Immigrant + legal entry or amnesty + naturalization = U.S. citizen eligible to vote after age 18 but not eligible to be President of the United States.
That is accurate, but not the point causing confusion in this discussion. The point causing the confusion is the insistence that, for the purpose of determining federal voting rights, a citizen may also be an immigrant. By definition of the Act, a citizen can not be an immigrant.
As I implied before, ignorance of, or refusal to acknowledeg the implications of, the law is not helping this discussion and the apparently stubborn defense of that ignorance or refusal is hurting the discussion.
I understand the motive, tradition, but that stance does not shed light on the veracity of the contents of the letter in a legal arena, which is the subject of this thread : allegations of a hate crime.
Here is the link to the verbatim text of the prevailing Federal Voting Rights Act.
U.S. Code, TITLE 42 > CHAPTER 20 > SUBCHAPTER I > § 1971. Voting rights
After you are at the web page, click EDIT then click "Find on this page" then type the word "Immigrant" then click "Find".
You will not find the word "Immigrant" in the text of the prevailing Federal Voting Rights Act.
The law only mentions "All citizens of the United States who are otherwise qualified by law to vote...." and that includes immigrants, such as myself, who are naturalized citizens.
As I noted in Post 87:
***********
Under U.S. law, there is no legal category labeled "immigrant" as such a generic term simply means somebody that has come from his original country to live permanently in another country.
Under U.S. law, the legal terms are:
Illegal Alien: someone that has entered the U.S. illegally.
Resident Alien: someone who has a Green Card.
Non-Resident Alien: someone that has a non-immigrant visa such as a student.
Naturalized Citizen: someone who immigrated to the U.S. and has been granted citizenship with all the legal rights accorded to a U.S. citizen except the right to be elected President of the United States.
***********
Regardless of the current American popular culture fad to make the word "immigrant" synonymous with "any person, usually a Mexican, living in the U.S. illegally", neither U.S. law nor the rest of the World subscribes to that massacre of the English or Spanish words both derived from the Latin word "Immigro" which means "moving into".
In the rest of the world, "immigrant" still means a person that leaves his original country to live permanently in another country and, since that word can apply to anybody from the current Governor of California to the guy that is still wet from illegally crossing the Rio Grande, U.S. law ignores the word completely and uses the legally precise terms of "Illegal Alien", "Resident Alien", "Non-Resident Alien" and "Naturalized Citizen".
Regardless of his citizenship status at his death, Andrew Carnegie will always be an immigrant.
Carnegie was not born in America. He immigrated (moved into) to America. That makes him an "immigro" according to the Latin language, an "immigrant" according to the English language and an "emigrado" from his native country and an "immigrante" into America in the Spanish language.
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish immigrant to the United States in the mid-19th Century.
Likewise, regardless of their citizenship status after naturalization Arnold Schwarzenegger, Albert Einstein, Werner von Braun and Bob Hope will always be immigrants.
Nothing can change the meaning of the words that denote how they got to America any more than the Mayflower Pilgrims can become Native Americans.
What you will find in the wording of the prevailing Voting Rights Act is:
(b) Intimidation, threats, or coercion
No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten, coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose, or of causing such other person to vote for, or not to vote for, any candidate..........
Informing a "citizens of the United States who is otherwise qualified by law to vote" who happens to be an immigrant that "You are advised that if ........ you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time, and you will be deported" is as blatant a violation of the prevailing Voting Rights Act as you are likely to find now that burning crosses on voter's lawn is no longer fashionable.