This talks about legals getting citizenship but is alarming when it comes to the paragraph regarding political power and keeping their culture. That has a big impact on illegals, immigration policy, bilingualism and would make what is left a third world country.

http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/55134.html

IMMIGRATION
Campaign hopes to add 8 million citizens
A nationwide push to naturalize millions of legal residents came to South Florida as community organizations launched a citizenship campaign.
By CASEY WOODS
cwoods@MiamiHerald.com
Univisión and other South Florida community organizations kicked off a yearlong citizenship campaign on Tuesday in an effort to transform an estimated 600,000 legal U.S. residents in Florida into U.S. citizens over the next year.

Their efforts, and those of other community groups and Spanish-language media such as Telemundo, are part of a nationwide push to help almost eight million eligible immigrants beat a dramatic increase in the government's naturalization fees and upcoming changes that would toughen the citizenship exam.

The campaign ''is about becoming an integral part of this country,'' said Jorge Mursuli, national executive director of People for the American Way's Democracia U.S.A. program.

``It's about gaining political power, and it's about our ability as Hispanics and as immigrants to protect our culture within the context of living in this country.''

The initiative comes at a time when citizenship applications are already surging nationwide, after last year's often caustic debate on immigration policy drove hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the streets from New York to Los Angeles to protest proposed legislation that would have classified undocumented immigrants as felons.

Citizenship applications jumped 79 percent nationwide, from 53,390 in January 2006 to 95,622 for the same time period this year.

For many immigrants, the upcoming hike in naturalization fees -- expected to jump from $400 to about $600 -- added urgency to their desire to become citizens.

''The marches did bring up more consciousness about people wanting to become citizens, but ultimately it was the proposed fee increase that galvanized interest in naturalization,'' said Javier Angulo, director of civic education for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, one of the organizations leading the campaign. ``The proposed fee increase will place a nearly insurmountable barrier in the path of legal permanent residents who want to become full participants in our American democratic process.''

The thousands of newly minted citizens could have a profound impact on the 2008 presidential elections by creating a vast block of mostly Hispanic voters who outside South Florida tend to vote for Democrats.

''I think it will radically alter the electoral map if it's done right,'' said Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chairman Joe Garcia. ``The places where the Hispanic vote is growing, like Nevada, Florida, and Colorado -- are tremendously important.''

State Rep. David Rivera, a Miami-Dade state committeeman to Florida's Republican Party, said that the GOP will benefit and attract new Hispanic voters from President Bush's long-standing support for immigration reform to help legalize the status of some of the nation's 13 million undocumented immigrants.

''I think our spokesman on immigration policy is President Bush, and Bush has always been an ardent advocate of immigrant rights and a path to earned citizenship,'' he said.