Hundreds of thousands of immigrants receive citizenship each year but only after meeting specific requirements and sometimes paying thousands in legal and application fees.
By Obed Manuel
Naturalization — the process immigrants go through to become citizens — was first built into U.S. law with the passage of the Naturalization Act of 1790.
Back then naturalization was open only to “any alien, being a free white person.”
Nowadays naturalization is open to immigrants of all races and ethnicities who are ready to take the final step at the end of the long-winding bureaucratic path that is the U.S. immigration system.
After taking the Oath of Allegiance at what are often emotional swearing-in ceremonies, immigrants are bestowed the same fundamental rights as citizens born on U.S. soil. They go forward being able to vote and get U.S. passports.
But naturalization requires more than simply filling out an application.
Immigrants usually spend thousands of dollars in application and legal fees and must reside in the U.S. for a number of years as legal permanent residents before they can become eligible to naturalize.
Even then, tens of thousands of immigrants are denied citizenship each year and many see their applications stall for months or years.
One reader asked The Dallas Morning News — as part of our ongoing Curious Texas series — how many immigrants are denied citizenship each year. We took a look at three naturalization stats from 2009 to 2018:
- Naturalizations each year.
- How many petitions for naturalization the federal government receives.
- And how many of those petitions are denied.
Close to 78,000 naturalization applications were denied on average between 2009 and 2018, though numbers varied each year.
Becoming citizens
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants apply for naturalization every year or are naturalized each year. Tens of thousands are denied as well.
| Year | Petitions Filed | Petitions Denied | Naturalizations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 810,548 | 92,586 | 761,901 |
| 2017 | 986,851 | 83,176 | 707,265 |
| 2016 | 972,151 | 86,033 | 753,060 |
| 2015 | 783,062 | 75,810 | 730,259 |
| 2014 | 773,824 | 66,767 | 653,416 |
| 2013 | 772,623 | 83,112 | 779,929 |
| 2012 | 899,162 | 65,874 | 757,434 |
| 2011 | 756,008 | 57,065 | 694,193 |
| 2010 | 710,544 | 56,994 | 619,913 |
| 2009 | 570,442 | 109,832 | 743,715 |
Requirements for citizenship
Before immigrants can apply for naturalization, they need to have been legal permanent residents for three to five years. Immigrants who obtain green cards through a spouse can naturalize in three years.
Immigrants must also:
- Be at least 18 years of age when filing for naturalization.
- Speak, read and write English in some capacity.
- Demonstrate knowledge of U.S. civics.
- Must be of “good moral character.”
- Must demonstrate attachment to the U.S. and its constitution.
Getting legal permanent residency sounds like a straightforward process, but immigrants can find themselves waiting years to hear back about their green cards or being admitted to the U.S., said Jeanne Batalova, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.
Legal permanent residency can be obtained through family, employment or a wide variety of other categories. But limits exist on how many green cards are issued to each country and all immigrants aren’t eligible for just any visa categories.
Some immigrants wait up to 20 years to be approved for family-based legal permanent residency, she added.
“The devil is in the details and usually these details are lost in public discussion and how we talk about the immigration system,” Batalova said.
Why some immigrants don’t naturalize or get denied
About 9 million legal permanent residents were eligible to naturalize in 2015, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security.
About 1 million Texas immigrants were eligible to naturalize in 2016, according to an analysis from the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at the University of Southern California. And close to 260,00 live in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area.
Batalova said immigrants are sometimes happy with the benefits a green card offers them and are comfortable staying with that status. Some are worried that they won’t pass the English test.
Sometimes it’s a criminal record, not paying taxes, providing incorrect information, owing child support or failing the civics test that keeps immigrants from naturalizing. Nationwide, about 90% of immigrants pass the civics test.
“Some immigrants have their own reasons. It could be financial constraints or it could be their choice because they don’t want to give up citizenship in their country of origin,” Batalova said.
Mexico, for example, didn’t allow Mexicans living abroad to hold dual citizenship until 1998 and that kept many Mexicans from seeking U.S. citizenship.
There’s also the costs that come with seeking naturalization. Right now it costs about $640 — plus an $85 fee for a fingerprints and photo session — to file an application for naturalization. Those costs don’t include legal fees.
“If you have three or four family members, that’s a lot of money,” Batalova said.
Those costs may soon go up. The Trump administration has proposed increasing the cost of applying for citizenship from $640 to $1,170. Batalova said she expects to see a surge in naturalization petitions due to this potential price increase.
Some immigrants simply find themselves waiting for their naturalization applications to be approved or denied. As of September 2019, there were close to 650,000 pending naturalization applications nationwide.
“It’s important to convey that the fluctuations we see in naturalization numbers can be explained by how difficult it is to apply for citizenship in the first place,” Batalova said.
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