Amid looming fee increases, Miami Citizenship Week strives to boost naturalization

This has been a challenging year for immigrants seeking to complete the citizenship process.

Although interest in naturalization typically spikes in the months leading up to presidential elections, the COVID-19 outbreak ground the citizenship process to a halt in March. The pandemic shuttered the offices of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the federal agency that administers the country’s lawful immigration system.

While USCIS resumed in-person naturalization services in June, the springtime shutdown left the agency with widening backlogs. And starting Oct. 2, looming fee increases are set to make the citizenship process significantly more costly.

To help prospective new citizens in South Florida get their applications in before then, the Office of New Americans (ONA) — a public-private partnership between Miami-Dade County and non-profit legal service providers — launched its second Miami Citizenship Week on Sept. 11.

In addition to connecting participants with free legal support, the ten-day event will also celebrate the social and economic contributions of South Florida’s immigrant communities.

“I think in Miami we talk about how we are diverse and how we are adjacent to Latin America, but we never take a moment to celebrate immigrants and the amazing work that they do whether it’s the nurses in our hospitals, the drivers that drive our buses, small business owners,” said Krystina François, ONA’s executive director. “We need to reclaim the narrative around immigrants and around our communities because it’s what makes us great.”

Because of pandemic-imposed restrictions on large gatherings, all Miami Citizenship Week programming will be hosted virtually.

That includes the Mega Citizenship Clinic, which will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 16-20. At the event, pro-bono lawyers from the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Americans for Immigrant Justice and other groups will connect with attendees one-on-one on Zoom and walk them through the process of filling out the 20-page citizenship application form.

The clinic is open to immigrants eligible to become naturalized citizens, meaning permanent residents who have had a green card for at least five years. There are 400,000 such people in Miami-Dade County.

Over the course of Miami Citizenship Week, ONA will also be announcing its first batch of scholarship recipients: prospective citizens who will get their citizenship application fees covered in full by ONA’s New American Fund.

“We have been working on this for the past two years because we know that the cost of the application is the number one barrier to people becoming citizens,” François said.

That financial barrier will soon grow more imposing: Starting Oct. 2, the fee to apply for U.S. citizenship will increase from $640 to $1,160 if filed online, or $ 1,170 in paper filing, a more than 80% increase in cost.

“In the middle of an economic downturn, an increase of $520 is a really big amount,” François said.

In addition to looming fee increases, the wide-ranging disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic have also spurred immigrants in the community to seek naturalization, François said.

“There are people who up until this COVID crisis, their status as a permanent resident didn’t impact their day-to-day life … but then the pandemic has given them another reason of why it’s important to take that extra step and become a citizen, because of the additional rights and protections that are afforded to you, but also to just have a sense of security and stability in a crisis.”

Aside from the programming meant to promote access to U.S. citizenship, Miami Citizenship Week will also have several food-themed cultural events, including a virtual “Immigrant Voices Brunch” and a “Leadership Miami Mixology Happy Hour.”

At the happy hour, a local mixologist who is himself in the process of becoming a citizen will demonstrate how to make a “signature citizenship drink.”

To sign up for free Miami Citizenship Week virtual events, click here.