Voting is for citizens

The City Council is embarking on an irresponsible and profoundly misguided effort to consider ways it can let noncitizens vote in city elections. Council President Andrea Campbell said, “All members of a community should have the right to participate and be included in the governance of that community.”

Campbell’s order — to explore ways noncitizens who have legal status in the United States can be given the right to vote — is co-sponsored by councilors Josh Zakim, Ayanna Pressley, Lydia Edwards, Annissa Essaibi-George, Ed Flynn, Kim Janey and Michelle Wu.

The order calls for the council to “explore voting rights” for people with green cards, or legal permanent residents, as well as “visa holders, Temporary Protected Status recipients, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients,” groups that include refugees granted asylum and illegal immigrants brought here as children.

Campbell told the Herald she wants it to apply to people who are trying to become citizens, to signal to immigrants that Boston is welcoming to them.

We find this order to be repugnant.

The right to vote is at the core of our democracy and is the highest privilege of citizenship. If one wants to participate in the democracy then one should embark on a path to citizenship.

We should not deem that a group of people be eligible for all the benefits of citizenship just because they share a geography with citizens. Many of the people in question are indeed citizens of other countries and can do all the voting there they like.

Though some of these noncitizens do pay taxes, that does not buy them status as an American. It buys them use of the infrastructure and some built-in protections of the state.

Many people work in Boston and reside in the suburbs or even out of state. They pay taxes in Boston and are a part of the community, too. Should they get to vote on city matters?

The audacity in City Hall is astounding. Councilors have just given themselves a raise and are spending their time signalling to immigrants that Boston is welcoming. We’ve had a spate of shootings in the past week in the city. That is what the City Council should be focused on.

Citizenship is sacred. There is a process in place for immigrants to attain it. Boston City Council has no right to circumvent that process.