Ex-NY Mayor Makes the Pro-immigrant Case Against Noncitizen Voting

Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York, argues that non-citizen voting proposals, similar to the ones recently floated by SJ CM's Arenas and Carrasco, are bad for immigrants and the movement to loosen immigration protocols at the federal level. His arguments align with opposition statements nearby from CM Dev Davis and former CM Johnny Khamis. This article originally appeared on Bloomberg News.

To me, being pro-immigrant has always meant incentivizing and rewarding citizenship — but some cities, unfortunately, are in danger of making it a less attractive proposition. Generations of immigrants have sought U.S. citizenship to gain full access to the American dream, including all the rights and responsibilities that go along with it — chief of them, the right (and responsibility) to vote.

The biggest problem with noncitizen voting isn’t a legal or technical obstacle: It’s the way it devalues citizenship. Proponents of the concept argue that voting gives the noncitizen more civic connections and a bigger “stake” in the community. This gets things precisely backward: Voting is a major reason many immigrants seek to obtain citizenship. They recognize that citizenship brings greater rights and responsibilities. If cities want more immigrants to become citizens — as they absolutely should — stripping away that incentive won’t help.

There’s no question that the route immigrants must travel to obtain citizenship is too slow and too restrictive. Fixing this process requires the White House and Congress to work with Republicans on a bipartisan deal, which noncitizen voting will make even more difficult and unlikely.

In fact, it will lend credence to the Republican argument that Democrats support immigration reform purely to pad their own voter rolls. This view is false, but pushing for noncitizen voting will only make it harder to refute, while also making the national conversation on the topic more toxic than it already is.
Immigrants deserve to be heard and protected.

But that will not happen with local attempts to supersede the broken federal system. Instead, we must do the hard work of fixing it through federal legislation — without making that even more difficult than it already is. Historically, incentivizing citizenship by combining it with the right to vote has benefited both immigrant communities and America as a whole — not only by integrating diverse cultures, but by cultivating a shared sense of purpose and national identity.

Local leaders should not attempt to break that compact.

Read the whole thing here.

Michael R. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, and UN Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions.@MikeBloomberg

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