At age 16, Jenny Dai is too young to vote, but she’s been canvassing in Flushing all the same, realizing she has a powerful tool to reach out to potential voters: her ability to speak Mandarin Chinese.
Of an estimated 6.6 million Asian-Americans who are eligible to vote in the United States, only about half were registered in 2006 and only one third voted. Going door to door through the apartment buildings in Flushing, Dai and her canvassing teammates, June Li and Angela Lee, were on a mission to increase those numbers, one voter at a time.
Many immigrant communities separated from the electoral process by their limited English have low voter participation rates, but here in New York, civic groups and political campaigns are turning to the children of immigrants as bridges to those new to the political process. Organizers have concluded it’s a cost-effective way to reach large populations of potential voters, because immigrant youth are more likely to be bilingual than their parents, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement Foundation.
As in the rest of the U.S., immigrants in New York must first be naturalized before they can register to vote, but even some naturalized citizens are left out of the electoral process due to language barriers. Standard campaign efforts, such as advertisements, phone calls, and rallies, don’t necessarily reach those who don’t speak English.
For that reason, the YKASEC – Empowering the Korean American Community, the organization leading the canvassing effort in Flushing, has made an effort to reach out young Asian-Americans for its get-out-thevote efforts, said Chris Chung, 26, a program coordinator. Even though older people are more likely to be politically engaged, he said, “young people can be points of contact for the parents, and they can serve as mouthpieces and ears for the first generation.”
Young people are also more likely to volunteer time, Chung said. This year, for the first time, the organization will be canvassing neighborhoods as a part of their campaign to reach 1,000 Asian-American voters in Flushing to encourage them to cast ballots in November. The canvass is a part of a larger campaign run by Voice Your Vote New York, a coalition of Asian-American organizations encouraging civic engagement. Studies have shown that members of ethnic minorities and immigrant communities are more likely to vote when approached by canvassers who are similar to them.
“The language barrier is really tough,” said Li, a recent college graduate. She was doing her best to engage potential voters, sometimes politely shouting through the door in Mandarin to convince residents to open up. “They are already like, who are you? Why are you here?” she said, so letting them know immediately that the canvassers spoke Mandarin was important.
Li, who moved with her parents to the U.S. from China when she was 6, had written out her talking script in Pinyin, a transliteration of Chinese, because she’s more fluent in English than Chinese. Sometimes Dai, her Mandarin-speaking teammate, would step in, because she was more comfortable with the language.
“They don’t want to talk, because they don’t speak English,” Dai said, “but there is a sense of familiarity when we speak their language.” She thought that the reticence to talk that many canvassers experience in immigrant communities shouldn’t be seen as a sign of political apathy, but an assumption that the door knockers won’t be able to speak Chinese.
Dai comes from a politically active family, and even though she won’t be able to vote in a presidential election until 2012, she felt compelled to be a part of this one because it is, “I don’t want to say historical, but kind of radical.”
The Chinese community in Flushing speaks many Chinese languages, including Mandarin and Cantonese, but even non-Mandarin speakers seemed to appreciate the effort the volunteers demonstrated. One woman, a Cantonese speaker from Hong-Kong, who also spoke Mandarin, marveled that the team had shown up at her door to encourage her to go to the polls. She said she planned to vote, which buoyed the team.
The New York State Youth Leadership Council, another immigrant advocacy organization, trains young immigrants on voter issues, the political process and organizing, skills that they can then take back to their communities, said Kiran Savage-Sangwan, director of the council’s civic engagement program. Young people involved in the program also go on voter registration drives.The council targets young people who moved to the U.S. as children but are now high school or college age, a generation they see as key to energizing the immigrant community.
Organizers say that the concerns of young immigrants overlap with those of the community at large and include immigration reform, education and financial aid, and employment opportunities.
The potential voters that the young canvassers spoke to in Flushing gave a variety of responses to the question of what issue was most important to them, ranging from the economy to health care to moral values. Some issues, it seems, translate in any language.
