Citizen me!

This week, I got my US robot passport (bechipped and dripping with patriotic quotes and images) and my voter registration confirmation.

So all I need now is for someone to call me for jury duty ... ironically, I've been invited to fulfill my civic responsibility three times in the last 13 years. Each time, I had to write back and decline because I wasn't yet a citizen. You'd think they'd have made a note of that somewhere.

Oh, and the INS is planning to increase citizenship application fees by more than 60%. While that's likely to make the process even more prohibitive for low-income immigrants (who often can't afford a lawyer and have to try and untangle the bureaucratic vines themselves), it at least suggests the possibility that it could lead to increased staffing levels, better informed officers and improved communication (though note how many conditionals I use there ...).