| Dr.
11 Olveen Carrasquillo, Director of Columbia University’s
Center for Health and Urban Studies, reports that 31 percent of
Dominicans do not have any health insurance coverage, compared
to 18 percent of Puerto Ricans, 21 percent of Cubans, 35 percent
of Mexicans and 33 percent of other Latino ethnic groups.24 There
are few existing vehicles to educate the Dominican community on
how the American political process works, namely through the power
of the vote, and the effect it has on their quality of life and
public policy in general. As Jones-Correa notes in his study of
Latinos residing in Queens, New York, the lack of a mechanism
to involve a community in the American political system is a way
to disenfranchise the same community and deny it access to the
halls of political power.25 The findings of this voter capacity
report should encourage richer and more profound studies to assess
the quality of life of Dominicans-Americans and to provide an
incentive for establishing a mechanism for effective political
engagement that addresses the needs of the Dominican community.
Among the new immigrant Latino groups studied, Dominicans have
the highest rate of citizenship (57 percent).26 Moreover, 79 percent
of the Dominican youth (under the age of 18) are US citizen. This
underage cohort constitutes one-third of the entire Dominican
population in the US. |
Even more remarkable is the
finding that Dominicans are located in every single one of the 437
congressional districts in the country (including the District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico).This latter point challenges the notion
that Dominicans persist in being concentrated in New York and the
Northeast region of the US. While it is still largely true the City
of New York is where a large majority of Dominicans reside, this
fact is slowly changing due to an outward migration that is subsequently
reinforced by the direct immigration from the Dominican Republic
to newer Dominicans enclaves growing throughout the US.27 The Dominican
community is a new ingredient that adds to the pluralistic composition
of the United States. The question remains, however, if voting is
an exercise of political power where do Dominicans stand nationally?
This report seeks to begin to answer this question. This 12 paper
is divided into seven sections. Section 2 will provide a more in-depth
literature review of the pertinent subjects relevant to this paper
so as to frame the concerns of the Dominican community around terms
like ethnic identity, political participation, citizenship, voter
turnout, and redistricting. Section 3 will delve into the methodology
used and the variables selected to estimate the voter registration
capacity of the Dominican community within the 108th Congressional
Districts. |
Section 4 is
a discussion of the limitations the data and obstacles encountered
during the research that can be used as opportunities in the agenda
setting process. Section 5 is an addendum to the research that
applies our methodology to New York City. Section 6 discusses
the data and its implication in the context of how the Dominican
community must proceed in order to better understand its voting
patterns as part of a long-term strategy. In the last chapter,
recommendations are presented and justified as a short-strategy
to address the needs of the Dominican community as well as other
potential areas of future research. Appendix 1 provides the definition
of the terms used and reasoning behind our approach. The other
appendices are complete tables of the study’s key results.
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