Andrew Friedman

Bureaucracy trumps democracy

Earlier this month, the New York Daily News broke a story about the obscene backlogs at the New York City immigration office.

Currently close to 150,000 legal immigrants are waiting to have their immigration applications processed. And we are not talking about a few months, here. The average wait is over three years, and many people are forced to wait significantly longer than that. New York City's office is the worst in the entire country.

The Daily News correctly draws attention to the fact that this massive bureaucratic pile-up causes real harm to tens of thousands of immigrant families who cannot visit sick or dying relatives in their home country until their applications are processed.

Another important aspect of this backlog, though, is that tens of thousands of New Yorkers are being denied a voice and a role in our democracy. Tax-paying, hard-working New Yorkers who have lived in the City for years are being excluded from our electoral process by bureaucratic incompetence.

Not exactly one person, one vote.

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Posted at 11:01 AM, Oct 08, 2005 in Immigration
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