New York City will allow legal non-citizens to vote in local elections.
The voting rights of noncitizens, legal residents with green cards, or those who have the right to work in the U.S. The New York City Council passed a measure giving these New Yorkers, more than 800,000 of them, the new ability to vote in local elections. New York City Council voted 33-14 to authorize non-citizen voting. New York City has joined more than a dozen communities across the US that currently allow non-citizens to cast ballots in local elections, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont.
New York isn’t the first city to grant these rights in recent years, but it is certainly the largest. Non-citizens in New York City still will not be able to vote for president or members of Congress in federal races, or in the state.
New York City is home to a large number of Black residents. Immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, as well as African Americans born in New York, comprise the Black community. A majority of the city’s Black residents reside in Brooklyn, Queens, Harlem and The Bronx. There are more Black immigrants and descendants of Caribbean immigrants in New York City than anywhere else in the nation
The rate of naturalization of Black immigrants is 54%, but there are thousands of longer-term Black legal permanent residents. The change in New York City rules will give them a voice in local politics.
The idea of granting non-citizens the right to vote in local elections is not new.
For some time in the U.S., this was normal, especially from the end of the Civil War through the 1920s. There has been a troubling history in this country regarding voting rights. Several U.S. principles support the right of non-citizens to vote as individuals and should not be taxed without representation.
Non-citizens are attracted to communities where they can vote.
There are those who oppose the change in rules. Former New York Mayor Bloomberg writes that “allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections will hurt new immigrants and the nation. It devalues citizenship.
Citizenship combined with the right to vote has benefited both immigrant communities and America as a whole, according to him. “It has been shown that…Individuals’ right to vote locally will not exclude their desire to apply for citizenship in the future.” For individuals to apply for citizenship, they need to wait between 3 and 5 years, during which time they must be physically present in the U.S. and pay taxes. It naturally follows that maybe they should be allowed to vote locally during that time.
