Political Rights in the Age of Migration: Lessons from the United States

Ron Hayduk ()
Additional contact information
Ron Hayduk: City University of New York (CUNY)

Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2015, vol. 16, issue 1, No 6, 99-118

Abstract: Abstract Voting is reserved for citizens, right? No. It is not widely known that immigrants, or noncitizens, currently vote in local elections in Chicago and Maryland. Moreover, campaigns to expand the franchise to noncitizens have been launched in at least a dozen other jurisdictions from coast to coast since 1990, including New York, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., California, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Texas. These contemporary practices have their roots in another little-known fact: for most of US history—from the founding until the 1920s—noncitizens voted in 40 states and federal territories in local, state, and even federal elections. Moreover, noncitizens were permitted to—and did—hold public office such as alderman, coroner, and school board member. For most of America’s history and in the vast majority of the USA, voting by noncitizens was the norm, not the exception. These policies reflect the impact of massive demographic shifts and the spread of democratic ideas. Noncitizens pay taxes, own businesses and homes, send their children to public schools, and can be drafted or serve in the military, yet proposals to grant them voting rights are often met with great resistance. But in a country where “no taxation without representation” was once a rallying cry for revolution, such a proposition is not, after all, so outlandish. This essay examines the politics and practices of immigrant voting in the USA, chronicling the rise and fall—and reemergence—of immigrant voting. In addition, this essay looks at the arguments for and against noncitizen voting and its impact and on policy and American political development.

Keywords: Immigrant voting; Political rights; Noncitizens; Immigrant voting; Alien suffrage; Local citizenship; Immmigrant incorporation; Political incorporation; Urban politics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12134-014-0336-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joimai:v:16:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1007_s12134-014-0336-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... tudies/journal/12134

DOI: 10.1007/s12134-014-0336-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Migration and Integration is currently edited by Lori Wilkinson

More articles in Journal of International Migration and Integration from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().