The Boston City Council will consider ways it can let noncitizens vote in city elections tomorrow in a hearing on a controversial measure being pushed by Council President Andrea Campbell. “All members of a community should have the right to participate and be included in the governance of that community,” Campbell’s order states, noting that Boston has a foreign-born population of more than 190,000, or 28 percent. Her order also states that non-U.S. citizens paid $116 million in state and local taxes and generated over $3.4 billion in spending, according to a 2015 city report.
… The order calls for the council to “explore voting rights” for people with green cards, or legal permanent residents, as well as “visa holders, Temporary Protected status recipients, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients,” groups that include refugees granted asylum and illegal immigrants who were brought here as children.
Campbell told the Herald she wants it to apply to people who are trying to become citizens, to signal to immigrants that Boston is welcoming to them.
“I’m done saying, ‘I stand with you’ and that’s it,” Campbell said.
Enacting a law change would have to be through a home-rule petition, which would need the approval of the council, the mayor, the Legislature and the governor.
Full Article: A vote for noncitizens? Boston City Council prez pushes access to rights | Boston Herald.