Last week, he was among 3,542 immigrants who raised their right hands to take the oath at a naturalization ceremony inside the Los Angeles Convention Center, joining a growing wave of new citizens across the country.
As Mr. Trump campaigned on promises of a border wall and strict crackdowns on immigration, 2016 became the busiest year in a decade for naturalization applications. But this year, the number of applications is on track to surpass that of last year’s, while a perennial backlog continues to pile up. It is the first time in 20 years that applications have not slipped after a presidential election, according to analysis by the National Partnership for New Americans, an immigrant rights coalition of 37 groups.
And with an unrelenting stream of hard-line rhetoric and enforcement in the news, as well as a swell of citizenship drives and advocacy, there are no signs the trend is abating.
In a year when the government has bolstered enforcement, backed curbing legal immigration and rescinded a program that protects undocumented youth from deportation, even a green card is not enough in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of immigrants applying for naturalization to protect themselves from removal and gain the right to vote.
