[Discussion] How do you feel about citizenship, immigrants (and emigrants) and voting / political representation?

Posting here and not on Ask Lemmy, since they ask for no politics and there’s no rules here as far as I see against non-news.

So, how do you feel about that topic? I’m asking, because the topic is close to me. Some (all?) countries don’t allow people who weren’t born there to be politicians, at least on higher levels such as as president. You also aren’t allowed to vote unless you hold a citizenship, but you’re allowed to vote in a country where you don’t live, but hold a citizenship of. You’re even allowed to be a politician if you don’t live in said country, apparently, at least in Germany.

I personally don’t really feel too positive about the entire concept of citizenship. I think citizen rights should be inherent to anyone who has consistently primarily lived in a country for a reasonable amount of time (I’d say 2-3 years are reasonable, but I’m not hung up on that at all). I firmly believe you shouldn’t have the right to vote in a country you don’t live in, because you don’t face the consequences of the outcome. You especially shouldn’t be allowed to be a politician of a country unless you’ve lived there for a long time consistently (let’s say, maybe minimum 5 years). I hope the quote “no taxation without representation” isn’t controversial, because I find it very fitting. No taxation without representation should include immigrants and it should also extend into no representation without taxation, to exclude emigrants (not if you ever left, obviously, but if you don’t reside in a country for ~over a year, you should lose your ability to decide its fate, since you’re not affected).

I genuinely wish this was a topic I ever saw discussed by politicians. I’m a chronic immigrant and want to partake and addup to the communities I join. I also don’t believe I should be able to vote in a country of which I hold a citizenship. I haven’t lived there much, I don’t live there and the outcome doesn’t affect me at all. If I decided to go back, sure, I should regain the voting ability once it’s clear through the time of my residence I’m there to stay and not just coming for a vacation.

I’d be happy to see discussion on this topic, as I feel it doesn’t get any attention and absolutely should.

Floon , (edited )

Immigration, as an issue in the United States, should not be an issue. We’re a nation of 350m, we can absorb a lot of people with no trouble. It’s only an issue because racists make it so, and the GOP oligarchs have been stoking white resentment for decades, with this “Let’s you and him fight” propaganda, pitting working class people against other working class people.

We have immigration limits that were set in the heyday of the KKK in the early 20th c, having had none during the preceding centuries. Those limits have never kept pace with global population growth.

People are fleeing countries we used to provide assistance to, but no longer do. We have dumped thousands of US-raised drug gang criminals into those countries, helping their inability to maintain a stable state. We blame refugees for fleeing circumstances we helped worsen significantly.

And we can’t remotely surface any of this in the national conversation. We can’t even agree that adults who have lived in the US their entire lives, pace a couple months in their birth countries, deserve to be citizens, or deserve to not be deported to countries they’ve never known.

We aren’t nearly as moral as we think we are.

Doubledee ,
@Doubledee@hexbear.net avatar

It really shouldn’t be complicated. If you live somewhere you need to be able to politically represent and defend yourself in some recognized way. The alternative is to grant that there is a discernable class of scapegoats that can be blamed and punished by everyone else without any recourse.

comradegreetingcard ,
@comradegreetingcard@lemmy.ml avatar

Once upon a time there were no passports — the world was a much better place… …I think borders are a sign of failure of the human species.

unherd.com/…/yanis-varoufakis-suella-braverman-sh…

If you live somewhere, you should have a say in what happens there.

michaelrose ,

Go far enough back and there were no passports but you were near certain to be killed if you wandered into another tribes space. Horrific violence is incredibly common. Go further and you might be able to wander in to trade but not welcome to settle and only if a handful of assholes who run everything hadn’t personally decided they had a dispute you ordinary folks ought to die over with zero recourse to pick new assholes.

Looking backwards is almost always a mistake because most of history is pretty awful.

TCB13 ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

As long as the left doesn’t turn immigration into an election rigging pyramid scheme to win elections I’m okay with it. if you look at most countries in Europe that’s what they’ve been doing, they simply allow them to enter our countries and/or even incentivize it because they know they’ll vote to keep them in power.

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