The presidential debates are over. Voters have chosen — or are weighing the candidates, who continue to criss-cross the nation in search of every precious vote.

It’s crunch time for them with the election less than two weeks away.

But long before the urgency of the competition, MIV — Mobilize the Immigrant Vote †has been one of the many NGOs trying to make every vote count in this election. Focusing on educating and providing linguistically sensitive assistance to immigrant voters, the group seeks to ensure that immigrants are voicing their needs by casting their vote on Election Day.

Claudia Gomez-Arteaga, the program coordinator for the Partnership for Immigrant Leadership and Action (PILA), shared the history and future of MIV.

Nguoi Viet 2: What is MIV and its mission? How was it formed?

Gomez-Arteaga: Mobilize the Immigrant Vote (MIV) California Collaborative was started by the PILA in 2002 as a project supporting immigrant-based community organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2004, PILA partnered with five other organizations to increase the scale and scope of MIV and formalized a statewide collaborative with the mission of organizing a multi-ethnic coalition of community/immigrant based organizations working within immigrant communities and building their capacity to register, educate and mobilize their constituents for electoral participation.

Currently, the MIV is staffed and governed by a coordinating committee including the Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition (BAIRC); the California Partnership (CAP); the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA); the Korean Resource Center (KRC); Partnership for Immigrant Leadership and Action (PILA); and Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN). MIV is the first of its kind in the state of California. Our core work is centered on support over 150 organizations in both non (-election) and election years.

NV2: What are MIV’s major achievements since 2004?

Gomez-Arteaga: MIV has worked diligently to help build its partner organizations’ capacity to do election work. What once started with just a handful of organizations has now become an over-150-organization partnered effort. In 2006, for example, our collective work made 60,000 voter contacts. Our process for developing our voter guide has included input from community members at issues analysis forums to help guide our work and give recommendations on our voter guides. This year, to help community-based organizations prepare for these forums, we developed training curricula centered on defining and debunking wedge issues that divide our community.

NV2: What are the particular goals that MIV discerns for this election?

Gomez-Arteaga: Our goal this year is to partner with 150 organizations across the state to provide culturally based resources to advance their electoral projects. We work with the 150 organizations to distribute 200,000 multilingual voter guides, voter-rights palm cards and other political-education materials to immigrant voters and their families across California. Of those 150 organizations, we work with 30 organizations on building their internal capacity and increasing the scale of their November 2008 voter turnout programs by 150 percent. We also lead a communications initiative to shift the world view in targeted communities on immigrants and immigration. Finally, we also hope to complete a scientific study of MIV as a model of integrated voter engagement.

NV2: What are MIV key successes up to this point in this year’s campaign?

Gomez-Arteaga: The biggest success we have had this year is actually one that started last year with our intensive capacity-building trainings for our 30 core groups. That work laid the groundwork for increasing the goals and work for this year. Another success we have is in providing additional support to two areas, San Fernando Valley and Orange County, to support organizations doing electoral programs in these areas and to show impact in contacting and mobilizing immigrant communities to vote. The two organizations leading this effort are the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and the Korean Resource Center.

NV2: What language groups does MIV target? Why those?

Gomez-Arteaga: The languages that we focus our work on are English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Tagalog. These are the top languages spoken by immigrant communities in California and what we have the capacity to provide support for.

NV2: How can voters get involved with MIV?

Gomez-Arteaga: Through their community-based organizations working in their communities.

NV2: Will you have follow-up programs with your members after Election Day on Nov. 4?

Gomez-Arteaga: Yes, we will be hosting post-election meetings in all of our six regions with our core 30 partners.

NV2: Where can voters find further information about MIV and Vietnamese-language voting materials?

Gomez-Arteaga: Folks can go to our Web site at www.mivcalifornia.org. If they are a community organization, they can sign on to our campaign and have access to all our voter education tools and voter guides.