Immigrant-rights activists yesterday renewed their push to allow legal noncitizens to vote in the Big Apple.Aren't there rules already in place for this? 200 years later? And this issue is NOT resolved?
"More than 50,000 adult noncitizen taxpayers in those two districts are disenfranchised by citizenship voting laws," said Cheryl Wertz, of New Immigrant Community Empowerment, referring to today's special election for council seats in Brooklyn and Staten Island.
Emphasis mine. From their mission statement on their website
New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE) is a cross-cultural, non-profit organization that uses organizing, advocacy, and public education to ensure that new immigrants are active, informed, and influential in civic, governmental and public affairs. Central to NICE’s mission is challenging the access gap between recent immigrant communities and government, seeking systemic solutions to improving immigrants’ voting rights, full language access, health care, and workplace protections under local, state and federal laws.This makes NO sense. If you become a citizen you have full access to all this. So what is it that this group really do? Continuing the article.
Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn), the sponsor of the Voting Rights Restoration Act, said that years ago, when immigrants were mostly European, they had voting rights.And just WHAT did the good Councilman say in 2005?
Among those testifying in support of the bill was Bryan Pu-Folkes, executive director of New Immigrant Community Empowerment.
"In New York City, 20% of New Yorkers, or one of every five adults, are disenfranchised because of their citizenship status," he argued.Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) voiced strong support for the bill, contending that resistance to allowing noncitizens to vote is motivated by a reluctance of whites to give up power.
"White men just have too much power," he commented. "They just don't want to give up on power."
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