Citizenship
Fee Hike Smells of Politics?
By Rene P. Ciria-Cruz
Is the Bush administration trying to slow down
the surge in potential new Democratic voters by
tightening access to US citizenship through drastically
higher application fees?
“For immigrants, the price of fully participating
in our society would rise by 892 percent,”
says Larisa Casillas, coordinator of the Bay Area
Immigrant Rights Coalition in Oakland. She says
the citizenship fee “has been raised six
times since 1989 when it was only $60.”
“The very first thing Emilio Gonzalez said
to us during the rollout of the proposed fee increases
is that there’s absolutely no politics involved,”
says Crystal Williams, deputy director of the
American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington,
DC.
Williams is willing to give “the benefit
of the doubt” to the Bush-appointed director
of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,
but, she says, “the effect of higher fees
is to certainly slow down everything.”
“Low-wage earning immigrants would have
to save up longer to apply,” protests Williams,
“possibly put off applying for citizenship
a year or more.”
Agency officials want to raise the US citizenship
application fee from $330 to $595, saying more
money is needed to improve its operations and
services.
Applicants for legal permanent residency —
the first step towards naturalization —
would be hit hardest, with the fee rising from
the current $325 to $905.
Fingerprinting and biometrics will cost $80 instead
of $10, in addition to other related expenses
incurred by applicants; hiring a lawyer adds significantly
more. Approval of the new fees won’t require
Congressional action, just a USCIS executive order
after a period of public comment.
The dramatic fee increases “would put the
American Dream out of reach of many immigrants,”
charged Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., chair of
the Senate subcommittee on immigration.
Recent immigrants are twice as likely to be poorer
than are native US citizens, says a study by the
Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC, although
their poverty rates fell faster than for US natives
between 1994 and 2000.
“The USCIS is putting up even more barriers
to integration,” says Casillas.
Congress, she argues, not immigrants, should fund
USCIS operations, and with strict audits of its
efficiency.
Some critics smell politics in the proposed fee
increases because voting rights come with naturalization,
and the foreign-born electorate is growing faster
than the general US voter population. The number
of foreign-born voters grew by 20 percent between
the 1996 and 2000 elections, compared with 1.5
percent for all persons, according to the Census
Bureau’s Current Population Survey. Once
naturalized, voter turnout among the foreign-born
is high; 58 percent registered to vote and 87
percent showed up at the polls in 2000.
Most worrisome for the GOP, the party identification
of the largest foreign-born group, Latinos, is
58 percent Democratic, 23 percent Republican,
even though Latinos tend to be conservative on
social issues such as abortion and gay marriage,
says a 2005 national survey by the Latino Coalition
in Washington, DC.
Detecting Democratic leanings among new citizens,
Republicans in the ‘90s blasted the Clinton
administration for promoting naturalization among
immigrants through the Citizenship USA program.
President Clinton, they charged, was speeding
up the citizenship process to create more Democratic
voters. Now, Republicans could be accused of trying
to slow down the increase of those voters.
“Immigration policy has practical political
implications,” concluded a 2001 paper by
the Center for Immigration Studies, which found,
for example, that “a generous Hispanic immigration
has contributed to a solid Democratic edge with
Latinos” the longer they stay in the US.
Laws barring non-US citizens from public benefits
have driven immigrants to protect themselves by
naturalizing in large numbers.
The number of new US citizens jumped in the last
few years, from 6.5 million in 1990 to more than
11 million in 2002. About half of all legal immigrants
in that decade had naturalized by 2002.
The naturalization rate among Mexicans rose from
only 19 percent in 1995 to 34 percent six years
later. Among immigrants from other Latin American
countries, the rate rose from 40 percent to 58
percent in the same period.
Traditionally high naturalization rates among
Asians and Europeans remained steady.
Today, some 8 million permanent residents (those
who have been legal immigrants for at least five
years) are eligible for citizenship, and they
are applying in a hurry.
Citizenship applications nationwide soared 79
percent this January, compared with the same month
last year, reports the USCIS. The agency attributes
the spike to efforts by immigrants to avoid the
proposed higher fees.
However, a self-protective response by immigrants
to the national debate over immigration –
as in the past -- is most likely also fueling
the surge. Republicans are on the losing end this
phenomenon too.
A 2006 Pew Hispanic Center survey, for example,
showed Latino support for the GOP position on
immigration dropping from 25 percent to 16 percent,
with the highest loss of support coming from the
foreign-born – future voters.
President Bush once declared that the Latino vote
was “in play,” but studies of voting
trends show immigrants-turned-US-citizens tend
to identify with Democrats more than with Republicans.
The Center for Immigration Studies found that
Latinos identified more with Democrats across
all nationality groups, except Cubans, and across
nearly all states.
“The gap is even wider among immigrant Latinos
who have not yet become citizens. As many of these
non-citizens naturalize, the political affiliation
of Latinos is likely to shift still further toward
the Democratic Party,” noted a center study.
- New America Media
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