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Currently Skimming:

10 Access to and Quality of Health Care--José J. Escarce and Kanika Kapur
Pages 447-480

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From page 447...
... is local. At the local level, a single national-origin group usually dominates the local Latino population, so there is a great possibility of Latino politics being framed in national-origin terms.
From page 448...
... , the organizational structure of the major Latino policy research organizations demonstrates this trend clearly. Each of the major Hispanic organizations -- the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Council of La Raza, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO)
From page 449...
... Instead, I argue that changes in immigration law in the mid-1960s and the dramatic changes in the composition of the Latino population that followed created the foundation for a set of shared interests among Latinos of different origins and ancestries, giving rise to a Latino politics that can be distinguished from the politics of other demographic groups. Both of these phenomena -- the shared experiences that underpin national expectations of a singular voice in Latino politics and incentives for Hispanic leaders to organize to link with a seemingly unified voice to express the needs of Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Puerto Ricans, and other Latinos -- must be understood as the twin foundations of today's Latino politics.
From page 450...
... society. Neither blacks nor Mexican Americans entered the United States voluntarily, but Mexican Americans joined the United States as citizens with treaty-based guarantees of land rights and the right of repatriation to Mexico.
From page 451...
... , the far bigger problem was the passivity that results from long-term machine politics and the commensurate sense of political incapacity they spurred among Mexican Americans. U.S.-resident Puerto Ricans of this era also faced periods of political exclusion and periods of neglect (Jennings and Rivera, 1984; Sánchez Korrol, 1994)
From page 452...
... With electoral politics precluded, civic organizing was a priority for all blacks. Although Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and other Latino populations had some local civic and political organizations prior to 1975, these were, for the most part, not integrated nationally.
From page 453...
... Although public opinion data are sparse on Latino national-origin groups that have begun to immigrate in large numbers in the past 25 years, available evidence indicates that Dominicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Salvador 4In this model, we contrast the immigrant-settlement agenda with an earlier Latino political agenda focused on civil rights demands. We argue that increased immigration has undercut Latino support for demand making based on claims of past exclusion and remedial politics (the "civil rights agenda")
From page 454...
... Latino leaders are working to build on this issue-based foundation for a pan-ethnic Latino politics. National Latino civic and civil rights organizations, such as the National Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, focus their organizational energies
From page 455...
... Latino Civic Engagement and Political Influence What is the nature, extent, and consequence of Latino political engagement? To answer this question, I analyze three dimensions of Latino civic engagement and political influence.
From page 456...
... As a result, empirical Latino political research must often rely on national surveys of Latinos that may not allow for direct comparison to non-Latino populations or on local or regional survey or polling data with relatively small samples that make it hard to compare across Latino national-origin groups or across regions. National data, for the most part, allow comparisons of the largest Latino national-origin groups (Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans)
From page 457...
... . Approximately one-third of Latino immigrants reported that they attended a cultural or educational event related to their home country in the past year, but less than 1 in 10 attended a rally for home-country political candidates, attended a meeting to discuss homecountry political affairs, or sought assistance from the home-country embassy or consulate.
From page 458...
... While these gaps have narrowed slightly, Latino turnout has not increased, despite the considerable growth in outreach to Latino voters over the past 20 years. Although there is relatively little research on the effect of immigrant generation on political behavior, available evidence suggests that immi
From page 459...
... Instead, as I discuss in the next section, the Latino-non-Latino participation gap results from institutional structures that lead to differential levels of mobilization and compositional differences between Latino and non-Latino populations. Institutional Structures and Demographic Barriers The reasons for Latino civic and electoral participation and nonparticipation are for the most part not unique to Latino communities.
From page 460...
... After analyzing its influence on Latino participation, I turn to some more general institutional factors that shape the political behaviors of all contemporary electorates. Institutional Structures Shaping Latino Political Engagement In 1975, Congress extended VRA coverage to four language-minority communities -- Hispanics, Asian Americans, American Indians, and Alaskan Natives.
From page 461...
... Other Latinos, including those yet to establish a critical mass through immigration, were brought into coverage, despite an explicit decision by Congress not to extend VRA coverage to all ethnic or linguistic minorities. Congress or the courts may eliminate VRA coverage for all Latinos in the future, including coverage of descendants of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans who faced sustained electoral manipulation and exclusion, if the perception arises that the primary beneficiaries are post1965 immigrants and their children.
From page 462...
... Latinos, and particularly Mexican Americans, are overwhelmingly concentrated in "reform" states, such as California. Reform states structured their electoral laws to reduce the power of organized interests and political parties.
From page 463...
... One reason that there are so few Latinos competing for statewide or national office is that legislatures that traditionally served as training grounds for executive office cannot fill this role when legislators are termed out after six or eight years. The impact of the institutional factors on Latino turnout appears in a clear natural experiment examining electoral turnout among Puerto Ricans living on the island and on the mainland (Cámara Fuertes, 2004)
From page 464...
... Individuals with lower incomes vote at lower rates than people with higher incomes. And people with lower levels of formal education vote at lower rates than people with higher levels of education.
From page 465...
... Second, the adult citizen Latino population includes higher shares of young individuals, those with lower incomes, and those with less formal education. More than 30 percent of Hispanic adult citizens, for example, have less than a high school education.
From page 466...
... . Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans are strong Democrats; Florida Cuban Americans are strong Republicans, while their New Jersey coethnics vote reliably Democratic.
From page 467...
... Arguably, however, when Fidel Castro leaves office and foreign policy assumes lower priority on the Cuban American agenda, the same issues that link Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans to the Democrats will spur a shift among Cuban Americans to the Democrats.
From page 468...
... The only pre-1975 count of Latino officeholders found that, in 1973, there were 1,280 in the 6 states with the largest Latino populations (Lemus, 1973)
From page 469...
... ; Na tional Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund Roster of Hispanic Elected Officials various years. in some sense the growth in the pool of Latino officeholders bodes well for the future.
From page 470...
... Naturalization Future growth in Latino electoral participation will depend on spurring naturalization trends. A recent estimate indicates that 4.2 million Latino legal permanent residents are eligible for naturalization (as are 3.5 million non-Latino legal permanent residents)
From page 471...
... 471 Columbia 6 6 10 12 7 13 27 12 13 14 11 11 Salvador 4 2 3 6 El 14 35 18 12 23 24 14 11 6 8 Dominican Republic 12 11 10 29 21 12 23 25 15 16 8 Cuba 10 15 16 18 62 13 15 25 16 11 11 23 13 24 46 82 77 Mexico 255 143 112 208 190 103 1991­2002 Origin, Share 35)
From page 472...
... . Latino immigrants report
From page 473...
... THE LATINO POLITICAL FUTURE The discussion so far establishes that the Latino political agenda, to the extent that it exists, is driven by a set of issues that bridge Latino nationalorigin groups and immigrant generations. While these issues are neither outside the American mainstream nor particularly controversial (contrary to what Huntington [2004]
From page 474...
... Senate from New Jersey. Clearly, a handful of victories, no matter how important, would not change the bigger picture of unmet expectations and lower than average levels of electoral participation and other forms of civic engagement, but they would move Latino politics to a new level of national prominence and, arguably, policy influence.
From page 475...
... The continual inflow of newly naturalized Latino citizens as well as secondgeneration Latinos coming of political age, however, renders this scenario unlikely for the foreseeable future. What is left, then, is a continuation and perhaps acceleration of the Latino politics that has emerged since the extension of the VRA in 1975: incremental growth in the electorate accompanied by an increase in the mass recognition of a shared Latino policy agenda (encouraged by continued elite efforts to form a Latino political community)
From page 476...
... Ultimately, then, the Latino politics of the near future rests on the questions that underpin my analysis. The tensions between the low levels of political affect across Latino populations and the reality of a marginally distinct issue agenda will remain.
From page 477...
... Religious diversity and Latino political atti tudes and behaviors.
From page 478...
... . Walls and mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican immigrants, and the politics of ethnicity.
From page 479...
... . "Let all of them take heed": Mexican Americans and the cam paign for educational equality in Texas, 1910­1981.


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