Full Citation

Title: PROMOTING CITIZENSHIP ASSESSING THE IMPACTS OF THE PARTIAL FEE WAIVER

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2016

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Abstract: Naturalization can have large economic and civic benefits for both immigrants and the native-born (Gonzalez-Barrera et al. 2013; Pastor and Scoggins 2012). Yet there are 8.5 million adults in the U.S. who are eligible to naturalize but have not. The barriers to naturalization are both individual, including Englishlanguage ability and fear of the citizenship test, as well as structural, including the cost of naturalization and the civic infrastructure that does (or does not) encourage citizenship. Given the recent revised fee proposal from the Department of Homeland Security1 (DHS) in which it newly introduces a reduced fee of $320 for naturalization applicants with family income greater than 150 percent and not more than 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines one of those barriers is being lowered. While it is not the only barrier, it is important psychologicallyin focus groups, many immigrants list it as a main concernand it is one of the factors most amenable to change in order to ease the naturalization process. The proposed fee change has come as a result of a regular process: the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) administration changes fees periodically and when doing so must first submit a comprehensive fee study and then eventually file final fee schedules with the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The last change to fees took effect in November 2010 (Preston 2010). It was then that USCIS provided a standard means for submitting fee-waiver requests on the naturalization application process. Before this, full fee waivers were applied on a case-by-case basis since the early 2000s. However, given that such waivers have been limited to individuals with household income at or below 150 percent of federal poverty guidelines, many near-poor or working poor families were left without needed assistance. Now, potentially 1 million adults would be eligible for partial fee waivers through this new action. The National Partnership for New Americans, along with many others, has advocated on behalf of many working poor LPRs who effectively were just beyond the cusp of financial assistance but also far from the realization of citizenship. New partial fee waivers for this important subset of price-sensitive eligible LPRs could have an important impact on naturalization rates across the country, particularly for those who are lower-income and for whom the fee has been seen as a significant barrier.

Url: http://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/731/docs/CSII_Citizenship_Brief_May2016_Final.pdf

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Pastor, Manuel; Sanchez, Jared

Publisher: USCDornsife

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Migration and Immigration, Other

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