When Immigrants Decide Elections

In 1962, Algeria expelled nearly 1 million French settlers. The Algerian government confiscated their property, stripped their political rights, and sealed the border. The eight-year war of independence had been fought for one purpose: to end foreign political control over Algerian affairs.

Since 1990, the United States has admitted over 30 million foreign-born residents. It naturalizes 850,000 to 900,000 new citizens per year.^[7] Each one can vote. In districts where immigrant communities reach critical mass, they elect representatives who reflect the priorities of the communities they came from - not the priorities of the Americans who were there before them.

This is documented history. It happened during the first wave of mass immigration from 1890 to 1924. It is happening again now.

The First Wave: When Immigrant Blocs Elected Socialists

In 1910, Victor Berger became the first Socialist elected to the United States Congress. He won Wisconsin's 5th Congressional District, centered on Milwaukee. The city had the largest German-born population in America.

Berger was born in Austria-Hungary. He immigrated in 1878. His political base was the German immigrant community. The Milwaukee Socialist Party published its newspaper in German, the Vorwarts. Its organizing infrastructure was built on German social democratic traditions imported directly from Europe.

Congress refused to seat Berger after his 1918 re-election. He had been convicted under the Espionage Act for opposing the war. He won a special election in 1919. Congress refused to seat him again. He finally served from 1923 to 1929, after the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.

Milwaukee elected three Socialist mayors over the same period: Emil Seidel from 1910 to 1912, Daniel Hoan from 1916 to 1940, and Frank Zeidler from 1948 to 1960. The German immigrant socialist tradition dominated the city's politics for half a century.

Four years after Berger's first election, Meyer London won New York's 12th Congressional District. The district covered the Lower East Side of Manhattan, one of the most densely populated places on earth. Its residents were overwhelmingly Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire.

London was born in Russian-controlled Poland. He immigrated in 1891. His voters were Russian and Eastern European Jews who had arrived between 1880 and 1914. Many brought socialist politics from the Pale of Settlement. The Jewish Daily Forward, a Yiddish-language socialist newspaper with a circulation over 200,000, served as the political backbone of the community.

London served three terms. Morris Hillquit, another immigrant Socialist, won 145,000 votes - 22% - in the 1917 New York mayoral race^[3], running on an anti-war platform in heavily immigrant neighborhoods.

In 1919, five Socialist assemblymen were elected from New York City districts with large immigrant populations. The New York State Assembly expelled all five by a vote of 140 to 6 in January 1920. The expelled members won their special elections. The Assembly expelled them again.

The political radicalism of immigrant communities fed directly into the Red Scare of 1919-1920. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched raids across 33 cities in January 1920, arresting between 3,000 and 10,000 people. The overwhelming majority were foreign-born. The USS Buford deported 249 radicals to Soviet Russia, including Lithuanian-born anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

Palmer told Congress: "Fully 90% of Communist and anarchist agitation is traceable to aliens."

Congress acted. The 1924 Immigration Act cut admissions by 80%. The foreign-born share fell from 14.7% to 4.7% over the next 40 years. The political radicalism faded as immigrant communities assimilated.

The Modern Parallel

The source countries are different. The ideology is different. The mechanism is the same: large immigrant communities voting as blocs and electing representatives who reflect their communities' priorities rather than those of the broader American population.

Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia. She arrived as a refugee in 1995. She represents Minnesota's 5th Congressional District, the Minneapolis seat with the largest Somali-American population in the country. Her election was impossible without post-1990 Somali refugee resettlement. She co-chaired Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign. Her Heritage Action score is 0%.

Pramila Jayapal was born in Chennai, India. She immigrated at age 16. She chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Her Seattle district, Washington's 7th, has a significant Asian-American population that grew substantially after 1990.

Rashida Tlaib was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrant parents. She represents Michigan's 12th District, which includes Dearborn - the first Arab-majority city in the United States at 55% Arab population.^[10] Dearborn was 97% Caucasian in 1970.

Ro Khanna's parents immigrated from India. He represents California's 17th, the most Asian congressional district in the country at 57% Asian. He co-chaired Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. He is building a $13.4 million war chest for a 2028 presidential run. As documented in our Silicon Valley analysis, this district's demographics were created by the H-1B program.

A 2020 study by Mayda, Peri, and Steingress in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics found that a 1-percentage-point increase in immigrant share of a county's population increases Democratic vote share by 0.7 to 1.0 percentage points.^[1] All Asian-majority congressional districts in the United States elect Democrats. Twenty of the 24 congressional districts where one in five adults is a non-citizen went to a Democrat in 2022.^[10] All 15 of America's wealthiest congressional districts elected Democrats in 2024 - the correlation between wealth and conservatism reversed because wealthy districts are now disproportionately populated by immigrant communities.

First and second-generation immigrants vote as members of immigrant communities. The Democratic Party positioned itself as the party of immigration. The math follows.

The Scale of the New Electorate

The United States naturalizes 850,000 to 900,000 new citizens per year.^[7] Each one becomes a voter. Over the 35 years since the 1990 Act, roughly 25 million people have been naturalized.^[7]

Decade	Naturalizations
1990s	~6.0 million
2000s	~7.0 million
2010s	~7.5 million
2020-2025	~4.5 million (est.)
Total	~25 million

That is 25 million new voters in 35 years. They are drawn disproportionately from countries with no historical ties to the United States. They vote overwhelmingly for one party. This is not a natural evolution of American politics. It is a manufactured electorate created by immigration policy.

No Other Country Allows This

The countries that send the most immigrants to the United States do not allow the reverse.

Country	Naturalizations/Year	Foreign-Born %	Non-Citizen Voting
United States	850,000-900,000	15.8%	Some localities
Japan	8,000-10,000	2.5%	No
South Korea	10,000-15,000	4-5%	Local only (permanent residents)
China	Hundreds at most	<0.1%	N/A (one-party state)
India	Negligible	<1%	No
Algeria	Negligible	<1%	No
Morocco	Very rare	<0.5%	No

Japan has 300,000 ethnic Korean permanent residents. Their families have lived in Japan for three and four generations. They cannot vote unless they renounce Korean nationality and naturalize as Japanese.

China introduced a "green card" system in 2004. By 2016, it had issued approximately 10,000 total.^[12] A 2020 proposal to slightly relax the rules triggered massive public backlash. The proposal was shelved.

India requires 12 years of residence for naturalization and rarely grants it. Dual citizenship is not allowed. The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 fast-tracked citizenship for non-Muslim refugees from three neighboring countries. It triggered nationwide protests.

Algeria fought a war to end French political influence. Morocco maintains strict citizenship barriers. The suggestion that either country accept mass French immigration and allow French settlers to vote in their elections would be treated as an act of aggression.

Only Western nations - the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden - allow mass immigration to reshape their electorates.

The Tammany Hall Parallel

In the weeks before the 1868 election, Tammany Hall judges naturalized over 41,000 immigrants.^[4] The machine provided housing, jobs, and services. In exchange, it got votes. Immigrants were politically mobilized before they were culturally assimilated. Their loyalty went to the machine, not to the broader civic community.

The modern version is more sophisticated. The structure is the same. Immigrant communities are settled in concentrated geographic areas. Ethnic organizations, native-language media, and community leaders mobilize them politically. Democratic Party operatives cultivate these communities. The naturalization system processes hundreds of thousands per year. The voters emerge pre-organized into blocs that reliably support one party.

In the 1920s, Congress recognized the problem. The 1924 Act cut immigration by 80%. The political machines lost their base as the immigrant supply dried up. Tammany Hall collapsed because the pipeline of new immigrants - and new voters - was turned off.

No equivalent action has been taken today. The pipeline remains open at 850,000 to 900,000 new citizens per year.^[7]

What Needs to Change

The Nation of Settlers advocates for immigration policy that serves American citizens, not political parties.

Annual naturalizations exceed 800,000. At that level, immigration policy is electoral policy. Reducing legal immigration to 200,000 per year would reduce naturalizations proportionally.

The current 5-year residence requirement before naturalization is among the shortest in the developed world. Japan, South Korea, and most European nations require 5 to 8 years. India requires 12. A 10-year requirement would ensure that new citizens have deeper roots in American civic culture before casting a first vote.

The current civics test has a 95.7% pass rate.^[7] A meaningful test - comparable to the requirements in Denmark, Germany, or Japan - would ensure that new citizens understand the system they are participating in.

Immigrant communities that reach critical mass in specific congressional districts create captured electorates. Geographic dispersal requirements would prevent the formation of ethnic voting blocs.

Every country that sends immigrants to America protects its own political system from foreign influence. The United States should do the same.

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Sources

1. Mayda, Peri, and Steingress, "The Political Impact of Immigration: Evidence from the United States," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2020
2. Sally Miller, Victor Berger and the Promise of Constructive Socialism, 1910-1920, Greenwood Press, 1973
3. Gordon Goldberg, Meyer London: A Biography of the Socialist New York Congressman, 1871-1926, McFarland, 2013
4. Terry Golway, Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics, Liveright, 2014
5. Robert Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920, University of Minnesota Press, 1955
6. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, Rutgers University Press, 2002 (revised edition)
7. USCIS, Annual Naturalization Statistics
8. Pew Research Center, "Naturalized Citizens Make Up Record One-in-Ten U.S. Eligible Voters," 2020
9. Heritage Action Scorecard, 118th-119th Congress
10. Ballotpedia, Congressional District Demographics
11. Japan Ministry of Justice, Immigration Control Statistics
12. Chinese Nationality Law, 1980
13. Indian Citizenship Act, 1955 (as amended)
14. Algerian Nationality Ordinance No. 70-86 of 1970