Legal Immigrants Once Could Run for Office in U.S., Professor Hayduk Says

QUARTZ -- It’s hard to believe given the tone of this campaign, but in the second half of the 19th century, US states like Alabama, Texas, Georgia and South Carolina actively courted immigrants by giving them the right to vote. In fact, immigrant voting was so widespread that at the end of the 1800s, nearly half the US states and territories had seen aliens voting in some form. Legal aliens could “even run for office,” Ron Hayduk, an associate professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University, told Bloomberg.