In the fiscal year that ended this September, people from around the world chose us. At some 970,000 naturalizations, it was the third highest year on record for immigrants becoming American citizens.
This is a testament to the staying power of the American idea of a culture of cultures, the story that anyone from anywhere can still have as much of a say as all others. This is, to some extent, a myth, more aspirational than a true mirror, but within every myth there’s a foundation of truth, and despite the imperfections this has kept being a country of immigrants.
These are a reason to celebrate, but they are not a reason to get complacent. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that a big part of this uptick is because naturalizations were essentially shut down due to COVID, and also led by immigrants reacting to the most vitriolic anti-immigrant rhetoric and official action in a century.
Under former President Donald Trump, dissuading and disrespecting immigrants wasn’t incidental, it was a deliberate strategy driven by people like Stephen Miller — the White House adviser who simply rejected the American identity of a truly pluralist society and yearned for a return to an imagined past of nativist glory.
Undoing his careful efforts will require more than just a change in rhetoric. The Biden administration must be commended for efforts to unwind the xenophobia, like reverting the citizenship test to a less onerous form and working to streamline it further, but this moment is an opportunity to do more than turn back the clock. Officials like U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ur Jaddou and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas must work to clear the brush of bureaucratic obstacles that still lock people out, such as by reducing the use of redundant paperwork.
For its part, Congress has much to fix, including a broken family and employment visa system that keeps people waiting in interminable backlogs for permanent residency, the precursor to citizenship. Many of the best Americans will be the ones by choice.
