CHICAGO, IL – Today, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) released a report that reveals a shocking decline in the number of U.S. citizenship applications in the last year. The report is called Priced Out: U.S. Citizenship, a privilege for the rich and well-educated? Exorbitant fees that had gone up by 610% in the last 10 years and the change in new citizenship test primarily impact legal immigrants of low-income and less-educated backgrounds, making U.S. citizenship a privilege for the rich and well educated.

“The Bush administration is making citizenship accessible only to the rich and well educated,” stated Flavia Jimenez, Director of the New Americans Initiative, a citizenship program administered by ICIRR. “This is contrary to the notion that playing by the rules and hard work is enough to become part of this great nation. Now, a person has to be wealthy, and with the change in test, have a much higher degree of education to become American. If the U.S. government was a credit card company, Citizenship is the gold card, only available to the elite.”

"Citizenship should not be auctioned for sale to the highest bidder," said Congressman Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL), "it should be available to all who qualify regardless of their income. The men and women who dream of taking the oath of citizenship are committed to the responsibilities of being American citizens and are equally prepared to pay the cost of processing the applications they submit to USCIS for courteous, timely and efficient services. However, the cost must be a fair price, and not burden the applicants of the future with budget shortfalls and agency inefficiencies of the past."

“I know about the privileges of becoming an American. I can sponsor my family to join me here in the U.S., can travel with a U.S. passport, and would love to be able to vote,” said Sunitha Doma, an eligible immigrant eager to gain full citizenship in the U.S. “I just do not have $675 available to send to immigration services.”

Results show affordability is the big obstacle for eligible immigrants like Sunitha to become citizens. In the past ten years, the federal minimum wage has only increased by 27%, while citizenship fees have increased to an unreasonable 610 %. A hard-working minimum-wage worker, must save an entire eight weeks worth of earnings –$ 262 per weekly paycheck – in order to pay the citizenship fees for a family of four. As immigrants face the mounting financial and education hurdles to apply for citizenship, becoming Americans implies less a matter by choice, but by chance.

Among key findings:
• As of July 31, 2007 the new fee to naturalize is $675. When Bush became president, the cost of citizenship was $225. That represents a 200% increase in the cost of the application since 1999 and a 610% increase since 1998 (when the fee was $95).
• In the period of January – June of 2007 (right before the fee increase took place in July of the same year), USCIS received 114,469 applications for naturalization per month. Once the fee increase kicked in, the number of applications decreased dramatically: in the same six-month period of 2008, 46,866 applications were submitted each month, representing a sharp fall of almost 59%.

Over the past year, the New American Initiative, a partnership between the State of Illinois and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, has spearheaded loan programs as part of the solution to assist applicants to pay the $675 fee, along with its partner organizations. The loan programs have been successful in helping immigrants finance their citizenship applications.

Despite the decrease in numbers nationwide since the fee increased, Illinois continues to be a leader both in integration programs for the immigrant community and in citizenship assistance to those who are eligible to become citizens. As a matter of fact, the New Americans Initiative has directly assisted almost 34,000 people in filing out naturalization applications and assisted over 255,000 people with information about the naturalization process.

“What we are seeing in our communities is the desire and need to become citizens. We are seeing excitement and willingness to become more politically and civically active, stated Monika Starczuk from APNC. People see the value of gaining citizenship, but in the past year, many working families have been left with no alternative because of the high cost, and many do not apply. “We need to lift up this issue to be dealt with by the incoming president in the first 100 days of the new administration,” concluded Starczuk.

As our nation awaits the historic election of November 2008, organizations assisting legal permanent residents in becoming citizens continue to work to encourage and bring the importance and value of citizenship to the forefront.

ICIRR urges anyone who is eligible to become a US citizen to apply NOW, before other obstacles are placed in front of legal permanent residents. For more information about upcoming workshops: www.becomeacitizennow.org.

The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights is a statewide coalition of 130 organizations dedicated to promoting the rights of immigrants and refugees to full and equal participation in the civic, cultural, social, and political life of our diverse society.

For more information, visit www.icirr.org

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