Nearly 47 million people voted in the German parliamentary elections last weekend. elections were the most intense since 2002; In it, the Social Democrats defeated the conservative Christian Democratic bloc by 1.8 million votes. Now the party leaders will need all their negotiating skills to form the next government. But imagine how different the result would have been if another 6 million votes were cast.
This is not an arbitrary number. Germany has a foreign population of about 11.4 million, and about three-quarters of that number are of voting age. If they had participated in the elections at the same rate as German citizens, about 6 million additional votes would have been cast. And only my family – who has lived in Germany for seven years – would have wanted to have their say on the path that Germany would take in a post-Merkel era. In the classic example of paying taxes without representation, however, they do not have the right to vote, and what American revolutionaries described as tyranny 250 years ago seems to be an accepted situation in some democracies today.
In fact, modern democratic governance has an essential economic component: people accept being taxed in return for having a say in how their country is run. The rapidly growing immigrant population in Western countries has to submit to the tax laws of the host countries from the moment they receive their first cash there. Almost anywhere, however, they have to wait many years (eight years in Germany, for non-EU nationals, 10 in Austria, for example, or the Czech Republic) in order to apply for citizenship.
Even at the local level, where many EU countries make it easier for foreign nationals to vote, they are often denied the right to vote. For example, a German citizen can vote in the Berlin elections 30 days after moving to the German capital; I cannot, though I have older and deeper roots in the city.
The foreign communities residing in the West are diverse. They include high-paid local and foreign refugees, construction workers and software engineers, taxi drivers and famous authors. The political agendas they could advocate if they had a voice would cover a wide range of topics, from improving second language instruction in public schools to facilitating recognition of foreign qualifications, and from smarter programs to attract immigrant women into the labor market to creating more public sector jobs for non-citizens. citizens. In addition to the agendas of immigrants, which are not fully understood by the local population, non-citizen residents also have strong feelings and opinions on the same topics of discussion among citizens.
On one level, disenfranchising these population groups seems just as illogical as denying women the right to vote in the early 2000s. Indeed, the rules for voting by non-citizens differ significantly from country to country. In New Zealand, all non-citizen permanent residents are eligible to vote in national elections after only one year in the country; in Chile, five years later; And in Uruguay, eight years later. In the United Kingdom, non-citizens from Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations can vote in national elections; Citizens of European Union member states can vote in parliamentary elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Portugal grants some Brazilians residing there the right to vote based on a special agreement with Brazil.
Published by special arrangement with the Washington Post and Bloomberg News Service.
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