The number of Mexican-born immigrants who became U.S. citizens swelled by nearly 50% last year amid a massive campaign by Spanish-language media and immigrant advocacy groups to help eligible residents apply for citizenship, according to a government report released Thursday.
Despite Mexicans' historically low rates of naturalization, 122,000 attained citizenship in 2007, up from 84,000 the previous year, with California and Texas posting the largest gains. Salvadorans and Guatemalans also showed significant increases at a time when the overall number of naturalizations declined by 6%.
At the same time, the number of citizenship applications filed doubled to 1.4 million last year, the report by the U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics found.
The surge in naturalization of Mexicans, their largest year-to-year increase this decade, came amid pitched national debate over immigration reform. The report cited the campaign by Spanish-language media and community groups, along with a desire to apply before steep fee increases took effect, as two major reasons for the jump in naturalizations.
"Immigrants are tired of the tone and tenor of the immigration debate, which they feel is humiliating and does not recognize their contributions," said Rosalind Gold of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials' Educational Fund in Los Angeles. "That climate has fueled their desire to have their voices heard."
New citizens interviewed Thursday echoed those sentiments. Erika Lorena Rivera, 30, came to Los Angeles from Mexico at age 1, became eligible for naturalization a decade ago but decided to take the plunge -- along with four relatives -- just last October. Rivera, a supervisor for a Los Angeles hair accessory firm, said she was offended by what she perceived as growing anti-immigrant bias and was moved to apply for citizenship after seeing ads about it on TV.
"I became a citizen to have full rights and vote for a president for the first time," said Rivera, adding that she and her family plan to vote for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
The increase in Latinos with the power to vote could affect the political landscape in November, analysts said. Louis DiSipio, a UC Irvine political science professor, said one of the biggest impacts could be in Florida, a key battleground state that posted 54,500 new citizens last year. Although the ethnic Cuban population there has dominated the Latino political landscape and tended to vote Republican, he said, more of the newer immigrants are coming from South America and trending Democratic. For the first time this decade, more Latinos were registered as Democrats than Republicans, 35% to 33% as of this spring, according to Gold.
