Bureaucratic back-up or political ploy?

November 22, 2007

The WaPo has a front-page piece today that, at first glance, seems largely unremarkable: there’s a bureaucratic back-up at DHS, and immigrants to applied for citizenship over the last year are finding frustrating delays.

Bush administration officials said yesterday that they had anticipated applicants would rush to file their paperwork to beat a widely publicized fee increase that took effect July 30, but did not expect the scale of the response. The backlog comes just months after U.S. officials failed to prepare for tougher border security requirements that triggered months-long delays for millions of Americans seeking passports.

Before the fee hike, citizenship cases typically took about seven months to complete. Now, immigration officials can take five months or more just to acknowledge receipt of applications from parts of the country and will take 16 to 18 months on average to process applications filed after June 1, according to officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of DHS. […]

“We expected [the fee increase] might stimulate demand from some folks to file who wouldn’t have otherwise, and some from folks to file earlier than they would have,” said Michael Aytes, associate director of USCIS, “but we never anticipated” the extent of the growth. “It went off the charts,” he said.

OK, so the Department of Homeland Security is slow with immigration paperwork. Given that the agency isn’t exactly known for its efficiency, it’s hardly a big surprise.

There is, however, another, more cynical, interpretation of events: the administration may be intentionally slowing down the citizenship process in order to prevent more immigrants from voting in the 2008 election.

As Mark Kleiman noted:

Who says the Bush administration is incompetent?

They’ve very skillfully arranged that hundreds of thousands of citizenship applications filed last summer won’t be approved in time for the new citizens to vote. Remember, this crew makes no actual distinction between campaigning and governing: everything is geared toward winning the next election.

That’s certainly an uncharitable interpretation, but given the last seven years or so, few have been embarrassed by thinking the worst of the Bush administration.

Indeed, Hispanic leaders and voter-mobilization groups have emphasized recently that DHS delays, intentional or not, will prevent several hundred thousand people who want to become citizens and participate in the ’08 election will not be able to.

With applications filed after June 1 now taking up to 18 months to process, prospective citizens will miss voter registration deadlines and the election.

The Bush administration has forced many of us into paranoid suspicions. Unfortunately, most of these have been proven not to be delusions.

  • Republicans believe that government doesn’t work, and will go to any lengths to create examples that prove their point.

  • …said Michael Aytes, associate director of USCIS, “but we never anticipated” the extent of the growth…

    Ever notice how this administration is constantly surprised by events that any village idiot could have predicted? No one could have predicted anyone would use airplanes as weapons. No one imagined the levies would break. No one knew about Walter Reed, or Abu Ghraib.

    Ideology aside, these people are too stupid to be in charge of anything.

  • “Ideology aside, these people are too stupid to be in charge of anything.”

    These people aren’t stupid, they are liars with priorities. What they didn’t know they didn’t want to know but will lie about all the same.

    This is exactly what they are doing. The republicans have already stated their fear of not wanting aliens in the country for fear they will vote democratically.

    This is Rove’s Bush and Cheney we are talking about so how can there be any doubt after their history of blocking minority voters that delaying citizenship to a block of potential democratic voters is precisely their goal.

  • Not only does it block people who are most likely to vote Democratic from voting, but it also plays to the bubbas in Das Base who will see their citizenship being defended.

  • Remember, this crew makes no actual distinction between campaigning and governing: everything is geared toward winning the next election. – Kleiman

    At least until elections are no longer required.

    More Soviet. More third world every day. Those with the bucks and connections move through the system and those without pile up outside the fence. With the election approaching and the advantages of this aspect of procedure dragging becoming clear, how it possible to think that instructions haven’t been given to go slow? The dept. looks bad. Fewer voters join the club. Further chaos, apathy and anger at the system are created.

    Gibson, Beck and Rush would all say that this is a success. This stuff is policy, not incompetence. If not by edict than by inevitable result.

  • ***Before the fee hike, citizenship cases typically took about seven months to complete.***

    I wonder when *that* happened… Because, when I applied — during Reagan’s first term — it took almost 2 yrs to get processed. And it was, I was told, SOP; the Naturalization office was , permanently, 2yrs behind with their work.

    As to whether they’re slowing the process down on purpose… It’s quite likely, I should think.

    The reason I was “sped up” (22 months instead of expected 26) was that Reagan was running for the second term and wanted all those grateful new citizens to vote for him. At least, that’s what the lady who swore me in at court (separate from the big ho-ha from the, later, at Monticello on the 4th of July, where we actually got our certificates) said. She said the department got a rocket up their butt er.. a directive from “upstairs”, to speed things up, so they hired extra people to swarm up and down the country to local courts swearing people in as fast as their paperwork was being processed (by equally beefed up paper-pusher section).

    So, my feeling is that, if they can speed things up, they can also slow them down. And, since Bush is not running for second term and couldn’t care less about the gratitude of the new citizens, it would be quite easy to choke off the processing, by letting people go instead of beefing up the ranks.

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