OPINION:
The next step in radically changing America is underway. City officials in our nation’s capital plan to allow noncitizens to vote this year.
President Biden let millions of immigrants cross the border illegally. Then he bused them to Washington, D.C. The city’s Democratic machine wants to let them vote — knowing they will almost certainly vote Democratic for all the support and assistance.
This policy is a clear threat to American nationalism.
Three characteristics define a survivable national identity.
There must be a border that defines the nation. There must be a broad sense of history and common culture, which enables people to see themselves as belonging to a common community. And there must be meaningful citizenship that gives people a stake in the larger national community (in our case, citizenship allows us to vote).
The American left has been working overtime to erase all three of these characteristics.
The left believes in open borders — and has done everything to make the United States open to millions of Mr. Biden’s illegal immigrants. This has not been the result of incompetence or lack of resources. This is deliberate policy. And from the left’s standpoint, it has been successful.
The left hates American history. It despises the great men and women who sacrificed and worked to make America the most successful, prosperous and free country in the world. For three generations, the left has been brainwashing children into an anti-American worldview. This anti-American prejudice now infects most of our newsrooms and many of our larger corporations.
Now that the left has been getting illegal immigrants into the country, its members want to start letting illegal immigrants vote. In effect, the noncitizens would offset Americans with whom the left doesn’t agree. They are especially committed to getting new noncitizen residents to vote.
Unfortunately for them, their dream of a huge American Hispanic-Democratic majority has been destroyed by the radicalism and real-world failures of Bidenism. (Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is now running ahead of Mr. Biden in polls among Hispanic Americans.)
A key test case for getting Mr. Biden’s illegal immigrants to vote in 2024 will be in Washington, D.C. The left-wing politicians in the nation’s capital are failing to protect residents from runaway crime (there were 959 carjackings in the District of Columbia in 2023).
City bureaucracy is driving sports teams out of town. The streets are decaying, and American citizens must visit their own capital with concern for their own safety.
And now, the D.C. City Council has decided its next contribution to American decay is to disenfranchise its own residents and allow noncitizens to vote.
The left — as they always do — will shout that being concerned about the votes of U.S. citizens being canceled out by the votes of noncitizens is (you guessed it) racist. This is a ham-fisted attempt to shut down any discussion of what is an absurd, self-destructive policy that would make the concept of American citizenship meaningless.
This is nothing but a fringe political position that is rejected by the American people.
In a February 2021 national survey, Americans deeply opposed allowing noncitizens to vote in American elections. Further, they support requiring citizenship verification during voter registration.
In Arizona, 81% supported allowing only U.S. citizens to vote and requiring citizenship verification to register to vote in federal elections. Only 15% were opposed. In Maine, 75% supported a ban on noncitizen voting, and only 19% opposed such a ban. In Montana, the figures are 86% and 11%, and in West Virginia, they are 84% and 13%.
In another national poll by McLaughlin & Associates taken in May 2021, 61% disapproved of “new laws in places such as California and Vermont that allow noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections.” Only 30% approved.
Congress should move this month to block D.C. politicians’ effort to let noncitizens vote in the nation’s capital. Congress should also pass a law making it illegal for noncitizens to cast ballots in federal elections.
The effort to let noncitizens overrule Americans must be stopped.
• For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com.
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