IMMIGRATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “For nearly a decade, Yonis Bernal felt perfectly secure carrying a green card that allowed him to live and work legally in the United States.
Becoming a citizen was not a priority, he said. The need to study for an oral civics test, pay a hefty application fee and miss work to complete the process discouraged Mr. Bernal, a truck driver who left El Salvador in 1990, from applying. Plus, he still felt attached to his home country.
He changed his mind after Donald J. Trump clinched the presidency…
Last week, he was among 3,542 immigrants who raised their right hands to take the oath at a naturalization ceremony inside the Los Angeles Convention Center.
In a year when the government has bolstered enforcement, backed curbing legal immigration and rescinded a program that protects undocumented youth from deportation, even a green card is not enough in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of immigrants applying for citizenship to protect themselves from removal and gain the right to vote.
Naturalization applications generally spike during presidential cycles and fall after an election. But this year, the volume of applications is on track to surpass that of 2016, as a perennial backlog continues to pile up. It is the first time in 20 years that applications have not slipped after a presidential election, according to analysis by the National Partnership for New Americans, an immigrant rights coalition of 37 groups. And with an unrelenting stream of hard-line rhetoric and enforcement in the news, as well as a swell of citizenship drives and advocacy, there are no signs the trend is abating.”
-Miriam Jordan, “Citizenship Applications Surge as Immigration Talk Toughens,” The New York Times online, Oct. 27, 2017