How Undocumented Immigrants Are Getting Involved This Election

[Sanguine]

Last month, Donald Trump nodded along as Art Del Cueto, a representative of a Border Patrol officer union that had endorsed the candidate, described undocumented immigrants flooding across the border to vote illegally. This was a continuation of the general Trumpian anxiety about brown people coming from afar to damage America, but it also reflected a specific fear: Almost 60 percent of Republicans believe that illegal immigrants vote en masse, though there's no evidence of that.

Undocumented immigrants have been engaging in the election in another way, though: They are registering and encouraging citizens to vote, even though they can't do so themselves. Given the stakes—with Trump promising to deport millions of them by force—it's not surprising that they're as engaged as they possibly can be.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) utilized the collective power of undocumented immigrants to register voters through a program called the New Americans Democracy Project. About 23 young fellows, several of whom are undocumented but have DACA permits allowing them to stay and work in the country, worked in and around Chicago in high-density immigrant neighborhood that typically don't vote in large numbers. (These permits are the result of executive action taken by the Obama administration allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children to remain.) They registered those who could vote, and educated the community in an attempt to get them more engaged....

http://www.vice.com/read/how-undocumented-immigrants-are-getting-involved-in-the-election