Latina Daughter Of Immigrants Says She’ll Vote Against Anti-Immigrant Politicians, Urges Fellow Millennials To Do The Same

Los Angeles, Calif. — A Spanish-speaking Latino introduces Jocelyn Guzman, accenting her surname, “goose-mAn,” and beacons her to a podium in in front of City Hall and steps lined with Korean and Latino activists from a coalition of immigration and labor groups. Guzman, 17, is an Emerging Latino Leader with Mi Familia Vota, a non-partisan organization focused on increasing voter participation and lobbying for pro-immigrant policies. “Hi, My name is Jocelyn Guzman,” she says in flat, American pronunciation “ghooz-min.”

“I want to encourage all of the youth and especially millennials to go out and vote and make sure that we vote for people who won’t encourage further oppression of immigrants,” she says.

Guzman represents the millions of voters that aren’t directly affected by immigration legislation. Unlike many of the 30 immigrants sitting behind her, she’s a U.S. citizen. Unlike many immigrants, her parents don’t fear deportation; they have green cards. Unlike most 17 year olds, she’s pledging to vote in 2016.

“We see it [among] all of the Republican candidates,” she says, perhaps forgetting her organization’s non-partisan status out of nervousness. It’s her first time speaking in front of a news camera, and there are about ten of them.

Watching Guzman stand at the podium, it’s clear that more than loyalty has motivated her to be her, shake off teenage insecurities and calm trembling knees to speak. She will be one of the estimated 1.5 million American voters who are expected to have DAPA-eligible family members in 2016, according to NBC News. With extended family members’ lives in the balance, she’s still personally invested in DACA, DAPA, and comprehensive immigration reform.

Republican strategists like Whit Ayres believe that Guzman’s vote might have been up for grabs had Republicans so thoroughly bombed courting either the Latino or pro-immigrant vote. Others like pundit Ann Coulter say that Hispanic are so loyal to Democrats that they’re no point.

Three years following Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s brutal defeat, some in his party are trying to win back the youth and Latino vote. Marco Rubio, the Spanish-speaking Cubano from Florida (and Ayrs’ new boss), has drawn on the immigrant experience in his speeches.

Jeb Bush, whose children are bicultural Mexican-Americans, has proposed policies that would offer some respite for Guzman’s uncles, aunts and cousins — immigrants in the country illegally. Under his plan, they would be eligible for deportation relief and work permits, but not a pathway to citizenship.

Enter Donald Trump, who knocked Bush and Rubio’s subtle calls for immigrant and Latino support down like toddler to a sandcastle. Trump ruined the Republican brand, snuffing out hope for Bush who had hoped he’d get the strong Latino support that his brother George W. Bush received in 2000.

What these pro-immigration advocates really want is the pathway to citizenship promised in the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill. At the very least they say, Barack Obama’s deferred action programs DACA and DAPA should be allowed to go forward.

Friday is the 1-year anniversary of the President's proposed expansion of his immigration policy, which would have used prosecutorial discretion to shield as many as 5 million immigrant from deportation. Eligible immigrants under DAPA included parents of DACA recipients; youth under 30 who arrived in the U.S. when they were minors.

The White House plan has sat mired in lawsuits by a coalition of Republican governors, with support of Republican presidential candidates. Also on Friday, the administration appealed a 5th Circuit Court decision that upheld an injunction of his executive actions. The case now heads to the Supreme Court, where it won’t be decided until at least June, in the heat of the election.

Regardless of how the court rules, Guzman says that she’ll rally her peers to vote for pro-immigrant candidates in California, and in the national elections.

“We have the opportunity to vote and not everybody does and it’s time what we use our opportunity to vote in favor of the [classes] that always get oppressed, like the immigrants and the working class.”