How the GOP can suppress millions of Democrats' votes and have some DUers cheering

[DemFromMem]

Every time a xenophobic Democratic Underground poster posts an anti-immigrant rant, remember that they're playing in to the long term GOP survival plans.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/48694/

Is the Bush administration trying to slow down the surge in potential new Democratic voters by tightening access to U.S. 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, D.C.

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."

<snip>

The GOP will fight like hell this year to oppose putting the 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country on a path to citizenship not because they hate immigrants (don't worry, plenty of them do). They'll do it because they know that the Democrats will knock them off one by one in election after election if these potential American citizens get the franchise. And they're counting on picking off Democrats in each battle on this issue by trying to divide Democrats - black versus Latino, blue dogs versus liberals, rural versus urban.

The latest battle involves an attempt to dramatically hike naturalization fees. Why now? Because it takes about a year to naturalize and Hispanics have been filing to naturalize in record numbers. The Democrats could pick up hundreds of thousands of extra votes in 2008 unless something is done - and fast!

[Wickerman]

1. mountain

molehill

flamebait much? I see very few of those type rants on DU.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. Um, exactly. The last thing the Bush adminstration wants is actual CITIZENS. They mess everything up

with those rights and all. MKJ

[Jack Sprat]

5. if I didn't know that your picture had

John McCain embracing George Bush, then I would swear it was Joe Lieberman.

[tblue]

3. I support the immigrants as a matter of human rights & social justice, not just for their votes, BUT

I hope a bunch of them get naturalized and help us kick butt in '08. I bet most of them will take the right to vote very seriously and participate in high percentages. Thanks for posting this important message.

[spag68]

4. rethug tactics

I don't understand why this surprises anyone. These same "people" have been doing this same thing for as long as we've been a country. Over and over, time after time, they play one group of us off against another, and we still fall for it. The only answer is for more citizens to look back at how other immigrant groups were treated. We can't let this latest generation of the robber barons rip us off again.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. The question isn't whether the new immigrants would vote Dem...

... it's whether the US citizens who's jobs they acquired would.

Personally, I think it's better to seek the votes of those who are already voters.