Our annual Christmas/Chanukah Dinner Party on December 2nd, 2021, was held at Pita Park Greek Restaurant in Floral Park. The festive dinner party featured a delectable three course dinner, the election of our new club slate of Officers and Board of Directors, our featured guest speaker, Andrew Giuliani who is running for governor of NYS, and special surprise guest, Councilwoman-Elect Vickie Paladino. We celebrated her astounding victory flipping a blue seat to red, and everyone had a grand time! Here are the videos of the guest speakers. Videos filmed and edited by James Doukas Productions.
New York Post | By Councilman Joe Borelli | November 24, 2021
Councilman Joe Borelli, Republican minority leader of the New York City Council.
Four years ago, newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron made a triumphant return to New York City, where he had courted votes from French expatriates nearly a year earlier.
“Reviens! — Come back!” he told his constituents gathered at the 92nd Street Y, a plea met mostly with shrugs.
Why should they go back? They have everything they need right here: lower taxes, extensive city services and — like most expats in America — they can still vote for president and the local officials in their ville de naissance in France. And soon, when lame-duck progressives in the City Council get their way, they will also be able to help decide who governs New York City.
A bill to allow noncitizens to vote is poised to be pushed through the council next month. Suffice to say, it will profoundly transform elections in New York City as we know them.
The bill’s backers say it will finally enfranchise an estimated 800,000 New York residents who are green-card holders, DACA recipients or otherwise in the country legally, all with little input from the city’s existing 5.6 million citizen voters.
Though New York has more registered voters than the entire population of South Carolina, elections for local offices are decided by a paltry few. Only 20 percent turned out in the general election, and the Democratic mayoral primary was decided by fewer than 10,000 votes. Council victors were lucky to rack up 20,000 votes. This means these newly enfranchised voters have the potential to hold real sway.
Yet this group of noncitizens is hardly disenfranchised. Like France, many countries allow citizens living abroad to vote in their elections. Almost all allow in-person voting. It is not uncommon for candidates from the Dominican Republic, for example, to open offices in New York City, where about 103,000 Dominican expats are registered to vote back home.
To vote there, one is required to establish long-term residency and even present a national ID card. Not so in “progressive” New York, where under this new legislation, these same citizens of the Dominican Republic may establish voting rights by residing here just 30 days before an election. This will make it less stringent for many Dominican New Yorkers to vote here under the new law than in the country where they hold citizenship.
The DR and France are hardly unique. In 2022, qualified residents could vote for a New York City Council member as well as for the president of Brazil, the Australian parliament or any election in the dozens of countries allowing expats to vote. This year, if the rules applied, a person could have cast a vote for Eric Adams and London’s Sadiq Khan within weeks.
Giving someone whose only evidence of any stake in this city’s future has been to stay here for a whole month a say in electing our leaders evinces a reckless disregard for the very real long-term problems this city faces, including grappling with multibillion-dollar budget deficits, rising crime and disorder and economic uncertainty amid a global pandemic.
Do New York’s powerful unions really want people working here on temporary visas to make decisions that would impact this city’s long-term debt and pension liabilities?
Do the good-government wonks think that diluting the voices of this city’s 5.6 million voters — many of whom have waited years to become citizens — will encourage more people to participate in our democracy?
This move shows how much contempt the far left has for the New York City electorate.
These are the same out-of-touch activists who have devalued citizenship and actually discouraged naturalization into this country by making New York a sanctuary city, so all immigrants can remain here without fear of being deported even after committing heinous crimes, and by extending benefits to immigrants, regardless of legal status. It was always in their plans to ultimately give away voting privileges.
To justify this, proponents are trying to sell us on the notion that offering them voting rights would encourage them to become citizens. That seems counterintuitive, at best.
If the champions of this bill really care about our democracy, they would encourage immigrants to strive toward American citizenship — not cheapen it by giving away the store.
And they would take the fundamental question about who can and cannot vote in New York City to the people themselves, by putting this on a ballot referendum in November.
At the very least, shouldn’t our citizens have a say in whether or not their votes get diluted by noncitizens?
We must defeat New York City Council Intro #1867. Contact your local City Council members and all elected officials. Call, visit, and write to them about the true meaning of citizenship and demand that they vote ‘no’ on this bill.
General Club Meeting on November 4, 2021 at Bellerose Jewish Center in Floral Park, Queens featured Rob Astorino, Republican candidate for NYS Governor, Maureen Grey, neighborhood historic preservationist speaking on saving St. Joseph’s Church, and Professor Joseph Cheruvelil, speaking on the Conscience of a Conservative. Here are the videos of their intriguing presentations. Videos filmed and edited by James Doukas Productions.
Rob Astorino: Republican candidate for NYS Governor
Rob Astorino, Republican candidate for NYS Governor, speaks at November 4th Queens Village Republican Club meeting. He is the former Westchester County Executive and 2014 Republican candidate for NYS Governor. Having nearly clinched the 2014 race, and won the state outside of NYC, he outlines the path to victory in 2022.
Maureen Grey, guest speaker at the November 4, 2021 Queens Village Republican Club meeting, is a neighborhood historical preservationist, lifelong educator, and was a teacher at St. Joseph Parish Day School. She is leading the fight to landmark St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church and save it from demolition. She told the story of a beautiful church that many Republican club members were parishioners of since its inception.
Prof Joseph Cheruvelil: Conscience of a Conservative
Professor Joseph Cheruvelil, guest speaker at the November 4, 2021 meeting of the Queens Village Republican Club, speaks lucidly about the Conscience of a Conservative. The professor is a popular conservative luminary who taught many years on the faculty of the English Dept. of St. John’s University. His book “A Passage to America” is an autobiography of Professor Cheruvelil, who describes himself as “a Catholic in religion, a Hindu in culture, a conservative in politics, and an eclectic in taste.”
