Since arriving in the US, I have been taxed without representation. For the first few years I didn’t really see not having the vote as a problem—I didn’t immediately engage with local politics and I do see sense in not instantly giving new arrivals a vote for President—but the taxation part felt pretty absurd when my student funding was coming from the government in the first place. I joked about holding a Cleveland Tea Party with a single teabag and Lake Erie, and never got around to actually doing it.
Once Seattle started to feel like home, my frustration with this started to rise. I’ve lived here almost 9 years, expect to stay and am highly engaged with local politics, but still don’t get to vote for my own Mayor or City Council. Meanwhile a US citizen who moved from Miami just in time for the voter registration deadline can. This has never made sense to me, and while the margin was larger than one vote it especially hurt to have to watch on the sidelines as a Mayor I felt great affection for was voted out last year.
Now we’re a month away from a ballot measure, the failure of which would sabotage bus service in the region. I am entitled to apply for citizenship, and I need to get on with that, but there’s no way it would be processed in time for this ballot. I resent my disenfranchisement.
Taxation without representation http://t.co/8R2PBSLgcp
Eldan, Very perceptive comments. It’s time you became a citizen. I say this because I’ve been a permanent resident since 1990 and spent half my life, more or less, here. Yet I too am not represented. Hard to explain why as the process of citizenship is much simpler and cheaper than acquiring a green card. In fact the situation has become so ridiculous that on the last two times I’ve entered the country from overseas trips, I’ve been castigated, albeit mildly, by the INS/Homeland Security agents. So now I’m filling out those bloody forms (they are on my computer) and hopefully I’ll get to vote in the not too distant future. Oh, and amusingly I note that because I’m beyond a certain middle age milepost and lived here for more than 10 years I’m exempt from the English exam when my interview comes around (something I was actually looking forward to…).
Ha! I didn’t know there was an English test as such – I thought they just did the citizenship exam in English. I was supposed to take a spoken English test before being allowed to teach at grad school. I missed the test because I hadn’t been warned it would be in week 0 in time to book my flight in accordingly, so I walked into the relevant office to ask what to do, at which point they said “Well, having heard you speak we don’t really need to do the exam do we?”
Get a suntan and some Salvadoran prison tattoos, and show up speaking only in Spanish. The sky will open up and it will rain money, and Obama will trip over his enormous clown shoes running to offer you amnesty and El Guëlfare. Especially if you tell him that you are a carrier of ebola, multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, Chagas’ Disease, or all three.
So, you find this drivel important enough to type, but only through Tor and with a fake email address. Say it to my face next time, you fucking coward.