Thread: N.Y. Immigrants Find Voting Can Come At a Cost

Immigrants Find Voting Can Come At a Cost

By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: October 15, 2010

The way Joseph E. Joseph tells it, he was just doing his civic duty.
On his way home from work one evening in 1992, he came across a group of volunteers in Brooklyn registering people to vote. Mr. Joseph, a legal permanent resident who had immigrated from St. Kitts eight years earlier, decided it was time to sign up. He cast a ballot in that year’s presidential election, he said, and in every one since.

His participation in American democracy came at a steep cost: The government is now trying to deport him.

In the United States, only citizens are allowed to vote in national and statewide elections. And while immigrants who are granted permanent residency — a green card — enjoy an array of privileges, including the right to work, they can lose them all and be expelled from the country if the authorities discover that they have even registered to vote.

Uncovering an immigrant’s voting history is not always hard. Many proudly acknowledge having voted when applying for American citizenship.
“I thought that was expected of me,â€

thats oustanding news, ididnt know that. even being registered is means the law has been broken.that little tidbit should headline the "laraza" website home page.

I think we need serious accountability from our reps that are responsible for protecting voters. We need a better way of counting our ballots and ber monotoring of legal and illegal votes. There has got to be a better way. There is so much fraud going on in our system that it seems to me that this should be a major issue and concern.

Advocates for immigrants said that in most cases, those who violated the voting law did so unwittingly.

A bigger lie was never uttered. Every LEGAL: immigrant knows they do not have the right to vote until they become citizens of the US. They are also told ad nasaeum that it is a deportable offense, If they believed "advocates" who told them different, sucks for them.

It's a shame that "advocates" will lie to further their own agendas, they don't think of the harm they cause immigrants.