While federal elections at the national level have tended to galvanize voters from all walks of life, the importance of civic participation at the state and local levels should not be cast aside.
This reality could not be more clear for immigrants, who find themselves among some of the groups most affected by policy across all levels of governance. At the same time, immigrants also have vast potential to make their voices heard through civic participation. More than half of the 46 million immigrants living in the United States are naturalized citizens, meaning that they are eligible to vote in all elections. Out of immigrant voters, Hispanic adults made up 34% of immigrant-eligible voters, representing the largest share of all immigrant voters as of 2022. This is a share that has grown steadily over the past two decades and will only continue to grow—in the November 2024 presidential election, Latino voters alone accounted for 14% of all eligible voters, compared to only 7% in the 2000 election.
Furthermore, in 2022 immigrants in DC with proof of residency gained the right to vote in local elections for their mayor, council members, and board of election members. However in 2024 only around 500 immigrants are registered to vote in local elections, therefore it is critical for workshops like Civics for All to exist to educate MLOV members who can disseminate voter information to their community.
Given the increasing percentage of immigrant voters over the past two decades, Many Language’s One Voice’s Civics for All workshops is seeking to bridge knowledge gaps in civic engagement to ultimately catalyze change by building from the ground up. Through a series of training sessions led by immigrant community members, our Civics for All Program teaches MLOV members about the US government system and how to exercise their basic constitutional rights, how to vote in DC, how to engage their families in civic engagement, and to take what they learned about civics into their community.
Since September 2024, 21 participants have been part of the program, and some graduates have gone on to conduct Get Out the Vote outreach with MLOV, reaching over 300 DC voters during the 2024 election cycle.
By transforming community members into advocates for civic responsibility, Civics for All hopes to inspire a culture of civic participation and responsibility among DC immigrants (both adults and youth). With two-thirds of Hispanic eligible voters younger than 50 years old, the importance of youth civic participation among immigrant groups can not be understated.
The relationships and curriculum MLOV has cultivated allows for the execution of Civics for All in a linguistically and culturally authentic manner, centering and engaging with community members in a long-term context beyond an election cycle.
By: Miranda Xiong, MLOV Economic Justice Assistant