The Department of Homeland Security failed to prepare for a massive influx of applications for U.S. citizenship and other immigration benefits this summer, prompting complaints from Hispanic leaders and voter-mobilization groups that several hundred thousand people may not be granted citizenship in time to cast ballots in the 2008 presidential election.
Bush administration officials said yesterday that they had anticipated applicants would rush to file their paperwork to beat a widely publicized fee increase that took effect July 30, but did not expect the scale of the response. The backlog comes just months after U.S. officials failed to prepare for tougher border security requirements that triggered months-long delays for millions of Americans seeking passports.
Before the fee hike, citizenship cases typically took about seven months to complete. Now, immigration officials can take five months or more just to acknowledge receipt of applications from parts of the country and will take 16 to 18 months on average to process applications filed after June 1, according to officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of DHS. Such a timeline would push many prospective citizens well past voter-registration deadlines for the 2008 primaries and the general elections.
We expected [the fee increase] might stimulate demand from some folks to file who wouldn't have otherwise, and some from folks to file earlier than they would have," said Michael Aytes, associate director of USCIS, "but we never anticipated" the extent of the growth. "It went off the charts," he said.
Other factors include legal immigrants' anxiety at an increasingly harsh tenor of the political debate over illegal immigration, and heightened interest in the 2008 presidential election, officials said.
Double the workload
The immigration agency's workload has nearly doubled, Aytes said, with 1.4 million naturalization applications arriving from October 2006 to September 2007, compared with 731,000 applications the year before. Between July and September of this year alone, USCIS received 560,000 applications, he said.
The number of green-card-related applications surged to 876,000 in fiscal 2007, from 497,000 in fiscal 2006, he said. At one point this summer, USCIS had 1 million applications and checks waiting to be opened and acknowledged, Aytes said, a backlog that now stands at 235,000. Overall, USCIS received 7.7 million applications for all types of immigration benefits, up from 6.3 million.
"I really want to target the elections," USCIS Director Emilio T. Gonzalez told the Associated Press in an interview published Tuesday. "I really want to get as many people out there to vote as possible."
Aides, however, contradicted him. "We are going to process these cases as responsibly and as quickly as we can, but we're not focused on any of the election cycle," Aytes said. USCIS spokesman Bill Wright emphasized that political calculations played no role in agency decisions. "Any implication of that is ludicrous," he said.
In June, poor planning and coordination between DHS and the State Department forced the Bush administration to temporarily suspend a new security requirement that Americans present passports when flying to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. Processing times for passport applications ballooned from three weeks to three or four months, jeopardizing summer travel plans for millions of Americans. Wait times returned to normal after the State Department allocated more resources and staff.
CONTINUED(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
3 comments:
I read the posting and didnt find much about how the Naz's plan to steal the 2008 election. (Again)
Does anybody have any idea how they plan to do it. Presidents Brother isnt Gov. of Florida anymore, to help him out. I think they will rig the primaries and the election. mass disenfrangised voters, mostly Black People with the same names as convicted felons. sorry about my spelling. They have a plan to steal indivisual states. im just not sure which ones. N.Y. maybe. that would do it. I heard something about florida again. Does any1 have any idea's yet? email me at
greycompound@gmail.com
They will use fear as usual to sway the herd. More brainwashing. Even if Obama or Clinton won, they wont stop or reverse the Nazification of America. so in the end, I am not sure, but I dont think anything can be done untill we stop being afraid to deal with what they have done. Untill we go back and face the fact that 300 million Americans have been lied to and misleaded into this Nazi take over, nothing will change. They are only getting more and more power. Our whole country is experiencing fear and is devided on purpose for the exbidition of the Nazification of AmericA. Its all over fols....unless we bring the 911 conspiracy to the mass public and we start debate and desent and stop being afraid to bring the ugly truth to the public eye.....we are doomed for self destruction. not the rich.....THE MIDDLE Class and the poor will continue to loose everything and alot of the upper class with soon be poor. Stop the Sham on Terror and the Military Complex. The Shamesty guest workers programs and the shamesty of not 20 million mexicans but 50 million. also there are over 1 million & 1/2 Muslims killed since our invasion of Iraq and Pakistan. This is true and the CIA is saying its much less. email me for the proof. there is a petition for congress you should sign inregards to the actuality of how many muslims have died. You mean to tell me that 911 and the war on terror justifies this mass genocide? you mean to tell me that just in Iraq and Pakistan over a million and 1/2 terrorist have been killed? impossible. stop being lied to. stop the Nazification of AmericA
Comment from Hawkeye, since i was submitting that day. I barely remeber where I gut the article, now, probably over Brad's Blog, where I suggest you visit and stay awhile, over at his site. He has everything that's worth knowing about Election theft. It is so damned easy it will make your head swim. Jeb isn't needed in Fla, anymore. That was just the way they got it the all important first time and, got caught, just like they do every time. The Bush boys, all of them, would rather not get cauht committing some felony or the other, but the really don't mind enough not to commit the felony in the first place. They don't mind getting caught because they know that nothing will ever happen to them, as a result of their criminal lives, both within our country's borders and without.
I agree with you, that it will be, finally, left to the people, to whom the power in this country really belongs, according to our founding fathers and our Constitution.
As Junior says about the Constitution, "It it just a God-damned piece of paper." Yep that is true, unless it is also written on the hearts of Americans everywhere
John Kerry once asked Congress, "who will be the last man to be asked to die for a mistake." Well, I doubt we will ever know the answer to that question. We won't know or care who will be the last one to die for megalomania, hubris and egotistical barbarianism. It no longer matters who the last one is,; it will be no worse than the first, because this war was criminal from the get-go. Our ation committed the mother of all war crimes: A War of aggression, a crime against the peace in Afghanistan and in Iraq...that we know of ) God only knows what other countries we have broken into and destroyed, either physically, as in the infrastructure and such, or the lives, minds and bodies of their citizens. Some of our men and women, I heard, are already saying what some of us said often in Vietnam: "tis the dead who are the lucky ones?"
The criminals who are responsible for the crimes committed in our name and with our blood and treasure. should get the same treatment as the Fascists of Europe did, bot no one is going to bomb the hell out of the U.S. and invade and occupy our country, nor will any one hold trials, unless we do.
It is up to us, who declare Our constitution still alive and meaningful to defend it and our nation's honor. It doesn't seem to me that anyone else intends to. Not the courts and not the congress; certainly not the corporate media
It is up to we, the gutless wonders of America, to take on the biggest Crime family in America (extended and their scholarly nitwits, the NEOCONs,,
They should be hung, put befoore a firing squador what ever the Uniform Code of Military Justice says should be done after their Nuremberg-like trial.
I am a 59 year olf hwite-haired woman, in remission from cancer, but I'm sure as hell ready to climb the ramparts and drag the Guilty out by their heads or whatever body part I can lay my hands on.
I doubt that you and me will get very far without several million of our compatriots at our sides. What do you think the chance of that are?
I will check out Brad's Blog. Key word search it. You phrased up whats happening better than I could.
You sound very sincere about how hard you would fight to bring back our freedoms and the true American way. If we had more people like you............Justice would be served. Thanks for your perspective. I'm off to Brad's Blog. Keep on Keeping on. Riders on the Storm.
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