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Push Is On to Give Legal Immigrants Vote in New York
April 8, 2004
By ROBERT F. WORTH
At first glance, it may seem a long shot in an era of
orange alerts and stepped-up border patrols. But quietly
and carefully, elected officials, labor unions and
community groups are starting to push the notion of
allowing legal immigrants who are not United States
citizens to vote in New York City elections.
Supporters say it is not an outlandish proposition. They
point out that even without citizenship, legal immigrants
pay taxes, send their children to public schools and serve
in the military. Noncitizens in many states were allowed to
vote in local, state and even Congressional elections as
recently as the 1920's. Until New York City moved to
abolish its school boards two years ago, all residents had
the right to vote for and serve on them. And although a
proposal to open city elections to immigrants was raised 10
years ago without success, some people believe that the
time may now be right.
In the last decade, five towns in Maryland have allowed
noncitizens, even illegal immigrants, to vote in local
elections. Campaigns for immigrant voting rights are under
way in several cities, including Hartford; Cambridge,
Mass.; and Washington, where Mayor Anthony Williams has
said he supports giving legal immigrants the vote in
District of Columbia elections.
Those initiatives may be taken more seriously in a campaign
season when politicians in both major parties are making
overtures to immigrants, as President Bush has with his
proposal to grant temporary legal status to millions now
living here illegally.
For the moment, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has declined to
express an opinion on the subject, and Gifford Miller, the
speaker of the City Council, said this week that he was
still studying the legal issues. Several union locals have
quietly indicated their support, though only one has
formally joined the coalition that is promoting the idea.
At a minimum, it is an intriguing prospect in a city with
about a million legal immigrants of voting age who are not
citizens - equivalent to more than a fifth of the total
number of current voters. Granting those people, most of
them Hispanic or Asian, the right to vote could change the
electoral calculus in a number of arenas, from the races
for mayor and the five borough presidents to ballot
questions on city borrowing and building projects.
The new voters would be more likely to elect minority
candidates, political analysts say, and could force
politicians to become more responsive to issues like
deportation policy and immigrant access to health care. If
voting rights were extended to the state level - truly a
long shot at this point - the effects would be even
greater, forcing redistricting that could affect the
balance of power in Congress. Although all residents are
counted when district lines are redrawn, normally only
eligible voters are included when the new districts are
challenged in court under the Voting Rights Act.
"This would be seismic in its impact," said Roberto
Ramirez, a political consultant and lawyer who has served
as a state assemblyman and chairman of the Bronx Democratic
Party. "Both parties would have to develop a different
mindset to address policy issues for those residents who
have historically not been part of the political process."
Nationally, there are more than 10 million legal
immigrants who are not citizens, according to estimates
based on census figures. Some are waiting to become
citizens, a process that often takes as long as 10 years
with the current backlog of applications. Others are not
eligible for citizenship because they are here on temporary
visas, or have simply not applied.
In New York City, the latest proposals are still being
drafted by two council members, Bill Perkins and John C.
Liu. Supporters all agree that whatever measure surfaces,
it should extend the vote to legal immigrants who are
eligible to become citizens. Some would prefer a broader
law to include anyone who pays taxes, regardless of
immigration status.
There will certainly be opponents. Critics say that giving
newcomers the right to vote would undermine the very idea
of citizenship.
"Extending voting rights to noncitizens eliminates the last
distinction between people who have accepted permanent
membership in the American people and those who have not,"
said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center
for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that favors
greater restrictions on immigration. "That distinction is
important to maintain."
The political landscape affecting the proposal has changed
in recent years. When the idea was first broached in New
York and Washington in the early 1990's, some black
community leaders opposed it, seeing immigrants as
political and economic competitors. That is no longer true,
at least in New York, where a number of black leaders and
elected officials say they see the effort as an extension
of the civil rights movement. Mr. Perkins, one of the
councilmen drafting legislation, is African-American.
A stumbling block was removed this year when lawyers for
the City Council reviewed state election law and decided
that the city could alter its voting statutes without the
approval of the State Legislature, where noncitizen voting
measures were introduced without success three times during
the 1990's. Nothing in New York State's Constitution
forbids voting by noncitizens.
A dozen New York organizations have formally joined a
coalition that is actively promoting the cause; they have
organized community meetings and held a conference last
month at City College in Manhattan. Half are
immigrant-based groups like the Asian-American Legal
Defense and Education Fund and New Immigrant Community
Empowerment, and some others have links to organized labor.
Immigrant sponsors have a clear self-interest: their
politicians would presumably get new votes, and their
communities would get more influence.
Seven or eight other organizations, including three union
locals and some nonprofit political and legal groups like
Common Cause, say they support the idea as well.
The groups say their optimism is based in part on the
Bloomberg administration's general receptiveness to
immigrant concerns.
"In the past two years New York has passed strong laws that
protect immigrants and give them better access to
government, and we are confident New Yorkers will support
voting rights once they fully understand the issue," said
Bryan Pu-Folkes, the executive director of New Immigrant
Community Empowerment, based in Queens.
Noncitizen voting is sometimes dismissed as a left-wing
hobbyhorse that can succeed only in overwhelmingly
Democratic places, like the towns in Maryland where such
laws have passed.
Still, it is not at all clear that the new voters would
favor one party over the other, said John Mollenkopf, the
director of the Center for Urban Research at the City
University of New York. In their last elections, Mr.
Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki each drew more than a
third of the Hispanic vote in New York City, Mr. Mollenkopf
estimated, a strong showing for Republican candidates.
Asian voters are even more likely than Hispanic voters to
lean Republican, he said.
Whatever the political fallout, some opponents argue that
noncitizen voting is bad policy and would remove an
incentive to becoming a full United States citizen. The
idea's proponents counter that getting the right to vote
could help provide a political education for new immigrants
and give them an appetite for voting in presidential
elections, which is restricted to citizens by federal law.
"In many ways, this prepares people," said Gouri Sadhwani,
the executive director of the New York Civic Participation
Project, one of the groups pressing the issue. "They start
local, and then they become citizens and vote in national
elections."
All of these arguments have long histories. From the
founding of the nation until the early 20th century,
immigrants had a civic voice that many citizens, including
blacks and women, did not. At various times, they voted in
22 states and federal territories (though New York moved
early, in 1804, to restrict voting to citizens).
The practice known as "alien suffrage" was less common in
the South than other parts of the country, largely because
new immigrants tended to be hostile toward slavery. The
first article in the Confederate Constitution banned
noncitizen voting, said Jamin Raskin, a law professor at
American University and a leader of the modern movement to
give immigrants the vote.
State legislatures began narrowing their suffrage laws in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as huge waves of
immigration from southern and eastern Europe led to greater
suspicion about political radicalism among the newcomers.
By 1928, voting at every level had been restricted to
United States citizens.
That remained true until 1992, when the town of Takoma
Park, Md., passed a measure allowing noncitizens to vote in
local elections. Since then, four other towns in Maryland
have followed suit. Two communities in Massachusetts,
Cambridge and Amherst, have passed similar measures, but
have been blocked from implementing them by the absence of
enabling state legislation.
Giving immigrants the right to vote will not be an easy
sell, even in New York. Some proponents say they will be
content for the moment if they can force people to rethink
a fundamental issue.
"Whether or not we pass this law in the next year, this is
an idea whose time has come," said Bertha Lewis, the
executive director of Acorn, an advocacy group for
low-income families that is planning rallies to support the
move. "You cannot put this genie back in the bottle."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/nyregion/08VOTE.html?ex=1082468279&ei=1&en=36888a206807072d
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