Phx. advocates pushing citizenship to boost number of Latino voters

PHOENIX — Advocates say they’ve helped more than 5,000 legal immigrants in the Phoenix metropolitan area apply for citizenship in hopes of boosting the number of Latino voters in November.

But many of those who applied may not get to vote because the immigration service reportedly isn’t processing the requests fast enough because of backlogs created by a rush of new applications for citizenship.

An immigration official acknowledged a spike in naturalization applications has fueled backlogs, but the agency is trying to process applications faster by working overtime and hiring more employees. The labor coalition held 13 citizenship fairs over the past year in Maricopa County that helped more than 5,000 legal immigrants of voting age fill out the paperwork for applying for citizenship, doubling its goal, said Guillermo Nicacio, president of the grass-roots organization My Family Votes.