Pandemic rules delay all-important rite of citizenship

Monique Akinpelu, like so many others hoping to vote this November, was this close to the finish line.

A nursing assistant on the pandemic’s front lines in Atlanta, she has lived (and worked, and paid taxes), always legally, in the United States for 15 years. A decade ago, she began the long process of applying for citizenship.

She assembled paperwork and got a top-flight immigration lawyer. She answered civics questions about the Federalist Papers. She completed her final interview last July. She was congratulated, fingerprinted and told she’d soon be scheduled to publicly swear an oath of allegiance to the United States.

“When they told me that, I sat and cried,” Akinpelu said.

The ceremony was scheduled for March 20. But when she showed up at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office, a security guard turned her away. The office was closed. Just days earlier, the USCIS had suspended all routine in-person services, including oath ceremonies, because of COVID-19, thereby also indefinitely deferring Akinpelu’s shot at citizenship.

They’re like seniors who’ve completed every graduation requirement but are being denied diplomas until the class photo is taken.

A backlog is also swelling of would-be citizens a step or two behind Akinpelu, those unable to complete interviews or other assessments historically conducted in person. These people’s lives are not merely on pause; some risk losing out permanently on certain rights or opportunities. Akinpelu worries that her 17-year-old daughter in Togo -- whom she last saw as a toddler -- could age out of eligibility to be granted citizenship through her mom. There’s also the matter of Akinpelu’s voting rights.

Each additional day that the USCIS remains closed, an additional 2,100 would-be citizens run out of time to be eligible to vote in November, estimates Boundless Immigration, a company that helps immigrants obtain green cards and citizenship.

If the closures continue through late fall, as many as 441,000 will be excluded from the election.

To be sure, the USCIS’s initial suspension of in-person services made sense for public health reasons. Even administrations less hostile to immigrants would have done the same.

The problem is what the USCIS has declined to do since.

Across the country, private and public offices have found creative ways to adapt to pandemic conditions.

Well before the outbreak, immigration courts conducted deportation hearings via videoconference. The USCIS acknowledges it has re-interviewed refugees via videoconference in certain limited circumstances. Political appointees, too, were sworn in remotely long before the coronavirus spread.

But when it comes to citizenship oaths, the USCIS has so far refused to swear people in by phone or videoconference.

House Democrats’ latest stimulus bill would mandate the USCIS begin this process. The agency already has authority to do so under existing law.

In a statement, the USCIS said that rescheduling naturalization ceremonies is a “top priority” in its phased reopening, but that “the statutory language mandated by Congress contains certain requirements that are logistically difficult for USCIS to administer naturalization oaths virtually or telephonically.” Some USCIS field offices recently began conducting small-scale, social-distancing-compliant ceremonies. Six new citizens were sworn in Tuesday in an outdoor ceremony in York County, Pennsylvania.

It’s hard to gauge whether the reluctance to move these ceremonies online is rooted in runof-the-mill government inertia or something more sinister.

If it is politically motivated -- perhaps based on assumptions that the newly naturalized would vote Democratic -- the strategy is cynical and possibly faulty. In the swing state of Florida, for instance, a large, historically conservative Cuban-born population awaits citizenship.

Whatever the political considerations, people like Akinpelu are exactly the kinds of new Americans both parties say they welcome: immigrants who have followed the rules, have waited in line, and want to raise their right hand and swear -- perhaps on Zoom? -- just how much they love this country.