Nicole Raz
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON (WMAL) — DC Councilmembers will get feedback today on a bill that would give green card holders the right to vote in local elections.
There are more than 50,000 green card holders in D.C. and Councilmember David Grosso says they ought to be represented in local politics.
“They’re here legally, they’re working in our city, they’re paying taxes in our city,” Grosso told WMAL. “These folks should have a say.”
He says he thinks it’s important for people to have U.S. citizenship in order to vote in presidential elections and to have a voice in national matters, but local matters are a different story.
“When it’s a local election where it’s for every-day things like whether or not your sidewalk gets fixed, whether or not the schools are high quality — things like that, I think these folks should have a say,” he said.
If the bill makes it out of committee, Grosso said he’s confident it will get passed by the City Council. But he’s not so sure about Congress.
“The District of Columbia is treated as a second-class jurisdiction and all of our laws have to go through Congress,” he said. “There would probably be some kind of debate up in Congress, I would imagine, based in xenophobic opinions of the world.”
Copyright 2015 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons)
