Let Non-Citizens Vote

by Domenico Maceri

"Don't I have any rights?" I yelled at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) official in Los Angeles, after waiting for hours to deal with some minor paperwork to become a US citizen. "Not until you become a citizen, and then you can write to your congressman," the official responded with more anger than he had received from me.

I had been in the country for about eight years and one of the reasons I wanted to become a citizen was to be able to vote. Yet, as a legal immigrant in the process of becoming a citizen, I should have been allowed to vote so that I could have had some rights.

Since the process of becoming a US citizen is such an ordeal and can take as long as ten years of dealing with the INS, its backlog, its inefficiency, and red tape, legal immigrants should be allowed to vote at least in local elections.

That's how it was in the past. In colonial times, people could vote without being citizens. When the country was first founded, in order to be able to vote, a man just needed to own property.

To encourage people to move west, many states allowed people to vote, provided that they had been residents for two years. The situation changed a lot in the 1920s when there was an anti-immigrant backlash. Until then, 22 states allowed legal immigrants to vote.

No taxation without representation was a cry for revolution and it still applies today. Legal immigrants work, pay taxes, and make valuable contributions. And yet, they can't vote. One of the most visible contributions is their military service. There are more than 40,000 non-citizen military personnel serving our country, one third of them Latino. In parts of California, half of the enlistees are non-citizens.

The service these non-citizens provide often becomes invaluable for their extra-linguistic knowledge. Many non-citizen military personnel speak two or more languages, a knowledge which is becoming critical, particularly as American soldiers are asked to serve and sometimes lose their lives in foreign lands.

Five of the first ten Californians killed in Iraq were non-citizens. In essence, one can die for the US, but cannot vote, even in local elections.

Although America is a land of immigrants, the tragedy of 9/11 has generated a lot of negative feelings against foreigners. Anti-immigrant attitudes are particularly strong against undocumented workers who are seen as invaders rather than people looking to improve their economic lot.

These negative feelings spill over to legal immigrants in spite of the fact that these people have followed all the rules and are on their way of becoming Americans. Their families are here. Their kids go to US schools. They work and should have the opportunity to vote if they have been in the process of becoming citizens.

In the case of local elections, there should not be any questions about their voting. In fact, in New York City, legal immigrants could vote in school board elections and even serve on the school board until a few years ago when the system was reorganized. This year, the City Council of New York will hold hearings to determine if the 1.3 million legal immigrants in the city should be allowed to vote for all local offices.

Immigrant groups in the San Francisco area are also researching the possibility of making a proposal to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.

Anthony A. Williams, mayor of Washington, D. C., supports the idea of allowing non-citizens to vote.

Of course, there is some resistance to non-citizens voting. Opponents view it as de-valuing the concept of citizenship. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, is against the concept of allowing non-citizens to vote. Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates reducing immigration, also opposes it.

Allowing non-citizens to vote is viewed by some as the equivalent of living together without the commitment of marriage. For many, the concern is that allowing legal immigrants to vote will be followed by illegal immigrants having the same privilege. But non-citizens can already vote in local elections in a number of towns in Maryland, and no problems have been reported.

Allowing legal immigrants to vote in local elections would encourage them to participate in the civic affairs of their adopted country and strengthen the democratic process in which we all take pride. It would also give them rights which they deserve.

Domenico Maceri (dmaceri@hotmail.com), PhD, UC Santa Barbara, teaches foreign languages at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, CA.