Travel ban spurs jump in naturalization filings
LOS ANGELES — Andres Dorantes has long been content with the green card that lets him live in the U.S. and work as a tattoo artist in Los Angeles.
That changed when Donald Trump became president and swiftly made executive orders to crack down on immigrants and ban travel from certain countries. Dorantes, a Mexican immigrant, made an appointment at a naturalization workshop to start the process of becoming an American citizen.
“I wanted to do it for a long time but I was always busy,” said the 33-year-old Dorantes, who came to the U.S. a decade ago after his father sponsored him for a green card. “Now, I see what is happening — everything is crazy.”
Since last month, immigrants have been rushing to prepare applications to become U.S. citizens. Legal service organizations in Los Angeles, Maryland and New York catering to diverse immigrant communities from Latin America, Asia and the Middle East all said they’ve been fielding a rising number of calls and questions about how to become a citizen.
The wait time has doubled for a spot at a monthly naturalization clinic focused on Asian immigrants in Los Angeles. Since Trump’s executive orders on immigration, the number of immigrants inquiring about citizenship has also doubled at a Muslim organization in Southern California and at Latin American-focused groups in Maryland and New York, advocates said.
The growing interest in citizenship follows a surge in naturalization applications last year amid Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric and ahead of a December increase in filing fees. Nearly 1 million people applied to naturalize during the 2016 fiscal year, the largest number in nine years, government data shows.
At naturalization ceremonies in Los Angeles last week, many of the 6,000 newly sworn citizens proudly waved flags and shed tears at the culmination of a lengthy journey to become Americans. A ceremony in Chicago a week earlier took an emotional turn when a Syrian immigrant recited the Pledge of Allegiance amid a rancorous court fight over the new president’s travel ban affecting his native country.
Immigrants historically have sought citizenship for the many new opportunities it brings: the ability to vote, better job prospects, an American passport for travel, bringing relatives here from overseas. This year, it’s more about fear in a Trump administration.
“After the election, the desire to naturalize shifted. It wasn’t more about opportunity and bringing more family, it was more about, ‘there is a new president who is antiimmigrant and we need to do what we can to protect ourselves,” said Nasim Khansari, citizenship project director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Los Angeles.