Submitted by J. Reyes-Montblanc, Sep 9, 2008 17:01

Commentary by J. Reyes-Montblanc I find it alarming and offensive that serious people are so confused as to what constitute civil rights and even more so about what is racism. As a foreign-born American I am offended and feel dishonored by the attempts to give non-citizens the vote. I came to United States with a permanent resident visa, I served honorably in the US Marine Corps and obtained my citizenship in one of the proudest moments of my life. The efforts to equate legal resident and illegal aliens to be the same kind of immigrants is in and by itself obscene and un-american. The efforts to grant voting rights to non-citizens is an outrage. The day that "citizenship" becomes irrelevant is the the day when Americans will cease to be Americans. Beign an American is a state of mind: learn our national language English; learn the history of our country and make it part of your experiences; say in your heart and mind "I am American and the American people are my people" It does not take anything away on the contrary it adds to your personality and being without losing your basic identity. Most of all the legal residents who are non-citizens qualify for US citizenship but do not accept it as they do not really intend to become one of the many but want their cake and eat it too. Illegal aliens should not be consider in any way as equal to legal immigrants for a basic concept of "common law" is that an illegal cannot result in a legal benefit, something that the "progressives" promoting these ideas do not recognize. No one who is not a citizen of the United States has the right to vote regardless of how much taxes they supposedly pay to the municipality, the state or Federal governments. Instead of this travesty of giving the vote to non-citizens efforts should go into encouraging and facilitating their becoming US Citizens the same as untold millions of other, me included, have done through the years. I beseech those elected officials, many of them personal friends of mine to cease and desist and rethink the objective which is to encourage those qualified to become US Citizens.

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