SPRINGDALE — The number of immigrants voting in Arkansas has more than doubled since 2008, with an estimated 25,000 voting in the 2012 election, according to organizers of a forum Sunday in Springdale.
The immigrant population has grown and their rate of participation in the political process has expanded at the same time, forum spokeswoman Mireya Reith of Fayetteville said after Sunday’s event. Sunday’s forum was part of a series held around the state on issues important to immigrants. These issues include naturalization law, voting restrictions, employment issues and others.
“A lot of it is simply because the younger immigrants brought here by their parents have turned 18,” Reith said of the expanding immigrant vote in an interview after the forum. Immigrants are also more engaged, she said, and the results showed in the last election in Arkansas and elsewhere.
“We can’t expect others to take action for us,” Reith told the audience in Spanish during the forum. The event drew an audience of at least 150 to the Civic Center, a private auditorium in Springdale. The forum was conducted in Spanish and included a panel of experts. Topics ranged from presentations on laws before Congress to practical advice and answers to questions on how to prove legal residency.
Co-hosts of the forum included: the Arkansas United Community Coalition, the Arkansas Coalition for Dream, Hispanic Community Services, Inc., Catholic Charities Immigration Services of Northwest Arkansas, the Northwest Arkansas Workers’ Justice Center and the OMNI Center.
Dream refers to the Dream Act, a bill before Congress that would allow students in good standing to stay in the country and to attain citizenship if they earn a college degree. The act has been before Congress in one form or another since 2001 and has yet to gain passage.
Further forums are planned, including one for the region’s population from the Marshall Islands, Reith said. Dates have yet to be announced. Springdale’s forum drew the largest crowd of any so far, she said. Other forums were held in Fort Smith, Little Rock and Jonesboro. Another is planned for Saturday in De Queen.
Northwest Arkansas is home to 44 percent of the state’s immigrant population, according to information presented at the forum and based on 2010 U.S. Census figures. Another 17 percent live in Pulaski County in central Arkansas, making these two regions the ones with the highest concentration of residents who were not born in the United States.
Luis Martinez of Springdale, a student at NorthWest Arkansas Community College, encouraged the audience to support measures like the Dream Act. He graduated with honors from high school but lost a college scholarship because he could not prove legal residency, he told the audience. Despite this, he is able to attend NWACC and has plans to go to the University of Arkansas and earn a degree in business management.
“We can do it. I’m proof of that,” Martinez told the crowd.