO’s first major workshop in the Inland region. A smaller one for four groups was held last year. More are planned in other Inland cities in coming weeks.
NALEO has worked in the Inland area since 2006. But the group is ramping up its presence. Last year, it began funding, co-sponsoring and assisting citizenship, voter-registration and other efforts in the Inland area through formal partnerships with four organizations.
NALEO and other Latino organizations’ spokespeople say they hope the growing number of Latino voters will put pressure on Congress to approve soon-to-be-introduced legislation to provide a path to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants.
Citizenship drives are key to increasing the number of Latino voters, said Elisa Sequeira, the acting California director of civic engagement for NALEO. There are about 200,000 legal permanent residents eligible to become citizens in the Inland area, more than in Arizona or Nevada. Only citizens can vote.
“If you can’t vote, you don’t take part in decision-making that has an impact on your community,” said Mayra Aceves, a bilingual community outreach worker at Barton Elementary School in San Bernardino who was among more than 40 people at the workshop.
Aceves said she hopes to hold citizenship forums at or near Barton. She sometimes talks with parents about the benefits of citizenship, but knowledge from the workshop will help her advise them better, she said.
“If they’re citizens, you’re more likely to get them to school board meetings, to the school-site council meetings,” she said. “I think they feel more empowered, that they do have a say.”
Erin Quinn, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Immigration Legal Resource Center, co-sponsor of the workshop, told attendees of the other benefits of citizenship.
Legal permanent residents are not truly permanent, because a misstep — such as spending too much time outside the United States — could lead to loss of residency, she said. Citizens can travel freely.
Quinn walked participants through the requirements of becoming citizens and the many disqualifying factors.
The workshop was held as President Barack Obama vows to push for an immigration-law overhaul in the coming weeks and days after Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, outlined his own immigration plan.
Key to proposals endorsed by leading Latino, immigrant-rights and Asian-American organizations is allowing millions of undocumented residents to first become legal residents and eventually citizens — although in most cases, legal residents must wait at least five years before applying for citizenship.
Immigration moved back near the top of the national political debate after a record turnout of Latinos in the Nov. 6 elections led some Republican leaders to warn of the political risk of alienating Latino voters with what are viewed as hardline anti-illegal-immigration positions.
Latino organizations see citizenship drives and voter-registration efforts as key to increasing Latino political power — and the chances of an immigration-law overhaul.
The workshop was held at the offices of Mi Familia Vota, a six-state Latino voter-registration campaign. That organization’s decision to put its California headquarters in Riverside is another sign of the increasing attention that regional and national groups are paying to the Inland area.
One of the groups that attended the workshop was San Bernardino’s Librería del Pueblo, which in December held the first citizenship workshop in its 30-year history with the assistance of NALEO.
Another is TODEC Legal Center in Perris, which has held citizenship workshops throughout the Inland area since its establishment in the 1980s.
Several people from TODEC were at Thursday’s training.
“There’s always something new you learn or bring to the table as well,” said Luz Gallegos, TODEC’s community programs director.
NALEO learns about the needs of the Inland region from organizations such as TODEC and taps into their expertise, Peña said.
Erika Martinez, 28, of Riverside, was at the workshop because she plans to volunteer on citizenship efforts with Justice for Immigrants Coalition of Inland Southern California.
The Mexican immigrant became a citizen in 2007, and she helped her mother and sister become citizens three years later.
“People who know I’ve done applications come to me,” she said.
She can help friends and relatives with simple situations. But some are unsure if, for example, conviction of a misdemeanor or living abroad for a year disqualifies them, and Martinez can’t always answer their questions.
“They don’t understand the requirements and are intimidated by the whole process,” she said.