The rise and fall (and rise?) of non-citizen voting: Immigration and the shifting scales of citizenship and suffrage in the United States

Abstract

Using non-citizen voting (or ‘alien suffrage’) as a case study, this article traces the long role which immigration has played in reshaping the boundaries around the citizenry and the population of eligible voters in the US. The paper discusses the gradual ‘territorialisation’ of citizenship and suffrage from the late 1700s to the mid 1960s and then addresses the current ‘deterritorialisation’ of these institutions vis-à-vis the growing population of non-citizens. It concludes with a discussion of contemporary attempts to reinstate non-citizen voting at the local scale, as a means of addressing the widening gap between popular and territorial sovereignty.

Notes

1. The two other models are the ‘universalist’ approach, which seeks to apply constitutional protections to all persons in all places (even extraterritorially) and the ‘global due process’ approach, the proponents for which scale back on universalist goals and argue that constitutional protections should apply to all persons in all territories, unless they are “outweighed by countervailing government interests through a balancing process” (Neuman, 1996, p. 8).

2. In this article, ‘alien suffrage’ and ‘non-citizen voting’ will be used interchangeably. The term ‘alien suffrage’ is used primarily in the legal literature, whereas ‘non-citizen voting’ is the preferred term of grassroots organisations (given, perhaps, the presumed negative connotations of the word ‘alien’).

3. A token 100 individuals per year were allowed to immigrate, as long as they were students or of the merchant classes.

4. Note that the 14th Amendment established jus soli citizenship not only for the US, but also within the individual's state of residence.

5. In 1920, however, women were enfranchised with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Through the 1940s and 1950s, persons of Asian descent were enfranchised via a series of changes to federal and state laws. And while Native Americans were granted federal citizenship in 1924, many states—especially those with large Native American populations such as New Mexico—continued to deny them the right to vote until the mid 1950s when, through a series of court cases, Native Americans' right to vote was legally guaranteed in all states.

6. Although the 2000 presidential election was an unfortunate reminder that many are still disenfranchised in the US.

7. Clearly, however, the ‘citizen-state’ is still a normative and idealised construct, as racial, gender, religious, etc. discrimination is still prevalent.

8. In 2001, George W. Bush and President Vicente Fox of Mexico were discussing a guest worker and/or amnesty programme, but the events of 11 September 2001 put these plans on hold. Only recently have discussions regarding amnesty emerged, most prominently in the ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’ legislation introduced by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ) in early 2005.

9. And this national-scale number hides regional differences, with several 1990 Congressional districts in Los Angeles, for instance, having a non-citizen population of over 50 per cent (Varsanyi, 2001).

10. With regard to federal control over immigration matters, Peter Schuck writes, “In perhaps no other area of legislation has the federal government's primacy been more firmly established and the power of the states more clearly circumscribed” (Schuck, 1998, p. 195).

11. Internationally, only New Zealand permits permanent legal residents to vote in all elections (Aleinikoff and Klusmeyer, 2002, p. 45). In addition, alien suffrage is becoming more common at the local scale in other nation-states. For instance, citizens of the European Union who are not residing in their country of primary citizenship are permitted to vote in both local and EU-wide elections in their country of residence.

12. A recent report by the City Planning Department details New York's status as an immigrant metropolis: approximately 3.2 million of the city's 9 million residents are immigrants and an estimated 43 per cent of the city's workforce is foreign-born (NYC Department of City Planning, 2004; Bernstein, 2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Monica W. Varsanyi

This research was supported by dissertation year fellowships from the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment (UC ILE) and the UCLA Department of Geography. A version of this manuscript was also presented at “Towards a Political Economy of Scale: A Studies in Political Economy Conference,” York University, Toronto, Canada, February 2005. The author would like to thank the comments of those in attendance, as well as John Agnew, Nick Entrikin, Joshua Muldavin and Marie Webb for their helpful suggestions.