Giving Green Card Holders the Right to Vote Makes Sense

Following is an edited excerpt of an article that appears in BrazilianJournal.net.

To encourage greater civic engagement among those affected by backlogs in the nation's immigration system, lawmakers in Massachusetts and across the country have proposed allowing legal permanent residents, or "green card holders," to vote in municipal elections.

These legal permanent residents - many of whom have lived here for years - contribute their hard-earned tax dollars and serve in the armed forces without having a voice in the political process.

Yet they wait for years either to receive notice of their permanent residency status or for the federal government to process their citizenship paperwork.

A handful of communities in Massachusetts have passed legislation to petition the state government to allow this change for local elections, including Amherst,
Cambridge and Newton.

Supporters also point to the city of Chicago, where non-citizen immigrants can vote in school board elections, and in Maryland, where five towns have passed similar measures, one of them as long ago as 1992.

Additionally, the European Union, with its heavy reliance on immigration for both skilled and unskilled labor to help replenish declining birth rates in many of its member-states, allows non-citizen voting for permanent residents in local elections.

At face value, the proposal to extend voting rights to non-citizens sounds fantastical, but consider the arguments of those who support it.

Many immigrants must wait 10 years or longer before they proudly take their citizenship oaths.

Of all immigrants, green card holders are often among the most heavily-invested individuals in their communities, frequently owning property, small businesses or performing vital professional services.

Also, many permanent residents have children who are American citizens and enrolled in local public schools.

Take the case of Alvaro Lima, the director of research for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, who arrived in the U.S. almost 20 years ago on a student visa.

Mr. Lima's naturalization process drags on while many of the most high-powered officials in Boston depend on his advice and statistical analysis to shape the city's future.

Yet Mr. Lima cannot decide on how his own property taxes are spent.

But most Americans remain dubious about extending voting rights to non-citizen immigrants - including in local elections. There is the notion that doing so, even for a legal immigrant, would discourage the final leap to become a loyal, patriotic citizen.

Of course, the 35,000 green card-holding immigrant soldiers serving in Iraq who cannot vote may disagree.

"If we can have so many immigrant soldiers proudly serving and dying for our country, we must address the issue of making the immigration process more open, fairer and just to all," Mr. Lima added.

Source: BrazilianJournal.net

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