Biggest effect would be seen in E. Boston, Dorchester, Mattapan
Expanding voting rights to noncitizen legal immigrants looks like it would have the biggest effect at the polls in neighborhoods such as East Boston, Dorchester and Mattapan — all areas where immigrants make up more than a third of the population.
The City Council will hold a hearing this afternoon about President Andrea Campbell’s suggestion that immigrants who aren’t U.S. citizens but are on the path to citizenship — such as green-card holders and refugees — have the right to vote in local elections.
A 2016 report published by the city said 26.6 percent of people in Boston are foreign-born. That number’s much higher in some neighborhoods, such as the heavily Hispanic East Boston, where more than half of residents are from another country.
The largest chunk of immigrants are from the Dominican Republic, accounting for about 13 percent of Boston’s foreignborn population. China, Haiti, El Salvador and Vietnam have the next-most in that order, according to the city.
About 44 percent of Boston’s more than 180,000 immigrants are citizens, so they already can vote in all elections. No data was available in the 2016 report about how many of the remaining 56 percent of them are legal permanent residents.
Valeria Do Vale, who attends Northeastern University and is a leader of the Student Immigrant Movement organization, said she supports the idea but doesn’t expect it to bring immigrants out to the polls in droves.
“I don’t really think there would be a huge difference,” Do Vale said, adding that there are already barriers to voting and an information gap for many people of lower socioeconomic standing who already can vote. “So many people don’t know.”
There’s no specific proposal before the council at this point, but anything like what Campbell is suggesting would not apply to state or federal elections. Allowing noncitizens to vote would have to be done through what’s called a home-rule petition, which would need the approval of the council and Mayor Martin J. Walsh before then heading to the state Legislature, where it would need to pass both houses and then be signed by Gov. Charlie Baker.
Boston immigration attorney Desmond Fitzgerald said if a law like this were to successfully wend its way through all of those layers of government, it could have a spillover effect into other cities with large immigrant populations.
“Oftentimes what Boston does, other communities will follow,” Fitzgerald said.