The immigration policies being uncertain under the administration of Donald Trump and the desire to vote in the upcoming elections this year have lead to many immigrants residing in the US in order to opt for citizenship.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has said in a press release that lawful permanent residence in the form of green cards have been granted to 5.77 lakh individuals. Comparing with the fiscal year of 2018, this is said to be showing a sharp fall of 47.4%.
A report that has been released by the US Department of Homeland security said that, the Indian- born individuals were said to be the second largest group in the fiscal 2018, to whom the US citizenship has been granted, at 52,194. The US Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the federal government of the United States which provides the country- of- birth data.
The India- born individuals have constituted 6.9% of the total number of the new citizens and a rise of 2.7% has been observed when compared to the year prior to this.
Mexico has continued to be the home from where the largest group has been recorded with over 1.3 lakh and the Chinese has stood in the third spot with 39,600.
There has been decrease in the number of applications that are pending for the green card as well as for the citizenship. The USCIS release has said that the decrease in the applications for green card is 14% and that of the citizenship is 12%.
The option of opting for naturalization which is a process through which US citizenship confers upon foreign nationals, can only be done by the individuals who are green card holders. This can be done after being a permanent resident for five years and the period is reduced for three years for the spouses of the citizens of US.
The immigration experts say that the reason for the rise in citizenship can be because of the two factors which are, the uncertainty on the immigration policy front and the other being the desire to vote in the upcoming elections this year.
It is said that the Indian-born people have occupied the fourth slot regarding the green cards as over 59,281 have been allotted with green cards. The first three slots have been filled by Mexico in the first, Cuba being the second and China in the third place.
The immigration experts say that the negative growth has been observed with the increased vetting of the green card. The comparison of the growth through statistics has resulted in showing a negative figure for many countries though Cuba is an exception.
It has been observed by the data collected by the US based think- tank, CATO that 9.2 lakh Indians were caught up in the green card backlog which is said to be 19% of the total backlog and Mexicans being 13.31 lakh have been caught up in both the categories which included family and employment and is said to be around 28% of the total backlog.
