The Biden administration announced on Friday its plans to use U.S. taxpayer dollars to register newly naturalized citizens to vote, marking the latest attempt to use federal bureaucracies to interfere in American elections.
In its Friday memo, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, announced it had updated its Policy Manual to include provisions directing agency employees to “increase awareness and expand access to voter registration during naturalization ceremonies,” in which eligible immigrants officially become U.S. citizens. The guidelines specifically direct USCIS to provide newly ordained citizens “access to voter registration services” at these ceremonies and additional information “regarding points-of-contact for voting and voter registration.”
Also included in the policy update are directives for USCIS employees to request local or state election officials “attend ceremonies to distribute, collect, and review voter registration applications, and to officially register new citizens to vote.” In the absence of said officials at these ceremonies, the agency must “coordinate” with so-called “nonpartisan nongovernmental organizations” to provide these same services.
The new guidelines provide “that, to the extent feasible, USCIS offices invite governmental or nongovernmental organizations offering on-site voter registration services to introduce themselves and address the naturalization candidates before the ceremony.”
As noted in USCIS’s Friday press release, the updates to the agency’s Policy Manual are designed to “support” Executive Order 14019, a directive signed by President Joe Biden in March 2021 requiring hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in the electoral process by using taxpayer money to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. As The Federalist has previously reported, voter registration efforts are almost always a partisan venture and often involve left-wing groups that abuse their nonprofit status to target likely-Democrat voters.
Executive Order 14019 required the heads of federal departments to draft “a strategic plan” explaining how their agencies intended to fulfill Biden’s directive. While the Biden administration has routinely stonewalled efforts by good government groups to acquire these plans by slow-walking its response to federal court orders and heavily redacting any related documents that are released, available information reveals a seemingly partisan venture aimed at registering voters who are likely to support Democrats.
Earlier this summer, for instance, The Daily Signal revealed the Indian Health Service (IHS), which “assists American Indians as part of the Department of Health and Human Services,” was coordinating with left-wing groups such as the ACLU and Demos to “register and turn out voters” under Executive Order 14019. It’s worth mentioning that IHS was one of the agencies flagged in a “progress report” released by more than 50 left-wing organizations (including the ACLU and Demos) that evaluated how well certain agencies were complying with Biden’s order.
According to the evaluation, IHS is classified as one of three agencies that are “falling behind” in their efforts to register and turn out voters.
USCIS’s Friday announcement provides further evidence that Biden’s order is designed to benefit Democrats, when you consider that studies indicate a voting preference among legal immigrants for Democrat candidates over Republican ones. Data published by the Pew Research Center, for example, shows a larger percentage of immigrants in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Texas identify as Democrats than Republicans or independents.
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