ABSTRACT
The Latino community's lack of a political presence in California commensurate with its numbers has been a puzzle to outside observers. Texas has three times as many Latino elected officials as California. A series of Latino political gains in California were reported nationally. The numbers of Latino state legislators jumped dramatically from fourteen to eighteen. In 1996, California's Latino population numbered 9,630,188, or nearly one out of three Californians. Much of California's Latino population is foreign born; thus the magnitude of noncitizenship in the state's Latino community is significant. Noncitizenship is one of the major reasons California Latinos do not have electoral power commensurate with their numbers. The response among Latino immigrants, as in other immigrant communities, has been to seek the protections of US citizenship through naturalization.
