The League of Young Voters has succeeded in placing a referendum on the ballot on whether to allow legal, non-citizen immigrants to vote in Portland's municipal elections.

This is a big accomplishment for The League, and the time and effort that went into gathering more than 4,500 verified signatures is impressive.

For the fall campaign, the main factors they'll be working against are general anti-immigrant sentiment, confusion over documented vs. undocumented immigrants (the law would only apply to those in the country legally) and some misconception about how our immigration system works.

Many will ask "Why don't they just become citizens if they want to vote?" But the way our immigration system is structured, that's not nearly as easy as it sounds.

Here's a flowchart from Reason Magazine that lays things out pretty well (click to enlarge):

Even if you're the spouse of a U.S. citizen and are living in this country, your best case scenario for gaining citizenship is a wait of six or seven years.

If you came to this country because you're a highly-educated specialist and have a U.S. employer willing to pay up to $10,000 in legal and other fees to gain entry for you (and everything else goes right), your time to immigrate and gain citizenship will be 11 to 16 years.

So, even if these people are taking the quickest routes possible towards citizenship, for most of these extended periods they are living in, paying taxes to, and sending their kids to school in municipalities where they don't have a voice in their government.

A final misconception is that this referendum would give new immigrants a vote in state or national elections. It won't. If the law passes, non-citizens aren't going to be voting on issues of war and peace, they'll be involved in local zoning regulations and school board elections, areas that are often cited as not garnering enough civic participation.

It will be interesting to see what kinds of messages come out of this campaign. The level of discourse will tell us a lot about the state of immigrant and racial politics in the city of Portland and the state of Maine.