Rush is on for U.S. citizenship

Immigrants worry about federal proposals

February 28, 1996
Web posted at: 6:45 p.m. EST

From Correspondent Brian Jenkins

NEW YORK (CNN) -- More than one million people applied for U.S. citizenship last year, double the number in 1994, and it's not hard to figure out why.

Measures that would reduce immigration into the United States are before Congress, and Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan would go even further by putting a five-year moratorium on legal immigration.

The biggest rush is at immigration offices in New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco -- cities with the biggest immigrant population.

"A large number of people who became legalized in the late 1980s are now eligible to apply for citizenship," said Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner.

In New York, a campaign started by Caribbean groups has helped process applications for some 5,000 people over the last two years.

"I want to vote ... I want to be heard," explained Ann Willabus, an immigrant from Guyana.

If such a law passes, there are "brothers and sisters who will not be allowed to come," even though applications on their behalf were made long ago, said May Ying Chen of the group UNITE. (128K AIFF sound or 128K WAV sound)

The Senate Judiciary Committee begins work Thursday on an immigration reform bill written by Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyoming, who says he's concerned that a flood of immigrants is driving down wages, competing with American workers for jobs and overcrowding some areas of the country.

Simpson's measure would slash the number of non-Americans who enter the United States to work. A less restrictive bill awaits a vote in the House.

Buchanan plan criticized

Buchanan's moratorium proposal drew fire Wednesday from Republican activists William Bennett and Jack Kemp.

Justifiable concern over stemming the flow of illegal aliens is expanding into "an ugly antipathy toward all immigrants," said Bennett, who supports Lamar Alexander for the Republican presidential nomination.

Kemp and Bennett sponsored an immigration study by their conservative Empower America think tank, "because we believe it serves as a corrective to the anti-immigrant sentiments now dominating our public discourse," Bennett said.

"This really is a stinking, rotten attitude," Bennett said of Buchanan at a Washington news conference. "This idea from him is grossly hypocritical and ungrateful to this country."

According to the study, U.S. companies hire foreign-born engineers and scientists because of their skills, not because they want to pay them less. In fact, the median salary of foreign-born engineers and scientists is significantly higher than their native-born counterparts, the study said.

"Stop Washington"

The push for reform has Haitian immigrant Wilson Cadet and his wife glad they secured their citizenship in December. Now living in New York, their two children were born on U.S. soil.

In his work for the relief agency Catholic Charities, Cadet helps others sign up to be citizens. With the right to vote comes the power to "stop what's going on in Washington," Cadet told CNN. (136K AIFF sound or 136K WAV sound)

With their extra voting clout, immigrant organizations hope to knock down most of the obstacles to immigration that others want to erect.

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