He needs the votes. Clinton pulled a fast one with making a lot of people citizens at the last minute to get himself elected. He had INS drop background checks and rush everyone in the process through to citizenship so they could vote for him. And they did.
Clinton delegated it to Algore, whose “Citizenship USA” program naturalized more than 1 million aliens; a couple of hundred thousand of those were never subject to a background check before they were allowed to become citizens, during Congressional hearings, witnesses testified their FBI background check requests were simply thrown away; another 100,000 who were checked and found to have significant criminal records were naturalized anyway. This was under the INS directorship of Doris Meissner, who “advises” BO on immigration. At that time, there were two — yes two — INS workplace enforcement officers for California, Nevada and Arizona combined.