| This
assessment seeks to achieve two things: 1) create the first comprehensive
report on the potential electoral voter capacity of Dominican
US citizens in the United States7; and 2) identify potential statistical
relations between the population of Dominican U.S. citizens and
actual voter participation by Dominican-Americans.8 In addition,
this assessment can serve as a tool for community-based organizations,
and the Dominican community at large, to take the appropriate
steps to increase the level of services and program funding dedicated
to educate, orient, and facilitate political participation and
civic awareness among Dominicans in the United States. It also
could provide the groundwork to assess the level of electoral
participation among Dominicans at a congressional district level,
primarily through the study of the number of Dominican U.S. citizens
of voting age. Furthermore, this report shows how the methodology
developed to estimate voter capacity could be employed at a city
level; New York City is presented as a case study for comparative
purposes. In attempting to forecast Dominican voter capacity Hudson
County, New Jersey is used as a benchmark to highlight the gap
between the available and missing information needed for nationwide
consistency.There are several reasons why people should know,
understand, and, thus, recognize the political potential that
lies within the Dominican community residing in the US. As of
the November 2003 elections, there have been 25 elected officials
of Dominican descent across the country. |
There is also an increasing
number of Dominican-American appointed officials throughout various
levels of government. The fact that there have been so many officials
elected into office since 1991 is a remarkable feat given that Dominicans
started to immigrate to the United States in significant numbers
post-Trujillo Era.9 after 1961, with an average of 23,000 immigrants
per year in the 1980s and more than 40,000 per year in the 1990s.10
Since the early 1970s, only 190,000 Dominicans11 have become naturalized
citizens, but many of them have had children born in the United
States that are also citizens and are of voting age.12 The CUNY-Dominican
Studies Institute estimates there are 345,914 U.S.-born Dominicans.13
Despite these dramatic advances over the past three decades there
does not exist a comprehensive assessment of Dominican political
behavior in the US.14 Worse yet, it is unclear how many Dominicans
there are in the country. The first official 2000 Census report
accounted for 765,000 Dominicans in the U.S.15 However, Dr. John
Logan of SUNY-Albany estimates the Dominican population to be over
1.1 million while the Pew Hispanic Center numbered Dominicans at
900,000.16 Based on these latter findings the US Census re-analyzed
their figures to find that due to the question format (particularly
the lack of group examples) there was a 25 percent misrepresentation.17,18
After reviewing the cadre of academic reports estimating the Dominican
population in the US19, it is reasonable to assume that at minimum
there are a million Dominicans in the US. As this community gets
older and more established there is a need to start educating and
including these “new Americans” into the fabric of the
American political system. |
Even though
Dominicans were adversely affected by the last Census count, the
2000 Census data is used, as initially reported, so as to maintain
consistency. According to the 2000 Census, 53 percent of the Dominicans
in the country live within New York City.20 Based on this information,
informal targeted phone interviews were conducted with known agencies
that service the Dominican community in New York City through
the provision of citizenship classes and assistance in filling
out naturalization documents. These agencies seemed to serve less
than three percent of the Dominican non-citizen population per
year There exists a clear dichotomy between the rapidly increasing
number of Dominican individuals becoming deeply involved in the
American political process and a community that because it does
not have a significant number of voter registration and voter
mobilization programs, it in turn is under-serviced in terms of
monies allocated to Dominican neighborhoods to meet their housing/infrastructure,
health care and education needs. For example, a recent study done
by Christopher B. Swanson, a research associate at The Urban Institute,
shows that the New York public school system has the lowest graduation
rates in the country.22 Dominicans are the second largest Hispanic
group in the New York City public school system, constituting
10.4 percent of all students
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