To anticipate one common criticism of the idea, it is said that granting non-citizens voting rights in local elections undermines the meaning of citizenship and reduces incentives for aliens to naturalize. On the contrary, a very frequent argument invoked for non-citizen suffrage by courts upholding the practice in the 18th and 19th centuries was that it would become a pathway to citizenship, not an alternative to it. Today we have millions and millions of immigrants in our midst who have not yet naturalized and are not integrated into the broader society. If we give people a taste of democratic participation and membership, they will hunger for more. This is one reason that I confine my proposal to local elections: to lead people down the path of citizenship. |