Back on topic: What scares Conservatives.

 Originally Posted By: Washington Post
The Department of Homeland Security failed to prepare for a massive influx of applications for U.S. citizenship and other immigration benefits this summer, prompting complaints from Hispanic leaders and voter-mobilization groups that several hundred thousand people likely will not be granted citizenship in time to cast ballots in the 2008 presidential election.

Bush administration officials said yesterday that they had anticipated applicants would rush to file their paperwork to beat a widely publicized fee increase that took effect July 30, but did not expect the scale of the response. The backlog comes just months after U.S. officials failed to prepare for tougher border security requirements that triggered months-long delays for millions of Americans seeking passports.

Before the fee hike, citizenship cases typically took about seven months to complete. Now, immigration officials can take five months or more just to acknowledge receipt of applications from parts of the country and will take 16 to 18 months on average to process applications filed after June 1, according to officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of DHS. Such a timeline would push many prospective citizens well past voter-registration deadlines for the 2008 primaries and the general elections.

Immigrant Paperwork Backs Up At DHS
Delays May Deny Vote to Hundreds Of Thousands



How convenient. I mean, nobody could have anticipated an influx of citizenship applications, right? I’m sure that it has nothing to do with the growing and changing Hispanic electorate. (/snark)

 Quote:
NDN.org:

In our new report, Hispanics Rising, NDN reviews the emerging politics of the fastest-growing part of the American electorate, one deeply changed by the immigration debate. The report documents how Hispanics have gone from a group trending Republican to a group overwhelmingly Democratic; one whose percentage of the American electorate has increased by 33 percent in the last 4 years; and one poised, because of the structure of the Electoral College, to determine who the next President will be in 2008.


And there it is. It's not so much that they want to change the U.S.into Mexico, which is frankly bullshit, it's that they have the power and numbers to completely obliterate the Republican Party who inexplicably have alienated and angered Hispanics en masse repeatedly. They're in danger of transforming America all right. Into DEMOCRATIC country. And that sends shivers down the spines of the Pariah's and Wonder Boys the nation over. After all, how can you lob "anti-American" slanders when you're (even more than now)the most minor of minority views in the nation?

To Bush and Rove's credit, they saw the handwriting on the wall and tried to reach out to Latinos who were even a few years ago, still a decent percentage of the Republican base. But the far right wingers who fear "Mexicans", will alienate anyone, race bait anyone, just so long as it fires up the nativists and xenophobes and gets them to the polls. All to their detriment. Fitting I say. Goodbye far right wingers. Please provide more heated racial baiting and hatred. It's the best, fastest, and surest way to be rid of you all forever.

Every short term initiative, every election disenfranchisement scheme is just winning the battle but losing the war. And yes, I have to frame it that way because this is the way these people see it. A "war".

All the Hispanic community sees is a bunch of fucks who never distinguish legal over illegal, And American from 'white person'. And they've been repelled and disgusted, just as most Americans of the caucasian persuasion, most of whom don't happen to be paranoid racists, ALSO have been. The GOP in flames.



Writing in the Washington Post yesterday, former Bush Chief White House Speechwriter Michael Gerson described the changes in the Hispanic electorate this way:

 Quote:
I have never seen an issue where the short-term interests of Republican presidential candidates in the primaries were more starkly at odds with the long-term interests of the party itself. At least five swing states that Bush carried in 2004 are rich in Hispanic voters -- Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Bush won Nevada by just over 20,000 votes. A substantial shift of Hispanic voters toward the Democrats in these states could make the national political map unwinnable for Republicans … Some in the party seem pleased. They should be terrified.





In fact it's really tempting me to start a project I've been mulling over for quite some time, a door to door voter registration drive in some of the most underrepresented latino districts in the southwest. Where even if people are residents, you get the LEGAL citizen of that household (usually a voting age son or daughter) to be the voice of the family and get them to the polls to represent the entire family.

It would be monumental and seismic!