Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas, director of research for the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Sacramento Bee about the possible undercount of Latinos in the 2020 Census. States with large Latino populations including Texas, Florida and Arizona did not gain congressional representation as predicted, raising concerns about the potential undercount of Latino residents. COVID-19 created new obstacles for census outreach, and Latino communities were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. “During the count, it was Latino communities that were having really high rates of infections and deaths, which also definitely impacted the way in which people view the priority of a census,” Dominguez-Villegas said. “When your community is dying, you don’t really care so much about participating in the census.” He noted that the Latino population in California grew by 1.5 million residents between 2010 and 2019. More information about the accuracy of the count in California will be available when further Census Bureau results are released.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas sees Democrats in power in Washington, D.C., and thinks the time may finally have arrived for comprehensive reform of U.S. immigration policy.
“It’s not very often that Democrats have control of the presidency and both chambers of the Congress,” Castro said during a May 4 webinar hosted by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative. “There’s a real opportunity here to pass comprehensive immigration reform and put 11 million undocumented folks — many of whom are ‘Dreamers’ or others, like their parents, who have been here for generations — on a path to citizenship.”
Castro, who introduced one of four immigration-related bills currently making their way through the political process in Washington, knows it won’t be easy, given the narrow Democratic majorities in both houses and longstanding GOP opposition to immigration reform that includes citizenship. Still, waiting too long could doom the effort.
As the 2022 midterm elections draw closer, elected officials will become “very cautious about the votes that they take,” Castro noted. “So, there’s got to be a lot of momentum and a big push to get immigration reform done this year.”
Castro’s comments came during a 10-minute live interview with webinar moderator Russell Contreras, a justice and race reporter at Axios, that set the tone for a panel discussion with scholars and political experts focusing on the challenges and opportunities for U.S. immigration reform.
During the interview, Castro spoke about why immigration policy reform is so important to him. He represents a district in the San Antonio area that is home to many Mexican Americans like himself.
“In our community, there’s an incredible sense of fairness, there’s obviously an incredible sense of family,” said Castro, whose mother is a renowned community activist and whose twin brother is former presidential candidate Julian Castro.
“There is a permanent class of conservative politicians … who want to use the immigration issue as a way to scare Americans and make them think that there is a lot of brown people who are going to come into the country and harm them,” Castro said. “But you see Mexican American communities being very favorable toward giving immigrants a path to citizenship because they understand that experience. To them, [an immigrant] was their parent or their grandparent. So, when they hear all of the fear-mongering, most of the time, they don’t buy into that.”
Castro said he hopes an umbrella bill that includes comprehensive immigration reform can be passed during this session of Congress, although it has not yet come to a vote. He noted that two other immigration bills have already made it through the House, however, and he urged the U.S. Senate to move forward with that legislation.
Cecilia Menjívar, a professor of sociology at UCLA who is an expert on immigration issues, argued that such piecemeal reform probably has a greater chance of success. Although the current social and political environment is unlike any in recent history, she said systemic barriers are likely to continue to impede sweeping immigration reform efforts.
Joining Menjívar on the virtual panel were Angélica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Los Angeles (CHIRLA), and Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute. All the speakers agreed that the national stance must recognize the complexities of the issue beyond border security and militarization.
Immigration reform is deeply interconnected with labor rights, access to education, health care and violence in other countries, they noted.
“You can legalize the people in the U.S., but if you don’t deal with the system that keeps us out and kicks us out, then you are not doing service to our community,” Salas said.
The so-called border crisis is actually a regional international policy problem, Selee said. “If you have lots of people coming in an irregular fashion, we need to rethink how we facilitate a legal path to immigration.”
Salas called for an urgent change in enforcement. “The detention system is a for-profit system,” she said. “Too many corporations [make] money off of the detention of our people.”
U.S. immigration policy also needs to account for the economic contributions made by the millions of undocumented workers throughout the country, Selee said.
Menjívar cautioned that immigrants should be recognized in a manner that avoids “reducing them to a dollar sign,” noting the many “social and cultural contributions [immigrants] have made to this country over decades.”
Selee pointed out that almost half of immigrants today have college degrees, representing potential talent that can help catalyze economic recovery in the wake of COVID-19.
“Unlock that potential, [and] it would fit in really well in a moment where we are trying to recover economically,” he said.
Latino Policy and Politics Initiative Director Sonja Diaz spoke to ABC7 about the role Latino voters are expected to play in the upcoming recall election faced by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Voter turnout has been historically lower for special elections, but Latino voters have turned out in large numbers in recent elections. “Our research showed that more Latinos in California cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential election than ever before,” Diaz said. She explained that both Asian Americans and Latinos are youthful demographic groups with increasing numbers of eligible voters. “This recall is really about a referendum of how we reopen — how our elected leaders including at the top, the governor, is able to ensure that people are having access to things to keep them not only safe, but making sure the world’s fifth-largest economy can continue to thrive,” Diaz said. She added that grassroots and civic engagement this year will carry into future races.
Professor of Public Policy and Social Welfare Martin Gilens was featured in a New York Times column examining a recent paper published by Yale political scientists Micah English and Joshua Kalla. The scholars contend that, “despite increasing awareness of racial inequities, linking public policies to race is detrimental for support of those policies.” The English-Kalla paper has prompted widespread discussion among Democratic strategists and analysts. “Their findings suggest that, even in this time of heightened public concern with racial inequities, Democrats are not likely to boost public support for progressive policies by framing them as advancing racial equality,” Gilens said. He called the paper “solid work” but also pointed out its limitations. “I would consider the English and Kalla results to be sobering but not, in themselves, a strong argument for Democrats to turn away from appeals to racial justice,” Gilens said.
Adjunct Professor of Social Welfare Helmut Anheier spoke about the intersection of economic prosperity and social cohesion in an episode of the “55 Voices for Democracy” video series. “Most of us favor a cohesive society, broad participation in the political process, and a prosperous, interconnected economy,” Anheier said, but he asked whether these wishes are compatible. He discussed the Dahrendorf Quandary created by sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, who argued that a growing and integrating world economy would eventually create “perverse choices” for liberal democracies. Later, Harvard economist Dani Rodrik argued that democracy, national sovereignty and economic integration are fundamentally incompatible. To test these theories, Anheier looked at data from 34 countries with upper-middle-income to high-income market economies over 25 years and found that the countries’ performance did not confirm the claims of Dahrendorf and Rodrik. Anheier concluded that globalization can be managed and the negative consequences of open markets can be offset by forward-looking policies in order to reduce economic inequalities.
Professor of Public Policy and Social Welfare Martin Gilens was featured in an Atlantic article about the influence of wealth on politics. In his research, Gilens has found notable differences in the policy preferences of affluent Americans compared to the middle class. These differences are not limited to economic matters like taxation, but also include funding for public education, racial equity and environmental protections, which the wealthy are less likely to support. These differences in policy preferences are significant because of the influence the rich have over government officials. In one report, Gilens analyzed thousands of public survey responses and found that, on issues where the views of wealthy voters diverged significantly from those of the rest of the populace, the policies ultimately put in place “strongly reflected the desires of the most affluent respondents.” Gilens concluded that the policies on these controversial issues “bore virtually no relationship to the preferences of poorer Americans.”
Public Policy Chair Martin Gilens‘ research into the impact of campaign finance regulations was published in American Political Science Review. Many scholars have expressed concern about the dominance of moneyed interests in American politics, and studies have shown that lobbying group interests and federal policies primarily reflect the desires of well-off citizens and well-funded interest groups, not ordinary citizens. While previous reports have faced difficulties drawing causal inferences from observational data, Gilens and his co-authors were able to analyze the effects of an exogenous change in state campaign finance law. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision held that corporations and unions have the same speech rights as individuals, and that corporate spending to influence elections does not give rise to corruption, as long as it is not coordinated with a political campaign. Gilens and his co-authors analyzed the impact of the ruling, which affected 23 states that had bans on independent expenditures by unions or corporations. After the bans were lifted under Citizens United, the states adopted more “corporate-friendly” policies on issues with broad effects on corporations’ welfare, they found. The authors concluded that “even relatively narrow changes in campaign finance regulations can have a substantively meaningful influence on government policy making.” The article, “Campaign Finance Regulations and Public Policy,” was written by Gilens, a professor of public policy, political science and social welfare; Professor Shawn Patterson Jr. of Southern Oregon University; and Professor Pavielle Haines of Rollins College. — Zoe Day
Director of the Los Angeles Initiative Zev Yaroslavsky spoke to Politico about growing efforts to recall elected leaders in California, starting with Gov. Gavin Newsom. Five previous attempts to recall the governor have failed. Now, voters unhappy with Newsom’s handling of the pandemic are again seeking to remove him from office. While there have been 179 recall attempts in California since 1911, only 10 have qualified for the ballot. Recently, virus fatigue has strengthened interest in recalls among disillusioned voters stuck at home, and many elected officials are becoming the targets of recall efforts. “I think COVID is one of those issues, and criminal justice is one of those issues, where everybody has an opinion,” Yaroslavsky said. He explained that law enforcement issues and pandemic restrictions have created distinct camps of Californians who “have been cooped up in their houses for a year” and are refusing to wait until 2022 to hold their representatives accountable.
Director of the Center for Neighborhood KnowledgePaul Ong spoke to NBC News about his hopes for increasing Asian American representation in the Biden administration. The White House announced the creation of a new position, Asian American and Pacific Islander liaison, to ensure that the community’s voice is further represented and heard. Details of the duties and responsibilities of the position have not yet been announced, but Ong said the liaison will be effective only if given direct access to key decision-makers in the administration. In addition, he said, a staff is needed to ensure coverage of vital issues to the AAPI community, including education, civil rights, the economy and housing. “Appointing an AAPI liaison could be one of the much-needed solutions to ensure fair and adequate AAPI participation in the administration, but it is critical that the role is impactful and not window dressing,” he said.
Lecturer Jim Newton spoke to the Washington Post about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approach to handling the COVID-19 pandemic. After winning the 2018 election with 62% of the vote, Newsom is now facing a recall effort caused by frustrations about his approach to the pandemic. In March 2020, Newsom announced a statewide stay-at-home order, which would be followed by a year of closing and reopening. “As it wore on, he seemed more vacillating, that there seemed to be a sort of uncertainty about how quickly to move to reopen,” Newton said. “It felt like the voices pressing for opening were starting to get to him.” However, Newton acknowledged that the circumstances were unprecedented. “I don’t know that he could have done it perfectly and I don’t know that there was a perfect way to do it,” he said. “He’s managed to be a little bit between the extremes and a little bit disappointing to people in both camps.”
