CM Davis Highlights Problems, Misconceptions With Affording the Franchise to Foreign Nationals in the U .S. Temporarily

At the 1.11 SJ City Council meeting, CM's Arenas and Carrasco argued unconvincingly to allow citizens of foreign countries who are in the U.S. to vote in SJ city elections. In response, CM Dev Davis provided a thoughtful primer on why the right--and responsibility--to vote in city elections should be limited to permanent U.S. citizens. An edited excerpt from Davis' presentation follows.

CM Dev Davis:

It is important that we do everything we can to make sure that everyone who is eligible to vote now is registered, has access, is able to vote.

But I don't think expanding the franchise at this time to non-citizens makes sense, and I have many concerns about the proposal.

I consider voting to be both a right and a responsibility for citizens. There is a big group of non-citizens, as CM Carrasco mentioned, but there are different categories of non-citizens. It's not just people who have been here a long time.

There are people here on tourist visas. There are p

eople who overstayed their tourist visas. There are people here who are on temporary protected status, who may only be in SJ temporarily until they settle someplace else. There are people here on student visas. There are people here on H1B work visas and their spouses.

And there are people here who are undocumented, some only in town for a short time.

Most likely, everyone in the categories I just mentioned is a citizen of another country. They have allegiances to another state and in all likelihood have the right to vote in that country right now. And many groups of these folks may not even be familiar with the laws and processes we have in our country and our city.

I just don't think affording them the right to vote here is either fair or correct.

I believe that we need to greatly expand the opportunities for people to become citizens. Currently, it's too hard, it's too time-consuming, it's too restrictive. But that's the federal failure and a federal power, not the city of SJ's. We should advocate for those changes but changing our voting rights at the city level in an effort to solve a federal problem just doesn't make sense.

Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity.

Photo by Wikimedia Commons.