I was about 3/4 finished writing this when I heard the tragic news. I'm still having reservations about hitting the send button, but since it's already written, I'll send it out and you can decide whether to read it, wait a while, or hit delete.
I'm still stunned and in shock considering our loss. ### Michael Atherton wrote of Falacies [1]: > 1) Legal residents are not required to perform jury duty. I don't know about this one, but I'll take your word on it. In a lot of ways though, this is both a right and a responsibility. There are some questions that could be raised regarding "trial by a jury of peers" if a resident noncitizen goes to court. In any case, this is a lesser responsibility of citizenship when compared to some others. If you're talking giving resident noncitizens complete voting rights for all offices, it may be an issue, but since what is being discussed is partial voting rights, having a couple less responsibilities isn't really unfair. There are other rights that noncitizens don't get such being able to get a US passport, government protection and assistance when abroad, etc. > 2) In event of war legal residents can give up their status and > return to their home countries without fear of being prosecuted > for draft evasion. This is not true of American citizens as > illustrated by what happened to young men who moved to Canada > to avoid the draft during the Vietnam war. However, if I'm not mistaken, an American citizen can give up their citizenship to avoid the draft by emmigrating to another country. Also, American citizens do not have to file for Selective Service (resident noncitizens do). Additionally, while someone from England could probably just leave, there are a lot of people who have no place they can safely go-. Sure they could go back and be killed or jailed. Resident noncitizens who want to become American citizens CAN give up everything and leave, but of course, so could you or I. Just don't expect it to be easy if you want to come back. In any case, this would only really be relevant if we were talking about giving full voting rights for all offices. Michael A. also discussed the ease of gaining citizenship. First you have to get permanent resident status (there are other means, but this covers 90% of the applicants), then you have to wait 5 years. There shorter times for people who are married to a citizen or have performed military service. You have to have "good moral character", english and civics knowledge, and an attachement to the constitution (I don't have a problem with these requirements, but they're more than a lot of "citizens by birth" have) In general, you also have to take both an english test and a civics test. I'm pretty sure that many people with the right to vote couldn't have done very well. I will admit that it was pretty easy for me, although identifying which one out of four ammendments didn't deal with voting rights was a bit of a guess (one was in the first 10 ammendments, so I was pretty sure that was it). I answered 50 questions at 100%, but two years ago I couldn't have. One of my favorites was: Q: Whose rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? A: Everyone ( citizens and non-citizens living in the U.S. ) I do agree with Michael that the fees are not exhorbitant. According to the DOJ, it's $260 to file the application and an additional $50 to get fingerprinted. The main hurdles for getting naturalized are getting permanent residency in the first place and then waiting five years. I'm not sure I would make the general hurdles any easier - as I've mentioned before, I would like to see the same bar raised for those who are born in this country. The hurdles in place for getting permanent residency may be worth reviewing. But again, what we are discussing is allowing people who work and live in Minneapolis the right to vote to some degree on a local level and allowing other cities in Minnesota to make that decision for themselves. Brian Melendez (who certainly knows a great deal more about the law than I do) also responded to a statement I made regarding the Constitution not giving the Federal government the right to dictate how state or local leadership is determined [2]. As an example, I said "If a city were to be run by a local church, that would not be unconsitutional (as long as it were not prohibited by the state constitution)." Brian made the statement that my example was incorrect for two reasons. Taking the second one first, he stated that the Minnesota Consitution also prohibits "any preference . . . by law to any religious establishment or mode of worship." This is absolutely correct. My statement was more of a hypothetical - the State does have the ability to determine it's own governance and depending on what the state constitution is, it may prohibit or give freedom to localities to determine their governance. That was part of the reason I included "as long as it were not prohibited by the state constitution" - The state can prevent it. His first point regarding incorporation was more educational to me. I knew that part of the purpose of the 14th ammendment was to limit state rights, but I didn't realize the degree of impact that "incorporation" had. I have a great deal of interest in the 14th and 16th ammendments as I feel that aspects of these changes go against what the framers of the constitution believed in, but I'll go side line to discuss that with Mr. Melendez. Because of this, my example was inaccurate, but (and I assume Brian would have pointed out if this was incorrect as well) the premise I was trying to illustrate is not. Our federal Constitution does not require the states to limit local elections to US Citizens only. Our state constitution does, which is why it would require an ammendment. ### [1] http://www.mnforum.org/pipermail/mpls/2002-October/017741.html [2] http://www.mnforum.org/pipermail/mpls/2002-October/017747.html - Jason Goray, Sheridan, NE __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@;mnforum.org Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
