The efforts of NPNA members Somos Un Pueblo Unido, El Centro de Igualdad y Derechos, partners like NM Comunidades en Acción y de Fé (CAFé) and other grassroots organizations’ engagement with newly naturalized citizens, can greatly increase participation of new citizens into becoming lifelong voters.

Our organizations are connecting with new citizens in language and in culturally competent ways.

The impact that New American Voters have also depends on overcoming obstacles to voting.

This electoral season presents many challenges, including the need for organizations to adapt their voter engagement work to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, language access issues that can affect New American Voters from the point of voter registration all the way through attempting to vote, and ongoing efforts to tighten and restrict access to voting, particularly targeting voters of color.

Another challenge that has emerged in recent years is the backlog and processing delays of citizenship applications. According to the latest data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), there are over 672,000 pending citizenship applications nationwide, with 1,038 applications backlogged in USCIS’ office in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

From 2016 through 2020, New Mexico added an estimated 15,064 newly naturalized citizens who are now potential new voters.

Of the total number of persons who naturalized in New Mexico from 2016 to 2020, approximately 72 percent are from the Americas, which includes Latin America and the Caribbean, approximately 18 percent are from Asia, which includes Asian and Pacific Islander countries, approximately 5 percent are from Europe, and approximately 3 percent are from the African continent.

Most of the persons in New Mexico who naturalized from 2016 to 2020 are originally from Mexico, at about 63 percent. Approximately 51 percent are under the age of 45 years old and around 58 percent are women.

Most of this report analyzed data from people who naturalized in recent years, however we also zoom out to look at New Mexico’s total naturalized population (see page 9 for more details).

When looking at the total naturalized population, naturalized citizens largely reside in the Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Santa Fe metropolitan areas (61,271 in total), there are large concentrations of naturalized citizens in other, more rural areas of New Mexico (15,659 in total). These are the potential New American Voters who can have an outsized role in what happens in New Mexico during the November 2022 midterm elections.