Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Citizenship For Sale

This is one of my favorite political cartoons.  It captures the essence of pandering at the expense of our own society.

Now, some will be quick to note that illegal aliens cannot vote.  Well, at least they aren’t supposed to vote.  The GAO has proven that many ineligible people are on the voter registration rolls.  But I digress.

The push for citizenship has been a staple in presidential politics for the last 20+ years.  I believe this is partly due to the pathetic lack of naturalization.  It is a national embarrassment that we have so many immigrants and so few of them become citizens.  A rational person might believe that these immigrants don’t want the American Dream at all; they just want to make money and send some of it home.






Citizenship drives are an effort to make the faux narrative seem palatable.

As Clinton approached the election for his second term he sent Al Gore out to manufacture voters through his Citizenship USA campaign.  There were significant discrepancies and background check procedure flaws, but the program went forward.

Bush 41 was more show and less shoe leather, choosing instead to fill a stadium with mostly Cuban immigrants who were more likely to vote GOP, and administer the oath to about 10,000 people en masse as a campaign stunt.

Later, Bush 43 would push for citizenship by warning people that the price for the paperwork was going up.  It was sort of like the mortgage guys on the radio, shouting “We’ll never see rates this low again.  Act now before they go up!”  The increase was based on actual processing costs and took the fee from $330 to $595.  And there was a significant bump in activity.

But Obama has topped them all, and you probably didn’t even know it was happening.  How about FREE?  That’s right, NADA.

Obama has a program in place where applicants can have their fees waived if they cannot afford it.  The program began last November.

Now, let’s think about that one.  If you are too poor to afford the $700 for the citizenship application, do we really want you as a citizen?  Aren’t we in effect adding people to the entitlement line, a line we are already struggling to pay for?

It’s hard to believe, but true.  Read it and weep:

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