Tue Nov 20, 2007, AP:
WASHINGTON - Millions of people who applied for naturalization and other immigration benefits to beat a midsummer fee increase are caught in a paperwork pileup that threatens the chance for some to become U.S. citizens in time to vote in next November's presidential election ...
The immigration agency would not say how many applications it has received. The American Immigration Lawyers Association, a private legal advocacy group, said it was told by agency officials that 3.5 million applications had come in over a two-month period. The agency projected a workload of 3.2 million applications for fiscal years 2008 and 2009.
Gonzalez ordered his staff to give priority to naturalizations, but some applicants will miss voting in primaries, which begin in January.
"I really want to target the elections," Gonzalez said. "I really want to get as many people out there to vote as possible." ...
Some groups that have been waging national campaign to help 1 million legal residents become citizens and vote in 2008 fear the pileup will hurt their efforts ...
The failure to anticipate the swamp of applications has left some skeptical of the agency and uncertain whether the pileup is political.
"I hope there is no politics involved, but it makes me wonder when it's a Republican administration and those pushing anti-immigrant legislation are Republicans and the ones managing this process are Republicans," Medina said.
3 comments:
So what if Republicans are holding up the process? The push for citizenship is obviously a Dems effort to simply import voters.
imho new citizens should have to wait three years before being eligible to vote--and nobody on welfare should be able to vote in any case.
When you have legal and illegal Hispanic immigration to the point that some call it "the Second Mexican War" then you would expect many Republicans will have little sympathy to speed up the process.
And now that we know democracy leads to cultural and national suicide, you do question who should be able to vote. Some would add that women should not vote.
Some would, yes.....
Including me.
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