Professor Hayduk to Speak in Pasadena about Immigrant Voting Rights

PASADENA NOW -- A knee-jerk response of some people to the idea of allowing voting by new immigrants who haven’t yet become citizens is that voting is a right for only citizens. I’ve been surprised to learn as I’ve looked at the parent-voting issue that, historically, immigrant residents did have the right to vote in elections in the U.S. But after the Reconstruction era when Jim Crow laws started preventing the newly-freed slaves from voting, the same political forces passed anti-immigrant laws which denied new immigrants the right to vote. San Francisco State University Political Science Professor Ronald Hayduk has written about this history in his book “Democracy for All: Restoring Immigrant Voting Rights in the United States.” Professor Hayduk will speak at a forum at the Pasadena Public Library on November 22. Hayduk is the leading academic authority on this history of immigrant voting rights and its suppression along with the Jim Crow suppression of African-American voting.