The purity of the blood must be maintained:

Routine naturalization ceremonies scheduled for this month in Putnam, Dutchess and Ulster counties to welcome new U.S. citizens were abruptly canceled last week by the federal government, surprising local officials.

Events planned for Wednesday (Dec. 3) in Putnam, Friday (Dec. 5) in Dutchess and Dec. 12 in Ulster were called off by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (USCIS), which approves applicants for citizenship. . .

Rep. Pat Ryan, a Democrat whose district includes Beacon, said in a statement on Friday (Dec. 5) that he also has written Edlow to protest the cancellations and ask for more information.

Apparently the courtrooms have the wrong sort of fringe on the American flag:

In an email sent this week to the clerks in Putnam, Dutchess and Ulster counties, the agency’s Albany director, Gwynne Dinolfo, asked them to confirm in writing that their judges were authorized under federal law to oversee the ceremonies. She said that the judge must have jurisdiction over civil actions “in which the amount in controversy is unlimited. Because county courts in New York have a jurisdictional limit of $25,000 in civil cases, [the judge] may not be authorized to administer the naturalization ceremony.”

Taylor Bruck, the Ulster County clerk, told the Daily Freeman that the directive was confusing. “The law hasn’t changed, so implying that the counties have been doing something unlawful for the last 15 years without anyone mentioning it doesn’t make sense,” he said on Tuesday. “No one said anything about this during the first Trump administration, so why now?”

On Nov. 13, USCIS announced new steps aimed at “restoring integrity in the naturalization process by ensuring that only those who truly deserve it are granted the most sacred status we can bestow.”

In addition to “fully” vetting applicants, the agency in October introduced a revised civics test “to ensure that naturalization applicants have a full understanding of American history and government.”

The agency said it “refocused the way we consider the good moral character of potential citizens, looking for positive contributions to our communities rather than merely the absence of bad behavior.”

How about we give this test to high-ranking members of the Trump administration, starting with Trump himself?

I wonder what’s really going on here?

Nearly 819,000 people became naturalized citizens from October 2024 through September, according to USCIS. The top five countries of origin were Mexico, India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic and Vietnam.

Oh.

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