Because of backlogs at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) office, some 60,000 New York residents who filled out their applications for citizenship in this country will lose their right to vote in the November general elections.
This charge was made yesterday by Dan Smulian, director of Training and Legal Services for the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), at a protest in front of the USCIS offices at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, where demonstrators carried signs reading “Respect the Immigrants: Process the Application Backlog,” and “The Backlog of Citizenship Applications Prevents Fair Elections.”
Yu Soung Mun, a Korean immigrant, shouted out in the middle of the demonstration, “I am desperate to vote. I applied for my citizenship over a year ago and I still haven’t gotten it.”
Smulian thinks that the delays in the agency have mounted because the funds provided by the federal government “are not sufficient.” He added, “And they are redirecting resources toward national security programs, like special registration focused on Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities.” Smulian explained that although the agency’s mandate is to process applications within six months, in New York it is taking over 19 months to do so.
Besides the 60,000 New Yorkers who will not be able to vote in November because of the delays, NYIC calculates that in Florida, one of the key swing states in this election (the margin that determined the presidential victory in Florida in 2000 was 537 votes), some 25,000 prospective citizens would be able to exercise their right to vote if they had received their citizenship within the mandated six months from the date they filled out their applications.
“Instead, the delay in the Miami office is 21 months,” states the Coalition’s press release.
The release points out that according to the USCISU, 678,000 applications for citizenship are pending at this moment throughout the nation.
There has been no immediate response from immigration authorities on this matter.
