Citizenship in the News

If you’ve watched any news in the last 30 days you probably saw the reports about the backlog of citizenship applications. The citizenship office has been backlogged for quite some time due to the new processing fee. Get your papers before the price goes up!

You’ll recall that Obama came out against the increase because it would be a hardship on the immigrants. (Translation: Some of the people likely to vote for me won’t be able to afford the fee.)

The backlog deadline is to get caught up before the presidential primary so all these people who were motivated to apply for citizenship because of a PRICE INCREASE will be able to vote.

First, a little history about our percentage of foreign born and the percentage of those who actually became naturalized citizen. It comes from a U S Census document called Working Paper #29:

Year…..% Foreign Born…..% Naturalized Citizens
1890………14.8%..........................64.1%
1900………13.6%..........................66.6%
1910………14.7%..........................50.6%
1920………13.2%..........................49.5%
1930………11.6%..........................57.8%
1940………..8.8%..........................67.7%
1950………..6.9%..........................78.7%
1960………..5.4%..........................N/A
1970………..4.7%..........................63.6%
1980………..6.2%..........................50.5%
1990………..7.9%..........................40.5%
2000………11.1%..........................40.3%
2006………12.5%..........................42.0%

I didn’t know much about Bill Clinton’s “Citizenship USA” campaign in 1995-96 until I read up on it today. The goal was to find and naturalize one million Hispanic green card holders in preparation for the presidential election.

And they pulled out all the stops. Even Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore was deeply involved. They broke all sorts of rules about fingerprinting, background checks, tutoring for the exam. Why, they even used Democrat-laden Latino activist groups to conduct the drive and fill out the paperwork.

Doris Meissner was the Commissioner of Immigration at the time and she testified before a House investigation that "We made mistakes in Citizenship USA. We have corrected those mistakes and put in place a series of new measures to prevent them in the future." But six months after that statement a KPMG audit of the immigration processing offices found that only 1 of the 24 offices was “compliant” with the procedures.

So, where is Doris Meissner now? Banished to Little Rock, perhaps? Certainly not. Doris is a Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. Her bio lauds her successes at INS thus: “Her accomplishments included reforming the nation's asylum system; creating new strategies for managing US borders; improving naturalization and other services for immigrants; shaping new responses to migration and humanitarian emergencies; and strengthening cooperation and joint initiatives with Mexico, Canada, and other countries.” Things sure were swell when she left Washington in 2000.

Of local note, Doris was also a member of the advisory panel that gave Gov Blago the report on his New Americans initiatives, including his welcome centers for illegal aliens. The weird part about that report is that it was put together by the same people who form Latino protest groups. Hardly seems like a balanced approach to me.

So, even though there was a push for citizenship in the mid-1990s, we are still lagging behind the percentage of foreigners who earned citizenship just 40 years ago. I think it is unfair to criticize Washington for this backlog. Literally MILLIONS of the foreign-born could have been applying for citizenship but they have not. Maybe their hearts are somewhere else. What we have here is a failure to assimilate.