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Line to become a U.S. citizen is shorter

April 9th, 2009
by VJ News

Fewer people are joining the long line for U.S. citizenship these days, following a surge of applications two years ago.

More than 1 million immigrants took the oath of citizenship in the year leading up to the 2008 presidential election, and another 330,000 are still waiting for approval. The big wave came just before the government’s application fee jumped to $675 from $400 in July 2007. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says it has worked to clear the backlog that resulted, and is now receiving surprisingly low numbers of new applicants.

Immigrants are generally eligible for citizenship once they have completed five years of permanent residency, or “green card” status. There are signs that the bad economy may be causing some to hold off.

“Receipts have not picked up as fast as we thought they would,” said Donald Neufeld, a top official at the agency, during a visit to New York last week.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 5:11 am and is filed under General Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.