The Homeland Security Department is granting as many citizenship applications as it can to try to sway participation in this year’s presidential election, an internal department document shows.
An email obtained by Senate Republicans shows a Texas immigration office demanded volunteers to work weekends, hoping to get as many people onto the citizenship rolls as possible before the end of September ─ which would give them enough time to register to vote in November.
Democrats and immigration groups had launched a drive to try to get eligibleimmigrants to become citizens in time to vote against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The advocates fell well short of their goal of registering 1 million citizens, but the 600,000 they didn’t get to sign up by June have created a massive backlog that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is now working through.
The memo from a branch chief at the USCIS Houston field office said in the July memo that the goal was to get as many applications approved as possible“due to the election year.”
Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chairmen of two committees with oversight of the Homeland Security Department, demanded answers from Secretary Jeh Johnson.
“Your department seems intent on approving as many naturalization cases as quickly as possible at a time when it should instead be putting on the brakes and reviewing past adjudications,” the two Republicans said in a letter to Mr. Johnson.
The push to approve new citizens in time for the election is not a new tactic. The Clinton administration attempted the same thing ahead of the 1996 election ─ with the result being massive fraud. Tens of thousands of people were approved despite criminal records, and nearly 200,000 were approved without going through fingerprint checks that could have revealed criminal records.
“We sincerely hope history is not repeating itself,” Mr. Grassley and Mr. Johnson wrote in their letter.
Immigrant- and Hispanic-rights advocates had entered 2016 with high hopes ofa massive surge of new citizens eager to vote ─ and in particular to vote against Mr. Trump, who has made cracking down on illegal immigration a central point of his campaign.
There are some 8.8 million immigrants who have been in the U.S. for at leastfive years as legal permanent residents, making them eligible to apply for citizenship. Those immigrants are heavily Hispanic, and 30 percent are Mexican.
applications as it can to try to sway participation in this year’s
presidential election, an internal department document shows.
An email obtained by Senate Republicans shows a Texas immigration office
demanded volunteers to work weekends, hoping to get as many people onto the citizenship rolls as possible before the end of September ─ which would
give them enough time to register to vote in November.
Democrats and immigration groups had launched a drive to try to get eligibleimmigrants to become citizens in time to vote against Republican
presidential nominee Donald Trump. The advocates fell well short of their
goal of registering 1 million citizens, but the 600,000 they didn’t get to sign up by June have created a massive backlog that U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services is now working through.
The memo from a branch chief at the USCIS Houston field office said in the
July memo that the goal was to get as many applications approved as possible“due to the election year.”
Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chairmen of two
committees with oversight of the Homeland Security Department, demanded
answers from Secretary Jeh Johnson.
“Your department seems intent on approving as many naturalization cases as quickly as possible at a time when it should instead be putting on the
brakes and reviewing past adjudications,” the two Republicans said in a
letter to Mr. Johnson.
The push to approve new citizens in time for the election is not a new
tactic. The Clinton administration attempted the same thing ahead of the
1996 election ─ with the result being massive fraud. Tens of thousands of
people were approved despite criminal records, and nearly 200,000 were
approved without going through fingerprint checks that could have revealed
criminal records.
“We sincerely hope history is not repeating itself,” Mr. Grassley and Mr. Johnson wrote in their letter.
Immigrant- and Hispanic-rights advocates had entered 2016 with high hopes ofa massive surge of new citizens eager to vote ─ and in particular to vote
against Mr. Trump, who has made cracking down on illegal immigration a
central point of his campaign.
There are some 8.8 million immigrants who have been in the U.S. for at leastfive years as legal permanent residents, making them eligible to apply for
citizenship. Those immigrants are heavily Hispanic, and 30 percent are
Mexican.
Sources:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/22/homeland-security-trying-rush-citizenship-applicat/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/22/email-shows-federal-immigration-bosses-in-ot-push-to-swear-in-new-citizens-due-to-election.html