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This
section covers the key findings that can lead to a more comprehensive
report in order to better understand and measure the potential
of Dominican-Americans, as a community with access to power channels
within the United States. A National Snapshot Dominicans are still
considered fairly new Americans, most of the known populations
are typically assumed to be concentrated in the Northeast region
of the US and Florida. While this is still the case, things are
changing and the Dominican population is spreading throughout
the United States. This study has found that Dominicans reside
in all 437 congressional districts, including Puerto Rico and
the District of Columbia. Appendix 2, lists the top 100 Congressional
Districts in the United States. In looking at the top 100 congressional
districts new areas with a growing Dominican population were found,
such as New Hampshire, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia,
Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, and Alaska. If misrepresentation
corrections were included then potentially Ohio, North Carolina
and Texas could also be added to these states with over 500 Dominicans
at a congressional district level. However, through the existing
data only 98 of the 437 Congressional Districts met the criterion
of having a listed population of 500 or more Dominicans. |
A 500-person cut off was used
since it is a nice number representative of a sizeable population.
This figure can also be used as a stepping-stone to determine the
make up of the Dominican community throughout this country. As the
community continues to grow more Dominicans will petition to become
naturalized citizens, register to vote and ultimately turnout to
vote. This study finds that among the “new Americans,”
namely Central and South Americans, Dominicans have the highest
rate of citizenship, numbered at 57 percent.63 When compared to
Mexicans, Dominicans still lag behind by 10 percentage points in
terms of their rate of citizenship. Yet there is hope, more striking
is the fact that 79 percent of all US Dominican youth are also citizens.
This young cohort is currently one-third of the US Dominican population.
More specifically, one out of every three Dominicans is under the
age of 18, and within this group four out of five are US citizens
and will be added to the cadre of potential future voters. High
Population ? High Citizenship Rational thought would suggest that
a large ethnic and/or racial population presence in a CD would be
highly correlated with voter potential, since a large established
population can imply higher levels of citizenship. Based on the
calculated data this may not necessarily be the case. |
A close look
was given to the top five Dominican populated congressional districts
within the US and was compared to the top five districts with
the highest amount of potential Dominican voters. (Table 1 shows
a comparison of these two sets of data.) What is found is that
while both columns are self-contained they are not directly reflective
of each other with the exception of Rep. Rangel’s district
(NY-15) and Rep. Menéndez’s district (NJ-13). The
report also finds that districts located even within the same
states can reverse their positions—in one case, one district
has a higher population but a lower number of potential adult
citizens eligible to vote compared to a neighboring district where
the opposite is the case. This information should be used to increase
the effectiveness of community-based organizations (CBOs) whose
mission is to provide equal services to these areas. These CBOs
facilitate the integration into the American polity, at the local
level. |
