America at 250 Should Not Put Citizenship Behind a Paywall |
A democracy that makes citizenship harder to reach should not pretend it is merely managing paperwork. It is deciding who gets full political voice.
I have attended naturalization ceremonies for more than three decades. I have watched courtrooms fill with nurses, engineers, truck drivers, scientists, caregivers, parents holding young children, and older immigrants who waited years to hear one sentence that would change their lives.
Before administering the Oath of Allegiance, judges often remind new citizens that American citizenship is about more than receiving a certificate or passport. It is about responsibility — to vote, serve on juries, obey the law, participate in civic life, defend the Constitution, and leave America stronger than they found it.
That reminder captures something we too often forget. Citizenship is not just a collection of rights. It is freedom joined to duty, opportunity joined to service, and belonging joined to responsibility.
A door that only the wealthy, the fluent, the well-connected, or the legally sophisticated can navigate is not truly open.
Unlike those of us fortunate enough to be born here, every person in that courtroom made a conscious decision.
As the United States approaches its 250th birthday, we should ask whether we still understand the power of that choice. One of America’s greatest accomplishments has not simply been welcoming immigrants. It has been making Americans.
Those are not the same thing.
The earliest naturalization laws reflected the exclusions and prejudices of their time. But America also preserved a revolutionary idea: a person born somewhere else could become fully American through allegiance to the Constitution and commitment to the Republic.
Naturalization was never just an immigration process. It was a democracy-building process.
Today, more than 9 million lawful permanent residents are already eligible to become American citizens. They are nurses, entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, factory workers, researchers, caregivers, veterans, farmworkers, small-business owners, and neighbors. They pay taxes, raise families, volunteer, worship, organize, serve, and build communities.
They have already invested in America. Now they are asking to invest even more deeply.
But at the very moment America should be inviting eligible immigrants into full civic membership, the government is moving in the opposite direction.
The Department of Homeland Security has proposed raising the naturalization application fee from $760 to $1,330 for paper filings and from $710 to $1,280 for online filings — roughly a 75% to 80% increase. The proposal would also eliminate the reduced filing fee option and the availability of fee waivers for Form N-400.
That is not a small administrative adjustment. For many working families, it is the difference between applying now and postponing citizenship for years.
The real cost of naturalization is not just the government filing fee. It is lost wages, transportation, child care, English classes, document costs, legal help, and the anxiety of navigating a system that too often feels designed for the fluent, the wealthy, and the legally sophisticated.
For a nurse working double shifts, a home health aide caring for elders, a farmworker, a refugee parent, an elderly green-card holder, or a veteran’s spouse, the path to citizenship can become a gauntlet: higher fees, longer waits, more forms, more documentation, more scrutiny, and more fear that one mistake could derail everything.
A democracy should not celebrate citizenship in speeches while making........