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[Mephansteras]

This Standing Rock stuff is seriously not ok.

[Reelya]

Well, it's pretty unlikely that the 9 million people who are theoretically eligible for this would all instantly rush over to get naturalized though, if they waive a $600 fee. That's the number of people who are potentially eligible, not the number who want to be naturalized.

The current naturalization fees make up something like 10% of the USCIS budget. Assuming that they don't means-test the waiver, that's how much they'd be losing out - 10%. Then you'd have to guesstimate how many extra people would want to be naturalized in a year if they saved $600 on the process. Let's guess that it doubles the rate of uptake, then they have extra costs of another 10% of the budget (assuming they made no profit on the fees, and no economies of scale). So you'd have USCIS dealing with about 80% of their current budget and take 10 years to clear the backlog. That seems like a realistic scenario.

[Reelya]

I can't see where you're coming from.

First, you say that naturalizing everyone is terrible idea, because it's going to cost too much, but when I point out that the process will be spread over time and therefore the amount per year won't really be that large in comparison to the overall USCIS budget, now your complaining that 10 years is too long to clear up all the non-naturalized people.

So, now you want the problem solved instantly, damn the cost! WTF man?

So, do you want them naturalized, or not? Because right now you're making completely contradictory complaints.

[Frumple]

... it's still pretty goddamn bad, though.

As to the edit, the thing you seem to be missing ree is that functionally what's being proposed isn't assistance. It's magic asterisk nonsense that would gum up a system already thoroughly gummed, and drop the burden of that on the rest of the folks using said system to boot. It's good intentions put forth ignorantly enough it counts as infernal construction subsidies.

[Criptfeind]

No one's saying it's the worst possible thing Reelya, just that it's a bad thing.

Be careful, MSH took the last free exit on parody grounds.

[sluissa]

Slow is better than "never".

How is giving some assistance so that more people get naturalized worse than doing literally nothing and thumb-twiddling?

The main problem here is that she would get credit for doing "something" when nothing really improved in any noticeable way and many things were made worse by it. (In the form of an 10-20% budget decrease for the people trying to do all of this.

This is basically social media "support". Big tragedy happens. People say "our prayers are with you" or something to that effect. They get a few brownie points among their friends and followers and nothing of substance actually gets done and in some cases the big outcry of "support" makes people who might otherwise actually help think there's plenty being done already and look elsewhere.

[Max™]

I would assume she'd be pushing to rearrange funding to cover that, perhaps adding in some sort of workaround so they still aren't directly getting public funding but their costs are reduced, like giving them direct tax credits and other cost reductions for any fees they wave.

Clinton is a lawyer, she can probably help work towards meeting the letter of the law without being constrained to the spirit and vice versa.

[Frumple]

Maybe float the question at em and see if they respond? Beyond Twitter, there's contact info on the website (if somewhat annoying to find -- it's at the very very bottom of the page).

[Starver]

Maybe float the question at em and see if they respond? Beyond Twitter, there's contact info on the website (if somewhat annoying to find -- it's at the very very bottom of the page).

Handiest and most logical place. (I've seen worse!)

[Max™]

It's not that I don't believe that, but I just want to actually know whether she's aware of the USCIS mandated self-funding. Since Congress apparently wasn't aware.

Well, she inaugurated the new york office in 2003, and has had a bit of involvement with the agency herself: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/report-cites-favoritism-for-terry-mcauliffe-and-brother-of-hillary-clinton-116370

[Max™]

Well I'm rooting for you, taking a proactive stance is awesome.

[alway]

It seems like there's a fairly simple solution to me: Require varying payment based on value of a person's assets/ability to pay. No federal funding, doesn't cut of ability of those without means any more than it already does. Call it the Shorter Line Fee and wealthier immigrants probably won't even complain about it for a decade or two when everybody forgets how bad the lines were beforehand.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Like most simple solutions, that's utterly non-helpful and indeed would make things worse. USCIS does have to, you know, do the things it does. Pay its employees, do all the work, etc. That means money. You can't just take what people are able to pay, at least not without federal funding. They're so slow because they're operating on as short a budget as is.

The reason other government bodies can go in the red is because the mission comes first, and the government just prints them debt if they're providing some vital service. That only applies if they get funding.

[alway]

There are, in fact, a wide variety of numbers to choose from between 600 and 500,000; any of which numbers could provide an increase in funding by selectively charging more based on means.

[martinuzz]

The democratic party has officially charged Trump before federal court, for voter intimidation in the states of Pennsylvania, Nevada, Ohio and Arizona.
They claim that his repeated cry outs to his supporters to rally at election day and keep an eye on the election booths will cause voters from minority groups to not vote at all, because the constant prescence of mistrusting Trump supporters is too intimidating.

In other news, the democratic party's office in Ohio was hit by manure, again. Four years ago they were already beset by a mountain of manure at their front door, and today, a police officer on patrol again encountered a mountain of manure at the office's doorstep.

When 4 years ago, the perpetrator was never caught, the police are hopeful they will catch who did it this time. Four years ago, there were no cameras at the site. This time however, there were, and the perp has been caught on camera.

The Republican party denied having anything to do with it and even offered to help clean it up. This wasn't nescessary, as the democrats already had heaps of volunteers show up to clean up the manure, and even some requests by people if they could please come pick up the manure to fertilize their fields.