Immigrants hold a naturalization ceremony at the New York office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on July 2, 2020.
On Tuesday (2), U.S. President Joe Biden signed three executive orders, including one that mandates multiple federal agencies to vigorously promote naturalization of legal immigrants and increase naturalization rates in preparation for the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election.
Hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants naturalize each year in the U.S. In 2019, more than 843,500 legal immigrants naturalized as U.S. citizens, an 11 percent increase from 2018. Many mainstream media outlets have reported that this large number of immigrants will help the Democratic Party’s electoral prospects.
Biden hopes that more Democratic voters will turn out in the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election. Tuesday’s new order is designed to remove barriers to and otherwise improve the existing naturalization process by significantly reducing current naturalization processing times and making it easier for all eligible individuals to naturalize, including through the possible reduction of naturalization fees and the reinstatement of the fee waiver process.
The order establishes the Interagency Working Group on Promoting Naturalization, which includes the Departments of Homeland Security, Labor, health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Department of Homeland Security, Department of Labor, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Education, Social Security Administration, and other federal agencies to develop a national strategy to promote naturalization.
The order requires that within 90 days, the Interagency Working Group on Naturalization must submit a report to Biden outlining its strategy for promoting naturalization, which may include a public awareness campaign. The order also includes a mandate that federal agencies review DOJ policies on naturalization denials and passport revocations to ensure that these powers are not used disproportionately or inappropriately.
In February 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice created a new office focused on revoking naturalized citizenship for fraudsters, sex offenders, war criminals and terrorists. Biden’s new order could eliminate some of these federal enforcement measures.
The dramatic increase in naturalization rates in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election could be a huge gain for Democrats, as the rapid demographic changes caused by immigration are giving Democrats a gradual permanent advantage.
An analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, a U.S. think tank, shows that mass immigration has largely changed the voter mix in every state since 2000. In Georgia, the number of foreign-born voters and their voting-age children has increased by 337 percent; in North Carolina, that population has increased by 335 percent; in Texas, by 156 percent; and in Arizona, by 111 percent.
“The biggest threat to the long-term viability of the Republican Party is demographics.” The U.S. news site Axios admitted last year that “the numbers simply don’t lie …… there is no one demographic megatrend that favors Republicans.”
The U.S. is expected to join 15 million new foreign-born voters by 2041, about 8 million of whom will be foreign relatives brought in by newly naturalized citizens.
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