I wrote a story about the Portland effort last month, and supporters told me the initiative was based on making elections fairer to legal residents. It takes at least five years for immigrants legally in the country to become citizens, and can be much longer because of the difficulty of the citizenship test and steep naturalization fees. In the meantime, non-citizens pay taxes and use city services, and immigrant rights groups argued they should be allowed to impact the elections.

Opponents of the law, on the other hand, said voting should be limited to citizens; otherwise, legal residents would have little incentive to complete the naturalization process.

In San Francisco, a ballot provision to allow parents of public school students — including illegal immigrants — to vote in school board elections also failed, 54 percent to 46 percent. If it had passed, San Francisco would have joined Chicago as one of the few cities that allows undocumented immigrants to vote in school elections if their children attend school. Non-citizens are banned from voting in most of the country, except in a few Maryland cities. Early in the country’s history, non-citizens often voted.

How often does document fraud actually happen? It’s tough to say — USCIS does not track incidents of fraud for immigration documents. Pro-enforcement groups such as Center for Immigration Studies claim document fraud is rampant and was partially to blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when foreign nationals with driver’s licenses were able to board planes they later hijacked. (Of course, some states allow non-citizens to obtain driver’s licenses legally.)

The new documents would not prevent illegal immigrants from giving false Social Security numbers, but they would make it more difficult to fake naturalization documents. Some senators have argued Social Security cards also need a high-security overhaul to become more resistant to fraud. Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) have proposed biometric Social Security cards and criminal penalties for using fake Social Security numbers as part of their proposals for comprehensive immigration reform.

Two veterans awaiting deportation described by the AP argue they were used by the military and are now being cast aside by the country they served. But the story does not touch on the question of whether the military misleads immigrants into joining as a path to citizenship. Although the military is beginning to offer fast-track paths to citizenship for current enlistees, the Army is so far the only branch that has fully implemented these programs. Meanwhile, some charge that military recruiters exploit immigrants by allowing them to believe they will be able to obtain citizenship for themselves and their families through military service — even though this isn’t always the case.

For citizen veterans, the court system is beginning to offer more leniency as part of an understanding that military service can lead to various mental and emotional conditions. In November, the U.S. Sentencing Commission will issue new rules allowing federal judges to consider a criminal defendant’s military service to issue a shorter prison sentence.

But these standards do not apply to immigration courts, where a 1996 anti-illegal immigration law made deportation the standard for immigrants who had committed certain crimes. Immigrant rights advocates argue these laws are unfair, particularly to veterans:

“Drugs, anger management, weapons charges, that’s what a lot of vets are getting caught for, and there is no relief,” said Margaret Stock, a recently retired Army reservist and immigration attorney who taught at the United States Military Academy at West Point. “The 1996 law really put the nails in their coffin.”

Coombs’ attorneys, Shagin and Heather Boxeth of San Diego, Calif., who have represented or advised immigrant veterans in similar straits, estimate up to 4,000 veterans who served as long ago as World War II are now in immigration detention or have been deported, but acknowledge that there are no hard numbers.

ICE spokeswoman Lori Haley said identifying and removing dangerous criminals from the country is an agency priority — and that the cases of people with prior military service are carefully reviewed.

The military does not allow illegal immigrants to enlist in the army, and both veterans in the AP story entered the country legally. But it is likely that many illegal immigrants who do manage to join the military do so in hopes of obtaining legal status for themselves and their families. In these cases, deportation for veterans could be even more likely. Immigrant rights advocates claim that military recruiters specifically target undocumented students to join the military by promising green cards.

One way to make the system more fair, some argue, would be for Congress to pass the DREAM Act, a now-stalled bill that would allow undocumented young people who entered the country as children to gain legal status through attending college or serving in the military. Defense officials have said the bill would be a boon for military recruitment, and supporters of the bill argue it would allow the country to properly acknowledge the service of immigrants in the military.

Legal immigrants will be allowed to vote in city elections in Portland, Maine, if a ballot initiative passes on Nov. 2.

Last Wednesday, a group of progressive volunteers gathered in Monument Square in Portland, Maine, to quiz passersby about citizenship. Could they answer sample civics questions from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services test to become an American citizen? (Most couldn’t.) Did they know how much it costs to become a citizen or how long it can take? (Most estimates were too low.) Did they know about Question 4 on the Portland, Maine, city ballot Nov. 2?

[Immigration1] In a city where legal immigrants make up about 15 percent of the population, the progressive groups Maine People’s Alliance and the League of Young Voters are working to encourage voters to extend voting rights to legal immigrants who have not yet become citizens. They argue these residents live, work and pay taxes in the city, but due to the difficulty of obtaining citizenship are unfairly denied the right to determine how the city spends its funds.

“Legal immigrants are active members of the community and shouldn’t be denied a voice because of these major barriers,” said Reva Eiferman, an organizer with Maine People’s Alliance. “There’s a disconnect between the citizenship process within the immigration system and an individual’s right to have their voice heard in their city.”

As cities and states across the country consider legislation aimed at limiting the flow of outsiders to their areas, a few municipalities are moving in the opposite direction, pushing to expand the rights of immigrants living within their borders. In Portland, Question 4 would allow legal immigrants to vote in municipal elections. A ballot proposition in San Francisco aims to take voting one step further, allowing even illegal immigrants to vote in school elections as long as they are the parents of a public school student. In New York, city council members plan to introduce legislation allowing legal residents to vote in city elections within the next few months.

These efforts show that while anti-immigrant sentiment is prevalent, it’s not universal, supporters argue.

“It responds to what’s happening nationwide — the new policies in Arizona included — in a positive way,” Eiferman said.

Non-citizens can already vote in six Maryland municipalities and in Chicago school elections, but the rest of the country gives voting privileges only to citizens. Early in the country’s history, non-citizens were allowed to vote in most states, but as immigration into the United States increased, residents began to restrict voting rights, state by state. (Federal elections have always limited voting to citizens.) By the 1920s, as Europeans moved to the country after World War I, states cut off legal immigrant voting rights entirely, and only a few cities have so far reinstated them.

“It was kind of like the atmosphere now: There was concern about the volume of newcomers and what it means for the nature of America and where it’s headed,” said Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at the City University in New York and a supporter of expanding New York voting rights to non-citizens.

If immigrants can vote, they will never bother to become citizens, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the anti-illegal immigration group Center for Immigration Studies. He said the citizenship process is sufficiently easy for legal immigrants that they should be required to fully commit to the country before getting the right to vote.

“It’s silly not to require that formal step of marrying America instead of just shacking up,” Krikorian said.

But supporters argue that voting would help legal immigrants become more invested in their cities and schools. The San Francisco ballot measure to give parents of public school students the right to vote, Proposition D, could dramatically increase the number of potential voters in school elections: About half of all children in the Bay area have at least one immigrant parent, according to a study by the California Immigration Policy Center.

“I really believe our schools will be better if more parents are involved in every level of school governance,” said Kathy Coll, the mother of two San Francisco Unified School District students and one of three co-chairmen of the campaign for Proposition D.

In New York, the effort to expand voting will go through the city council, not through voters directly. City council member Daniel Dromm, a Democrat, said the council plans to consider legislation to extend voting in city elections to legal immigrants with the next few months. The bill will be called the Resident Voting Rights Act — “They are residents, they’re just not citizens yet,” Dromm said — and would allow any legal resident to vote in municipal elections.

“I feel it’s a basic right: This country was founded on the premise of ‘no taxation without representation,’” Dromm said. “By denying residents the right to vote, we are forcing taxation without representation.”

Advocates for immigrants said that in most cases, those who violated the voting law did so unwittingly.

“It really annoys me that they’re just trying to do their civic duty for no pecuniary gain at all, yet they wind up in removal proceedings,” said Jeffrey N. Brauwerman, a lawyer in Coral Gables, Fla., and a former immigration judge, who has represented four immigrants that the government tried to deport for registering to vote.

Under current policy, only U.S. citizens are able to vote in most of the country. Only six Maryland municipalities allow non-citizens to vote in city elections, while Chicago allows non-citizens to vote in city school elections, a political science professor told the Boston Globe. This was not always the case: Most states allowed originally allowed non-citizens to vote, but began to restrict voting as more people moved to the country. The first states to remove voting rights for legal residents, New York and Massachusetts, did so because they feared French radicals moving to the U.S. after the French revolution.

Despite the laws, some state lawmakers are concerned non-citizens are trying to vote anyway. In Colorado, state Rep. Ted Harvey (R) is pushing for legislation that would require voters to prove citizenship when they register by bringing either a passport or birth certificate. His plan was bolstered last week, when the Denver Post reported that nearly 12,000 registered voters failed to check a box affirming they were U.S. citizens when they registered to vote — which could have been either an error or an admission they were not legally allowed to vote.

“The federal government has proven they are incapable of protecting our borders and we are being flooded by people who should not be here,” Harvey told TWI. “On 9/11, some of the attackers had valid government documentation that they used to get on planes. I want to ensure that our government documents are valid and going to only people who should get them.”

At the other end of the spectrum, a few cities are pushing to allow some legal immigrants to vote. In Portland, Maine, the League of Young Voters gathered votes to put an amendment providing voting rights to legal residents on the ballot in November. The amendment would allow immigrants with green cards to vote in municipal elections so they could have a voice on issues that affect their taxes. A few cities in Massachusetts have passed similar efforts previously, and San Francisco politicians have proposed allowing all parents of public school children — legal or not — to vote in school elections.

Shahed Hossain, who had lived legally in the U.S. for 10 years, was deported in 2007 after more than a year in a detention facility. He was stopped at the border and told guards he was a citizen before backtracking, ColorLines reported. Under the 1996 Immigration Reform and Individual Responsibility Act, it is illegal for any immigrants — even those with green cards — to claim to be citizens:

The law was intended to prevent undocumented immigrations from lying to get a job or enter the country without a visa. It wasn’t supposed to target green card holders like Hossain, but as with all of the beefed-up enforcement initiatives federal officials have launched since then, the law is a blunt  tool. So Hossain was charged that day with making a false claim to U.S. citizenship. The charge triggers automatic deportation.

Since the mid-90s, the immigration removal system has become increasingly standardized to the point of removing nearly all discretion from immigration judges. While judges previously could cancel deportation based on the individual’s circumstances, current law makes it next to impossible to do so.

Judges also face a monumental number of cases: In mid-June, a record of 247,922 cases were awaiting resolution in immigration courts, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. These cases are sometimes dealt with in mass hearings, NPR reported in September. As programs such as Secure Communities and Operation Streamline net more illegal immigrants, backlogs and heavy caseloads seem likely to exacerbate the problem of a conveyor-belt judicial process.

At the same time, Democrats have stepped up immigration enforcement in an effort to compromise with Republicans. But comprehensive immigration reform has yet to appear, and immigrant rights groups argue it is the only way to resolve the problems within the current immigration enforcement system:

“If we are going to be continuing to escalate what we call enforcement, or mass deportation,” says Michelle Fei, director of the Immigrant Defense Project in New York City, “many … who are coming forward to register or to get legalized might actually land in deportation. Enforcement will undercut the promise of reform. We don’t want a system that is rounding people up and deporting people without due process.”

Democrats, as they push to renew and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, hope to include coverage for legal immigrants, who currently must wait five years to receive health care under Medicaid and SCHIP. Indeed, House Democrats announced yesterday that the legal immigrant provision is included in the lower chamber’s SCHIP proposal.

But it’s not in the Senate version released today by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). Instead, Senate Democrats will attempt to add the language as an amendment in the Finance Committee — an amendment that’s likely to pass.

Why go through the extra trouble?

It’s not because Senate Democrats oppose the policy. Indeed, Baucus has supported the concept of covering legal immigrants under SCHIP in the past. Rather, the issue here is political. As Robert Pear of The New York Times explains this morning:

This part of the bill deals only with legal immigrants. But it could revive the emotional debate over immigration, as many Republicans want to establish stricter verification procedures to prevent illegal immigrants from getting health benefits.

Most Finance Committee Republicans — including Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the panel’s ranking member — oppose the legal-immigrant provision. Grassley’s office sent out a statement this week explaining that opposition thusly:

In order to get legal immigrant status, a sponsor has to sign an agreement that the immigrant will be financially supported for five years so the taxpayers won’t have to bear the immigrant’s health care costs. Senator Grassley and many other Republicans support that policy and would be concerned about now allowing sponsors to go back on that commitment by asking the taxpayers to shoulder the health care costs for individuals who came to this country under those terms.

If the provision is in the final bill, the statement adds, “it’ll be difficult for many Republicans to support final passage.”

Republicans likely won’t have the votes to prevent the Democrats’ SCHIP bill from passing. Still, the current ruckus over the legal-immigrant provision is some indication of just how volatile an issue immigration remains.