If by some miracle Congress passes immigration reform, will Tuesday's SCOTUS decision gutting the Voting Rights Act disenfranchise potential new citizens before they can even register to vote?
I'm not a lawyer. I'm a natural-born U.S. citizen who has a certified copy of my birth certificate and a valid Illinois driver's license as my state ID (I also have a valid passport). My state does not have a voter ID law, and I have no reason to think that it will pass one.
So I have no problem voting, as I have in every election since 1972 when I turned 18, in every state I lived in, with the exception of a school board election in Bloomington, Ill., in 1977, when I had to work late (as I recall, it was uncontested anyway).
But what about immigrants who become U.S. citizens? Even if they must wait years before becoming citizens, will states with these wretched voter ID laws ever let them vote?
Somehow, I suspect that people who crossed a border illegally to get into this country traveled light and didn't necessarily bring a certified copy of a birth certificate. What happens to them? How will they be able to prove they're legal? Even if they gain legal status to stay in the United States, what's to say states won't include a requirement like said certified copy of a birth certificate before they can register to vote? They might gain citizenship, but not suffrage. (I'm sure there are groups of "angry old white guys," as Sen. Lindsay Graham put it, trying to think of other obstacles to put in the path of voting.)
We have a friend who grew up in Northern Ireland. After years of living -- legally -- in the U.S as a green card holder, he finally became a citizen in the early fall of 2010, plenty of time before those fall elections. He and many other brand-new Americans registered to vote that day. But -- you guessed it -- when he showed up to vote in November, he magically was not on the voting rolls.
Am I being paranoid? Can any lawyers out there offer an opinion?