Voting
A New Push to Let Non-Citizens Vote
September 2008
Earlier this month, dozens of protesters, many wearing facemasks emblazoned with the word "Voiceless," gathered on the steps of City Hall. Organized by the New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights, they demanded that non-citizens who are legal residents be allowed to vote in municipal elections. They said they deserve political representation because they are law-abiding New Yorkers.
This is hardly a new subject in the New York City public debate. For many years, pro-immigrant groups here have called for allowing non-citizens to vote but to no avail. Now, with candidates prepared for the 2009 mayoral and City Council elections, the campaign for non-citizen voting right has gotten a new burst of energy and is making a comeback. This time, the advocates are hopeful.
"There are going to be big elections in New York City in 2009, so we are latching on this big event to bring more attention to this issue," said David Andersson, the rally's main organizer. "It is a fantastic time for us." He added that many City Council members will have to leave office at the end of next year, and if non-=citizen voting is not a reality by then, he hopes to garner more support from the new members.
Abut half a dozen candidates running for City Council, have expressed support for the bill, including Julissa Ferreras of District 21 in Queens, Mark Levine of District 7 in Manhattan, Brad Lander of District 39 in Brooklyn, Ydanis Rodriguez of District 10 in Manhattan and Daniel Dromm of District 25 in Queens.
"I believe anyone who pays taxes should be able to vote," said Dromm, a Democrat. "That's the principal our country was founded on. It's a basic civil right. Voter participation is the basis for our democracy."
Taxation without RepresentationAccording to the coalition, New York City is now home to more than 1.3 million immigrants of voting age who are not yet citizens. The organizers said these city residents have no political representation but remain subject to all the laws that citizens must observe, pay taxes and make substantial contributions to New York's economic and cultural life.
The coalition also cited the old "No taxation without representation" rationale. "Why should immigrants pay taxes when they have no say in how their hard-earned money is spent?" read one of the signs held by protestors. According to a 2007 report by Fiscal Policy Institute, immigrants are responsible for $229 billion in economic output in New York State and account for 22.4 percent of the state's gross domestic product, a share slightly larger than their percentage of the population.
Similar bills that would allow non-citizens to vote in local elections have been introduced in Washington D.C. and San Francisco. Many states, including California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Colorado, also are reviewing legislation that would allow long-term residents to vote.
Passing a BillThe subject was officially brought into the public debate in 2005 when Brooklyn City Councilmember Charles Barron and nine other members introduced a bill to allow all legal residents who have lived in New York City for at least six months to vote in local and municipal elections. The bill, the Voting Rights Restoration Act or Intro 628, fell through at the end of that year.
In 2006, Barron, along with 13 other City Council members reintroduced the bill, also known as Intro 245. It is still pending in the Committee of Governmental Operations.
"They used to have legal residents who are non-citizens voting many years ago when immigrants were predominantly white," said Barron, an outspoken advocate for the African American community. "And when the complexions of the immigrants change, the policy change."
Noting legal residents can fight and die in wars for the country but cannot vote in local elections, Barron added, "I think it is racist that they can't vote. I think it is unjust that they can give up their life and they can pay taxes, but they cannot have a say in major quality-of-life issues."
A spokesperson for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said she does not support allowing non-citizens to vote.
Barron said this will make it hard to get the bill through City Council. "It is very difficult when the speaker doesn't support something," said Barron. "She would tell her chair that she appoints to not even have a hearing on it. And then she can kill it in the committee by getting that committee to not vote on it or vote favorably for it. .... So we got a little struggle ahead of us, but we are used to that kind of struggle."
An Old IdeaUntil Mayor Michael Bloomberg dismantled the Board of Education in 2003, non-citizens were allowed to vote in community school board elections for more than three decades. Barron said even some parents who were undocumented immigrants voted in those elections.
In fact, non-citizens voted in local and national elections in many states and territories from the founding of the country until 1926. Currently, resident non-citizens can vote in several townships in Maryland and in Chicago school board elections. Globally, more than 40 countries allow their legal residents to vote in local and/or national elections, including many countries in the European Union and some in Latin America.
The DebateAllowing non-citizens to vote in local elections could lead to greater immigrant integration and participation, according to Ron Hayduk, a professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and a co-director of the Immigrant Voting Project, said non-citizen participation.
He cited the story of Guillermo Linares, the commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs. An immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Linares first gained a spot as a parent representative on the school board in Washington Heights before he became a citizen. He went on to become the first Dominican elected to the City Council in 1991 and was later appointed by President Bill Clinton to lead the White House Initiative for Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.
"Our policy process and outcomes would be more representative if non-citizens have access to the ballot," said Hayduk. "Elected officials would be attuned to making sure they are aware of all of their constituents' needs, and be more responsive to those and be more representative of them."
Bloomberg disagrees. He has repeatedly stated his view on this issue,saying that only citizens should be able to vote. In an e-mail message from his spokesman, Stu Loeser, the mayor affirmed his pro-immigration stance but at the same time insisted that the "right to vote is a privilege and responsibility for citizens only."
Meanwhile, a report released this month by Dr. Stanley Renshon for the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports immigration control, cites statistics that it say show that, even when non-citizens can register and vote, they don't. The report also emphasizes the importance of the process of naturalization because its standard five-year wait allows the immigrants to immerse themselves in the language and culture, and develop attachment to the country.
"Each of the five elements of the naturalization process -- residency, good character, language facility, civics knowledge, and affirmation - are essential elements," wrote Renshon. "Naturalization as a requirement of citizenship and voting is not so much a series of hurdles to surmount, but an essential part of becoming American."
Document Jam Could Keep Immigrants from Voting
April 2008
To many immigrants, the right to vote in the United States represents the full realization of their American dreams and a validation of many years of hard work and struggle. It means that they are active members of the American society and equal to native-born Americans -- at least in the eyes of the law.
This year, though, many immigrants who thought they would be able to vote in the November presidential election may not be eligible because of delays in processing their applications for citizenship. Because of a rapid rise in applications, the federal government has been taking an average of 16 to 18 months to review the applications, up from around seven months a year ago.
Even the Department of Homeland Security, which has responsibility for reviewing the applications, concedes that a problem exists. "There may be a significant number ... that have applied at this date that don't make it through" in time for the election Homeless Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a recent congressional hearing
In an effort to pressure the administration to clear the backlog of citizenship applications by legal immigrants, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF) in New York filed a class-act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security to demand that the immigration authorities to complete hundreds of thousands pending naturalization petitions in time for the new citizens to vote in November.
"It is insulting to the people who applied for citizenship," said Cesar Perales, PRLDEF's president and general counsel. "Especially after they learned English and passed the civics and history test to qualify for citizenship, they still have to wait. They should have all been ready to cast their vote as American citizens in November. ... It is very typical of the American government. They don't care about the immigrants. They don't want them to be a part of the American society."
In the lawsuit, PRLDEF demands that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, process all application filed before March 26 by September 22.This would give the new citizens time to register to vote and meet the Bush administration's own goal of processing all applications within six months.
Beating the Fee IncreaseThe backlog springs largely from a sharp increase in 2007 in citizenship applications. A total of 460,294 citizenship applications were filed in July 2007 alone, the Associated Press reported, an increase of about 650 percent increase from July 2006. And that was not an isolated event. Throughout the first half of 2007, the citizenship agency received far more applications than it had in the same month a year earlier.
The large influx of applications is widely believed to be a result of the drastic fee increase last summer. On July 30, 2007, the fee for naturalization applications rose 69 percent, to $675 from $400. All other immigration-related application fees went up as well. Immigration officials justify the increases by noting that Congress has required that federal immigration and naturalization services be self-supporting.
Critics of the large fee hikes argue that they will place U.S. citizenship out of reach for many legal immigrants. But proponents counter that immigrants should be willing to save and sacrifice if they want to enjoy the benefits of being citizens.
Regardless of the merits of the increase, critics of the immigration agency said officials should have anticipated its effects. ""The fee hike is no small increase," said Norman Eng, communications director of theNew York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella advocacy group. "So the fact they didn't expect so many people would try to get their application before the deadline. ...They only have themselves to blame for their lack of foresight."
Too Late to VoteThe backlog has affected immigrants in New York and around the country. More than 90,000 legal immigrants in New York State have been waiting for up to three years for their naturalization applications to be processed, PRLDEF said in a statement. Currently, 1.1 million foreign-born New Yorkers are eligible for citizenship, according to the New York Coalition.
In their statement, PRLDEF officials were particularly critical of the effect this could have on the election.
"We've already witnessed unprecedented numbers of Latinos going to the polls during this election season. Hundreds of thousands more are being denied that same opportunity," said Perales.
"Thousands of immigrants will be wrongly denied the most wonderful opportunity our government offers us, the ability to participate in the democratic process," said Foster Maer, one of PRLDEF's attorneys. "When people follow the rules, so should the government."
Breaking the LogjamTwo weeks after the lawsuit, immigration services director Emilio Gonzalez announced that his agency had lowered its projections for how long it would take to process naturalization applications. Citing the sharp increase in applications last summer, Gonzalez said the individuals who filed for citizenship during the summer of 2007 can anticipate an average processing time of 13 to 15 months, a three-month improvement from the 16 to 18 months projected in January, though far from the Bush administration's six-month target.
The immigration agency blames the Federal Bureau of Investigation for some of the delay, noting the FBI has to check all names. To address the backlog there, Citizenship and Immigration Services and the FBIannounced a joint plan. The bureau said it has already dealt with all name check cases pending more than four years and by May hopes to complete all name checks pending more than three years. By June 2009, the FBI hopes to process 98 percent of all name checks within 30 days and to spend no more than 90 days to clear cases that are deemed difficult.
To speed its own processing, the immigration agency has hired retired employees and encouraged workers to work overtime voluntarily. The agency scheduled naturalization interviews on Saturdays and Sundays as well as after traditional business hours. It also plans to add nearly 3,000 new employees, place workers in offices with the greatest backlogs, quadruple the funding for overtime and use Asylum Office facilities and staff to conduct naturalization interviews.
"By the end of the year, I expect USCIS will have finished 36 percent more naturalization cases than last year without compromising national security or the integrity of the naturalization process," said Gonzalez.
But PRLDEF's Perales is not satisfied. "The review of these applications is not going to be done in time for these legal immigrants," he said. "They can't keep answering the question with the vague notion of national security."
Eng said that the government needs to send a more welcoming message. "There needs to be a commitment to immigrants and to encouraging immigrants to get involved and to be part of our civic life," he said. "The message that this backlog debacle sends is that we don't care about you. That's not the right message. That's not what this country is founded on."
Meanwhile, Gonzalez plans to step down on April 18 after serving as the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services since January 2006.
In an editorial, the New York Times said Gonzalez will leave behind a gummed-up bureaucracy and perhaps a million empty promises. "Those who know the citizenship system say it is 'dumbfounding' that Gonzalez and his agency did not foresee the surge, not only because the fees went way up, but also because 2008 is a presidential election year - always a time when would-be citizens hurry to get their papers in," reads the editorial.