Immigrants and Local Governance: The View from City Hall

Short sections of text, not to exceed three paragraphs, may be quoted without written permission provided that full attribution is given to the source and the above copyright notice is included. PPIC does not take or support positions on any ballot measure or on any local, state, or federal legislation, nor does it endorse, support, or oppose any political parties or candidates for public office. iii Foreword A number of PPIC reports have documented the rather poor level of civic engagement by immigrants in California—from the lack of voting to lower levels of participation in mainstream civic groups. This latest PPIC report by S. Karthick Ramakrishnan and Paul G. Lewis suggests that local government itself is generally not very effective in fostering effective communications between immigrants and elected officials. The authors do point out that cities with more immigrants do better than smaller cities in providing translators and translated documents, but elected officials in cities with a higher share of immigrants are also more likely to report mistrust of police as a significant problem. Ironically, the authors found that police departments are considerably more attuned to immigrant communities than elected officials are. This suggests that the lack of political participation among immigrants impairs their relationship with elected officials but not with city agencies that interact often with immigrant communities. Much of what concerns us about lack of civic engagement by the foreign-born today will most likely pass into history fairly quickly. California is undergoing dramatic and unprecedented change in its population composition. Although new residents and our local governments might be slow to adapt to the new circumstances, we will most likely look back on this period as exactly what it is—an era of transition that had to be experienced before a new equilibrium was established between the private lives of families and civic engagement. Adaptation may well take longer than expected, but we can be sure that the style of doing business will never be the same. iv v Summary Scholars and commentators have long focused on the implications of immigration for state-and national-level politics and policy. Yet there has been little research on the ways local governments have reacted to changes in their constituencies brought about by immigration. This report presents an analysis of political and policy dynamics in California's " immigrant destination cities, " or municipalities where the foreign born account for a sizable proportion of residents. …