Democracy for Whom? Voting Rights to Non-Citizen Immigrants!

Should non-citizen U.S. residents be allowed to vote? Peter Markowitz, director of the Immigrant Justice Center at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University here in New York, argues in the Stanford Law Review that each U.S. state has full authority under the US Constitution to grant state citizenship to its residents and should exercise that power to expand full rights, including voting rights, to non-citizen immigrants who fulfill state residency requirements. Granting state citizenship to non-citizen immigrants would remedy the underclass status of immigrants, enliven democratic participation and force a resolution of Congressional deadlock over the status of undocumented immigrants, who are now permanent and vital participants in American life.

Ron Hayduk, a political scientist at San Francisco State University (and formerly at the City University of New York) and the author of Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States, concurs. Drawing on the extensive history of non-citizen voting in the U.S., and reviewing what is at stake for immigrants and the polity alike when non-citizen immigrants have no voice, Hayduk asserts that restoring and expanding the right to vote to non-citizen immigrants is necessary to fulfill the demand of “no taxation without representation.”