I'm not a US citizen, but I keep getting voter material. Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our offices in St. Louis, Missouri, San Diego, California, and Washington DC. Today's question comes from Nore, one of our subscribers to the YouTube channel. And Nore wants to know, hey, I'm not a US citizen, but I keep getting these voter registration cards or voter alerts telling me where my polling place is. Is something wrong? And Nore the answer to that question is yes, there is something wrong. Now, many of you might know that my daughter's name is Nore. So I have a soft spot for those named Nore or for those named Ibrahim, or Yusufer, Ismael, those are all my kids' names. So with Nore, I'm especially concerned because if you're not a US citizen and you're receiving information from the state or the county about voting, that means that somehow, somewhere, some ways you were registered to vote. It might not have been your fault. It might've just been an operation of state law when you obtained your driver's license.
So the thing to keep in mind is that we have the federal government, and we have the state government, and we have county governments, and they don't always work together exactly properly. And sometimes things happen. And so you'll have the sort of progressive states that just want to register everyone as many as they can to vote. And sometimes they make mistakes and they register people who are not citizens. So if I were Nore and I was receiving information that indicated that I was probably a voter, a registered voter, I would go to my state or local election officials. And I would track down how this happened. We're going to need to nail down how this happened. Hopefully it was something that the government did and not something that Nore did.
If Nore checked a box that said he or she was a citizen, then we might be in a little bit of trouble. So the first step is to reach out to your local election officials and find out how you became to be registered. The next step is you have to recant or withdraw that registration. So you have to notify them that you are not a US citizen and that you did not register to vote. And that you certainly didn't intend to register to vote, and that you've never voted, and that you need to cancel your registration. So this is something we could help you with. If you're a non citizen and some entity believes that you have claimed that you were a citizen and registered to vote, that can really be a problem if you're applying for a green card or for citizenship. Those questions are all over those forms and it's all going to come out.
So you have to show that as soon as you found out that you had been mistakenly registered, that you had recanted and withdrawn that registration. Because the thing is, voting without permission or passing yourself off as a US citizen, that's one of the Cardinal sins in immigration. One of the things that you really can't get a waiver for or get fixed. And when you have that kind of a situation, you need to be a little bit careful and you probably need our help to document that none of this was your fault. And that as soon as you found out about it, you fixed it.
If you have questions about this, or if you have questions about voting or about your citizenship, give us a call (314) 961-8200. You can email us [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called immigrant home. We'd love to have you in there. And then of course, make sure that you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos like this one. We post a new video every single day. And then on most Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon central, you'll find me live in our YouTube channel and on our Facebook group answering as many of your immigration law related questions as possible. Thanks a lot and have a great day.
