By Kristine Christlieb, MFE Senior Correspondent | September 18, 2024
There’s a reason citizenship naturalization ceremonies are popular and the perfect kind of story to cap off an evening news broadcast. They’re universally happy occasions, regardless of one’s politics.
The ceremonies that take place in our national parks are particularly moving. This year, on the 4thof July, 167 people took a sacred oath of allegiance and became United States citizens at the foot of Mount Rushmore..
The naturalization ceremonies on federally protected ground have the additional patriotic element of highlighting that not only is America great, it is also beautiful, a land endowed by our Creator with majestic vistas and a rich array of natural wonders.
In fact, America welcomes more legal immigrants than any other nation on Earth by an order of magnitude. Germany comes in a distant second.
The United States has long had more immigrants than any other country. In fact, the U.S. is home to one-fifth of the world’s international migrants.
--Pew Research. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/key-findings-about-us-immigrants/, August 5, 2024.
Bottom line, one-in-five international migrants (19%) live in the U.S.
However, setting foot on American soil does not automatically confer citizenship. Even expressing a desire to be a citizen isn’t enough to make someone a citizen. There are steps that must be taken, a ritual observed before a judge’s pronouncement allows immigrants to call themselves citizens.
In America, it has never been easy to become a citizen because we protect the privilege of participating in our government, and the most fundamental level of citizenship participation is the right to vote. It is not only the most fundamental privilege, it is also the most sacred.
Men and women who are not U.S. citizens can be members of our armed forces, they can die on the battlefield defending America. But until they are citizens, they do not have the right to vote.
Nearly every religion has a rite of initiation. The Catholic Church, for example, has a Rite of Catholic Initiation for Adults. The initiation typically lasts about nine months and culminates at Easter Vigil as participants (called catechumens) are presented for baptism. Catechumens, though sincere in their faith and actively seeking to become part of the Body of believers, are not allowed to participate in the Eucharist or partake of the holy elements until they have been baptized.
So too it is with many fraternal organizations. Initiates must wait, learn, and endure a period of testing before becoming full members, or, in this case, before becoming citizens.
Under federal law, it is illegal for non-citizens to even register to vote, much less cast a ballot. That is how protective our system is of the right to vote.
Foreigner voting degrades our system. As an example, in some states like Michigan, when an applicant registers for a driver’s license, he or she is automatically added to the voter roll. In order to be removed, the applicant must take action to opt out of being registered to vote.
Defenders of the opt-out registration system say the process has the advantage of registering more people. That may be true, but at what cost?
These automatic additions through departments of motor vehicles not only undermine our voter rolls, they put non-citizens in legal jeopardy, bordering on entrapment. If new immigrants, whose addresses may change frequently, fail to return the opt-out postcard that says they don’t want to register to vote, they automatically become part of the state’s official voter rolls, the Qualified Voter File. They are legally registered to vote and queued up to request an absentee ballot.
Registering to vote is one of the first privileges of citizenship and a prerequisite for casting a ballot. Voter registration by non-citizens is a serious crime, and the penalties can deprive unwitting immigrants of eventually gaining U.S. citizenship.
New immigrants, as a vulnerable population, require special protection, especially when it involves their right to register and ultimately to vote. There are Reddit threads for immigrants seeking citizenship, and some posts include desperate pleas for help because the individual has accidentally registered to vote and now his citizenship may be jeopardized.
Maybe one of the kindest things Americans can do for new immigrants is to warn them it is a federal crime for non-citizens to register to vote or to cast a ballot. Then we should enthusiastically applaud them and welcome them when they attain citizenship.
Kristine Christlieb serves as senior correspondent on MFE's communications team. She publishes Trust but Verify on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/trustbutverifyreport/p/voter-registration-blitzkrieg?r=2haa2x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
The Only Citizens Vote Coalition has organized a National "Only Citizens Vote Week," and issued a citizens Call to Action to "shine the light" on the issue of non-citizens voting in our elections. The Coalition is providing Call To Action toolkits this week to assist citizens in taking action.
Each day this week has a specific action. In the daily toolkit, sample letters are included for citizens to use as an Op Ed, a radio interview, a podcast, and Social Media statements. Please use them and share with friends. Click on the circle below to download the sample letter and talking points.
Wednesday Toolkit - Taking Federal Action
What You Can Do: Support the Federal SAVE Act
Write or Contact your Senator from MI to support the SAVE Act.
Senator Peters: https://www.peters.senate.gov/contact
Senator Stabenow: https://www.stabenow.senate.gov/
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The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the Michigan Fair Elections. Every article written by an MFE author is generated by the author or editor alone. However, links or images embedded within the article, may have been generated by artificial intelligence.
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