Every year, hundreds of thousands of people apply for citizenship in the United States, and America celebrates them with pageantry at citizenship ceremonies across the country. There’s even an annual Citizenship Day in mid-September.
But, as a researcher who studies citizenship, I think that Americans should know that there are also long bureaucratic delays that keep people from becoming citizens.
In a study published on Sept. 12, the Colorado Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, of which I am a member, found the backlog in naturalization applications has ballooned and wait times have doubled in the last three years.
Path to Citizenship
Before someone can become a citizen, he or she must spend at least a decade legally inside the U.S. After obtaining a visa to enter the U.S., he or she will spend five years or more waiting to become eligible for a green card that establishes legal permanent residence. Then there is another five-year wait to become eligible for naturalized citizenship.
The next steps in the application process take time: a 20-page form called the N-400, a US$725 filing fee, a biometric screening to authenticate identity and an interview with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to demonstrate knowledge of U.S. civics and proficiency in English, plus possible requests for more evidence.
Federal law considers 180 days a reasonable time for the agency to process applications. Agency guidelines further define a backlog as “the number of applications that exceed acceptable or target pending levels,” a definition that has been interpreted by Congress to mean six months.
Our new report shows that, as of Sept. 17, there is a national backlog of more than 700,000 applications. Wait times across the agency field offices ranged from an average of 10 to 18 months, which is in excess of the six months as required by statute.
The report relied on government data on patterns of naturalization backlogs and public testimony from numerous experts about the consequences of the recent backlog. It was supplemented by independent research into the causes of the backlog and remedies that have helped to reduce backlogs in the past, as well as analysis specific to Colorado.
The precise wait time and pending caseload varies across regional field offices. Noncitizens in the military have not only longer wait times, but higher denial rates. Applications flagged for national security sometimes never emerge from the queue. Immigrants and their attorneys often have scant information about what is happening with their application while they wait.
Getting Back on Track
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service says that interest in naturalizing is high, and it is processing applications as quickly as it can. It feels that to adjudicate cases more quickly would compromise accuracy.
An agency spokeswoman, Jessica Collins, told the Denver Post that the agency “continues to adjudicate the naturalization that skyrocketed under the Obama administration” and that the agency plans to add new offices and increase staff.
I do not doubt the agency is working hard, and there are some signs that its numbers are improving with new hiring. But in places like Colorado, the backlog persists despite the number of applications received returning to preelection levels. The approaching election cycle means interest in naturalizing will rise again.
Also, I think that there’s another factor at play. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service is now vetting individual applications more intensely than it did in previous years.
For example, it is now issuing more requests for evidence. It has added additional requirements, such as interviews for employer-sponsored immigrants and relatives of refugees living inside the U.S. or original signatures from high-level officers for noncitizens in the military. It reviews prior determinations more stringently than in the past.
The negative effects carry over to delays in other types of immigration petitions, too. Applications for DACA, Temporary Protected Status and asylum are all processed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, for example.
Harm to Rights
The substantial delay to naturalization created by the backlog harms voting rights and civil rights.
The impediment on voting rights is straightforward: The right to vote depends on becoming a citizen. Based on the current wait times, those who apply now will not be processed in time to participate in the 2020 elections in many parts of the country.
Keeping people who are eligible for citizenship from participation in choosing their president and voting on high-stakes policies is a problem. This is true no matter how the participation of newly naturalized voters affects elections, because voting is an individual right.
In addition, immigrants’ eligibility for employment and public benefits hinges on citizenship. Workers need citizenship for federal jobs, and university researchers need citizenship to apply for federal grants. Students need citizenship for federal financial aid. Health insurance, welfare and other public benefits vary for citizens versus noncitizens as well.
Ultimately, naturalization is about more than material rights and benefits. In my forthcoming book, Pursuing Citizenship in the Enforcement Era, I find that immigrants in varying legal statuses feel insecure about their position in society. Even white high-tech workers from Canada, typically a subset of green card holders who feel secure in their belonging, feel worried about lacking citizenship in volatile times.
Government backlogs are not new, and they have been eliminated before. In 2006, Congress addressed a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service backlog by requiring regular reports and performance plans and by providing funding specifically for backlog elimination. It reset the clock.
However, so far, Congress has held only one hearing on the current backlog and has not taken any follow-up action. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service may be hamstrung by certain White House policies, but there is some evidence that it is choosing to divert funds to fraud detection and other enforcement operations, rather than staying focused on processing the backlog of naturalization applications.
In my view, it will take a combination of political accountability, administrative commitment and legal action to push the agency to get back on track or ideally ahead of the next election cycle.
Ming Hsu Chen is a member of the Colorado Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and contributed to a report, Citizenship Delayed: Civil Rights and Voting Rights Implications of the Backlog in Citizenship and Naturalization. The views in this article are her own and do not reflect the views of the Colorado Advisory Committee or the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.