The Real Growing Foreign Influence in Our Elections

RNLA Vice President for Communications Harmeet Dhillon wrote today in the Daily Caller about San Francisco's new policy of allowing non-citizens to vote in its School Board elections.  Ms. Dhillon explains that liberals see non-citizens as a powerful force to support their radical policies:

Why are noncitizens — legal and illegal — being invited to vote in the first place, in school board elections or, as in some other jurisdictions, other municipal elections? The reason is clear: Liberal politicians, devoid of ideas and with dwindling support among Americans, see a promising voter pool in foreign nationals who might be future citizens, and have decided to cut out the waiting time and just let people vote whether they meet established criteria or not. . . .

The School Board in San Francisco controls a massive bureaucracy with a huge budget, with enormous power and influence:

San Francisco politicians are trying to play this alarming development off as no big deal, “just” a school board election because after all, some of these children are born here and are citizens themselves (some, of course, are not) and why shouldn’t the parents have a say? — so the argument goes. But make no mistake – if Americans stand by and allow foreign citizens to control our schools, the next step will be foreign citizens voting for Mayor, District Attorney, Sheriff, Board of Supervisors, judges, and more — after all, they live here — why shouldn’t they have a say in local government? Note as well how carefully San Francisco politicians avoid making any distinction between legal and illegal immigrants – for such distinctions contradict the open-borders extremism of the left. 

Focusing on the San Francisco school board elections, the implications are alarming enough. San Francisco Unified School District is the seventh largest in the nation, educating some 55,000 students annually, and very demographically diverse, with 36.3 percent Asian, 26.5 percent Hispanic, 13.3 percent white, and 7.6 percent black students. The 136 total schools in the district employ 10,000 employees, and had a budget for the 2016-2017 school year of a whopping $823,841,337 — averaging $10,182 in unrestricted funds per student ($566,065,162), with an additional quarter billion dollars in restricted funds. Over this massive government machine reigns the seven-member, liberal, San Francisco Board of Education, responsible, in its own words, “for establishing educational goals and standards; approving curriculum; setting the district budget … confirming appointment of all personnel; and approving purchases of equipment, supplies, services, leases, renovation, construction, and union contracts.” The Board of Education also appoints the county superintendent of schools.

Ms. Dhillon concludes by pointing out the obvious fact about real foreign influence on our elections that is being completely ignored by the mainstream media:

If our apathetic citizens continue to turn out at barely 50 percent in off-year elections, the chances of motivated non-citizens having a substantial impact on the outcomes of entry-level political races such as Board of Education, will increase as both politicians and non-citizens see a path forward for real foreign influence in our elections, far more tangible and potent than the specter of Russian bots tweeting propaganda in a social media echo chamber. While we are distracted by such issues at the national level, on the ground, non-Americans are having a growing impact every day at the polls. The Russian bots aren’t voting on the billion-dollar school board governance – but foreign nationals surely are, and the movement is coming to a city near you.

The entire Op-Ed is well worth a read.  Ms. Dhillon will be speaking at the RNLA's National Election Law Seminar on August 3 and 4 in St. Louis, Missouri.  There is still time to register to hear Ms. Dhillon and many other expert speakers.