Amnesty Could Create Loopholes for Illegal Immigrants to Vote

President Obama’s temporary deportation amnesty could make it easier for illegal immigrants to improperly register and vote in elections, state elections officials testified to Congress on Thursday, saying that the driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers they will be granted create a major voting loophole.

While stressing that it remains illegal for non-citizens to vote, secretaries of state from Ohio and Kansas said they won’t have the tools to sniff out illegal immigrants who register anyway, ignoring stiff penalties to fill out the registration forms that are easily available at shopping malls, motor vehicle bureaus and in curbside registration drives.

Anyone registering to vote attests that he or she is a citizen, but Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said mass registration drives often aren’t able to give due attention to that part, and so illegal immigrants could still get through.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach said even some motor vehicle bureau workers automatically ask customers if they want to register to vote, which some non-citizens in the past have cited as their reason for breaking the law to register.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting member of Congress, accused Republicans of an effort at voter suppression.

“The president’s executive order gives immigrants the right to stay, who have been here for years, immigrants who have been working hard and whose labor we have needed,” Ms. Norton said.  “The Republicans may want to go down in history as the party who tried once again 100 years later to nullify the right to vote.  Well, I am here to say they shall not succeed.”

Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Democrat, said he doubted illegal immigrants would risk running afoul of the law, which could get them deported, just to be an insignificant part of an election.

The hearing was the latest GOP effort to dent Mr. Obama’s executive action, announced in November, which grants tentative legal status and work permits to as many as 5 million illegal immigrant parents whose children are either U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.  The president also expanded a 2012 policy for so-called Dreamers, or illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, granting them tentative legal status and work permits as well.

Republicans say there are a host of unintended consequences, including the chances of illegal voting, a perverse incentive created by Obamacare that would make newly legalized workers more attractive to some businesses than American workers and complications with the tax code.

The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Koskinen, said the White House never spoke with him about potential consequences before Mr. Obama announced his policy changes.  The secretaries of state who testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Thursday said they too never heard from Mr. Obama ahead of time.

Mr. Husted has written the Obama administration asking for help in identifying the name and date of birth of all non-citizens who get Social Security numbers, which he said would allow states to go back and clear illegally registered voters from their rolls.

This potential problem also will exist for cities that issue photo id's to non-documented individuals.  The problem occurs at the place where the photo id is created, the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).  They usually fall under the law to offer the recipient a voter registration form with their photo id card.











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker Technorati Tag in Del.icio.us