Former Green card holder now Citizen as of a few days ago.
Submitted an online form 4 months ago, received an interview date two months ago, had my interview last week.
Interview was at 8:30am
Oath ceremony was at 9am
Registered to vote at 9.15am
Back at work at 10am!
Submitted passport application the day after.
Interview was straightforward and most of the time was double checking all the information I had previously submitted was accurate. Learning the answers to the civics test was fun.
I think there is a cliche of a stern interviewer who is looking for any excuse to say no, but this officer was kind and encouraging.
The oath ceremony was actually quite moving. I often see most displays of patriotism as some kind of pseudo mental illness but the patriotism shown by the officiant was actually rational, inclusive and inspiring.
All that to say, am lucky and pleased to have such a smooth journey to citizenship and am happy to be able to vote!
Wow, they really streamlined it. I wonder how they did that. I spent a decade in the US (Permanent Res), wife was American, had two kids, worked for a solid 10 years, payed an enormous amount of taxes, had two properties, no record, not even a parking ticket and it took about 12 months and that was pre 911.
I guess they must have changed the requirements since and hired 1000's of people to process everyone. Lucky you.
USCIS needs to be fully self reliant on funding, a restriction not placed on any other agency from what I know.
Congress passed a bill a couple of years ago increasing the fees of several kinds of applications allowing for more funding, after a long gap. Further, they passed funding for digitizing their processes and updating computers after about 2 decades.
An additional factor is the massive backlog created by the Trump administration whose strategy was to simply add roadblocks and delays to the simplest processes. This was further exacerbated by pandemic slowdowns, so the increased capacity, combined with the removal of ideological opposition to legal and authorized immigration and a large backlog has likely resulted in the large numbers of citizenships.
Ours was even faster. Submitted our naturalization application March 31. Had passport in hand by mid May. Interview and ceremony was between those dates.
>I often see most displays of patriotism as some kind of pseudo mental illness
Why is that? It just doesn't seem rational to me to see it that way, but if that is how you feel then that is how you feel. I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise, I already know I can't, but just some explanation would be valuable.
When there is no reason to display it, i find it weird tbh. Not aggressive, just weird and uncomfortable. I get it for sports or official ceremonies, but else it often just seems to either seek conflicts (Hooligans), or more often, seek cheap branding.
And there is ways to display it. A pub calling itself "Penny Lane" and displaying a liver bird is totally fine, but when an english pub looks excessively, in-your-face english, i just can't, and i would bet most englishmen living in the same city couldn't either. It's just so weird.
The belief of "I should" is one of the core part for Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD, not confused with OCD). The behaviour is largely driven by the anxiety of "fail to e.g. be citizen" and sometimes is considered a little extreme from others' view.
A patriotism that sounds like "we are the best" often coincides with spurning rational and empathetic assessment of reality in favor of using this patriotism as a prideful crutch.
I remember my wife going through all stages of visas. Student visa, H1B, green card, then citizen. If you've never gone through it, it's complicated and involves a lot of waiting. Green card was the most complex out of all of them. We had less paperwork getting a mortgage and buying a house. It's very bureaucratic, and could use with some simplification. But once you're a citizen, it's smooth sailing.
It's a long process and people who have been vetted and through it don't deserve to be held up unless there is a good reason. I can understand if there is something amiss but to just put the entire thing on hold for "theater" is wrong.
Still from what I understand the US takes in more immigrants every year than any other country.
Worldwide, the United States is home to more international migrants than any other country, and more than the next four countries—Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—combined
> Worldwide, the United States is home to more international migrants than any other country, and more than the next four countries—Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—combined
That's a somewhat misleading way of presenting data.
It is true that in absolute terms, the US contains more immigrants than any other country on earth.
However, on a percentage of the population basis, the US is actually only around the OECD average in terms of numbers of immigrants: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/foreign-born-populat... – in 2019, Luxembourg was 47.30% foreign-born, Australia 29.90%, Switzerland 29.70%, Israel 21.20%, Sweden 19.50%. At 13.60%, the US was around the middle.
The fact that the US comes first in absolute terms, is not because the US is unusually welcoming to immigrants, it is because (among developed countries) it is unusually populous – at 333 million people, it is over 2.5 times more populous than the 2nd most populous OECD member (Japan).
The top five countries in the world by population are China, India, United States, Indonesia, and Pakistan. As mega-population superpower/rising-power type countries go, the United states is it for the embrace of immigration.
Our anti-immigration lobby is loud and politicized, but there are smart people doing policy behind the scenes no matter which bunch of belligerent blowhards are in office in a given year.
We should be even more welcoming of immigration than we are, and we should clean up our act on e.g. the southern border and the humanitarian crisis that's completely avoidable there. We don't have this right yet.
But when it comes down to it in realpolitik terms, populous nations are strong nations both today, and especially in 20-40 years when powers like the PRC are going to be faltering badly because of demographic collapse and we're still going strong because new blood kept the country young and vibrant.
US can take in easily another 20-30 million immigrants over say 5-10 years - the question is always how to assimilate when there is already a distinct lack of affordable housing / schools / medical infra. There is literally no public investments in this.
That said the IRA act is poring money into manufacturing which is having direct effects in those states, but require a hard look at easing infra development,
1) The US economy has no choice, it needs immigrants to keep the population from declining. This is why the southern border is what it is. We've trade an economic problem for an immigration problem.
2) In some - many? - cases these immigrants are a brain drain from their home country. That is, when "the best" come here instead of staying home to improve their on country, is that a net positive? We pat ourselves on the back but no one talks about how this hurts the from countries.
> no one talks about how this hurts the from countries
It's a fairly common topic when people talk about foreign aid and assistance. The classic dilemma is that we'd like to make sure top people all over the world get as much education as they can use, but we'd also like them to stay in their home countries and do the work of development even though they might rationally view the opportunities someplace else for a highly educated person as quite attractive.
> the uptick in new citizens is due to efforts to reduce a backlog of applications that began during the Trump administration and exploded amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Readit News
Submitted an online form 4 months ago, received an interview date two months ago, had my interview last week.
Interview was at 8:30am Oath ceremony was at 9am Registered to vote at 9.15am Back at work at 10am!
Submitted passport application the day after.
Interview was straightforward and most of the time was double checking all the information I had previously submitted was accurate. Learning the answers to the civics test was fun.
I think there is a cliche of a stern interviewer who is looking for any excuse to say no, but this officer was kind and encouraging.
The oath ceremony was actually quite moving. I often see most displays of patriotism as some kind of pseudo mental illness but the patriotism shown by the officiant was actually rational, inclusive and inspiring.
All that to say, am lucky and pleased to have such a smooth journey to citizenship and am happy to be able to vote!
I guess they must have changed the requirements since and hired 1000's of people to process everyone. Lucky you.
USCIS needs to be fully self reliant on funding, a restriction not placed on any other agency from what I know.
Congress passed a bill a couple of years ago increasing the fees of several kinds of applications allowing for more funding, after a long gap. Further, they passed funding for digitizing their processes and updating computers after about 2 decades.
An additional factor is the massive backlog created by the Trump administration whose strategy was to simply add roadblocks and delays to the simplest processes. This was further exacerbated by pandemic slowdowns, so the increased capacity, combined with the removal of ideological opposition to legal and authorized immigration and a large backlog has likely resulted in the large numbers of citizenships.
Why is that? It just doesn't seem rational to me to see it that way, but if that is how you feel then that is how you feel. I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise, I already know I can't, but just some explanation would be valuable.
And there is ways to display it. A pub calling itself "Penny Lane" and displaying a liver bird is totally fine, but when an english pub looks excessively, in-your-face english, i just can't, and i would bet most englishmen living in the same city couldn't either. It's just so weird.
Dead Comment
Generally, yes, this is the way it should be. Path from visitor to citizen should involve way more checks than owning a home.
Also, making sure the house is sufficient collateral for the loan is a whole bunch of additional overhead.
Still from what I understand the US takes in more immigrants every year than any other country.
Worldwide, the United States is home to more international migrants than any other country, and more than the next four countries—Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—combined
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested...
That's a somewhat misleading way of presenting data.
It is true that in absolute terms, the US contains more immigrants than any other country on earth.
However, on a percentage of the population basis, the US is actually only around the OECD average in terms of numbers of immigrants: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/foreign-born-populat... – in 2019, Luxembourg was 47.30% foreign-born, Australia 29.90%, Switzerland 29.70%, Israel 21.20%, Sweden 19.50%. At 13.60%, the US was around the middle.
The fact that the US comes first in absolute terms, is not because the US is unusually welcoming to immigrants, it is because (among developed countries) it is unusually populous – at 333 million people, it is over 2.5 times more populous than the 2nd most populous OECD member (Japan).
Our anti-immigration lobby is loud and politicized, but there are smart people doing policy behind the scenes no matter which bunch of belligerent blowhards are in office in a given year.
We should be even more welcoming of immigration than we are, and we should clean up our act on e.g. the southern border and the humanitarian crisis that's completely avoidable there. We don't have this right yet.
But when it comes down to it in realpolitik terms, populous nations are strong nations both today, and especially in 20-40 years when powers like the PRC are going to be faltering badly because of demographic collapse and we're still going strong because new blood kept the country young and vibrant.
That said the IRA act is poring money into manufacturing which is having direct effects in those states, but require a hard look at easing infra development,
1) The US economy has no choice, it needs immigrants to keep the population from declining. This is why the southern border is what it is. We've trade an economic problem for an immigration problem.
2) In some - many? - cases these immigrants are a brain drain from their home country. That is, when "the best" come here instead of staying home to improve their on country, is that a net positive? We pat ourselves on the back but no one talks about how this hurts the from countries.
It's a fairly common topic when people talk about foreign aid and assistance. The classic dilemma is that we'd like to make sure top people all over the world get as much education as they can use, but we'd also like them to stay in their home countries and do the work of development even though they might rationally view the opportunities someplace else for a highly educated person as quite attractive.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-09-26/with-an-el...