Thread: Latinos Seek Citizenship in Time for Voting

A lawsuit filed Thursday in a New York federal court by Latino immigrants seeks to force immigration authorities to complete hundreds of thousands of stalled naturalization petitions in time for the new citizens to vote in November.

The class action suit was brought by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund on behalf of legal Hispanic immigrants in the New York City area who are eager to vote and have been waiting for years for the federal Citizenship and Immigration Services agency to finish their applications. The suit demands that the agency meet a nationwide deadline of Sept. 22 to complete any naturalization petitions filed by March 26.

Latino groups hope to summon the clout of the federal courts to compel the Bush administration to reduce a backlog of citizenship applications that swelled last year. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, more than one million citizenship petitions were backed up in the pipeline by the end of December, the majority from Latino immigrants.

Despite protests over the delays from lawmakers, Latino groups and immigrant advocates, the immigration agency is currently projecting wait times of 16 months to 18 months to process the petitions.

“The reality is that large numbers of Latinos will not be able to vote in the elections because of these delays,â€

I heard this....as well as lowering the voting age to 17 in some states...... Have to be nice....

No fast track citizenship. Not only that, their are too many applications and it exceeds the annual immigration quota. Sorry, got to wait your turn. You know, there are people from non-Latin American countries eligible to enter the US and become citizens and they are trying to push them out of the way? I don't think that should ever happen. America is about diversity and we don't need the entire immigrant quota filled by people from Latin America.

Dixie