A report in the New York Times indicates that the federal government has been processing requests for citizenship at the fastest rate in a decade, with thousands of immigrants becoming Americans each week and celebrating their eligibility to vote for the president this fall at ceremonies in sports arenas, convention centers and courthouses throughout the nation.
Several new naturalized American citizens told the New York Times that they were looking forward to voting in the election this November. One of them is Gladis Brown, a woman who emigrated from Honduras six years ago and is married to an American. She filled out a voter registration form that was given to her by a representative for the league of Women Voters.
Brown told the New York Times: “I’m so glad that the process moved quickly. People like me want to vote in the election.”
Although information is not available about the specific number of new voters who live in battleground states, states such as Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia are seeing growing numbers of voting-aged naturalized citizens.
The chief executive of immigration trend analysts Boundless, Xiao Wang, said that the volume of new citizens could well be enough to influence the outcome of the election.
He stated: “The surge in naturalization efficiency isn't just about clearing backlogs; it's potentially reshaping the electorate, merely months before a pivotal election. Every citizenship application could be a vote that decides Senate seats or even the presidency."
The Times reports that around 3.3 million immigrants have become American citizens so far during Biden’s presidency, and the processing speed of applications now equals the rate seen in 2013 and 2014 of less than five months. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was taking an average of 4.9 months to process naturalization applications during the first nine months of this year; the average in fiscal year 2021 was 11.5 months.
The Biden administration took on additional staff and implemented new technology to help speed up the processing of citizenship applications. They also reduced the length of the application from 20 pages to 14 and made it easier for low-income individuals to qualify for a discount on their citizenship application fee.
Boundless estimates that the bottleneck in reviewing naturalization applications prevented around 300,000 prospective citizens from being naturalized in time to vote during the 2020 presidential election.
81% of naturalized citizens say they will “definitely” cast a ballot in 2024 election
Right now, 9 million green card holders are eligible to become naturalized U.S. citizens. Latinos account for the biggest proportion of new citizens and have historically tended to vote for Democrats.
In a survey carried out by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego, more than 81% of naturalized citizens said they would “definitely” cast a ballot during the 2024 election, while a further 14.5% stated they would “probably” vote.
A political scientist from the university who headed the study, Tom Wong, said: “The American electorate is as diverse as it has ever been, and much of that has been fueled by newly naturalized citizen voters, who are making up an increasingly large share of the electorate.”
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