Donald Trump's war on voting has merged with his war on immigration to make it as hard as possible for foreign nationals to become U.S. citizens. That includes decimating staffing for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which processes naturalization applications, and jacking up the literal price of the citizenship application fee.
The fee, $640, is already beyond the reach of many would-be citizens like Guadalupe Rubio, 41, who is recovering from coronavirus in Kent, Washington. She's had to close her small business and doesn't have the income to support her family, a daughter here in the U.S. and her parents and three children in Mexico. Before the pandemic, she didn't qualify for a reduction in the application fee because her construction business made too much. Now the administration plans to hike the fee by 80%, to $1,170 or $1,160 for online applications. At the same time, it will lower the income threshold for fee waivers and eliminate the current partial subsidy for applications. And it’s not jutot just the subsidy—most of the other exceptions that allow immigrants to have the fee waived are getting the axe. So financial hardship, like a need for food stamps and other means-tested public benefits, won't allow immigrants to qualify for the fee waivers. Only victims of domestic violence and human trafficking will be allowed to have fees waived.
“It’s a low blow during a pandemic,” Rubio told The New York Times through a translator. “I have worked a lot for this country, and if I’m a citizen, I can—not just contribute more—but I can also better reap the benefits of all of my hard work in this country.“ The primary impetus is, as always, Donald Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller's racism and xenophobia. Ostensibly, the hike in fees is to provide the necessary funding for the USCIS, which is funded mostly by these fees. Melissa Rodgers, the director of programs at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, told the Times that Trump's policies have “effectively bankrupted U.S.C.I.S.” Trump bloated it, increasing staffing by 19%, mostly in fraud detection. That move “effectively bankrupted U.S.C.I.S.” The administration also slowed down processing, creating more bureaucracy and adding administrative inefficiencies that discourage new applicants, hence reducing the agency's own revenue.
“It’s the first-ever wealth test on citizenship,” said Rodgers, the director of programs at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco. She called the new rule “the most dramatic change we’ve ever seen to the structure of the immigration system." Marielena Hincapié, the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, agreed, pointing out that it is immigrants from some of the poorest nations in the world—immigrants of color—who would be shut out of citizenship because of these fee hikes.
“This administration has been slicing and dicing and finding different ways to make it hard for immigrants to be included in this country,” Hincapié said. “This is about Trump trying to restrict who is considered worthy of being an American, and time and time again, he has sent the message to immigrants, especially low-income immigrants, that if you are not from Norway, you are not wanted in our country.”
There's another part to this: the backlog of cases at USCIS, the loss of staff, and the new fee structure means many of these people will not be naturalized by November. That means they won't be eligible to vote. And voting is the No. 1 priority for Guadalupe Rubio—before reuniting her family, and before saving for her retirement. “First,” she said, “I’m going to vote.”
