Agency Acts to Cut Delay in Gaining Citizenship (more people could be eligible to vote in Nov)

[maddezmom]

Source: NYT

Agency Acts to Cut Delay in Gaining Citizenship

By JULIA PRESTON
Published: January 12, 2008
Federal officials said Friday that they had agreed on an emergency plan to hire back about 700 retired government employees in an effort to pare an immense backlog in applications for citizenship by legal immigrants.

Under the plan, first proposed by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, retired workers could return to the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency without sacrificing any part of their pensions. The agency will be authorized to hire former employees who have long since passed training programs and could be on the job quickly to help handle the more than one million citizenship applications filed in the first 10 months of last year, Mr. Schumer said.

The required waiver was approved in a letter on Thursday to immigration officials from Linda M. Springer, the director of the Office of Personnel Management.

The rehiring program is one step to help the immigration agency overcome an embarrassing backlog. Legal immigrants, saying they were spurred by a fee increase that took effect July 30 and by worries raised in the fierce political debate over immigration, applied in huge numbers last summer to become citizens. They were aided by a nationwide drive led by Hispanic groups and Univision, the Spanish-language television network.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/us/12citizen.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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Retirees may help cut immigration delay By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer
57 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has authority to rehire retired workers to reduce a backlog of immigration applications that is preventing thousands of people from becoming U.S. citizens in time to vote in November's elections, a Democratic senator said.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., had pressured Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Homeland Security Department, to seek permission to rehire the retirees. The permission was granted Thursday by the Office of Personnel Management.

"This is a welcome breakthrough that has great potential to help sort through the backlog of pending applications," Schumer said Friday in a statement. "Immigrants who play by the rules and get in line deserve a chance at citizenship, not an endless waiting game. Failed planning led to this backlog, but this is a smart step that could help fix the situation."

Schumer pushed for the retiree hiring after The Associated Press reported that a summer spike in immigration applications caused the backlog.

During the 2007 fiscal year, 7.7 million applications for citizenship, legal residency and other immigration benefits were filed. About 2.5 million of those were filed in July and August.


more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080112/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/immigration_elections

[hayu_lol]

1. I can tell you the reason for the speed up, it ain't the backlog...

if you have never attended a swearing in citizenship ceremony, you need to go observe one. Watch as the happy new citizens leave the building with their small American flags in their hands.

Here they are, coming out in long lines from the room in which the ceremony is held. There are people waiting for them, all Repugnants holding voter registration cards with Republican Party printed on them. They hand these out to all the new citizens without explaining that they are all Republican forms. New citizens want to vote. That is why they went through the expense, the delays, the interrogations, the tests...so that they could vote.

The Repugnants are happy to have all these newbies in the Republican Party. I have never seen members of the Democratic Party attend these things.

[frog92969]

2. Hmm, interesting.

At least they can vote Dem in the general once they figure out they've been scavenged by vultures.

[drm604]

4. But if they can increase the number of registered Republicans

then any shifting of votes becomes more plausible. I'm not saying that's the case here but it's a possible motivation.

[drm604]

3. If that's true

then we need twice as many Democrats there handing out registration cards.