Anti-Immigrant Mood Helps Fuel Citizenship Rise

They hailed from more than 100 nations worldwide, a diverse gathering even by the polyglot standards of today’s Los Angeles. Many were euphoric, some teary-eyed, others solemn. Most clutched tiny red, white and blue flags provided for the occasion.

Among them was Alejandro Navarro, a onetime illegal border-jumper from Mexico, who, like the others, came to swear allegiance to the Stars and Stripes. “We feel more American than those who were born here,” said Navarro, one of 14,000 immigrants who became citizens during a Los Angeles Convention Center ceremony last month. “We’re American by choice, by conviction.”

Looking for a powerful, and old-fashioned, way to assert their rights, immigrants throughout the country are signing up for citizenship in near-record numbers.

More than 425,000 immigrants nationwide are expected to become citizens this fiscal year, rivaling a 50-year-old record set during a period of wartime anxiety. In the Los Angeles area, 90,000 immigrants will probably turn in green cards for naturalization certificates--almost double the number last year.

The surge in citizenship sign-ups reflects the peak immigration levels of the past decade, a period that has seen more newcomers--both legal and illegal--arrive on U.S. soil than during any other stretch in history.

But propelling citizenship interest now, say observers and immigrants, is a distinctly political factor: fear of fallout from what many call an anti-immigrant backlash, particularly in California. With Gov. Pete Wilson attacking illegal immigrants and legislators seeking cutbacks in aid for lawful immigrants, many have hastened to sign up for citizenship--and the opportunity to vote.

“We are being attacked as government dependents, but most of us are hard-working,” said Alfonso Gutierrez, a Mexican-born factory foreman who is applying for citizenship. “For me, the most important thing is the vote, the opportunity to have a say in this country.”

Immigrant advocates have launched aggressive citizenship sign-up drives--at churches, on television and radio, house-to-house and in the streets. Bus benches in Los Angeles’ heavily Latino neighborhoods carry the message: Ciudadania, la mejor via (“Citizenship, the best way”).

Courses in English language and U.S. history and civics are booming, reflecting immigrants’ desire to satisfy requirements for naturalization. A record 6,200 students are crammed into citizenship classes offered by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Citizenship registration is expected to swell over the next year or more as eligibility kicks in for most of the more than 3 million onetime illegal immigrants--more than one of four residents of greater Los Angeles--who gained amnesty beginning in 1987. Some fear that the ever-lengthening queue at U.S. immigration offices will overwhelm an already slow-moving process, extending delays.

“Will the capacity be there to respond?” asked Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based umbrella group of advocate organizations. “If not, people get frustrated. It will be a lost opportunity.”

The Clinton Administration is seeking an additional $30 million to add citizenship staff and streamline and further automate what is often an intimidating and burdensome process for applicants. The House reduced the amount to $7.5 million, and the proposal is pending in the Senate.

Declaring that U.S. officials have historically been too passive in promoting citizenship, Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner has pledged to foster citizenship as an instrument of national harmony during an era of growing anti-immigrant sentiment.

“The naturalization process is a continuing reaffirmation that newcomers want to join up, that they do, by and large, share the values that those of us who came before share,” said Meissner, the daughter of naturalized German-born parents. “I think that does help to ameliorate some of the tensions around immigration.”

While Latino leaders and immigrant advocates have praised the commissioner’s championing of citizen sign-ups, lawmakers and others pushing for limits on new immigrants are wary. Some oppose stepped-up naturalization efforts because citizens can more easily bring in relatives from abroad.

“Citizenship,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), “should not be a priority for INS during a time when we are being smothered by an avalanche of illegal immigration.”

The boom in citizenship enrollments has buoyed activists’ hopes for a united front against perceived immigrant-bashing. But it would be a mistake to take new citizens’ views for granted. Polls have shown many Latinos to be as disturbed about illegal immigration as non-Latinos. A voter registration booth run by the Republican Party did a brisk business after the mass swearing-in at the Convention Center last month.

Alejandro Navarro, who was arrested by immigration authorities in a Los Angeles shoe factory three decades ago and sent back to Mexico, now finds himself agreeing with Gov. Wilson. “Some people come here and just don’t want to work,” Navarro, a father of four U.S.-born children, declared after taking his citizenship oath.

His wife, Mariana Navarro, who renounced her Mexican citizenship alongside her husband, sees it otherwise. “The governor is generalizing against all Latinos,” she said. “Immigrants work more than anyone else in this country.”

Decidedly nonpolitical factors--cost, convenience, job opportunities and other personal motivations--also impel many immigrants to become citizens. (Immigrants are eligible for citizenship after five years of legal residence, or three years if married to U.S. nationals.) Along with the right to vote, citizens are entitled to serve on juries and hold jobs restricted to citizens only, including many positions in government and law enforcement.

Among the recent new citizens is Hung Tri Tran, a 19-year-old Navy man and Saigon native assigned to an aircraft carrier. Tran, one of the thousands of Southeast Asian “boat people” who made their way to the United States by enduring high seas and attacks by pirates, saw his status hindering his career advancement.

“I want to be an officer,” Tran, dressed in his Navy whites, explained shortly after receiving his citizenship papers at the Convention Center.

For Alejandro Espinoza, citizenship is a practical matter. The 68-year-old father of four, originally from Mexico, is among longtime U.S. residents now required to turn in their old green cards for new ones. The cost is $70 for a document that must be renewed every 10 years. Becoming a citizen costs $20 more--and is permanent unless renounced.

“I’d rather get it all taken care of at once and not lose any more time,” Espinoza said.

Hector Espinoza (no relation), a 36-year-old auto parts salesman in Gardena, offers another reason: He wants to petition for his father to come to the United States from Mexico.

But, along with the practical considerations, both Espinozas and Tran express desires to formalize their allegiance to their adopted land and gain voting privileges.

“This is a great nation, and I want to be a part of it,” said Hector Espinoza, who emigrated illegally from Mexico in 1979 and later gained amnesty. “My vote could make a difference.”

Notwithstanding the advantages of citizenship, recent waves of immigrants--particularly those from Mexico--have generally eschewed the privilege. Only slightly more than one-third of legal immigrants apply for citizenship today, considerably lower than the rate earlier in the century, officials say. Yet peak immigration levels are pushing raw citizenship numbers ever higher.

Sign-up rates vary dramatically depending on nationality. Asians traditionally have high naturalization rates--another important reason why sign-ups have swollen in recent years as Asian immigration and refugee flows have increased. About 60% of Filipinos and 58% of Chinese, for instance, apply for citizenship, according to a government study of immigrants who arrived in 1977.

In contrast, only 16% of eligible immigrants from Mexico seek U.S. citizenship, the study found.

Traditionally, officials have explained that Mexican citizens are wary of renouncing their homeland, often clinging to an illusion of going back, even after their lives take root and children are born in the United States. But others see low sign-up rates as a product of a confusing, costly and often intimidating citizenship application process.

Applicants must pay a $90 fee and fill out a four-page form, which asks a bewildering array of personal questions in English. Aspiring citizens are queried as to whether they’ve been Nazis, Communists, narcotics traffickers, prostitutes, gamblers, drunkards, tax cheats, deserters or polygamists.

During a subsequent interview, applicants must demonstrate an ability to speak and understand English--some longtime residents older than 50 are exempted from this requirement--and pass a history/civics test that encompasses themes from the obscure to the relevant, including: Name five of the first original 13 states. Who is your congressman? Who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner?”

Many regard the citizenship process as hostile, particularly since the crucial interview is conducted by INS officers, who have long embodied newcomers’ worst fears. “I’m hoping my English is good enough,” said Juan Jose Ugarte, an industrial painter who has been traveling between the United States and his native Mexico for more than 30 years.

An amnesty recipient, Ugarte has little empathy for fellow immigrants who hesitate to become citizens based on a misplaced nostalgia for the old country. Ugarte tells the story of a beloved uncle who lived in California for 40 years, fathered nine children, but always insisted that he would go back to Mexico. The uncle died a few years ago--in Los Angeles, where he is buried.

“When I visit his grave,” Ugarte recalled with a smile, “I tell him, ‘See uncle, you never did make it back!’ ”

The reluctance among many to apply for citizenship also stems, in part, from apprehensions grounded both in fact and fiction. Some fear a loss of land ownership and other rights back home if they acquire U.S. passports--and, indeed, Mexico, South Korea and other nations limit the ownership rights of non-citizens.

A widely circulated, albeit apocryphal, tale: Mexicans must stomp on their flag during swearing-in ceremonies. “That rumor still persists,” said Domingo Rodriguez, coordinator of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s adult citizenship programs. “I heard it back in the 1940s within my own family.”

Some longtime immigrants, such as Graciela Liceaga, simply refuse to cut legal ties to home. Liceaga, a 34-year-old amnesty recipient and mother of four U.S.-born children, said she still hoped to return to her hometown near Guadalajara, away from the crime, fractured family life and lack of traditional values that she sees in her Eastside neighborhood. She has no plans to become a U.S. citizen, though she is eligible.

“I don’t want to grow old here,” Liceaga said recently after an English-language class, which she is taking to improve her ability to speak with her children’s teachers. “Here, one can be so alone.”

In an effort to promote citizenship, immigrant advocates steer newcomers through the procedural morass. Staffers interview citizen-aspirants, assist them in filling out forms, take the required photographs and fingerprints, help set up appointments and arrange for instruction in English and civics.

Latino leaders express hope that expanded citizenship rolls will help boost the community’s political clout--from school board level to Capitol Hill. Noting that elections in some of the region’s small, heavily Latino cities are decided by fewer than 1,000 votes, Harry Pachon, head of the Tomas Rivera Center, said, “I’ll bet there are city council members and mayors looking at these (citizenship) figures with trepidation.”

In Los Angeles, INS officials have bolstered citizenship staffs by one-third, and, in a pilot project to be launched this week, plan to interview would-be citizens on the grounds of a church--a striking contrast to what many consider the threatening ambience of INS offices. However, officials besieged with an ever-expanding volume of requests have pointedly refrained from aggressively advertising naturalization efforts.

“If I promote it too much, I overwhelm my system,” said Richard K. Rogers, INS district director.

Citizenship applications from the Los Angeles region have surged from fewer than 200 a day last fall to more than 500 daily now, as initial waves of amnesty immigrants begin signing up. (The first amnesty beneficiaries only became eligible for citizenship last fall.)

Experts have long theorized that amnesty recipients will be more likely to seek citizenship than other immigrants. Most have lived here since at least 1982, and many were already required to study English and U.S. government and history.

“The amnesty people have already gone through the process, they know they don’t have to face the INS alone,” said Jose de Paz, who heads the California Immigrant Workers Assn., a community and labor group that is encouraging people to sign up for citizenship.

De Paz himself finally became a citizen last month, though he has lived in the United States for 28 years and is the father of three U.S.-born children. “I’ve convinced hundreds of people to become citizens,” said the Mexican native, “so I felt I had to do it myself.”

Despite optimistic forecasts about citizenship registrations among amnesty beneficiaries, initial figures show those from Mexico still lag behind other immigrants in becoming U.S. citizens. That shortfall is potentially significant because Mexican nationals account for almost three-quarters of all amnesty recipients.

But Latino scholars say they expect that the number of Mexican immigrants seeking citizenship to rise as word of the opportunity spreads.

Alfonso Gutierrez, the factory foreman who is also an amnesty immigrant, can’t wait to get his citizenship papers. Along with his desire to vote and participate in the democratic process, Gutierrez, 30, wants to petition to bring his wife from Mexico.

“This is my country now,” Gutierrez said the other day after filling out his application at an East Los Angeles clinic. “I want to be able to stand up for the interests of my community.”

Citizenship Applications

Applications for U.S. citizenship have increased dramatically at the Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service--from a daily average of 182 in October to a daily average of more than 500 for each of the last three months. The office serves a seven-county region of Southern California.

Daily Average Applications 10-93 182 11-93 306 12-93 294 1-94 353 2-94 398 3-94 493 4-94 519 5-94 568 6-94 545

Source: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service