Welcome back to my civic blog. As the end of the semester approaches, so does the final post of this blog. For this penultimate post, I wanted to go over a topic that almost all immigrants experience, the application process for citizenship. A common obstacle that immigrants face is the challenges that come with the process of applying for citizenship. In this post, I want to detail some of these challenges and talk about how we could improve this process in a way that benefits all groups.
Citizenship Application
*image source*
The application process itself is a lengthy process in which you can get denied naturalization at every step along the way. The first step is determining if you are eligible to gain citizenship. Here is a link to a worksheet that uses a flow diagram to determine eligibility. If you then are able to apply for naturalization, you must fill out a form called the N-400 Form. You must also pay a fee of $700 to fill out this form. After that, you must get interviewed by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). And finally, after that (if you are not denied), you take the naturalization test. With passing this test, you can then take the Oath of Allegiance to the United States and are granted citizenship. Click here to read a full comprehensive list of the steps to citizenship.
The Naturalization Test
The naturalization test has been an area of controversy in the citizenship application process as many feel that it is unfair. In 2020, the Trump administration made revisions to the widely used 2008 naturalization test. This new 2020 version was named the civics test and created many new barriers for the immigrants taking it. When Biden came into office, he pushed to revert the naturalization test back to its 2008 form. Click here to read more about that.
As I have mentioned in earlier posts, my father is an immigrant who came to America for college. He is still currently not an American citizen and has a green card instead. Since he is married, has children, has a full-time job, and has lived in America for more than thirty year, the naturalization process would be a bit easier for him. Even though he has still lived here for a very long time, he is still hesitant on becoming a US citizen. He is aware of how long the process would take and would need to set aside a lot of time to prepare. I believe that naturalization should still be a strict process, but it has become very time and money consuming. Many immigrants would not be able to easily pay $700 dollars on an application fee and be able to set aside time to study for the test.
The immigration to citizenship process in the US is problematic in many ways, and this is definitely one of them. It reminds me of poll taxes, in a way — if you want to be a citizen, you have to pay this exorbitant fine. Your research was well done — I would have like a few more pictures, but overall, strong work on exposing info many people may not be aware of!