IMPACTS OF MIGRATION Mexican Immigrants and Mexican American Political Assimilation

There are many political dimensions of Mexican immigration and MexicanAmerican life in the U.S. Political life in the U.S., as elsewhere, includesthe realms of routine electoral politics where candidates seek votes, symbolic politics where images of immigrants may be put to a variety of uses, legislative politics where rights and privileges of different groups may be gained or lost, and so on. The political relationship between Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans (a term which I will use in this paper to refer to U.S. born persons of Mexican descent) is a multidimensional one that has evolved over time as the Mexican American community has evolved politically, and as U.S. immigration law has changed. While at first it may seem that immigrants have little direct effect on routine electoral politics in the U.S., because they cannot vote, there are in fact a number of links between immigrants and electoral politics. Immigrants effect electoral politics directly through census enumerations and decennial redistricting. U.S. congressional districts, and all state legislative districts are apportioned on the ba-sis of persons, rather than on the basis of citizens or adult citizens because of the wording of article 1, section 2 of the U.S. constitution (the U.S. is quite unusual i