As many as 4,000 immigrants are raising their right hands this week to take the citizenship oath, just in time to celebrate Independence Day. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency held more than 50 naturalization ceremonies spanning the country in locations as historic as Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia and the USS Midway in San Diego, CA, as well as in public libraries and city halls.
For new citizens, the ceremony itself isn’t simply a reflection of the thousands of dollars spent in application fees that allows them to become Americans in name: It could also mean having “a normal life.”
“As we celebrate Independence Day, we welcome over 4,000 new Americans who will be able to enjoy all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship,” USCIS Director León Rodríguez said in a press statement. “From Los Angeles to New York, Miami to Seattle, Indianapolis to Los Alamos, these individuals are showing their full commitment to the freedoms, values and ideals that have inspired Americans since the Declaration of Independence in 1776.”
For Fabiola Valencia, 25, becoming a citizen means that she and potentially her parents won’t be deported back to their native Lima, Peru. Valencia was undocumented for eight years before she was finally able to go through the process of getting legal status and applying for citizenship. She was naturalized in March.
“It’s been a real roller coaster from being undocumented to having legal status, and then being able to apply and granted U.S. citizenship,” Valencia said in a YouTube video recorded in April. Since becoming a citizen, she said that she could petition for legal status for her parents. “We don’t have to be in fear,” she continued. “I don’t have to fear to get a phone call from my parents telling me that they have been stopped by the cops or that they could be deported. […] It’s a sense of being more free, having freedom and just live [sic] life without thinking, ‘are my parents going to be okay? Am I going to be okay?’”
“We were dreaming of this day,” Sajida Alkhateeb told The Modesto Bee after her naturalization ceremony this week. She and her family fled Iraq five years ago and now feels safe in the country. Other new citizens told the publication that they were excited to vote, with one man noting that it was a “top priority.”
Lawmakers also joined in on the naturalization ceremonies. Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D-NY) and New York State Assemblywoman Jo Ann Simon led about 20 people from 17 countries in the Pledge of Allegiance, the Park Slope Stoop reported. Moderate conservative Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA) touted comprehensive immigration reform at a naturalization ceremony to welcome 70 new U.S. citizens, the Modesto Bee stated. And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) turned up at a city hall ceremony for 50 new citizens on Wednesday. As reported by The Hartford Courant, Courtney told them, “There are more people in this room than my margin of victory. If anyone tells you your vote doesn’t count, just give them my phone number.” Courtney won his congressional seat in 2006 by a margin of 83 votes.
At least 654,949 immigrants became U.S. citizens last year. But of the 8.8 million lawful permanent residents eligible for citizenship, only about 10 percent apply. That’s because there may be language barriers to taking the citizenship test in English or some immigrants simply cannot afford the $680 application fee. A 1998 study found that the average income of a lawful permanent resident in New York hovered around $18,700.
Still, immigrants given the chance to become citizens could contribute more to America. A 2002 longitudinal study following 332 young male legal immigrants from 1979 through 1991 found that citizenship was associated with a wage gain of about 5.6 percent, a Center for American Progress (CAP) report stated. Bolstering those findings, a 2012 Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration report found that “citizenship alone can boost individual earnings by 8 to 11 percent, leading to a potential $21–45 billion increase in cumulative earnings over ten years that will have ripple effects on the national economy.”