Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON — Washington is seeing a revival of a 1996 partisan election-year battle over the processing of citizenship applications — in reverse.

Twelve years ago, Republicans protested what they said was a rushed approval by the Clinton administration of new citizens who, the GOP feared, would be Democratic voters. This time, it’s Democrats complaining that the Bush White House is dragging its feet over the approval of new citizens.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in April, Democratic senators accused Secretary Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of Homeland Security, of failing to ensure prompt processing of citizenship applications.

As a result, the Democrats implied, the number of new immigrant voters in November’s election would be held down.

“Can you assure that those who applied for U.S. citizenship before March 31, 2008, that they're actually going to be able to get that citizenship in time to vote in this election?” demanded Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Or, Leahy said, is there “an effort made to make sure they don't vote in the next election?”

A cynical view?
The Vermont Democrat added, “I don't mean to be cynical.” But he implied that Chertoff's department will “get through some (of the applicants for citizenship) very quickly after the presidential election, not before.”

Chertoff answered that he would not allow Leahy’s accusation to “linger in the air.” He said a record number of people would qualify for naturalization. “There'll be over a million, as our current estimation, which is far more than any prior year,” he told Leahy.

But he acknowledged that “there may be a significant number” of applicants for naturalization who had applied as of March 31 “that don't make it through” in time to register to vote.

Many states have registration deadlines 30 days before the election.

Chertoff's department saw nearly a doubling of citizenship applications between fiscal year 2006 and 2007.

Increase in application fee
The Democrats mauled Chertoff for not hiring more personnel since he knew that in previous years when there had been an increase in naturalization fees, as there was last year, and a presidential election looming, there had been a surge in new applications for citizenship.

Interactive Election A to Z Do you have questions about the election process? We'll answer them. NBC News

The application fee was increased last July from $330 to $595.

There was a whiff of déjà vu about the Democrats’ election-year tussle with Chertoff, and Chertoff himself explained why: “Ten years ago there was a blistering IG (Inspector General’s) report relating to the 1996 naturalizations, which were riddled with fraud and misconduct. We're not going to repeat that. We're going to be secure….”

The politics this year are reminiscent of the 1996 scrimmage over immigrant voters. Then it was the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton creating a program called Citizenship USA to accelerate processing of petitions for naturalization.

Republicans saw a political motive in what the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now called Citizenship and Immigration Services) was doing: swearing in large numbers of new citizens in the hopes that they would vote Democratic in the 1996 elections.

Web extra video John McCain on immigration July 23, 2007: Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, discusses immigration. NBC News Web Extra

As it turned out, Clinton cruised to a comfortable re-election over Republican Bob Dole. But it looked in 1995, only a few months after the smashing GOP congressional win in the 1994 elections, as though ‘96 might be a close election.

The Justice Department’s non-partisan watchdog, the Inspector General, concluded after an investigation that the Clinton administration’s citizenship speed-up resulted in the INS doing slipshod background checks on thousands of applicants.

The Inspector General’s report also revealed that Clinton administration officials were sensitive about allegations that they might be waving through dubious applicants in order to bulk up Clinton’s vote.

“To blunt any charge that we are running a citizenship/Clinton voter mill, I am working with the FBI to find a way to tighten up the ridiculously loose fingerprint check system,” Clinton administration official Douglas Farbrother wrote in one March 1996 e-mail to his colleagues. Farbrother worked for Vice President Al Gore’s National Performance Review (also known as Reinventing Government.)

They had the election in mind
In its July 2000 report, the IG’s office said, “The prospect of an impending general election was present in the thinking of a number of White House officials who pressed INS to accelerate its naturalization efforts.” But that did not prove there was “improper partisan motivation,” the IG report concluded.

Web extra video Barack Obama on immigration July 23: Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, discusses immigration. NBC News Web Extra

One of the origins of the naturalization speedup was a meeting between Clinton and Daniel Solis, who was then head of a group called United Neighborhood Organization in Chicago and is now a Democratic alderman in Chicago.

Solis attended a September 1994 Democratic fundraising event and was seated near Clinton. Solis told the president that there were more than 5 million potential new citizens in the United States.

According to Solis, Clinton said there should be an effort to register them to vote. But they had to be naturalized first, Solis pointed out. He told the president that research showed that newly naturalized citizens tended to vote at a higher rate than other citizens.

Citizenship USA got underway in late 1995, prompted in part by grassroots activists such as Solis.

Solis was correct about newly naturalized Latinos tending to vote at a higher rate than native-born Latinos.

But that trend doesn’t hold true for all naturalized Americans.

The Census Bureau says that in the 2004 election, 64 percent of native-born citizens voted (or at least told Census interviewers that they did), while only 54 percent of naturalized citizens cast ballots.

Among Latinos, 52 percent of naturalized citizens voted in 2004, compared to only 45 percent of native-born Latinos.

MORE FROM ON THE TRAIL

On the Trail Section Front

‘Yes we did!’ Historic night in Harlem Will Obamas get a Yankee labradoodle? Obama elected 44th president   Obama’s transformational moment   Images from a historic election night   Obama victory makes history   Images: World reacts to Obama’s victory   Barack Obama casts his vote   Slide show: America votes   McCain makes final appeal to voters On the Trail Section Front   Add On the Trail headlines to your news reader: