Military personnel getting U.S. citizenship on the rise for first time in years
The number of immigrant military personnel receiving U.S. citizenship is beginning to rise after years of decline, and service members are getting approved for naturalization at a higher rate than civilian applicants for the first time since 2017, government data shows.
Based on data reported by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the number of military personnel applying for naturalization rose 14 percent in the quarter that ended March 31, the most recent data available. Military approvals rose to 90 percent, compared to 87 percent for civilian applicants.
That is a turnaround from October 2017, when former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis established much stricter security vetting requirements for non-green card holders who were recruited through the Pentagon’s Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program, or MAVNI, that sought foreigners with key medical or language skill.
The number of naturalization applications plummeted. By December 2017, military naturalization applications had fallen almost 66 percent to 1,069 from 3,132 in the previous quarter that ended Sept. 30. The rate of military naturalization application denials grew to double that of civilians.
In the months that followed, the Pentagon also closed naturalization offices at basic training sites and overseas bases, which affected a wider net of immigrant soldiers such as green card holders.
Class action lawsuits challenging the new requirements followed. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia in May 2019 found some of the new requirements to be “arbitrary and capricious” and vacated them.
The number of military naturalization applications have begun to slowly climb from a low of 644 applications in the third quarter of 2018 to 1,280 in the quarter that ended March 31, the most recent data available.
The number of immigrant service members approved for citizenship has also been climbing, from a low of 420 in the second quarter of 2018 to 1,174 approvals as of March 31. Not every application is approved in the quarter it is filed.
The new gains could be impacted if the agency furloughs thousands of staff as of Aug. 3, which USCIS has previously said would be needed due to budget shortfalls.
“All USCIS operations, including naturalization ceremonies, will be impacted by a furlough,” said USCIS spokesman Joe Sowers. “At this time, we do not have the number of naturalization ceremonies that will be impacted.”
Of the more than 10,000 military naturalization applications that have been approved since the lawsuits were filed, about 1,900 of the now-approved military naturalizations are MAVNI military personnel, said Jennifer Wollenberg, a military immigration attorney with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP that is representing soldiers in one of the class action lawsuits.
“I think it shows that these lawsuits have been very effective and it’s unfortunate that military personnel have to turn to the courts to get their citizenship,” said retired Army Reserve Lt. Col. Margaret Stock, a military immigration attorney who has also represented several service members who challenged the MAVNI restrictions.
Even after receiving citizenship, some MAVNI soldiers have filed lawsuits to get the military to proceed with completing background checks necessary to allow them to perform their jobs.
One of those soldiers, 2nd Lt. Valdeta Mehanja, was honored Wednesday evening by the American Immigration Council with its American Heritage Award. The MAVNI soldier fled Kosovo with her family in 1991 and was naturalized in 2016. She sued to force the Defense Department to conduct the security background checks necessary to allow her to serve as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot. She is now in pilot training.
“My accomplishments and contributions to America wouldn’t have been possible if I didn’t have people who helped me along the way. It was not easy to get here; it was a very long journey, but those people saw something in me and fought for me,” Mehanja said in a statement when the council announced the award.
Other immigrant soldiers, however, are still in a holding pattern. Two active duty soldiers who spoke to McClatchy, asking they not to be identified because they feared they would face retaliation, said their overseas deployments had occurred just as the added requirements and overseas naturalization office closures took effect.
Both are green card holders. All of the other green card-holding soldiers who were in their basic training group have already been naturalized because they were not deployed overseas.
“We are the ones, in Europe, in South Korea, who are closest to the immediate threat,” said one of the soldiers. The soldier has been deployed in Germany for almost a year and has been unable to be naturalized because the overseas office is closed and USCIS has not flown staff to Europe to complete the final interviews and oaths necessary to become a citizen.
Sowers said the agency is trying to assist those overseas personnel, but that COVID-19 has made it more difficult.
“USCIS has been unable to travel to conduct overseas naturalization interviews and ceremonies for military members and their family stationed abroad,” Sowers said. “We currently have fewer than 300 overseas applications. We are proactively weighing new initiatives to accommodate these individuals, and we routinely meet with DOD on overseas military naturalization issues, including expediting interviews for military members and their families when possible.”
McClatchy data reporter Shirsho Dasgupta contributed to this report.
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 12:01 PM with the headline "Military personnel getting U.S. citizenship on the rise for first time in years."
