Not letting immigrants vote is holding back climate action
Nothing gets a German conservative going quite like basking in the frustration of a post-work traffic jam—or you’d be forgiven for thinking so. Against all common sense, the local conservative government in Berlin opened a new motorway last month, spiking levels of traffic and forcing bus operators to cut affected operating lines in half. Sadly, neither I nor anybody I know voted for this, in part because many of us weren't allowed to.
If I could have voted, I definitely wouldn't have chosen a party harbouring a romantic obsession with cars. Transport research persistently shows that expanding roads leads to higher car use, causing more traffic jams, greater levels of pollution, and more carbon emissions from fossil-fuel vehicles. More cars on roads, especially with relaxed speed limits as is happening in Berlin, increases the likelihood of fatal collisions with pedestrians, cyclists, and other vehicles.
Despite now having to inhale larger volumes of exhaust fumes on a daily basis, I didn't deserve to vote in the local election because of one egregious crime: my lack of German citizenship. While 449,990 people voted for the party who won the last local election, there are 829,900 foreign residents in Berlin—none of whom could vote. That means almost twice as many people couldn't vote than there are people who voted for the winning party.
Similar systems exist around the world. In the USA, non-citizens, including permanent legal residents, aren’t allowed to vote in federal, state, or most local elections. England allows Irish, Commonwealth, and EU citizens, under certain conditions, to vote in local elections, though only the former two have a say in general elections. Citizens of the European Union are largely allowed to vote in local elections across the bloc, though not in all cases, such as the German city states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg.
Jack McGovan
Citizenship remains the best method of accessing the ballot box for most people. Applying, however, can cost thousands, a significant amount during an ongoing recession, and some countries, like Austria, require that you give up your old nationality. Germany finally allowed dual citizenship last year, but the current chancellor said that citizenship can be stripped from those who applied for it as a warning to dissenters.
Voting systems based around citizenship are steeped in nativism and inherently create a class of outsiders. Stefan Schmidt from Stuttgart deserves to vote in Berlin after living here for a matter of weeks because it is his birthright, while immigrants who have nurtured communities, stimulated the economy, and contributed to the cultural significance of the city—for decades in many cases—do not.
A rising tide of nativism is destroying public life across Europe, and those political projects are only going to further entrench our society's reliance on fossil fuels.
The left, and the climate movement, should be fighting for the right of immigrants to vote and not only because it’s the just thing to do in an increasingly globalised world. People with migration backgrounds across Western countries tend to vote for left-leaning parties, who are typically more likely to be supportive of climate action. Immigrants in the USA were found to be more pro-environment than those born there.
Although based on anecdotal evidence, my assumption is that the new motorway would never have been opened if foreign nationals were allowed to vote in Berlin. At the very least, there would have been significantly more opposition. Almost one quarter of residents are foreign nationals, many of whom moved here for the progressive values of the city—yet their voices, and my voice, remain unheard.
Of course, there should be some rules as to who is allowed to partake in elections. People who are only living somewhere for a short period of time, like students on exchange semesters, probably shouldn't be able to vote. However, many countries allow foreign nationals to vote in local elections after they’ve lived in the country for a few years; immigrants in Denmark can vote after living there for four years, three in Sweden.
Both countries show what an inclusive voting system could look like and demonstrate that fears about immigrants being a threat to Western nations are unfounded. The Scandinavian lands are widely-renowned for their robust welfare states, even after allowing immigrants to vote for the last three decades. I wasn't able to find any research specifically on how immigrant votes affected politics in either country over a longer period, demonstrating how little attention the issue receives (or highlighting my lack of research skills).
Jack McGovan
In the UK, the Migrant Democracy Project has an ongoing petition calling on the government to implement a residence-based voting system. The group Wir Wählen (We Vote) is campaigning for immigrant voting rights across Europe by, amongst other initiatives, organising symbolic elections for immigrants. They ran one for this year’s federal election in Germany and found overwhelming support for left-wing parties versus the actual dominant right-wing result.
That's one of the reasons, alongside racism, why the right is opposed to immigrants voting. Elected Republicans in the US have stated very clearly that only citizens should be allowed to vote, and the language used by far-right parties across Europe—like Germany's AfD and the UK's Reform—doesn't suggest they'll be campaigning on voting rights for foreign nationals anytime soon.
A rising tide of nativism is destroying public life across Europe, and those political projects are only going to further entrench our society's reliance on fossil fuels, as far-right groups are funded by fossil fuel interests. Many of these political projects are succeeding precisely because foreign nationals aren't allowed to vote; democracy will always die if significant chunks of the population are excluded because of the circumstances of their birth.
Residency-based voting rights are a real opportunity for the left and climate movement to garner greater public support for their policies, yet I've seen very little attention given to the issue. Instead, many major environmental organisations succumb to far-right talking points in the hopes of bolstering support for their work that way. That is, of course, a dead end: multiculturalism is the only path along which we will find our salvation.
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