Washington: The run-up to the US presidential elections has seen growing interest among green card holders to obtain citizenship. According to the data released recently by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the immigration agency of the US government, a little over 5,44,000 foreign nationals became US citizens during the first three quarters of fiscal year 2018. Interestingly, this is a rise of 15% over the same period last year. On the other hand, 7,07,000 immigrants had become US citizens during the fiscal year ended September 30, 2017 - this was a 6% decline from the previous fiscal.
Advocacy groups, such as the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), through outreach programmes and legal assistance, aim to mobilise one million ‘eligible’ foreign nationals in the United States to apply in time, to enable them to participate in the democratic process. During this nine month period ended June 30, 2018, as many as 37,431 Indians became US citizens (nearly 7% of the total), making them the second-largest group following Mexico. Chinese were the third-largest group, with 28,547 (5% of the total) obtaining US citizenship. As compared to the previous corresponding period, 5,950 more Indians were conferred US citizenship during the first three quarters of fiscal 2018, which is an increase of 19%.
Immigrant experts view the rise in citizenship is owing to two key factors - uncertainty on the immigration policy front, which even renders green card holders vulnerable, and the desire to vote in the forthcoming elections. At the same time, the backlog in processing of citizenship applications is on the rise. According to NPNA’s communication release, citizenship application backlogs remain at record-levels while processing delays have increased in fiscal 2018, showing that streamlining the citizenship process remains a critical issue ahead of the 2020 election.
