Citizenship seekers flood U.S. system
Waits get even longer as backlog grows 40%
Maria Manzo cleaned houses, babysat and spent countless Sundays selling burritos at a swap meet to support her eight children, who emigrated with her from Mexico more than 30 years ago. When a son eventually became a legal resident, Manzo was able to apply for a green card, ensuring that she, too, could remain a permanent resident of the United States.
Her green card made her feel secure, allowing her to travel, if she wished, to see relatives in Mexico and return without hassles to her home in Garden Grove, Calif.
But after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Manzo began to feel differently.
Now the 82-year-old great-grandmother is among hundreds of thousands of permanent U.S. residents applying annually for citizenship, clogging an already-burdened system that relies mostly on fees from applicants such as Manzo to keep itself afloat.
In the year after the election, the backlog at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services grew 40%, to nearly 735,000 pending applications — with pronounced surges in several states with the highest immigrant populations: California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas. As a result, the wait time has grown, too.
The backlog creates “a second wall,” said Emily Gelbaum, National Partnership for New Americans chief of staff, in addition to the one Trump has vowed to build at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Immigrant advocates say that aside from ensuring their personal security, citizenship applicants want the right to vote — in many instances against the Trump administration and its backers. Gelbaum, whose organization is a consortium of non-profits that advocate for immigrants, said she is concerned that the slowdown is deliberate, a move to “suppress the vote” of these potential citizens.
Marilu Cabrera, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, disputed such allegations. In an email, she wrote, “There is no truth to this claim.”
“USCIS also has a responsibility to serve the American public, and safeguarding the security and integrity of our nation’s immigration system is a top priority,” she said.
Since 2013, federal data show that the time it takes for a naturalization application to wend its way through the approval process has more than doubled, from about four or five months to a year or more, depending on where the applicant lives. In Harlingen, Texas, for instance, the wait time is now as long as 18 months, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In Fort Myers, Fla., the wait is even longer, up to nearly 21 months.
That means someone who applies now to become a citizen has almost no chance of being sworn in before the November midterm elections.
Cabrera, the agency spokeswoman, said by email that the agency is reviewing its procedures and looking to new technology to “more efficiently” handle cases.
From 2002 to 2010, Congress provided about $574 million to help reduce a growing backlog in processing applications. But it has rarely stepped in to provide such additional funds.
The Center for Investigative Reporting is a national, non-profit journalism organization. To see more of its work, go to revealnews.org.