Thread: Civic Groups, Spanish Media Open Citizenship Drive

Apr 14, 7:55 PM EDT

Civic groups, Spanish media open citizenship drive

By JULIANA BARBASSA
Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Community groups and Spanish-language media organizations that helped push a record number of immigrants to become citizens last year said Tuesday that they want to build on that success.

More than 1 million immigrants became U.S. citizens in 2008, an increase of 58 percent from one year earlier, according to the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics. The groups attributed the increase to a national citizenship campaign and an incentive to apply before a fee increase went into effect.

Coalition partners that include hundreds of grass-roots organizations and Spanish TV and radio outlets said they want this year's "Ya es Hora, Ciudadania!" drive, which means "It's Time, Citizenship!" in English, to help another million legal residents who are eligible for citizenship to go through the process.

"This road is not easy," said Clarissa Martinez, a national campaign director of the Washington-based National Council of La Raza. "We want to demystify the process."

Last year's campaign came from a community response to the massive immigrants' rights mobilizations of 2006 and was followed by a drive to register new citizens to vote.

Organizers said they want to build on that momentum by relaunching the campaign, which kicked off Tuesday through a conference call with civic and civil rights organizations and members of the media. Influential Spanish media companies, such as Univision Communications Inc., Entravision Communications, and impreMedia will spread the message.

Homeland Security statistics show that Latinos made up 44 percent of last year's new citizens. Mexican-born residents topped the list with 231,815 naturalizations.

Martinez called it the "largest and most comprehensive effort to incorporate Latinos as full participants in the American political process."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/ ... SECTION=US

I had the great pleasure of attending a citizenship swearing-in ceremony in January. I was very proud to witness my Canadian DIL becoming a U.S. citizen. She and my son did her paperwork themselves to save on attorney fees but still paid thousands of dollars and spent a couple of years getting there.

During the ceremony, they announce the name of the country each applicant came from. Polite applause for each country was given, some got a louder ovation depending how many family members were present. Like Canada got a little more hoot and holler since we were a large group there for our family member.

The thing I learned that day was that it's true about more and more Mexicans becoming U.S. citizens because when they announced "Mexico" over 3/4's of the crowd stood up and the applause was deafening.

That was just one day, in one ceremony, in one city and represented only a small fraction of the people who actually go through the expense and time to become citizens. That means each of them can now chain migrate more family members.

My DIL can do that too but her family members love Canada and have jobs and businesses they want to keep. They don't want to live in America. They just want to come visit and they do it legally.

While many new Mexican citizens also have family who love Mexico and want to stay there, the hard truth is most Mexicans don't have jobs and businesses to keep them in Mexico and that's why we have so much illegal immigration from Mexico.

So, IOW's, many come here, some do it legally, some not legally and therein lies the problem. Amnesty isn't fair to those who follow the rules and rewards those who break the law.