By, Nina Heverin-Alvarado
Baldwin High School
Fewer than 1 million immigrants typically apply to naturalize each year in the US. However, in 2023, there were 8 million immigrants eligible to apply. This disparity between citizens eligible to apply and the ones that apply is in part due to cost barriers and a large backlog of immigrants awaiting to hear if their naturalization application has been approved or not.
The population of people eligible to naturalize largely consists of immigrants living below the poverty line making the high costs of applying a deterrent. The N-400 is the form lawfully permanent residents, meaning immigrants who currently hold a green card, can use to apply for citizenship. The price of this form has increased over the years from $95 in 1994 to $595 in 2011 to currently $725. The N-400 fee includes $640 for the N-400 application and $85 for biometric testing that is required of immigrants who are younger than 75 years old. The cost of the N-400 as well as additional fees such as the cost of English classes or paying for an attorney, can result in the total cost of applying for naturalization to range between $850 and $2,500.
In 2010 US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began offering Request for Reduced Fee, or I-942, which provided full coverage of the N-400 fee for immigrants whose household income is 150% below the poverty line. However, this meant that immigrants who were still below the poverty line but didn’t meet the I-942 requirements were required to pay the full $725 to fill out the N-400. In addition, data demonstrated that despite standardized federal fee waivers, immigrants with higher incomes still naturalized more frequently than those who qualify for waivers to reduce the cost of N-400.
Another issue with the naturalization process is the backlog of the N-400 form. This forces applicants to wait months to know if they have been approved for naturalization. Over the last 11 years, more naturalization applicants have been filed than processed each year. For example, in 2020 almost 1 million N-400 forms were pending while approximately 700,000 N-400s were completed. Three pieces of legislation enacted in 1996 effectively increased the number of pending applications for decades to follow: the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.
The highest backlog in history was reached in 1998 with 2.4 million pending N-400 applications. In 2021, an executive order was made for federal agencies to develop plans to reduce naturalization processing by allocating money to fund resources for the USCIS to focus
on the N-400 backlog specifically. Though the number of pending cases was reduced, the wait time was still quite long as seen in 2022 when the average processing time for the N-400 took 10.5 months.
By making the N-400 free for immigrants with household incomes of $50,000 or less and allocating funding/resources to the USCIS to reduce the N-400 backlog, the naturalization process can be made less costly and time-consuming. In addition, the I-942 will be altered to give partial coverage to immigrants with an income greater than $50,00 but below $100,000 to reduce but not fully eliminate the cost of the N-400 for immigrants of this financial status. This will allow low-income immigrants to be encouraged to apply for naturalization and therefore decrease the disparity between the number of high and low-income immigrants applying for naturalization.
By allocating more funds to the USCIS, the organization can increase staff who are helping with pending applications for citizenship. In addition, with more funding USCIS can begin to move away from processing applications on paper. Currently, employees have to manually enter paper forms into the computer system which can result in errors that lead to information gaps or data inconsistencies in the applications of immigrants. By reducing their reliance on paper, USCIS can do virtual interviews and reuse fingerprints from other parts of the process, making the length of applying for naturalization shorter. In addition, funding can allow USCIS to have more people working leading up to elections which is a popular time for immigrants to fill out N-400 as they hope to become citizens in time to vote.
USCIS will evaluate the incomes of immigrants to see if they qualify for full coverage or partial coverage by requiring them to submit their adjusted gross income (AGI) before submitting an N-400. If an immigrant is found to make between $50,000 and $100,000 they can receive coverage of no more than ½ of the cost of the N-400 by applying for the new version of the I-942. This will ensure that USCIS still makes revenue from immigrants but not in a method that targets low-income immigrants.
Federal funding will allocate $100 million each year for the next 10 years to hire more staff whose main role will be to focus on reducing the N-400 backlog, update the current application systems to become more online, and provide bonuses during the time leading up to major elections to encourage employees to work longer hours. By spreading out $1 billion over 10 years it will ensure that the new online systems implemented are sustainable, reduce the current N-400 backlog significantly, and ensure this new process for naturalization will prevent future increases in the number of pending N-400s. This is reasonable as the Biden administration did something similar in 2022 when they allocated $250 million to help with the N-400 backlog.
An obstacle to this reform is the loss of revenue for USCIS made through the cost of the N-400. Because of this, before the USCIS implements the N-400 cost reduction processes mentioned earlier, USCIS will evaluate the current revenue they receive from N-400 application fees and how much revenue they would lose by implementing this reform. From there, it will be determined how much federal funding will be given to the USCIS to implement the N-400 cost changes while also ensuring that the USCIS doesn’t lose efficiency from the slight loss of revenue. This will be a separate amount of money than the $1 billion issued over 10 years. Congress will be given one month to determine how much money is necessary for this once the first $100 million is given to provide resources for the USCIS. In addition, immigrants who do have the funds to pay the N-400 fee, meaning those with a household income greater than $100,000, will still be required to pay the N-400 fee to ensure revenue from immigrants who have the funds to pay for the N-400 is still obtained. In addition, when compared to the military expenditures, asking for $1 billion is not an
outlandish amount of federal money to request.
Is it ethical for naturalization to be a privilege only available to immigrants who can afford the high cost of the application? Is it fair for immigrants to have to wait almost a year to hear if their citizenship application was approved? These are the questions USCIS must deeply consider to improve the naturalization process for immigrants. That is why the N-400 must be made more financially achievable for low-income immigrants eligible to naturalize. In addition, allocating funds to USCIS will help make naturalization an easier process for both groups involved: the immigrants applying and the staff members helping them apply. Naturalization should be open to any eligible immigrant who wishes to share the American identity that we so value.
My father was adopted from Honduras when he was a baby. When he was 5 years old, he was naturalized into the US. This was a big moment for my dad as he had been looking forward to it for years. At his naturalization ceremony, my dad remembered “being handed a small US citizen handbook and also a small American flag.” When asked about these objects now, my dad answered that he still has them, stating, “I valued that flag and citizenship handbook so much. I felt like it [had] just changed my life.”
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