Immigration: Connecting The Dots

The Republicans who just today voted to keep bi-lingual voting in place should congratulate themselves. Could be they just secured their defeat. Or do they believe The Service Employees International Union is going to tell them all the reasons to vote Republican?

Citizenship applications among legal immigrants are up nearly 20 percent over last year.

Organizers are aggressively reaching out to the estimated 8 million-plus legal immigrants who are eligible to apply but haven't done so. Ultimately, they hope to turn these immigrants and those who have already become citizens into a powerful political bloc, launching nationwide campaigns this week to sign up 1 million new voters by the fall.

Some organizers say there are more than a dozen political swing states where between 50,000 and 600,000 legal residents are eligible to apply for citizenship and the right to vote - numbers big enough to influence elections.

The vote is what ultimately pushed Rosalyn Cuenca, a housewife who came from Mexico 13 years ago, to apply for citizenship.

"There are politicians who keep attacking us," Cuenca, 34, said after a citizenship preparation class in Los Angeles. "I already know who I'm not going to vote for."

The Service Employees International Union plans new citizenship and voter registration drives nationwide. "They are going to hear about citizenship at Mass, at union gatherings and at civic organization meetings," said Eliseo Medina, union executive vice president.

Between January and March, the Homeland Security Department received 185,400 naturalization applications - a 19 percent increase over the same period last year.

Comments

[Digger]

And I'm betting one of the reasons they applied is that these groups are covering the fee required to file (which I believe is $450 -- that's just to apply!). A lot of these people don't have $450 extra to file for citizenship, though they'd like to. If that's the case, they'd basically be buying votes.