After becoming a US citizen, this Kansas resident is eager to vote in the 2024 election

Brooks is a race and culture reporter for KCUR.

Cindy Phillips, originally from Mexico City, became a U.S. citizen in December and registered to vote the same day. She said systemic corruption in Mexican politics, including the assassinations of candidates and voters, makes it dangerous to participate in democracy there.

“This sounds very stereotypical, but there are cartels taking over the country and the government is not taking the right measures to control that,” Phillips said.

Escaping that situation is one reason she immigrated to the U.S. nearly eight years ago. The other was to be with the man who is now her husband. What she has since learned about the electoral impact of immigrants like herself makes her feel that American democracy is more open and transparent than it is in Mexico.

“I’ve read that younger voters have had a huge impact on election outcomes,” she said. “So in my case, as a millennial, I know that when I vote, my vote counts.”

The 35-year-old Philips represents a fast-growing segment of the American electorate: recently naturalized immigrants.

An estimated 3.5 million voting-age adults have become naturalized voters in the U.S. since the 2020 election, according to the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California San Diego and the National Partnership for New Americans. And the number of immigrants who have the right to vote has increased by 93% since 2000, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study.

While the same Pew study found that new citizens typically vote 8% less than American-born citizens, in some swing states the number of new naturalized citizens is larger than the voting margin based on recent election results.

In Arizona, where the 2020 presidential election was decided by 10,000 votes, more than 62,000 people were naturalized between 2016 and 2020.

Phillips said the meaning these voters hold energizes her as she prepares to cast her first vote in the U.S.

“Voting is a right that we have. It wasn’t that long ago that they made this a constitutional amendment so that women and other minorities could vote,” said Phillips, who has lived in Kearney, Missouri, since 2021.

“So it’s something we have to remember,” she said. “This is a symbol of our freedom.”

The Hallmark Cards editor-in-chief has been working mostly from home since the COVID pandemic hit, partly how she’s adapted to life in rural Missouri.

She says the anti-immigrant rhetoric she encountered in her small community was a culture shock, compared to the more diverse cities she previously lived in, like Independence and Olathe.

“They can make racist comments that I don’t agree with most of the time. I don’t want to say anything about it because I don’t want to get in trouble or get into a controversy,” Phillips said of living in Kearney. “I just got tired of trying to educate people when they don’t understand certain aspects of being different in this country.”

Phillips also worries that the lack of diversity in Kearney’s schools and businesses could negatively impact her 4-year-old daughter, who was born in Merriam, Kansas.

“I try to teach her about other minorities by reading her some books and teaching her that everyone looks different,” she said.

She admits it can feel disappointing at times, but Phillips doesn’t let that stop her from talking to other immigrants about the importance of voting.

“It is our responsibility to exercise this right and make it count for us, because we matter,” she said. “Now that we are citizens, we need to teach younger generations that this is very important and essential for our country.”

Opposition to progress

Immigrant voting rights have once again become a hot topic this election season. Micah Kubic, leader of the Kansas Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, says Americans need to modernize their understanding of what disenfranchisement looks like.

“It’s not all Bull Connor and police dogs,” he said, referring to the infamous Birmingham, Alabama, segregation commissioner who ordered violent attacks on Martin Luther King Jr. and protesters in 1963. “Voter suppression is when we refuse to make materials available in languages other than English, knowing that this will increase voter turnout.”

Kubic also notes that former President Donald Trump and others have been spreading debunked theories about the number of non-citizens who vote in U.S. elections since 2016.

“The attacks that you see on democracy, particularly these completely false, twisted ‘big lie’ attacks that tie immigration to it, are so damaging,” he said. “In addition to being factually incorrect, they seek to discourage people from participating by creating an environment of fear, intimidation and bullying.”

However, Kubic says that in his experience it is common for the naturalized community to be politically active, as it takes an average of seven years to complete the naturalization process, depending on the country of birth.

“To do that, you have to be super engaged. You have to be really aware of what’s going on in the world,” Kubic said. “And all of that, generally speaking, leads to higher levels of civic engagement, including voting.”

More than 5 million eligible immigrant voters became citizens between 2014 and 2020, according to a 2020 report from the National Partnership for New Americans. And the Pew Research Center says that 10%, or 23.2 million, of eligible voters in the 2020 presidential election were naturalized citizens, a record number.

The path forward

In her suburb of Kearney, where she has no acres of fertile farmland, Phillips often thinks about the challenges of navigating the administrative path to citizenship.

She remembers constantly worrying that sudden policy changes in Washington, Jefferson City, or Topeka would make obtaining citizenship more difficult, or that simple legal matters such as a traffic violation might be viewed in a court of law as crimes or a lack of moral worth.

“That worry that they can revoke your residence permit at any time because it’s subject to certain conditions,” she said, “that was very stressful for me. So I wanted to do this for myself, but especially for my family, just to provide some certainty.”

Phillips is especially grateful for her legal status, knowing that other immigrants may never have the opportunity to take the naturalization exam, let alone pass it.

“It takes a lot of sacrifice and money and it’s a huge investment to just become an American citizen,” she said. “When the ceremony was over, I felt very proud of myself.”

Phillips’ husband, a naturalized citizen, doesn’t share her passion for voting. She said he sometimes complains about things like taxes and inflation, but doesn’t feel compelled to vote.

His stance reinforces her ideas about Americans who take privileges like voting for granted, but it doesn’t diminish her enthusiasm for making her voice heard.

“I just let it go, because I mean, you just pick your battles, right?” she said. “But I hope he votes in the next election.”

Phillips said she still doesn’t know who she will choose for president in November, but that issues like education, health care and public safety will be at the top of her list of priorities when she goes to the polls.

“I’m excited because it gives me the opportunity to preserve the democracy of this country,” she said.

Cover photo: Cindy Phillips stands by a shelf of family photos and Mexican-themed dolls that she takes with her to Kearney, Missouri, when she travels back to Mexico. “It’s a daily reminder of my heritage for me and my daughter,” she said. (Lawrence Brooks IV/KCUR 89.3)

This article was first published on KCUR 89.3 and republished with permission.