Niloufar Akhavan sat inside the crowded Folsom Public Library on Saturday morning waiting to raise her hand and say the words that would finally make her an American citizen. For the 21-year-old Iranian immigrant, a biology major at UC Davis, it was the end of a road paved before her birth.<\/p>\n
Her father, who still runs a financial investment firm based in Iran, moved the family to El Dorado Hills six years ago in search of a \u201cfreer, happier life,\u201d as Akhavan puts it. Akhavan\u2019s dad first came to America during his college years and fell in love with the country, she says.<\/p>\n
For Akhavan herself, it was a more gradual coupling. She arrived as a teenager with her older sister and parents, and started high school in El Dorado Hills, where she didn\u2019t know anyone or much of the language.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so hard,\u201d Akhavan remembered. \u201cI sat in the back of the class and didn\u2019t know what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Akhavan is the first in her family to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. She\u2019s also among the first groups of immigrants to do so in the era of President Donald Trump, who has spent his first three months in office advancing a hard-line nationalist agenda bent on driving out unauthorized immigrants and making legal entry more difficult for refugees, visa-holders and people from majority Muslim nations, including Iran.<\/p>\n
In other words, it\u2019s a weird time to become an American.<\/p>\n
Akhavan was one of 25 people to swear the oath of citizenship during the April 8 ceremony at the Folsom library. While the ceremony, full of symbolic pomp and optimistic rhetoric, reflected the realization of a dream for the college undergrad and two dozen others, it also begs certain uncomfortable questions.<\/p>\n
Akhavan admits that she\u2019s nervous about the president\u2019s policies. Her ability to travel freely back to Iran to visit relatives\u2014something her family had done every summer since it emigrated\u2014was cast in doubt by Trump\u2019s executive orders, which sparked retaliatory directives from the Iranian government.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually, for [me and my family], it\u2019s kind of scary,\u201d Akhavan told SN&R. \u201cWhat happens to us? What happens to our peers? What happens to our family back there if they want to come and visit? It\u2019s a bit distressing, it really is.\u201d<\/p>\n
That ambivalence is making the rounds these days.<\/p>\n
According to Kevin R. Johnson, dean of the UC Davis Law School and an immigration expert, Akhavan\u2019s concerns are shared by other prospective citizens on his campus. Johnson formerly served as a policy adviser on Barack Obama\u2019s 2008 presidential campaign. He said his students, particularly those from China and Saudi Arabia, are worried.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have 35 to 40 students from China,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cPresident Trump has said some pretty negative things about the Chinese government, and they get the impression he\u2019s not very sympathetic to China. That troubles some of the Chinese students\u2014many of them are funded by the government to continue their studies in the United States. They\u2019re uncertain about what all this means for their future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson added that the Saudi students, while not directly impacted by Trump\u2019s attempted travel bans, are concerned with the political climate in the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of them are Muslim,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThey\u2019re feeling uncomfortable with his continued suggestions that Muslims may be terrorists, subject to extreme vetting and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before Trump\u2019s election, the man who would be president called for \u201ca complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.\u201d Upon assuming office, Trump tried to make good on that rhetoric, issuing two travel bans that the federal courts have blocked. The leader of the \u201cland of the free, and the home of the brave\u201d\u2014so lauded in song at the citizenship ceremony by Sacramento area singer Preeti Prabhu\u2014singled out Akhavan\u2019s homeland in his \u201cProtecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States\u201d executive order.<\/p>\n
Such extreme vetting for select groups complicates an already confusing immigration process.<\/p>\n
According to Sharon Rummery, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the legal immigration process typically involves entry to the United States first through a H-1B work visa or a family-sponsored visa.<\/p>\n
Congress caps the issuance of H-1B visas at 65,000 annually, a cap that was reached five months before the end of this fiscal year in September. Rummery said that was normal.<\/p>\n
Once here, becoming a full-fledged citizen requires that the applicant be at least 18 years of age, have prior authorization to live and work in the United States through a green card for at least five years (30 months of which must be spent physically present in the country), have a working knowledge of English, pass a test on U.S. history and government, and be of \u201cgood moral character,\u201d as determined by USCIS. The final requirement is that the prospective citizen take the oath of allegiance.<\/p>\n
So far, it isn\u2019t clear whether Trump\u2019s policies have had an impact on those seeking citizenship. Immigration numbers for early 2017 won\u2019t be available until midsummer.<\/p>\n
But, according to data from the National Visa Center, Trump\u2019s campaign rhetoric doesn\u2019t seem to have significantly curbed the outside world\u2019s attraction to America. As of November 1, 2016, nearly 2.5 million applications for family-sponsored visas were pending determination, while another 24,629 applicants waited to hear back about their requests for work visas. Figures from the same source show there were 76,084 more total visa applications at the same time in 2015, but the numbers tend to naturally fluctuate.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the number of immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship appears to be growing.<\/p>\n
Between October 1 and December 31, 2015, USCIS recorded 187,635 naturalization applications, a 13 percent bump compared to the same period a year earlier.<\/p>\n
In Sacramento County alone, 1,851 new citizens were naturalized between October 1 and December 31 of last year.<\/p>\n
According to Johnson, the trend will likely continue thanks, in part, to Trump\u2019s increased immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past, what we\u2019ve seen when there\u2019ve been these kinds of concerns, we\u2019ve seen more legal immigrants naturalize and try to become citizens,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cYou can\u2019t be deported if you\u2019re a citizen who\u2019s been lawfully naturalized. \u2026 It\u2019s going to take some time to tell what\u2019s going to happen, but in light of the concerns over immigration enforcement, we\u2019re likely to see more legal immigrants try to naturalize and become citizens. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised in the least if we were to see an uptick in naturalization petitions over the next couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tenuous political climate is what spurred Gunnar Vestergaard to finally become a citizen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to become a U.S. citizen because of the political situation now,\u201d Vestergaard said. \u201cI just think we all need a voice, and I want to be able to vote in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Danish immigrant and legal U.S. resident for 42 years, Vestergaard spent most of his life working as a cabinetmaker here for a Danish furniture manufacturer. At the Folsom library, he said he was driven to finally become a citizen largely in direct response to the last election cycle. Becoming a citizen, he said, will give him a chance to do something about the concerns he has for his newly official home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to revert to 70 years ago,\u201d he added, referring to the events that led to World War II. \u201cWe need to be careful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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