Voting and Illegal Immigrants

The anti immigrant forces are up in arms saying that illegal immigrants are voting in record numbers.  They point to statistics from 2005, that 3 % of 30,000 individuals called to jury duty was not citizens.  And hence they assume that everyone who is illegal is probably dying to vote.

First, in many states jury is selected by driver's license rather than voter registration.  Such is the case in Texas. Many permanent residents and non immigrants have the right to drive.  And the jury can be called based on that.  Which is why you have the question asking whether or not you are a citizen on the  jury questionnaire.

Second, lets face it, voting is a right, but its a chore. (Just like Jury duty). You stand in line, sometimes for hours, to vote.  Yet you get nothing out of it. Yours is just one vote, it does not even guarantee that your favorite candidate will win. While I am certainly not discouraging anyone from voting, lets face it, I have not voted in every race. And so is the case of most Americans judging by the poll numbers.

So why would an illegal immigrant, waste his time to vote, knowing that she might get caught doing an illegal act and be deported. Unlike working, voting does not give you money. An illegal immigrant would probably relax and sleep rather than waste her time voting.

Illegal immigrants come to this country to make a living. They have nothing in their country.  So they come, work and make a living. Its survival, the most basic of all instincts that lead them to work illegally.

The REAL ID ACT has denied a lot of illegal immigrants the right to drive. Yet they have to,  to work and to survive.   And they can't get insurance. Accidents can and do happen. And then we all share the cost. The same is true of medical insurance.  And we all as a society pay the cost, instead of the illegal immigrants paying for themselves.  I wish the anti immigrant organization were made to pay for this even for one day. They would change their stance and see the reality. 

Contact Houston Immigration Lawyer, or Houston Immigration Attorney Annie Banerjee, for more information.

VOTING and IMMIGRANTS

Record number of new naturalized citizens will vote this year. The democratic congress made sure that as many people as possible got through the immigration process as possible before the voter registration deadline. Since IKE struck Houston the scheduled Naturalized ceremony was postponed. The Houston District Office rescheduled the oath ceremony just before the registration deadline, and called every applicant personally to make sure they came to the ceremony.

Generally Naturalized Citizens are more interested in American politics and vote in record numbers. These are people who chose to become American and was not simply born in America. Thus they are more interested and more aware. Most of them will probably vote democrat. The republican party seemed to do better in rural white conservative areas.

Realizing that though the Republican run USCIS promulgated a new test that makes it harder for citizens to pass. I think they hope that people who pass the test are more educated, and therefore richer and vote Republican.

I doubt whether candidates like Sarah Palin would pass this hard test. Please check it out at:

www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/100q.pdf

Contact Houston Immigration Lawyer, Annie Banerjee for more details