ARKANSAS, USA — Immigration advocates said that becoming an American citizen can take almost 18 months in Arkansas. While the process has moved quicker for some, others are left waiting.
“We have definitely seen the impact of the pandemic on citizenship nationally,” said Helena Coric with the National Immigration Forum.
Coric said that even before the pandemic there was already a backlog of citizenship applications.
“We had this perfect storm in 2020 was an existing backlog of applications that weren't being processed,” said Coric.
Coric explained how once the pandemic hit, US immigration offices closed and citizenship ceremonies were canceled— which made the backlog worse.
"Arkansas in particular, that year saw a backlog completion rate below 50%,” said Coric.
So, for those waiting before the pandemic, many were now left with an even longer wait ahead of them.
It's a process that attorney Miriam Ramirez Ward said can already take years for some.
"Generally, it's five years after you get your green card you can apply for citizenship. So, some people may have wanted to file before, but they just legally couldn’t',” said Ramirez Ward. “So, it wasn't their fault that just the timing wasn't right.”
According to the immigration forum, when U.S. immigration offices shut down from March 2020 through June, nearly 300,000 people nationwide were unable to complete their path to becoming a citizen.
“In Arkansas, specifically what we saw, up until about September 2020, when they were looking at those numbers of potentially eligible voters for the presidential election, we saw 1164 disenfranchise potential citizens as a result of those closures,” said Coric.
Coric said that during the pandemic, those offices had to adjust in order to help keep the application system moving.
"Capturing fingerprints that were previously used by applicants by doing video interviews," said Coric.
Ramirez Ward added that while some of her clients who submitted applications this year are already U.S. citizens, other clients who did it in 2020 are still waiting because of the backlog.
"Some of them are still being processed,” said Ramirez Ward. “Some of them have gone to their interview, but they're still waiting even longer for their swearing-in ceremony.”
Coric stated that another issue offices are running into when it comes to lowering the application time is having enough workers due to the labor shortage.