NYC Allows Legal Immigrants to Vote in City Elections

The New York City Council has overwhelmingly approved a bill to allow more than 800,000 lawfully present immigrants to vote in municipal elections, becoming the largest U.S. city to do so. As a founding member of the New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights, created in 2003 to research, recommend, and advocate for the ideas that culminated in this new policy, I could not be prouder. Even though I moved to Chicago in 2014, part of my heart will always remain in New York City and I am so happy that New Yorkers who support vibrant democracy have finally carried this initiative over the finish lines.

If this is the first time you are hearing about noncitizen voting –which was widespread in the U.S. until early in the twentieth century– please wait before you pass judgment. Many of the arguments of opponents simply do not hold water. The word “citizen” comes from the days when people’s allegiances lay with their cities because nations did not yet exist. The NYC policy does not allow voting in state or federal elections, so does not remove an incentive for recent immigrants to become U.S. citizens. To the contrary, it helps prepare them to become full federal citizens as they wait until they are eligible.

Below is the testimony that I delivered to the New York City Council for November 14, 2005 hearings on Intro. 628, the first bill introduced in favor of municipal voting rights for lawfully present non-citizens.

“Why the Voting Rights Restoration Act (Intro. 628) Is Good for New York City”

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on why New York City should allow non-citizens who reside legally in this city to vote in municipal elections. My name is Michele Wucker and I am a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute at The New School, where my research focuses on immigration and citizenship issues, particularly on how immigrants integrate into their host communities, on the policies that can promote or retard that process, and on the consequences. With Ron Hayduk, I am a co-founder and co-director of the Immigrant Voting Project (www.immigrantvoting.org), which documents and analyzes the initiatives to enfranchise non-citizens around the United States and the world, both throughout history and during a revival of the practice that began in the 1960s and accelerated in the 1990s through the present.

You’ve heard important testimony today about rights, democracy, and the ways that non-citizens would benefit from being given a voice in the city’s affairs. But I wouldn’t blame you, or your constituents, for asking, “What’s in it for me?”

All New Yorkers should care whether or not non-citizen New Yorkers can vote in city elections for the same reason that we care whether anybody votes at all. It’s not at all hard to see why people are alarmed that the voter turnout last week was below 40% and the lowest in five mayoral elections. Municipal voter participation reflects how much residents care about the city where they live and how much of a stake they feel they have. A recent New York Times Magazine article argued that, given that the likely benefit to any one individual of casting a vote is tiny, it’s a wonder that anyone votes at all. The broader community benefits far more than any individual does when he or she casts a vote.

In Fall 2003, the Los Angeles community of Lynwood, where 44% of voting-age residents are not citizens, discovered the hard way what happens when a large part of the community is disenfranchised. Taxpayers were funding Lynwood City Council members’ exorbitant salaries, fancy meals and junkets to Rio de Janeiro and Hawaii. The whole city suffered because the local government was not accountable to all of its residents.

When a city fails to create engaged local citizens, the consequences can be devastating, as has been happening in the immigrant suburbs of Paris. Similarly, the 1992 Washington Heights riots here in New York City were caused in part because community residents were isolated from the rest of the city and felt they had little say or influence over policies that affected them. The solution was to develop policies to address residents’ needs. In Washington, D.C.’s Adams Morgan neighborhood in 1991, ethnically charged riots inspired several suburbs to respond by granting local voting rights to noncitizen residents as a way of making sure that their concerns were addressed before they reached a breaking point.

When I first heard about the idea of noncitizen voting rights, my reaction was similar to the one I often get today when I tell others about the work of the Immigrant Voting Project and the New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights. Why would someone bother to become a citizen if they already enjoyed the right to vote? While it is an understandable reaction, because Americans are far more likely to vote in national elections than local ones, it also is mistaken. The New York movement, like many similar ones across the country, only involves city-level voting rights; you still must be a citizen to vote for, say, President of the United States.

Adopting a new nationality is an emotional and very personal decision. Legal residents must wait five years before they can even apply to become a naturalized citizen, a long and often frustrating process. For many immigrants, the big hurdle in deciding to apply for naturalization is emotional: when they say the Pledge of Allegiance, they want to mean it. They want to feel like they belong to a place before they do the paperwork and undergo a process that is so complicated and frustrating that only those who really want to be citizens will go through. Giving incipient Americans a voice in their communities is a way to create involved, educated citizens at the local level, which will encourage many of them to go on to become U.S. citizens as well. At the same time, by cultivating all immigrants as citizens of this great city, New York will benefit immensely by welcoming into our civic life even those individuals who may not ever naturalize.

Becoming a “citizen of the city” is very different, both emotionally and in terms of results, from being a citizen of a nation. While it is only logical to think long and hard before changing their nationality, people are arguably citizens of a new city the minute that they take a job, sign a lease, enroll their children in schools, or begin a school semester of their own. Everyone who lives in a city immediately have an interest in securing safe and clean streets, good schools, and reliable and affordable transportation and health care. City officials’ decisions have immediate and tangible effects on the daily lives of every single resident: whether we have to walk through garbage or pass by crack dealers on the corner, how long we have to wait at the bus stop or subway station. We cannot afford to wait until the newest New Yorkers become U.S. citizens to make them full citizens of the city.

All residents depend on their neighbors being willing and able to participate in making sure that elected officials know what their needs are and meet them. Last year, I moved to Washington Heights, a neighborhood that is heavily populated by recent immigrants who, because of their citizenship status, cannot vote. I had to depend on the “A” train, which I quickly learned was unreliable at best. But, because the residents of Washington Heights had only a limited political voice, nobody expected more frequent or reliable train service any time soon. Meanwhile, lower Washington Heights finally succeeded in ending the skip-stop 9 train and increasing 1 train service, a feat achieved only when the number of likely voters to be courted hit critical mass. I think about the businesses that depend on reliable transportation for their workers no matter what their citizenship status and about the citizens who cannot get the services they need because their neighbors have no voices. And in these examples, I hope that you too will see clearly the answer to the question, “What’s in it for me?”

HuffPost: Trump – RINO or Gray Rhino?

PHOTO BY GAGE SKIDMORE. HTTPS://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/GAGESKIDMORE [CC BY-SA 2.0 (HTTP://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY-SA/2.0)], VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
PHOTO BY GAGE SKIDMORE. HTTPS://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/GAGESKIDMORE [CC BY-SA 2.0 (HTTP://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY-SA/2.0)], VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
The failure of a final doomed attempt to prevent Donald Trump from securing the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland has brought to a close the first stage of the presidential race: a campaign defined above all by how bad humans are at recognizing and dealing with obvious problems right in front of them.

Many of Trump’s foes within the GOP have complained that Donald Trump is a RINO (Republican in Name Only), who does not hew to conservative principles. That may be true, but he’s not just a RINO. He’s a classic example of what I call a gray rhino: a big, obvious threat that we are all too likely to neglect or outright ignore until it’s too late.

The Republican presidential candidate’s inflammatory statements and encouragement of bullying have left many Americans terrified over what’s happening to our democracy. World leaders have compared him to Hitler and Mussolini and called him everything from an idiot to a demagogue to a threat to peace.

Some pundits have described the loose-tongued business mogul’s initial popularity as an outlier black swan event, referring to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s 2007 book about the unpredictable events that can sideswipe us. But once enough people recognize that something can happen, by definition it is no longer a black swan.

Unlike the highly improbable black swan seen only in hindsight, gray rhinos are obvious risks that all too often are poorly (if at all) addressed until they are charging straight at you. Unlike the elephant in the room, gray rhinos move fast. Crucially, they give us a choice: act or get trampled.

Trump’s campaign has tapped into an entire crash (the zoologically correct term, appropriately enough) of gray rhinos: a polarized, paralyzed government; a breakdown in democracy and civil discourse; dramatic changes in the labor market; the increasing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few; and, as might be expected, rising social and political unrest. Both white working-class voters and minority populations feel neglected and disrespected.

Basic civility, compromise and constructive engagement have fallen to the wayside, replaced by bullying, insults, race-baiting, and candidates comparing the size of their you-know-whats. Too many Americans feel that they lack the power to change things for the better. Some have dropped out of the political process altogether. Others are drawn, like moths to a flame, to strong-arm leadership and revolution, reminiscent of Latin American caudillismo, with no evidence of concrete plans to keep their promises.

Trump’s takeover of the GOP is a classic example of how the five stages of a gray rhino unfold, from denial to muddling to diagnosing to panic to action. Understanding these stages can help to understand how to face a threat staring us in the face.

Early denial of the idea that Trump could become the GOP presidential nominee was more than understandable in the summer of 2015. But as he gained momentum over the fall, denial quickly ceded to muddling: recognition that the problem existed, but failure to diagnose the problem or present a solution, much less act decisively.

By Fall 2015, Republican campaign strategists were worried enough that they drew up a “ProtectUSA” plan to stop him. But no donors took them up on it. In February, Republican governors met to talk about how to prevent the increasingly real possibility of a Trump nomination. In March, they laid out a 100-day plan to derail his campaign. In April, Ted Cruz and John Kasich announced a plan to cooperate against Trump. But it was all too little, too late.

When his last rival dropped out and Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, the political establishment entered the fourth stage of a Gray Rhino crisis: full blown panic. Panic ought to create the impulse to action. In this case, the action the party chose was to let itself be trampled.

We’re at a new inflection point, for both the GOP and the general public.

The GOP will have to decide if the party can be rebuilt. Trump’s GOP does not seem to be ready to deal seriously with the issues that created his fan base, nor with cross-cutting fault lines within it: between those who believe the party can only survive if it is more inclusive and those who want to bring it back to the 1950s but without the optimism; and between those who believe in more trickle-down policy for the one percent and those who are sincere in their believe in growth and entrepreneurialism.

By choosing a smaller tent and utterly refusing to act presidential, Trump may be his own gray rhino.

For its part, the Democratic Party has a choice of how to deal with Trump between now and November. To stop Trump, it must face head on the obvious but neglected issues that helped to create him.

The first challenge is to avoid the GOP’s first pitfall: denial. Surely America could not possibly elect as president a bully who insults Muslims, Mexicans, women, and disabled people; who has dragged the campaign rhetoric to a high school level; and who has told so many flat-out lies and half-truths that Politifact has called his accumulated statements its 2015 Lie of the Year?

Yet millions of voters across the United States have supported him. The website Five Thirty Eight puts the odds of a Trump win at about one in three. Recall that the odds of a Brexit were just 17 percent only months before 52 percent of British voters chose to leave the European Union. A Trump win is not impossible.

Hillary Clinton is hardly muddling or complacent in the face of Trump, out-fundraising him and making it hard to ignore his less attractive traits. The Democratic Party’s full strategy will become more apparent at its upcoming national convention.

Trump may come with a silver (or is it faux gold?) lining by giving America the shake-up that it needs. Indeed, his candidacy itself has sparked a sense of urgency and soul-searching, if not yet full-blown panic, that suggests the Democrats are more likely than the GOP to act successfully than capitulate.

But even if there were no Trump, America’s underlying gray rhinos would still be there. Unless Americans succeed in addressing those issues, we will be flattened, whether by Trump or otherwise.

Originally published at Huffington Post

Observer: Why We Ignore Obvious Dangers

In this Year of the Gray Rhino, I wrote for the New York Observer about how issues that are anything but the unexpected have sideswiped the Democratic and Republican parties:

Screen Shot 2016-05-26 at 1.12.49 PMThis year’s presidential campaign is full of the unexpected. Yet the underlying issues are anything but. It’s hardly news that middle- and working-class incomes have stagnated and that Americans are fed up with a government that even squabblesover an impending public health crisis like Zika. Why, then, have the country’s two leading parties been taken aback by voters who are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore?

It’s because everyone—not just politicians—underestimates the power of the obvious problems that loom right in front of us. So it’s a surprise when inaction creates unpleasant consequences. The Democratic and Republican parties are learning this lesson the hard way.

The truth is that we get into most trouble when we’ve ignored obvious problems. I call these issues “gray rhinos” because they are huge and charging right at us and ought to be harder to ignore. Yet we miss the most important information—like calling rhinos black and white even though they are all gray.

Read the full article at observer.com

 

Elected to Serve Far Away -Wall Street Journal

Three Dominicans living in New Jersey were elected recently to national legislative positions in the Dominican Republic, created precisely so that the country’s diaspora will be represented

Sumathi Reddy writes about this phenomonenon in the July 31 Wall Street Journal article, “Elected to Serve Far Away,” in which she quotes me about the significance of diaspora elected officials: “Michele Wucker, president of the World Policy Institute, said countries ‘have been reaching out to diaspora, increasingly offering them seats in Congress…, recognizing their remittances, their technical skills and their international networks are all important assets.’ ” More than a dozen countries have created similar positions, mostly over the past several years.

Those of you who have read my first book, Why the Cocks Fight, may recall the profile of a Dominican living in Washington Heights who ran for the equivalent of a seat in Congress from his home province in the Dominican Republic, but pledged to represent the more than one million Dominicans estimated to have been living in the United States and Canada at the time. More than a decade later, the country will finally be giving formal representation to these “dominicanos ausentes.”

Global HR Forum (Seoul)

Video from my comments at the Global HR Forum in Seoul, South Korea, November 2, 2011, on a panel “Are We Headed Towards Another Global Economic Crisis?” with Professor Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University, Professor Weiping Huang of Renmin University of China, and Moderator Seunghoon Lee, Professor Emeritus, Division of Economics, Seoul National University

(My comments begin at 53:20) The short answer is no -we’re not in another global economic crisis because we never left the one we already have been in.

2011 Outlook on opendemocracy.net

The editors at opendemocracy.net, one of my favorite websites, asked me and a group of writers from around the world, “Where are the sources of inspiration that can improve global and national prospects in 2011?

Here are my thoughts:

Citizens of every country need to see their self-interest more broadly instead of pitting themselves against other groups, nationalities, religions, and classes. If people were to embrace this one idea in 2011, we’d see a world of greater cooperation and prosperity instead of the polarisation and malaise that affects so much of the world today. When your neighbour is better off, it’s more likely that you will be too.

We do not live in a zero-sum world. Yet if the xenophobes and hate-mongers have their way, we’ll be in a less than zero-sum world: everyone will be worse off, not only the purported targets. Concentrating wealth in the hands of the mega-rich while leaving less than crumbs for the working class destabilises society and shrinks purchasing power that could create more wealth for everyone. A country or community that cracks down unfairly on immigrants and minorities is biting off its nose to spite its face; it pulls the rug out from under families, economies, and communities instead of supporting new communities and economies. Demonising another religion instead of seeking dialogue puts precious energy into destruction instead of building. An extremist political party that puts up roadblocks, no matter what the issue, ends up destroying people’s trust in the political process instead of creating positive change.

The unintended consequences of division undermine the very goals that politicians and leaders invoke to justify actions intended to punish the few instead of to reward the whole. It’s time to change that dynamic.

Read other writers’ thoughts.

Japan Times article on non-citizen voting

Japan Times

Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010
How the rest of the world deals with aliens at the ballot box
By SARAH NOORBAKHSH

Excerpt:

Acknowledging the rights of immigrant groups, “recognizing special ties among particular groups of countries” and reciprocation are often part and parcel of granting suffrage, says Michele Wucker, executive director of the World Policy Institute. The EU, the Commonwealth, Brazil, Portugal and Spain are cases in point. However, the decision in South Korea had the effect of enfranchising mostly Taiwanese immigrants rather than being a “quid pro quo” reform benefiting Japan, and the country has thus far only indicated that it hopes for a similar move here in Japan. Also worth noting is that whereas 6,000 noncitizens benefited from the law change in South Korea, there are over 900,000 permanent foreign residents in Japan, including over 400,000 “special permanent residents” — mostly Koreans and Taiwanese who lived in Japan before and during the war, as well as their descendants.

So what about the argument that, rather than give voting rights to permanent residents, they should be encouraged to naturalize instead? This attitude is prevalent in North America, where noncitizen voting rights have been rolled back. In contrast, Chile introduced alien suffrage to in part to compensate for its slow, inefficient nationalization system.

“If people feel that they are part of a community with their neighbors, then they are more likely to embrace national values and even apply for citizenship as well,” suggests Wucker. Indeed, movements in Toronto as well as Rome have used this argument in pressing for the involvement of immigrant groups in local politics, though demonstrating objectively that granting foreigners the vote leads to an increased demand for naturalization has proved a challenge.

CLICK TO READ FULL STORY

U.S. and European Perspectives on Immigration

The American Council on Germany, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the World Policy Institute and Demos present
“U.S. and European Perspectives on Immigration: A Problem or an Opportunity?”

a discussion and luncheon featuring

Delancey Gustin, Immigration and Integration Program, The German Marshall Fund of the United States
and
Michele Wucker, Executive Director, World Policy Institute


This event comes on the heels of the release of Transatlantic Trends: Immigration, which compares transatlantic as well as cross-country opinion on immigration and integration issues. Some of the topics included in this year’s survey are: public perception of immigrants’ labor market impacts and effects on wages, the effect of the economic crisis on attitudes toward immigration, and preferences for temporary vs. permanent labor migration programs. The survey also gauges opinion on a legalization program for illegal immigrants and asks respondents to rate their governments’ current job of immigration management.

When:
Wednesday, January 27
12:15 – 2 PM

Where:
Demos
220 Fifth Avenue (between 26th and 27th streets)
Fifth Floor conference room
New York, New York

RSVP: This lunch and event are free and open to the public, but advance registration is required to reserve a seat and help us minimize waste when ordering.  RSVP by e-mailing events@worldpolicy.org or calling 212.481.5005 option 2.