Alien ballot

A novel idea in Cambridge: Give noncitizen immigrants the vote

Cityscape by Sarah McNaught

Manuel Garcia feels cheated. As a young man, in 1984, he left his family in Chile and moved to Cambridge to start a new life with his bride, Rosa. But in the past 15 years, he's accumulated some complaints. He says he's been forced out of his home by the loss of rent control. He's had to sit by and let others make decisions about his daughter's education in the Cambridge public schools. And he's heard many of his fellow immigrants complain that they get paid less than their American coworkers even though they do their jobs just as well, if not better.

Garcia feels that he has no recourse because, as a noncitizen, he cannot vote. It frustrates him. "I have never broken the law. I pay my taxes. I give money to almost every local organization that calls me for donations. And still, I am without any say," he says, smoothing his hands over his shoulder-length black hair. "I work hard and I give what I can to this city, but what do I get in return? There are too many barriers here."

But that could change with the passage of an unusual initiative now gaining momentum in Cambridge.

On January 25, the Cambridge City Council heard proposals from a city-government task force formed last October to address the growing race and class tensions within city government and the city at large. Most of the recommendations were conventional -- racial-sensitivity training for city employees, more minorities in upper management, and additional affordable housing. But the task force also suggested that city government empower immigrants by giving them the right to vote in city-council and school-committee elections. If the proposal is approved, Cambridge would become one of only a handful of cities nationwide to grant voting rights to noncitizens.

This is not the first time the issue of noncitizen voting rights has been raised in Cambridge. In June 1993, a grassroots organization known as the Cambridge Eviction-Free Zone launched a "Campaign for Voting Rights" to allow Cambridge's legal immigrants to vote in all city elections, even if they were not citizens. According to the 1990 US Census, Cambridge has 21,350 foreign-born residents, 14,754 of whom are noncitizens. A 1998 Current Population Survey shows that since the census, another 135,000 people have immigrated to Massachusetts from other countries.

Laura Booth, who spearheaded the 1993 effort, says her group adopted the idea from a similar 1992 campaign in Takoma Park, Maryland. "We learned that a professor at a university in Takoma Park campaigned for a referendum to allow noncitizens to vote and succeeded," says Booth, who now works for the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee and is no longer affiliated with the Cambridge Eviction-Free Zone. But after about a year, Booth says, the organization dropped the voting-rights issue to focus on housing, which had become an urgent matter with the demise of rent control.

It was Cambridge Eviction-Free Zone member Natalie Smith who took up the cause again, suggesting it to the task force as a way to get more members of the community involved in the class and race issues that are increasingly dividing the city. "People who use public schools, pay taxes, and participate in community activities should have a say not only in their children's education, but also in how their taxes are spent," says Denise Simmons, the head of the task force and a school-committee member. "We understand that some people feel the right to vote should be a privilege only for citizens, but you have to look at it from a participatory point of view." Expanded voting rights, she argues, will give more people a voice in city decisions "and, in turn, show city-government officials that all members of the Cambridge community have a vested interest in the future of the city and its schools."

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Other cities across the country have attempted similar initiatives. Chicago and New York City have always allowed noncitizens to vote in local school-board elections. And activists in Los Angeles and several cities in Texas and Colorado are working to win noncitizen voting rights in local elections. Internationally, countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Chile, Norway, and the Netherlands have allowed noncitizen immigrants local voting rights for several years, according to Booth.

And there is historical precedent. Prior to World War I, immigrants were allowed to vote in local, state, and national elections in 22 states. Jamin Raskin, the American University law professor who led the referendum effort in Takoma Park, says that at one time it wasn't unusual for immigrants to serve as school-board members, coroners, or aldermen. "Alien suffrage was a huge issue during the Civil War, with the North in favor of it and the South abhorring it," Raskin says. "It wasn't until the end of the First World War -- when immigrants became darker, more Mediterranean -- that the outbreak of anti-alien passions finished off the practice of voting rights for noncitizens."

Reintroducing those rights is an effort that must be fought on both legal and political fronts. Massachusetts law says that voters must be citizens, but the law is easily amended. After the initiative is discussed further at the next city-council meeting, a public hearing will be held and the community will vote. If approved, the measure will be passed on to the state legislature as a home-rule exemption to the state law.

"It's something I would think would be accepted in Cambridge, as they have many organizations that work closely on the issue of immigrant rights," says Kerry Doyle of the International Institute of Boston, a group that assists immigrants with asylum and citizenship applications, job placement, and other needs.

Getting state approval may not be easy, however, says Laura Booth. "Basically, that involves begging [House Speaker Thomas] Finneran to approve it, which we haven't had much luck with in the past," she says, referring to home-rule petitions that Cambridge has introduced on other issues.

Cambridge is not the only Massachusetts city weighing this type of proposal. On October 26, Amherst passed an initiative to grant local voting rights to foreigners in board-of-selectmen, school-committee, and even town-meeting elections. Now the measure needs approval from the state legislature, which rejected a similar home-rule petition that Amherst filed in 1996.

In Cambridge, too, the measure's political prospects are uncertain. Members of the Cambridge City Council did not comment on the proposal at their January 25 session but instead opted to table the discussion until their next meeting. But the idea has increasing support from the immigrant community. Oscar Chacon, a Salvadoran immigrant who has been a US citizen for eight years, says it is time for the government to acknowledge that noncitizen immigrants are suffering taxation without representation.

"To the extent that we pay taxes equally, we should also have the right to choose the public officials who administer our taxes," says Chacon, the executive director of the Cambridge-based Centro Presente, an organization geared toward immigrant civic activism. And he is confident that immigrants -- unlike many native-born citizens -- would use their voting rights. "I do believe there are more immigrants interested in voting than Americans right now," Chacon says. "I can assure you that the percentage of noncitizens voting in city elections would be higher than citizen votes when it comes to such things as ballot questions, which oftentimes involve immigrant issues such as wages and housing."

Noncitizen immigrants in Cambridge remain hopeful. "My children attend the public schools, so I should have a say in choosing those people who oversee how the Cambridge school system is run," says Salvador Hernandez, 40, a Centro Presente employee from El Salvador who has applied for asylum. "Similarly, I have the responsibility to pay taxes, so why can't I have the privilege of contributing to how those taxes are spent?"

Hernandez admits that language is a barrier for him and other immigrants who have not mastered English. But, he says, there is no reason why voting instructions and ballot questions can't be made multilingual. "Some say immigrants keep to themselves and probably wouldn't vote anyway, but voting and the barriers that keep us from voting are very large issues among the immigrant community," says Hernandez. "We do care, and we do have opinions just like anyone else. That's why we moved here."

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.