Intentional backlogs

Just as Chris Christie “allegedly” clogged up the George Washington Bridge to teach a mayor a lesson, impeached President Donald J. Trump is slow-walking hundreds of thousands of applications.

Here’s twenty-six-year-old Laura Muñoz, a native of Colombia who submitted her paperwork NEARLY A YEAR AGO:

After you call this your country for so many years, you’re still not a part of its democracy.

When Trump took over, the average processing time was 5.6 months, below the six-month federal target. It’s now ballooned to 10-18 months since 2016.

It’s the swing states, stupid

Wikipedia / PNG Guru

Yes, the COVID-19 outbreak hasn’t helped the situation as agency closures and social distancing requirements limit each ceremony’s size. But there are plenty of ways around those issues that – spoiler alert! – have largely been ignored.

• Shorten the ceremonies so you can do more of them each day.
• Have the ceremonies outdoors so you can increase the number of applicants.
• Go virtual.
• If all other requirements have been completed, waive the oath part.

However, because immigrants, especially Asian Americans and Latinos are a growing population in swing states, the more hoops they have to jump through, the better for Trump.

Think it’s no big deal? The number of newly naturalized voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada exceed Trump’s 2016 margin of victory.

In 2016, Trump was able to take Florida by just 112,911 votes. Meanwhile, the number of naturalized voters who became citizens between 2014 and 2018 is nearly triple that margin (415,468).

Some key states — such as Florida and Texas — have huge backlogs that will be impossible to remedy in time for November.

“Without any new legislation, but with a complete understanding of how the immigration bureaucracy operates, they have been able to radically restrict immigration and immigration law through presidential proclamations and executive orders, and by using policy manuals…” 1

— RET, esq. (@imRyanElizabeth) September 8, 2020

It all adds up to suppression

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services kept an astounding 738,148 people’s naturalization applications waiting for up to three years. And backlogs beget backlogs. There are now an additional 126,000 eligible immigrants playing this waiting game while government agencies play dead.

The Pew Research Center had projected 10% of the 2020 U.S. electorate would be naturalized citizens.

Running out the clock

Canva

Boundless, a network of immigration experts, estimates that each day that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services remain closed will keep 2,100 immigrants off the voting rolls for November 3.

Swearing in a group of five immigrants during the RNC was a campaign stunt — and about the only help Donald J. Trump has been to immigrants since he took office.