Non-citizens work in every sector of the economy, own homes and businesses, attend colleges and send children to schools, pay billions in taxes each year and make countless social and cultural contributions. They're subject to all the laws that govern citizens, serve in the military and die defending the United States.

Their numbers are staggering. Nationally, about 23 million adults are barred from voting because they lack U.S. citizenship. In some districts -- and whole cities and towns -- non-citizens make up 25 to 50 percent of all voting-age residents. Adult non-citizens in Los Angeles make up more than a third of the voting-age population; in New York City, they're 22 percent of adults. In many places immigrant political exclusion approximates the level of disenfranchisement associated with women prior to 1920 and African Americans before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Discriminatory public policy and private practices -- in employment, housing, education, healthcare, welfare and criminal justice -- are the inevitable by-products of immigrant political exclusion, not to mention racial profiling, xenophobic hate crimes and arbitrary detention and deportation. Non-citizens suffer social and economic inequities, in part because policy-makers can ignore their interests. Denying immigrants local voting rights makes government officials less accountable and undermines the legitimacy of public policies. Immigrant voting rights would help reverse inequities and make the American political system more democratic.