B.J.Pol.S.

32, 353370 Printed in the United Kingdom

Copyright 2002 Cambridge University Press

Political Participation by Latino Non-Citizens in the United States

DAVID L. LEAL*
This article examines the extent of political participation by Latino non-citizens across the United States. The only previous national quantitative research on this topic is by Verba, Schlozman and Brady, who found little difference between the participation rates of Latino citizens and non-citizens. Using the Latino National Political Survey, large differences between citizen and non-citizen participation are found. Although Latino non-citizens participated in non-electoral political activities and in non-political civic groups, they were signicantly less likely to do so than Latino citizens. Examination of the non-citizen population shows that immigrants who understood politics better, planned on naturalizing, had a stronger ethnic identity, were more familiar with English and were younger were more likely to become involved. The traditional socio-economic measures of education and income as well as length of stay in the United States were non-signicant predictors of non-citizen participation.

This article examines the political participation of Latinos who live in the United States but are not citizens. Some scholars have noted that while non-citizens are unlikely to vote in American elections, other types of participation might not be unexpected. Garcia and Arce pointed out:
It should be noted that ineligibility from voting does not totally remove the Mexican-born from the electoral process. They can, and many undoubtedly do, participate in campaigns, voice political opinions with family and friends, and contribute to campaigns. However, the nature and extent of their involvement with the electoral process is relatively unexplored.1

De la Garza and DeSipio similarly noted that Lack of citizenship serves to exclude participation in electoral activities and can make involvement in non-electoral political activities even less likely.2
* Department of Political Science, University at Buffalo, SUNY. The author would like to thank Louis DeSipio, Michael LeMay, the anonymous reviewers and the Editor, David Sanders, for their suggestions. A previous version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, 1999. The author can be reached at dleal@post.harvard.edu. 1 John A. Garcia and Carlos H. Arce, Political Orientations and Behaviors of Chicanos: Trying to Make Sense Out of Attitudes and Participation, in F. Chris Garcia, ed., Latinos in the Political System (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 12551, at p. 147. 2 Rodolfo de la Garza and Louis DeSipio, Overview: The Link Between Individuals and Electoral Institutions in Five Latino Neighborhoods, in Rodolfo de la Garza, Martha Menchaca and Louis DeSipio, eds, Barrio Ballots: Latino Politics in the 1990 Elections (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), p. 18 (emphasis added). Hardy-Fanta similarly wrote that legal status is not a prerequisite for political activism; there are Latinos who are not citizens and who may not be in this country legally who contribute to political mobilization in Latina Politics, Latino Politics: Gender, Culture, and Political Participation in Boston (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), p. 120.

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While it might seem self-evident that citizens always participate more than non-citizens, this is not the conclusion to be drawn from the only quantitative examination of the topic. The recent Verba, Schlozman and Brady study of political engagement in America reported that Latino citizens did not always participate at higher levels than the overall Latino population.3 In addition, their regressions showed that while citizenship was positively correlated with an aggregate measure of political participation, the regressions on four specic types of political activity revealed a statistically signicant difference between citizens and non-citizens only for voting. Because they used a combined sample of Anglos,4 Latinos and African-Americans in the regressions, it is not clear to what extent the ndings applied specically to Latino citizens and non-citizens. This article re-examines Latino citizen and non-citizen participation in non-electoral activities using the most extensive dataset on these populations: the Latino National Political Survey (LNPS). It interviewed 2,817 respondents of Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage in 1989 and 1990. It is representative of 91 per cent of these populations in the continental United States, and it asked many useful questions about political participation. As will be shown, the results differ from those of Verba et al. by showing more contrasts between Latino citizen and non-citizen political activity than they suggest5 but nevertheless demonstrating the fact of some participation among non-citizens. Even a small degree of non-citizen activity is potentially important both because of the large number of Latino non-citizens and the signicant length of time they live in the United States before naturalization. If non-citizens quickly took the oath of citizenship, this issue might be of little interest. As Jones-Correa noted, however, it takes a generation for even half of the largely middle-class Latin American immigrant population in New York to become citizens.6 In addition, because so many non-citizens are concentrated in particular locales, a small percentage who participate will have a greater impact than if they were more evenly distributed across the country. Numerically, almost 38 per cent of Latino respondents in the LNPS themselves identied as non-citizens. While non-citizens are certainly not all Latino, Latinos make up the largest plurality of both legal and illegal entrants.7 This article does not generalize to all non-citizen groups, but it does provide data against which researchers interested in the non-citizen participation of other ethnicities (in the United States and in other nations) can make comparisons. The article also examines the determinants of political behaviour among the Latino non-citizen population. While there are several hypotheses why one
3 Sydney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman and Henry Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995). 4 Non-Hispanic whites. 5 It should be noted that this issue is not central to the argument of the Verba et al. book, but is a nding they nonetheless found puzzling. 6 Michael A. Jones-Correa, Between Two Nations: The Political Predicament of Latinos in New York City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 65. 7 Immigration and Naturalization Service, Immigration Fact Sheet, http://www.ins.usdoj.gov.

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non-citizen participates while another does not, the LNPS allows a test of some of these theories. Do the same variables apply to non-citizens as to citizens, such as education and age, or are there additional relevant factors, such as English language ability, length of stay in the United States, citizenship plans, or knowledge of the political system? This article provides the rst statistical test of these factors. Recent congressional hearings pointed out that federal law prohibits campaign contributions by foreign nationals to federal campaigns, although permanent residents of the United States may contribute money. Whether or not non-citizens should participate in numerous other ways, however, is a normative question that is rarely discussed. Should they be encouraged to volunteer for political campaigns, and therefore try to convince others to vote for a candidate, if they themselves cannot vote? Should distinctions be drawn between the various types of non-citizens, such as permanent residents, the undocumented, refugees and those seeking asylum? For much of American history non-citizens have been allowed, if not encouraged, to participate in politics. Twenty-two states and federal territories at some point in their histories allowed non-citizens to vote in a variety of elections.8 These provisions were gradually eliminated during the rst decades of the twentieth century. As Aylsworth commented almost seven decades ago in the American Political Science Review, For the rst time in over a hundred years, a national election was held in 1928 in which no alien in any state had the right to cast a vote for a candidate for any ofce national, state, or local.9 While voting is still not allowed for non-citizens, there is no prohibition against non-electoral participation.10
DISCUSSION

There are good reasons to expect that non-citizens might want to become involved in elections, reasons that would also apply to the citizen population. First, there is the pull effect of political campaigns. In election years a signicant amount of political advertising is heard and seen by citizens and non-citizens alike. The United States Federal Election Commission (FEC) reported that in the 199798 election cycle, for example, $1,392m were spent by all congressional candidates and political parties. In the 198788 election cycle, which covers the elections inquired about by the LNPS, this gure was $838m.11 In addition, the presidential candidates in the 1988 primary and general elections received a combined total of over $178m in public funds from the federal government, and spent additional private funds in the primary
8 Jamin B. Raskin, Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The Historical, Constitutional and Theoretical Meanings of Alien Suffrage, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 141 (1993), 1391470. 9 Leon Aylsworth, The Passing of Alien Suffrage, American Political Science Review, 25 (1931), 11416. 10 With the above-noted exception of nancial contributions to political campaigns. 11 Federal Election Commission, http://www.fec.gov/nance/nmenu.htm.

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campaigns.12 These gures do not include expenditures by state and local candidates or on behalf of initiatives or referendums. The various elements of the news media also extensively report on candidates and campaigns (in both English-language and Spanish-language formats). Non-citizens cannot avoid this ood of information, and it is reasonable to assume that many will become more aware of and interested in politics. Secondly, non-citizens and citizens alike are affected by the laws passed in Washington and the state capitals. Verba et al. agree that non-citizens are affected by American laws, and this should provide sufcient incentive for many to become involved in affecting legislation.13 This is especially true for those who expect to remain in the United States for the long term, such as permanent residents, but also those who are currently undocumented but expect to stay either with or without legal sanction. While these two different but related factors might draw people into the political arena, there are obstacles to the non-citizen. First, there is the question of resources. Non-citizens often have difculty with the English language, which would make non-electoral political activities much more challenging. They also possess lower socio-economic status (SES), and SES is generally associated with participation. Verba et al. also point out that two key spurs to activism are (1) membership in an organization that develops politically relevant civic skills, and (2) others asking for your participation. Non-citizens may have fewer friends and acquaintances who are involved in politics as well as fewer group memberships. When non-citizens think about politics, they may also be more focused on events in their native countries. Non-citizens are increasingly able to maintain strong ties with the place of their birth,14 and constant immigration has sustained ethnic communities.15 As Minnite, Holdaway and Hayduk noted, To the extent that such transnational communities provide a buffer against mainstream American culture and promote the retention of the language, traditions and concerns of the home country, they may delay incorporation or foster a new generation of immigrants with dual political allegiances.16 In addition, non-citizens may see their participation in political activities as

Anthony Corrado, Paying for Presidents: Public Financing in National Elections (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1993), p. 105. 13 Verba, Schlozman and Brady, Voice and Equality, p. 231. 14 Nina Glick-Schiller, Linda Basch and Christina Szanton Blanc, Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration, in Nina Glick-Schiller, Linda Basch and Christina Szanton Blanc, eds, Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1992), pp. 124. 15 Nathan Glazer, Is Assimilation Dead? Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 53 (1993), 12236. 16 Lorraine Minnite, Jennifer Holdaway and Ronald Hayduk, The Political Incorporation of Immigrants in New York (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, 1999), pp. 56.

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inappropriate. While the law is silent on most types of non-electoral activities, such as volunteering for a political campaign, non-citizens may know they cannot vote and that contributing money is only allowed to permanent residents. Given this patchwork, non-citizens may feel it is best to avoid all such activities and delay participation until citizenship. Undocumented residents may be particularly anxious to avoid any contact with the government, however tangential. Non-citizens may also be unaccustomed to a political system that allows meaningful participation. They may theoretically know that such participation is possible in the United States, but only gradually become aware of their options for inuencing elections. While these last two conclusions are different, they are not mutually exclusive. It is possible that a person could be both unfamiliar with the political system and believe that it is not yet appropriate to invest the time to learn more. While there have been many studies of the political behaviour of immigrants, they largely focus on those who have naturalized. This research agrees that the naturalized participate at lower rates than do the native-born.17 There is also a growing interest in the participation of the second generation, who are the children of immigrants,18 and some have examined the third generation.19 Little research, however, studies the behaviour of those who have immigrated into the United States but are not citizens. By examining immigrant participation in this period, we will have a fuller understanding of the incorporation of immigrants into American politics.
Kevin Hill and Dario Moreno, Second-Generation Cubans, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 18 (1996), 17593; Louis DeSipio, Making Citizens or Good Citizens: Naturalization as a Predictor of Organizational and Electoral Behavior Among Latino Immigrants, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 18 (1996), 194213; David Olson and Melissa Levitt, Immigration and Political Incorporation: But Do They Vote? (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Northeast Political Science Association, Boston, 1996); Louis DeSipio and Jennifer Jerit, Voluntary Citizens and Democratic Participation: Political Behaviors Among Naturalized US Citizens (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 1998); Pei-te Lien, Who Votes in Multiracial America? An Analysis of Voting Registration and Turnout by Race and Ethnicity, 19901996 (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, 1998); John Mollenkopf, Tim Ross and David Olson, Immigrant Political Participation in New York and Los Angeles (paper commissioned for the Negotiating Difference Project, International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship, New York, 1999). 18 Mauricio Ma zon, The Zoot Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984); George J. Sa nchez, Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 19001945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Peter Skerry, Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Louis DeSipio, The Second Generation: Political Behaviors of Adult Children of Immigrants in the United States (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, 1999). 19 Marcus Lee Hansen, The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant (Rock Island, Ill.: Augustana Historical Society, 1938); Rodolfo de la Garza, The Effects of Primordial Claims, Immigration, and the Voting Rights Act on Mexican American Sociopolitical Incorporation, in Wilbur Rich, ed., The Politics of Minority Coalitions: Race, Ethnicity, and Shared Uncertainties (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996), pp. 16376.
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From a larger perspective, Jones-Correa pointed out the contemporary lack of interest in questions of how immigrants t into political life: whereas a hundred years ago the question of political incorporation seemed inescapable, now it is hardly even an issue.20 Minnite et al. agree that research has focused largely on the impact of immigration on labor markets and social welfare policies, with less attention paid to the implications of mass immigration for the political process.21 Previous work on participation is mixed in whether non-citizens are included in their analyses. Scholarship using the LNPS has excluded non-citizens when the subject was voting22 and included them (but not separately examined them) when the focus was on non-electoral participation.23 This suggests an assumption by scholars of Latino politics that while non-citizens do not vote, some may participate otherwise in politics. This article describes the amount of non-citizen activity in seven nonelectoral forms of participation, ranging from volunteering for political campaigns to petition signing. Regression analysis is then used to test if citizenship status is a statistically signicant inuence while controlling for a large number of personal and political factors. Thirdly, using regression analysis, I examine the level of and determinants of Latino involvement in non-political community organizations and see whether those determinants are the same ones relevant to political activities. Lastly, I examine determinants of political activism among non-citizens by using a sample restricted to this population. Although immigrants are often described one-dimensionally, there might be important differences between those who become involved and those who stay home. As noted above, the most comprehensive work to date on non-citizen political participation is found in Verba et al. They compared the percentage of Latino non-citizens and the overall Latino population who were active in eight types of political activities. These data showed that Latino citizens participated more than the overall Latino population in some activities, but not in others.24 The authors found no difference when it came to taking part in political protests, and little difference for campaign work, political contributions and board membership. However, they found somewhat larger differences for voting, contacting
20 21

Jones-Correa, Between Two Nations, p. 43. Minnite et al., The Political Incorporation of Immigrants in New York, p. 2. 22 John Arvizu and F. Chris Garcia, Latino Voting Participation: Explaining and Differentiating Latino Voting Turnout, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 18 (1996), 10428; William Diaz, Latino Participation in America: Associational and Political Roles, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 18 (1996), 15474. 23 Rodney Hero and Anne Campbell, Understanding Latino Political Participation: Exploring the Evidence from the Latino National Political Survey, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 18 (1996), 12941; Robert D. Wrinkle, Joseph Stewart Jr., J. L. Polinard, Kenneth J. Meier and John R. Arvizu, Ethnicity and Nonelectoral Political Participation, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 18 (1996), 14253. 24 A more direct approach would have compared Latino citizens with non-citizens.

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elected ofcials, informal community activity and afliation with a political organization. Verba et al. then ran regressions on the four dependent variables of time-based acts,25 voting, political contributions and political discussion. For these regressions they used their complete dataset of face-to-face interviews including Anglos, African-Americans and Latinos. They found that citizenship, of course, plays a signicant role for voting, but, strikingly, for no other activity.26 It is surprising that these ndings of equal and near-equal participation of citizens and non-citizens in many forms of non-electoral activities have not been further investigated by scholars. Many would have assumed beforehand that large differences must exist across all political activities for citizens and non-citizens, but now we cannot be so sure. Aside from Verba et al., there are only a few studies that examine the political activities and opinions of non-citizens. De la Garza et al. were the rst to publish data from the LNPS, and they dedicated one chapter to various characteristics of non-citizens, such as demographics, attachment to the United States, media usage, ideological orientations and opinions of the US government.27 They did not, however, present data for non-citizen participation in the types of political activities discussed in this article. While Minnite et al. surveyed non-citizens in their multi-ethnic New York state immigrant survey, their data did not sample this group accurately.28 As they acknowledged, this was probably because the respondents needed both to speak English and to own a telephone to be included. Their data show that over 10 per cent of non-citizens reported voting in the 1994 gubernatorial and the 1996 presidential elections, and non-citizens reported an average participation in non-electoral activity of about 10 per cent. These results should be viewed with some scepticism, and the authors spent little time discussing them. The sample problems also highlight the value of the LNPS, particularly the English/Spanish survey option and the face-to-face interview format. Hill and Moreno, in a study of the political attitudes of second-generation Cuban-Americans based on the LNPS, included a dummy variable for citizenship status.29 They found it was signicant in two of the seven regressions they ran: non-citizens showed less political knowledge than citizens, but conversely were more trusting of government. DeSipio examined partisanship

Working in a campaign, getting involved informally on a community issue or problem, and serving on a local community board or attending its meetings (Verba et al., Voice and Equality, p. 357). 26 Verba et al., Voice and Equality, p. 359. 27 Rodolfo de la Garza, Louis DeSipio, F. Chris Garcia, John Garcia and Angelo Falcon, Latino Voices: Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban Perspectives on American Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992). 28 Minnite et al., The Political Incorporation of Immigrants in New York. 29 Hill and Moreno, Second-Generation Cubans.

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according to stage in the citizenship application process, the policy perspectives of those applying for citizenship and of those who planned to apply later, and the political participation of the naturalized. His data included both the LNPS and the National Latino Immigrant Survey (NLIS).30

DATA

As mentioned above, the LNPS interviewed 2,817 respondents of Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage. It is representative of 91 per cent of these populations in the continental United States.31 The respondents were given the option of answering either in English or Spanish, an important improvement over other surveys that include Latinos. One thousand and thirty-eight respondents were not citizens. Of course, non-citizens are a diverse group and generalizations are risky, a fact not often acknowledged in everyday political debate. Even experienced journalists sometimes conate all non-citizens together into a single group called immigrants, despite the many differences between permanent residents, refugees and asylum-seekers, illegal entrants, visa overstayers and other categories. There is no way to tell which non-citizen respondents in the LNPS belong to the legal or undocumented immigrant subgroups. There was a variable for citizenship, and non-citizen respondents were asked about their citizenship plans, but a large number did not respond to the latter question. The survey did not ascertain whether the respondent entered the country without permission, and perhaps to do so would have proved costly in terms of response rates. As discussed above, Verba et al. found some basic differences between Latino citizens and the overall Latino population, but their data are not nearly as extensive as the LNPS. They interviewed 375 Latinos but noted, it is likely that our sample is biased when it comes to Latino non-citizens, underrepresenting migrant workers and undocumented residents. Hence, those in our sample may well be relatively advantaged in comparison to non-citizens as a whole. This may help explain the lack of differences they sometimes found between citizen and non-citizen participation. The LNPS is less likely to have these problems because it was designed and executed with the overall Latino population in mind. Unfortunately, the LNPS did not ask non-citizens about electoral activities, such as voting or registering to vote.32 Given widely publicized accusations in a 1996 California congressional election that Latino non-citizens changed the
Louis DeSipio, Counting on the Latino Vote: Latinos as a New Electorate (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996). The NLIS interviewed 1,636 Latino immigrant adults in 1988 who were either naturalized citizens or eligible for naturalization. It was a national survey, and like the LNPS, all interviewers were bilingual. For more details, see Appendix I of DeSipio. 31 De la Garza, Latino Voices. 32 It did ask both citizens and non-citizens about voting in local school board elections. No non-citizen reported such activity.
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outcome,33 it would have been useful to see if any had reported voting (albeit six years before the election in question).
MODELS

Table 1 shows the number and percentage of Latino citizens and non-citizens who participated in the seven types of non-electoral political activities inquired about by the survey. These include: wearing a political button or displaying a sign, signing a petition, writing a letter to an elected ofcial, volunteering for a political campaign, attending a public meeting, attending a political rally and donating money.
TABLE

Comparison of Non-Electoral Political Participation by Latino Citizens and Non-Citizens: Percentage Engaging in Each Activity
Citizen participation 23.72 16.94 14.97 12.58 11.03 8.56 7.09 5.74 Non-citizen participation 6.25 5.19 4.81 3.60 4.23 2.12 0.96 1.63

Political activity Sign a petition Wear a button Attend a public meeting Average rate Write to a politician Attend rallies Donate money Volunteer for a campaign
Source: LNPS (198990)

Of course, non-citizens systematically differ from citizens in terms of age, income and education.34 These factors, especially age and education, are known to be associated with political activity.35 Perhaps non-citizens have not participated at a lower rate than their socio-economic status would suggest. This is one interpretation of the Verba et al. nding that the citizenship variable was insignicant in their regressions on specic types of political participation (with the exception of voting). Table 2 therefore presents regressions that test whether citizens were more
33 Outspoken conservative US Representative Bob Dornan lost to Democrat Loretta Sanchez by only 984 votes in the California 46th District. The Republican-controlled House investigated his charges but in the end refused to overturn the election. 34 Descriptive statistics from the LNPS show that citizens have far higher incomes and levels of education, are more likely to be female and are generally older than non-citizens. 35 Raymond Wolnger and Steven Rosenstone, Who Votes? (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980); Steven Rosenstone and John Mark Hansen, Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America (New York: Macmillan, 1993).

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TABLE

2
Petition Volunteer Public meeting Rally Money Write

Logit Regression Model Explaining Non-Electoral Political Participation by Latino Citizens and Non-Citizens

Variable

Button

LEAL

Intercept

Citizen

Income

Age

Education

Gender

Cuban

Information index Party differences Degree love US Ethnic consciousness Trust

Follow politics

Skin colour

Observations

4.233*** (0.663) 0.882*** (0.171) 0.098** (0.046) 0.070 (0.044) 0.123** (0.057) 0.217* (0.131) 0.241 (0.231) 0.175*** (0.042) 0.134 (0.092) 0.098 (0.079) 0.108*** (0.036) 0.009 (0.069) 0.236*** (0.067) 0.002 (0.066) 2,450 181.02

3.090*** (0.604) 0.973*** (0.165) 0.194*** (0.042) 0.099** (0.043) 0.320*** (0.054) 0.275** (0.124) 1.042*** (0.262) 0.181*** (0.040) 0.017 (0.082) 0.085 (0.074) 0.025 (0.033) 0.205*** (0.066) 0.269*** (0.063) 0.018 (0.062) 2,448 384.25

7.803*** (1.181) 0.721** (0.304) 0.073 (0.075) 0.007 (0.072) 0.174* (0.094) 0.540** (0.223) 0.329 (0.384) 0.302*** (0.069) 0.204 (0.165) 0.145 (0.139) 0.149** (0.060) 0.074 (0.116) 0.239*** (0.119) 0.014 (0.111) 2,450 100.42

4.893*** (0.712) 0.631*** (0.184) 0.113** (0.049) 0.005 (0.047) 0.270*** (0.062) 0.261* (0.141) 1.033*** (0.310) 0.147*** (0.045) 0.031 (0.093) 0.193** (0.086) 0.071* (0.038) 0.140* (0.075) 0.200*** (0.075) 0.117* (0.071) 2,450 186.31

6.960*** (0.974) 0.853*** (0.257) 0.160*** (0.062) 0.024 (0.060) 0.232*** (0.078) 0.210 (0.180) 0.162 (0.300) 0.190*** (0.057) 0.218 (0.137) 0.262** (0.118) 0.139*** (0.049) 0.009 (0.097) 0.201** (0.097) 0.018 (0.092) 2,449 148.16

7.229*** (1.138) 1.354*** (0.351) 0.351*** (0.071) 0.095 (0.070) 0.269*** (0.089) 0.049 (0.202) 0.457 (0.371) 0.233*** (0.064) 0.384** (0.170) 0.010 (0.130) 0.046 (0.053) 0.102 (0.110) 0.316*** (0.117) 0.176* (0.103) 2,449 206.97

4.877*** (0.786) 0.414** (0.200) 0.091* (0.054) 0.034 (0.052) 0.316*** (0.068) 0.336** (0.158) 0.256 (0.266) 0.195*** (0.050) 0.011 (0.107) 0.017 (0.094) 0.029 (0.042) 0.218*** (0.084) 0.333*** (0.084) 0.039 (0.080) 2,450 170.37

Notes: Cells consist of coefcients in numerator, and standard errors in parentheses. *** p 0.01, ** p 0.05, * p 0.10. Source: LNPS (198990)

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or less predisposed to participate in particular political activities than were non-citizens, ceteris paribus. A dummy variable for Cuban-Americans was also included, as prior research shows they participate less in non-electoral activities than do Mexican-Americans.36 A gender dummy was also included. In addition, the model takes advantage of the comprehensive nature of the LNPS by including measures for level of factual awareness of the American political system, whether the respondent perceives a difference between the two political parties, trust in government and other people, interest in politics, ethnic consciousness and self-reported love of the United States. The variable for political awareness consists of four measures of political knowledge. Included were two types of questions that measured different components of political awareness. The rst asked the respondent to identify certain political gures, and the second tested for broader knowledge of the political system. The political gure identication questions asked the respondent to identify Dan Quayle, William Rehnquist and Ce sar Cha vez, and the broader political knowledge item asked the respondent to identify the party with the majority in the House.37 The interest-in-politics question asked respondents how much they followed politics on a ve-point scale, and self-reported love of the United States used a four-point scale. The question for perception of party differences allowed three responses. The LNPS did not ask any questions about political efcacy. The trust measure is an aggregation of the questions for how much the respondent trusts government as well as other people. Because many of the non-electoral political participation activities require interaction with others, it makes sense to include both measures. While trust has not generally
36 Maria Antonia Calvo and Steven J. Rosenstone, Hispanic Political Participation (San Antonio: Southwest Voter Research Institute, 1989); Wrinkle et al., Ethnicity and Nonelectoral Political Participation. 37 The information index variable has ve levels because it consists of four dummy variables added together. It ranges from 0 (when the respondent could not correctly answer any of the 4 questions) to four (when the respondent correctly answered all four). This scaled information variable is similar to those developed by Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter (Measuring Political Knowledge: Putting First Things First, American Journal of Political Science, 37 (1993), 1179206). Although they pointed out that there is no generally accepted measure of the publics knowledge about national politics (p. 1180), they suggested a ve-level scale using questions found in the NES. Fortunately, two of the questions asked in the LNPS were among those chosen by the above authors: identifying Dan Quayle and the party with the majority in the House. In addition, research by John Zaller (Analysis of Information Items in the 1985 NES Pilot Study, report to the NES Board of Overseers, Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan, 1986) and Shanto Iyengar (Shortcuts to Political Information: The Role of Selective Attention and Accessibility, in John Ferejohn and James Kuklinski, eds, Information and Democratic Processes (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990), pp. 16085; Whither Political Information? (report to the Board of Overseers and Pilot Study Committee, National Election Studies, 1986)) on the 1985 NES pilot study showed that the best of the new information questions were those which asked respondents to identify political gures. Because our measure asks respondents to identify the jobs of three people involved in politics, we have some condence that these questions are useful measures of political information.

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been found to affect political participation,38 it has not been explored specically in the Latino context. Also included is a measure of ethnic consciousness that aggregates three questions: do Latinos of various groups have a common culture; should members of your group help each other out; and are you interested in what other members of your group are doing? Researchers have often pointed to the importance of group consciousness in stimulating political involvement, particularly for African-Americans,39 but it has not been explored for Latinos. The model for non-electoral political participation is therefore: Pr(Y 1) 1/(1 EXP(-XB)), where XB b1Citizen b2Age b3Income b4Education b5Gender b6CubanAmerican b7InfoIndex b8PartyDifferences b9FollowPolitics b10LoveUS b11Trust b12Consciousness. In addition, we might ask whether non-citizens are involved in other community activities besides politics. Simply examining political activities could leave the impression that non-citizens are more disengaged from their communities than might be the case. Local community groups and activities should be both less intimidating than political ones and more directly relevant to everyday life. We can therefore specify a second equation that uses the same independent variables as in the model above but that uses as the dependent variable whether or not a person participated in a non-political citizen group. These include charity, social, work, and sports groups. This is specied as a dummy measure because most respondents participated in only one such activity. This also allows logit analysis, which is the same technique used in the other regressions, thus facilitating easier comparisons. The third model that I specify attempts to learn more about the political participation of the Latino non-citizen population. While some Latino non-citizens participate in political activities, it will soon be clear that most do not. What might explain the different choices? Perhaps the traditional factors that inuence overall citizen participation are most relevant to non-citizens. The previous model is therefore used, with two differences. First, several additional variables are added that are relevant largely to non-citizens. These include length of time spent in the United States,40 plans for future citizenship status and
Jack Citrin, Comment: The Political Relevance of Trust in Government, American Political Science Review, 68 (1974), 97388; Rosenstone and Hansen, Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. 39 Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); Arthur Miller, Patricia Gurin, Gerald Gurin and Oksana Malanchuk, Group Consciousness and Political Participation, American Journal of Political Science, 25 (1981), 494511; Richard Shingles, Black Consciousness and Political Participation: The Missing Link, American Political Science Review, 75 (1981), 7691. 40 As Milbraith and Goel generally noted, The longer a person resides in a given community, the greater the likelihood of his participation in politics. Hill and Moreno, in their study of Cuban-Americans, found that the percentage of life spent in the United States was a signicant
38

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English language abilities. While one might suspect that all the above factors are at work in the decision of non-citizens to participate in politics, the LNPS allows for regression analysis to test which have explanatory power. Secondly, all citizens are deleted from the dataset in order to see which variables apply specically to non-citizens without using a large number of interaction terms. The dependent variable was whether or not a person participated in any type of non-electoral activity. Only a small number of people from this sample participated in more than one type, so the data were truncated into a dummy measure. The new model is therefore: Pr(Y 1) 1/(1 exp(-XB)), where XB b1Age b2Income b3Education b4Gender b5CubanAmerican b6InfoIndex b7Party Differences b8FollowPolitics b9LoveUS b10Trust b11Consciousness b12YearsUS b13CitizenshipPlans b14English.

FINDINGS

Table 1 shows that Latino non-citizens took part in all the non-electoral political activities examined, although their involvement was on average three and a half times less than that of Latino citizens. Participation rates for both non-citizens and citizens were highest for less demanding activities, such as wearing a button or displaying a sign, signing a petition or attending a public meeting. Rates were lowest for the more demanding and time-consuming activity of volunteering for a political campaign and for the one act that required disposable income, donating money. One initial hypothesis was that non-citizens, especially the undocumented, might avoid activities that maximized the risk of contact with the government, but this was not the case. Signing a petition was in fact the most common of the seven political activities, and writing to a politician was fourth. Like citizens, non-citizens appear to participate most in activities that are the least demanding and least in those that are not. As previously noted, non-citizens differ from citizens in terms of age, income, gender and education. Table 2 presents a logit regression model that tests whether citizens were more predisposed to participation, ceteris paribus. The results show that citizenship is positively correlated with all of the participation measures. This suggests that even if there is no law against non-electoral

(Fnote continued)

predictor of non-electoral behaviour. In addition, Garcia found that length of stay in the United States was the key variable predicting naturalization. The present study follows the lead of Milbraith and Goel and Garcia and uses time spent in the United States but also controls for age (Lester Milbraith and Madan Goel, Political Participation: How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics? 2nd edn (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1977), p. 113; Hill and Moreno, Second-Generation Cubans; John A. Garcia, Political Integration of Mexican Immigrants: Explorations into the Naturalization Process, International Migration Review, 15 (1981), 60825).

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Logit Regression Model Explaining Non-Political Group Participation by Latino Citizens and Non-Citizens
Local group participation 4.283*** (0.589) 0.329** (0.139) 0.250*** (0.041) 0.039 (0.039) 0.196*** (0.051) 0.134 (0.117) 0.744*** (0.217) 2,442 Variable Information index Party differences Degree love US Ethnic consciousness Trust Follow politics Skin colour
2

Variable Intercept Citizen Income Age Education Gender Cuban

Local group participation 0.096** (0.038) 0.115 (0.082) 0.157** (0.072) 0.038 (0.032) 0.093 (0.062) 0.135** (0.058) 0.052 (0.059) 222.58

Observations

Notes: Cells consist of coefcients in numerator, and standard errors in parentheses. *** p 0.01, ** p 0.05, * p 0.10. Source: LNPS (198990)

political participation by non-citizens, they nevertheless participate less, even when controlling for education, age, income and other factors. What is the substantive difference in this participation? An analysis of the coefcients using the program CLARIFY reveals that citizens are on average twice as likely as non-citizens to participate in these non-electoral activities.41 This contrasts somewhat with the conclusions of Verba et al., although the data for their regressions included their entire sample, not just Latinos. Table 2 shows differences between citizen and non-citizen participation in every category of non-electoral activity. Table 3 considers the effects of the same set of independent variables on participation in non-political local organizations, including social, charitable, work and sport groups. Once again, the citizenship variable is statistically signicant. Even though local organizations are probably perceived as more accessible by the non-citizen community than are political organizations, especially for the undocumented, Latino non-citizens are less likely to join them even controlling for income and education. Non-citizens are about 1.4 times less likely to participate, a lower gure than that for the average of the non-electoral activities. The reason might well be the accessibility idea mentioned above,
41 Gary King, Michael Tomz and Jason Wittenberg, CLARIFY: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results, Version 1.2.1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1 June 1999).

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Logit Regression Model Explaining Non-Electoral Participation by Latino Non-Citizens

Non-electoral participation 4.115*** (1.008) 0.301*** (0.078) 0.275** (0.123) 0.267* (0.162) 0.106 (0.135) 0.010 (0.015) 0.263* (0.158) 0.105 (0.085) 786 Variable Gender Age Cuban Education Ethnic consciousness Trust Follow politics Skin colour
2

Variable Intercept Information index Citizenship plans Perceive party differences Degree love US Length in US English Income Observations

Non-electoral participation 0.211 (0.223) 0.167* (0.094) 0.239 (0.300) 0.091 (0.092) 0.191*** (0.069) 0.190* (0.113) 0.182* (0.106) 0.313*** (0.113) 75.54

Notes: Cells consist of coefcients in numerator, and standard errors in parentheses. All citizen respondents dropped from dataset for this regression. *** p 0.01, ** p 0.05, * p 0.10. Source: LNPS (198990)

although local organizations may be perceived as more relevant and even more fun than political options. The nal step reported in Table 4 is to look more closely at the non-citizen population.42 Uhlaner, Cain and Kiewiet analysed Latino non-citizen participation using a California telephone survey. Their dependent variables included whether the respondent contacted elected ofcials, contacted the media, and worked with a group on a community problem.They found the independent variables (except age, percentage of life lived in the United States, and perception of a problem related to ethnicity) were largely insignicant.43
42 A related issue is whether there is a general tendency among some non-citizens to become involved in political and non-political organizational activity. Perhaps some non-citizens are simply predisposed to activity while others are not, so it would be wrong to assume that those who participate in political activities are doing so exclusively because of their interest in politics. The data, however, do not entirely support this. While those who participate in political activities are more likely to be involved in local organizations, those who eschew politics are also to be found. Of those with no political involvement 9 per cent were members of local organizations, while the gure for those who participated in at least one political activity was 24 per cent. Overall, about 11 per cent of Latino non-citizens were involved in local groups, which is a higher percentage than for any of the political activities detailed in Table 1. 43 Carole Uhlaner, Bruce Cain and D. Roderick Kiewiet, Political Participation of Ethnic Minorities in the 1980s, Political Behavior, 11 (1989), 195231.

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The results show that for non-citizens, non-electoral participation is signicantly affected by political information and the perception of differences between Democrats and Republicans. While the former was signicant in the previous regressions, the latter was not. This suggests that political awareness may be a more important determinant of non-citizen than citizen political activity. In addition, those who were interested in politics and had a greater sense of ethnic identity were more likely to participate in politics, which reects previous ndings using the overall Latino sample. The variable for age is statistically signicant but negative, which means that younger non-citizens were more likely to be active than were their seniors. This is contrary to previous understandings of electoral participation, where age is seen as a close cousin of education; people are thought to gain more information as they age and therefore grow more likely to participate. Perhaps younger non-citizens saw a greater need for political activity as American politics grew increasingly anti-immigrant. Two other distinctive features are the insignicance of the socio-economic status (SES) variables of education and income, which means that the traditional SES model does not appear to apply to the non-citizen population. Trust is again negatively associated with political participation. Non-citizens who trust government and other people may see less reason to invest time and energy in politics, while the sceptical may see a need for activism. Skin colour was also negative, meaning that those coded by the interviewers as darker were less likely to participate. They may have been discouraged by a greater level of discrimination, although the data do not allow any certain conclusions to be drawn. Those who expected to naturalize were also more likely to become involved, as were those more comfortable with the English language. The length of time lived in the United States was not signicant, however. It would therefore seem to matter less how long somebody lives in the United States than what they learn while they are there. People who live in the United States for twenty years may still not see any pressing reason to become involved if they have little understanding of the political system and do not think it matters which party has power. This may not be far removed from how many American citizens decide to become involved in politics.
CONCLUSIONS

This article examined the extent of non-electoral political participation by Latino non-citizens, along with their involvement in non-political group participation. It also explored the determinants of political participation among the non-citizen population. Latino non-citizens were involved in non-electoral political activities, although far less often than were citizens. While the average participation rate across all seven types of activities for citizens was 12.6 per cent, the gure for non-citizens was 3.6 per cent, or over three and a half times less. An important question is whether or not this lower rate was due to lower levels

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of education, age and income among non-citizens, as these factors are often associated with participation. The regressions in Table 2, however, showed that this is not the case. The citizenship variable is statistically signicant in all regressions, although controlling for SES and other measures lowered the gap between citizen and non-citizen participation from three and a half to two times. These ndings contrast with the only previous national study that analysed this subject quantitatively. Verba et al. found differences between Latino citizens and the overall Latino population in voting, contacting elected ofcials, informal community activity and afliation with a political organization. However, their data showed no differences in political protest activities, and only minor differences for campaign work, campaign contributions and board membership. In addition, their regressions, using their overall United States dataset, showed that while citizenship was a statistically signicant variable explaining voting and overall participation, it did not explain participation in the sort of non-electoral political activities examined in this article. When it came to participation in local non-political groups, the analysis here nds signicant citizen/non-citizen differences though they are not as pronounced as for political activities. Citizens were about one and a half times more likely to participate. Although the data cannot conclusively reveal why, it is likely not only that local group activities are less forbidding than political activities, but also that they may be perceived as more directly relevant and perhaps even more fun. This article also examined why some non-citizens participated more in political activities than did others. The results show that participation is not random but boosted when the non-citizen is more informed about politics, perceives differences between the two major parties, is interested in politics, has a strong ethnic identity, is younger and plans to naturalize. The traditional SES measures of education and income, along with length of time in the United States and reported love of the United States, were not signicant. Whether or not non-citizens should be involved in political life is a normative question this article cannot answer. Those who oppose non-citizen participation might not nd great cause for alarm, however. Not only is it a limited population that becomes involved, but the individuals are not randomly self-selected. They are better informed about American politics, more likely to plan on naturalizing, and more likely to perceive differences between the parties than are the non-participants. What implications might these conclusions have for civic involvement? First, they show that participation for all Latinos in all types of activities is associated with political knowledge. The substantial growth of Spanish-language television, newspapers and radio means that such information is more available to Latino non-citizens today than at any time in recent history. Anecdotal evidence also indicates that political candidates are spending more time than ever before granting interviews to and providing information to reporters from such media. This suggests that Latino non-citizen political and community participation will only continue to increase.

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This article also has implications for the perception of non-citizens by citizens. Immigrants are often viewed as coming to America in order to reap government or economic benets and not to become active stakeholders in the nation. The ndings reported here show that, contrary to stereotype, a number of non-citizens are civic-minded and do invest their time in communities in which some are not even legally allowed to live. In addition, community groups should be aware that the common view of non-citizens as leading isolated and perhaps even fearful lives44 is not entirely accurate. Latino non-citizens do participate in community and political activities, so local groups who need assistance in solving community problems should not overlook them.45 While it is open to debate whether non-citizens should be active in political campaigning, few should oppose their involvement in church groups, parent-teacher organizations or Little League. Lastly, as many non-citizens will eventually naturalize, by studying the civic orientations of non-citizens we can learn more about the future direction of participation. We saw that those who are likely to naturalize are more likely to participate politically, which means these future citizens are somewhat predisposed to making contributions to civic life. In addition, if some Latino non-citizens are willing to participate despite the legal ambiguities of such involvement, then there are probably many others who will become active once they naturalize. This further suggests that Latino immigrants are better prepared to make civic as well as economic and cultural contributions to their adopted country than may be commonly thought. What are the implications for future research? The LNPS is now eleven years old and there is a need for a new national Latino survey. The Latino population continues to grow, both in terms of citizens and non-citizens, but there is little contemporary Latino survey data available for analysis. This article would make a useful baseline of comparison for future studies, but unfortunately no comprehensive surveys are under way. The results reported here suggest that any such survey should be designed to encompass respondents not just of Mexican, Cuban and Puerto Rican descent but also those from Central America and the Caribbean. It would also be useful to try to ascertain the many categories of non-citizen, such as permanent residents, refugees and asylum seekers, and undocumented entrants. Lastly, the sampling of another non-citizen population group in the United States, such as immigrants of Asian heritage who have not naturalized, would allow important comparisons to be made.46

44 Either from a lack of understanding of society, in the case of legal residents, or fear of discovery by law enforcement or immigration authorities, in the case of undocumented immigrants. 45 Delgado similarly argued that unions should not overlook Latino non-citizens as potential members. He discussed how non-citizens are not unorganizable, as is commonly thought, but capable of taking an active role in union activities (He ctor L. Delgado, New Immigrants, Old Unions: Organizing Undocumented Workers in Los Angeles (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993)). 46 A measure of political efcacy might also be included, as it is a useful control variable for research into political participation.