Immigrants who are close to having U.S. citizenship are experiencing delays in their application and uncertainties due to the global pandemic and new immigration process.

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One of the biggest dreams of immigrants in the United States is not only to have a job that pays a good salary but to get U.S. Citizenship. In this way, they can do more things and will have more opportunities in the country. They can also avail of what naturally born Americans enjoy.

Sam Ramirez, an immigrant from Leon, Mexico, shared her experience in getting U.S. citizenship. She called it "the dream." However, her U.S. oath of allegiance drifted away because of the global pandemic and the new policies on legal migration.

Ramirez has been in line and has processed the documents needed for nearly 10 months. During her first interview, she brought her medical documents but she was told that it was not needed at that time. Later on, she was required to submit the said documents to the federal offices of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

Ramirez is just one of the more than 700,000 immigrants who are facing delays in their quest to gain U.S. citizenship. There was supposed to be an Oath of Allegiance ceremony in March but it did not happen because of the global pandemic.

This delay is happening again but this time it is not because of the global pandemic but because of the new policies under Trump's administration. The new immigration process will now undergo an intensified scrutiny.

The application process to have U.S. citizenship will now take one to three years in big cities, according to a published article in The Dallas Morning News. According to a reliable source from the government, the application process few years ago only took six months and before the pandemic, the average was only eight months.

However, the application to have U.S. citizenship in large cities like Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Miami will take up to three years. Meanwhile, the application in Chicago is from 13 months to four years.

Randy Capps, a research director for U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute, said that there were around more than 700,000 pending applications through the end of March. He also said that the number of pending applications could easily rise to 900,000.

Capps also added that around 130,000 applicants have passed the naturalization process and tests yet their Oath of Allegiance was paused due to the pandemic. Capps also published this report in a just-released study he co-authored entitled "A Rockier Road to U.S. Citizenship?"

Meanwhile, the USCIS has naturalized nearly 87,000 individuals since June and they plan to complete all their postponed naturalizations by the end of July. But the ceremonies will be small and with no guests allowed due to the pandemic.

It will be far different from the traditional festive celebration of Oath of Allegiance when people used to wave tiny red, white, and blue flags.

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