More than 1.5 million immigrants have been naturalized as U.S. citizens since 2020, the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA) has announced. The figure represents more than three-quarters of a goal asked by the organization last year. That effort called on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to naturalize 2 million eligible immigrants by the end of 2022. NPNA said in its policy brief that the Biden administration also reduced the naturalization backlog by 35%, representing hundreds of thousands of immigration cases.
“This was possible because of common-sense USCIS policies that expand access to citizenship, significant backlog reduction, and governmental and civil society efforts to promote naturalization, including NPNA’s Naturalize 2 Million by 2022 and New American Voters campaigns,” NPNA Executive Director Nicole Melaku said in a statement received by Daily Kos.
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“USCIS has naturalized an estimated 1.52 million new citizens, or 76% progress towards NPNA’s goal of naturalizing two million new citizens by the end of 2022,” the policy brief said. That campaign kicked off in over 100 cities, and as part of its goal urged Congress to increase immigration legal service funding from $10 million annually to $100 million annually.
NPNA said in its policy brief that Congress did increase funding for USCIS’ Citizenship and Integration Grant Program from $10 million to $20 million for the 2022 fiscal year, “thanks to advocacy from NPNA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), and other NPNA members and#2MillionBy2022 and NAV campaign partners.” They encouraged further increases, noting that the program has aided just a small percentage of immigrants eligible for naturalization.
“Since the Biden administration came into office, USCIS has decreased the backlog of naturalization applications from 1,020,351 applications to 672,785 applications; a 35% reduction,” the policy brief continued.
“USCIS has been able to make this reduction by adopting several policy recommendations from the NPNA network, as requested in a March 2021 letter to DHS Secretary Mayorkas.” The brief noted that this progress was made “during periods when it was not receiving funding from Congress for backlog reduction purposes. And since it received Congressional appropriations in September 2021($250 million) and March 2022 ($389.5 million), the agency has begun effectively utilizing those funds to further reduce naturalization backlogs.”
As many as 10 million were eligible for U.S. citizenship as of last year, but “barriers like limited English skills, high application fees, and a lack of access to legal services and information prevent them from taking steps towards naturalization,” NPNA said last year. In just one example, the previous administration tried to put citizenship out of reach for many people of color by jacking up fees by 80%. USCIS itself was under constant duress by that anti-immigrant administration, at one point facing a possible furlough of more than half of its staff.
Since the citizenship effort, more than 85,000 immigrants have been naturalized in Pennsylvania alone. In a testament to what a critical role these potential new voters could play, President Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the 2020 election was just over 80,000. Per a release from the campaign effort, nearly half of the newly naturalized Americans are from Asia, 27% from the Americas, 15% from the African continent, and 13% from Europe.
“I became a citizen only 4 months ago,” said Make the Road Pennsylvania member Milagros Castillo. “I couldn’t do it sooner because of the discrimination and language barriers that exist in this country for people of color like myself.” She’s now voting for the first time in these midterm elections.
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The 2022 midterms are just around the corner, and you sent us a ton of fantastic questions for this week’s episode of The Downballot. Among the many topics we cover: which states are likely to report results slowly—and how will those results change over time; the House districts that look like key bellwethers for how the night might go, and which might offer surprises; why and how Democrats make the hard decisions on which races to triage; the top legislative chambers to keep an eye on; and plenty more!
