ICIRR Policy Director Fred Tsao journeyed to Washington this week to testify before a Congressional Subcommittee about the impact of the tremendous backlogs to obtaining citizenship that immigrants across the country now face. The agency that processes citizenship applications, USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), was not equipped to handle the recent influx of new registrations, which was caused by the agency’s own decision to steeply increase citizenship fees last July (by 70%).
This processing backlog of sixteen to eighteen months means that legal residents who had rushed to become citizens in time to vote in the 2008 elections will be left out to dry, their dreams of full participation in our country needlessly placed on hold.
"'The price of USCIS's failed leadership and poor planning is the disenfranchisement of those immigrants who have played by the rules,' said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union," in a recent Wall Street Journal article.
Read ICIRR Policy Director Fred Tsao’s testimony here, download the press release, or read more in the Wall Street Journal or Chicago Tribune.
No comments:
Post a Comment