April 19, 2004, 7:11AM
Immigrants' voting rights becoming a major issue
By KIM COBB
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
RESOURCES
People who are not U.S. citizens cannot vote in most American elections. But there's a movement brewing to allow legal immigrants to vote in local elections in New York City. As many as 1 million New Yorkers could qualify. America's largest foreign-born populations are concentrated in six states.Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, March 2000 population survey. Numbers are rounded and not restricted to voting-age population.
U.S
·Total foreign-born population: 28.4 million.
·Naturalized citizens: 10.6 million.
·Non-citizens: 17.8 million
Regional
·New York and New Jersey: 6.4 million total foreign born; 2.6 million naturalized; 3.8 million non-citizens.
·Illinois: 3 million total foreign born; 1.2 million naturalized; 1.9 million non-citizens.
·Florida and Texas: 7.6 million total foreign born; 2.8 million naturalized; 4.8 million non-citizens.
·California: 11.3 million total foreign born; 4 million naturalized; 7.3 million non-citizens.
It's pretty basic: You have to be a citizen of this country to vote, right? Not necessarily.
A movement is growing in New York City to grant the vote in local elections to legal immigrants. And the debate is growing loud enough to become a major issue in the city's next mayoral election.
The right to vote in a presidential election is not on the wish list: New York proponents say immigrants just want a voice on local issues ranging from sewer improvements to public school construction for everyone who pays local taxes.
A similar movement is percolating on the West Coast. Immigrant groups in San Francisco are researching how they could change state and local law to allow non-citizen parents to vote in local school board elections.
There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that bans non-citizen voting. Those decisions are made by the states, and some allow it.
While Texas has large and diverse immigrant populations concentrated in cities like Houston and Dallas, immigrant activists say "alien suffrage" is an issue that doesn't draw much support in the southwestern states, perhaps because of the concerns about large numbers of illegal immigrants living in the region.
A Texas legislator introduced a bill in 1995 to allow local communities to decide whether non-citizens could vote in their elections. It never made it out of committee.
Until a backlash against immigrants began to swell at the beginning of the 20th century, more than 2 dozen states, including Texas, allowed non-citizens to vote.
But in New York City, a change of state law would add approximately 1 million legal immigrants to the list of eligible voters, a potentially powerful voting bloc. It's not unprecedented. When many large urban school districts were decentralized in the late 1960s, parents who were not citizens were allowed to vote in school board elections in Chicago and New York.
Immigrant parents in New York lost that voice two years ago when the city dismantled the school boards.
A handful of suburban towns in Maryland allows non-citizens to vote in local elections, and the mayor of Washington, D.C., would like to open the vote to legal immigrants in his city's elections. Opponents say granting voting rights to non-citizens devalues the concept of citizenship.
"There's nothing in the Constitution to prohibit extending the vote to anybody," said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "But that doesn't mean it's a good idea."
FAIR advocates reducing legal immigration and stopping illegal immigration. Stein's group has long complained that the so-called "Motor Voter" law, which makes applying for a voter's registration card nearly automatic for anyone applying for a driver's license, has sent countless numbers of non-citizens to the polls anyway, with only an honor system about citizenship standing in the way.
"It's always interesting. The genesis of these proposals seems to be there are people on the city council who see a lot of people in their communities who would probably vote for them but aren't citizens," Stein said. "That's a heck of a reason to dilute the concept of citizenship."
A variety of immigrant groups and a few labor-related organizations are backing the idea in New York, but they are not united on the details. Some want voting rights for all legal immigrants; some want rights only for those who are pursuing citizenship.
New York's Republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is against the measure, while City Council speaker Gifford Miller, a Democrat and potential mayoral candidate, indicated he's leaning toward supporting the idea.
Margaret Fung, director of the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the issue will become important in the municipal elections. At a basic level, immigrant parents just want to get back the voice they had when they were allowed to vote in school board elections, she said.
"It was the one spot where Asian turnout was generally higher than the general population," Fung said.
Jamin Raskin, professor of constitutional law at American University, led the "Share the Vote" campaign in Maryland's Takoma Park in 1992, getting the right to vote in local elections for the small community's immigrant population, mostly Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees.
New York's vast non-citizen population needs to get similar access to the polls, Raskin said, to get the voice it deserves.
"This is a way to make people who are politically invisible today visible tomorrow," Raskin said. "Mayor Bloomberg, who has spoken of his openness to immigrants, has raised people's expectations, and now many New Yorkers will follow through on his political rhetoric even if he does not."
Granting the right to vote to Takoma Park's non-citizens has not made much of an impact on local elections. In 2003, out of 9,832 registered voters, the city reports, only 494 were non-citizens and 14 of those actually voted in the last election, according to the city secretary.
It was unclear how the votes by non-citizens were identified.
In states like California and Texas, Hispanic activist groups are more focused on getting Latino voters already eligible to register and show up at the polls.
"We are a formidable force as it is, with just those citizens that are eligible to vote," said Victor Landa, regional director for the Southwest Voter Education Project in San Antonio. "If we could just tap into that, it would be outstanding. I'm not really sure if those residents awaiting citizenship would be more eager voters -- who's to say?"
Allowing non-citizens to vote on local issues makes sense, Landa said.
"But I don't know if Texas is ready for something like that. Hopefully we could debate it," he added.
The Texas Election Code required voters to be U.S. citizens as of 1921. That constitutional amendment took the vote from immigrants, who had been allowed to cast ballots since 1869.
State Rep. Robert Alonzo, D-Dallas, couldn't raise any support for non-citizen voting when he introduced his proposed legislation in 1995. But he still thinks it's worth pursuing.
"At the time, we were discussing school issues, talking about local control and that people locally should be involved in their community, definitely on school issues," Alonzo said. "In a lot of cities like Houston (with an estimated 587,000 non-citizen residents) there are parents who are legal residents, they're in line to become citizens, they pay taxes, they can go to PTA meetings, but they can't elect their local school board members."
"The biggest involvement they can have is to allow them to make decisions that affect their children," Alonzo said.
Return to <http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2515456#top#top>
Barbara J. Burcham, C.I.D.
Fairfield Industries, Inc
281-275-7687
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: DesignerCouncil [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brooks,Bill
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 5:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [DC] Outsourcing coming back to insourcing
Hi Barbara,
Legal immigrants can vote... I think you meant the 'illegal ones'...
sometimes referred to as 'undocumented' and yes they are trying to do that
and I think it stinks. Be careful who you vote for... they may not be
working for your best interests. The problem I see in the system is when
both candidates are really working for the same side...
If you are a Star Trek fan, it's kind of like having the Borg offer us two
of their drones to choose from, knowing either way... no matter who we
choose, we are still being ruled by the Borg.
I remember a movie called 'Rollerball' 1975 with James Caan playing the
lead... It was a futuristic society that developed after the 'Corporate
Wars'... there were no 'Countries' anymore... Just "The Global Corporation"
and their multimedia 'Games' to keep the populace entertained....
I think they re-made it in 2002.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073631/
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0246894/
Bill Brooks
PCB Design Engineer , C.I.D., C.I.I.
Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510
-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara Burcham [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 3:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [DC] Outsourcing coming back to insourcing [text]
This is a bit like clearing the rainforest for make way for cash crops to
feed the hungry. Short term gain and NO long term vision.
Starving management seem only to care about their next big bonus and not
what is healthy for our economy.
We should be telling all of this to our congressional represenatives who
create inport/export laws which make this all possible.
As a side, I saw a newspaper headline, this morning, that said legal
immigrants are pushing for a vote....
That would mean that one would not have to be an American to decide what
American law will be.
Duh...
Barbara J. Burcham, C.I.D.
Fairfield Industries, Inc
281-275-7687
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: DesignerCouncil [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Kowalewski, Andy
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 3:59 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [DC] Outsourcing coming back to insourcing
Good one Bill. You obviously think deeply about this stuff.
Let me make another observation that you might find interesting, and
probably controversial:
The American social culture has embedded a short term investment philosophy
into the national psyche. My take is that the emphasis on quarterly share
price growth, the ubiquitous and incessant philosophy of "maximisation of
profits" in the shortest possible time, and the whole business of chasing
monetary gain at the expense of other, more social activities is so deeply
buried in the culture that the politicians, the newspapers, the pundits and
much more importantly, the American people have "lost the plot". Money, as
in getting it and keeping it, has overtaken quality of life at a national
level and at the personal level.
Hey, I'm not exempt from that myself, but I don't particularly like it.
While my boss can fire me and thousands of my fellow workers because
quarterly targets aren't being met (that's the quickest way to get dollars
back into the bottom line), while large companies contribute to the
political decision making process in megadollars for unknown, hidden
returns, and while the American populace is focused on making and keeping
"wealth", nothing will change.
Andy K.
Sychip Inc
Office (972) 202 8852
-----Original Message-----
From: Brooks,Bill [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 3:36 PM
To: Kowalewski, Andy; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: [DC] Outsourcing coming back to insourcing
Hah!
My wife refers to this chain of events as "all part of the 'new world order'
that President Bush Senior talked about years ago in his presidency"...
Really, What's so new about it? I think it's more opportunism than anything
else... I doubt former President Bush had the clout to orchestrate this. The
US tax policies and market pressures have really set the pace of foreign
investment and outsourcing of jobs. It's human nature to find the best deal
and maximize your profits and the market expects continued growth or they
loose interest and invest in other companies. But not all things we do as
humans are good for us.
If 'money' is your only 'god'... it has no morals, nor does it discern the
difference between bad customers and good customers... it all spends the
same and is not beholden to anyone. The problem with it seems to be in the
'vision' area... Money cannot predict the future... but it can affect it for
good or bad. Unfortunately it has a hard time making the distinction between
the two. There are times when 'more' is not necessarily 'better'.
That's why people with vision need to make decisions about the direction we
are headed and choose the path carefully before marching off to do business.
The American companies may make short term profits from their investments
abroad, but they also may face stiff competition with those same assets
later when the countries they are dealing with learn how to compete and
start their own enterprises.
The Japanese have an acute sense of national pride that seems to make would
be competitors collaborate to keep sensitive 'trade secrets' at home rather
than selling them to the highest bidder abroad. This may not be the 'best
deal' for one of the companies, but it IS the best deal for their country as
a whole. It allows them to keep their competitive edge and not loose
momentum. They also invest heavily in R&D and THIS is where our focus should
be as well.
"Although they interfere less than they once did, Japan's bureaucrats are
concerned by the prospect of manufacturing, especially high-tech
manufacturing, going abroad. Surely, the thinking goes, if one Japanese
company builds a plant in China, and the technology is copied, then all of
the firm's Japanese rivals will face cheap competition? Hidetaka Fukuda, who
oversees information technology for the Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry, says that METI stepped in earlier this year to persuade NEC, an
electronics giant, to sell its plasma-display business to local rival
Pioneer, rather than a foreign investor, as a way to keep its technology in
Japan. Mr. Fukuda says that he is currently in similar negotiations with
roughly ten other companies that might otherwise transfer technology
abroad."
It should be an interesting next 10 years in our business area... I hope we
all get to be a part of it.
Bill Brooks
PCB Design Engineer , C.I.D., C.I.I.
Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510
-----Original Message-----
From: Kowalewski, Andy [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 12:50 PM
To: (Designers Council Forum); Brooks,Bill
Subject: RE: [DC] Outsourcing coming back to insourcing
Right on.
I used to be on PC Design Magazine's Editorial Review Board, and at a
meeting of the Design, Fab and Assembly ERBs (in Pete's better days) there
was a lot of talk about fab and assembly going off shore, and how everybody
was working hard to stay competitive within the US by outsourcing. I asked
the question "Aren't you worried about selling the farm? You're teaching all
these overseas companies how to do your work to get the advantage of low
labour costs - aren't you worried about them eventually eating your lunch?"
Most of the answers boiled down to "We aren't worried - we'll make sure we
stay ahead by developing new machinery, new processes and new techniques".
I wonder if those same people have the same blasé attitude today?
Andy K.
Sychip Inc
Office (972) 202 8852
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