Aaron Gonzalez, 35, was dressed in an all-American outfit colored with red, white and blue and a mask the day he got his citizenship. Holding the American flag in his hand, the bank relationship manager from Utah felt joyous during his naturalization ceremony, despite celebrating alone due to Covid restrictions keeping families and friends outside the courtroom.
“Getting my citizenship was [one] of the greatest moments of my life, second only to my children being born — I felt like I actually belonged somewhere,” he said, remembering that day two years ago.
For Gonzalez, the day marked a special milestone. After immigrating from Mexico to Atlanta, in 1992 at only 3 years old, his life was marred with uncertainty as an undocumented immigrant. Without legal status, Gonzalez resorted to cleaning homes and landscaping with his parents after high school, unable to pursue higher education despite his good grades.
“There was the looming idea that I wouldn’t be able to do anything even with a degree due to my legal status,” he said.
The only breath of relief came in 2012, when the Obama administration implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Gonzalez qualified.
“From that moment, I saw the virtue in the Democratic Party and told myself that I would vote Democrat one day to provide others that same opportunity,” Gonzalez said. But after naturalization, “not having the fear of deportation allows an individual to see other issues,” he said. Gonzalez had avidly encouraged a Joe Biden vote in 2020. Now, he’s a registered Republican. As a result of experiencing high food costs and a lack of progress on immigration from Democrats, he begrudgingly backs Donald Trump this year.
“Honestly, I was looking most for someone besides Biden and Trump,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t want to think of this upcoming election as me voting for Trump, but more so voting for issues. Every election, the issue of fixing [the] immigrant system simply feels like a taunt or a joke to get votes and sympathy.”
For many Americans, the upcoming November elections imposes a flashback to 2020: a fatigued, drawn out match between two unprecedentedly unpopular candidates amidst a struggling economy and an all-time high for international instability, whether that may be a pandemic or two ongoing wars.
For recently naturalized citizens like Gonzalez, this election will be the first of potentially many acts of civic engagement, contributing to the historic impact naturalized citizens have had on elections in previous years. The potential power of new citizens remains crucial to the presidential outcome, as evidenced by the numbers. The American Immigration Council estimated the number of non-citizens eligible to naturalize is 7.4 million. Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 was roughly 7 million, underscoring the importance of these people in a close election.
With every vote counting, many non-citizens are currently rushing to gain their citizenship to have their voices heard. Francisco Rodriguez, 42, originally came to the United States from South America to pursue his medical residency on a J-1 student visa. After two of his mentors were murdered in his home country, Rodriguez decided to not return out of safety, and was approved for a green card in 2019. The Illinois-based physician recalls hearing lots of anti-immigration discourse during this time, which prompted his need to become politically active.
“While I was one of the ‘desirable’ immigrants, I realized that my motives for immigration were the same as that of many others,” Rodriguez said. “While I don’t disagree [with] the need for migratory regulations, the rhetoric was toxic and maligned immigrants that like me, were hardworking and looking for a better future.”
“Many of my mentors during the 2016 election were apathetic; they did not believe that much would change,” he said. “I was not going to become that. I needed to become an opinionated participant.”
While Rodriguez has begun his citizenship journey, it’s not clear yet if paperwork will process in time for him to be able to vote by November. Despite this, Rodriguez states that even if he were able to vote, he views his participation as “more symbolic than real,” given that his county and state of Illinois are Democratic strongholds.
Nancy Flores is the deputy director at the National Partnership of New Americans (NPNA), a coalition of immigrant and refugee rights organizations aiming to increase civic engagement amongst immigrant populations. She shared that discouraged voters like Rodriguez shouldn’t “lose focus” and instead shift their attention to civic engagement’s impact at the local level.
“Let’s zoom in on local level initiatives; ballot initiatives that affect school boards, that affect our children, that affect our garbage collecting process,” Flores said. “[Civic engagement] is not just the federal level but actually, the more local you get the more it directly impacts your life and your everyday life.”
Flores honed in on the idea that while “the level of enthusiasm is certainly on a spectrum, for a lot of folks, you’ve earned the right to vote, and it wasn’t overnight.”
“For many folks, this has been decades in the making…and we see that this also translates to when people head to the voting booth, that it’s a really emotionally charged journey and voting is the great equalizer in this country,” she said.
For many others, obtaining citizenship was a given — election or not. For Karen Lee, 20, who was originally born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and moved to California at the age of 2, becoming a citizen “just made sense.”
“I don’t care too much about voting, even though I know it gives me more political power,” Lee said. “I know I should care, but I feel like I’m so busy with other stuff that voting is at the bottom of my priorities.”
Citing the “difficulty of keeping up with political candidates,” Lee shared that she will vote in the presidential elections in November and do her research on candidates closer to then.
“Because I grew up in a very homogenous community, I never felt oppressed or felt a need for change in my life. I feel like my family isn’t really political – we don’t really talk about politics too often, [and] I never had a strong need to vote.”
Aanya Jain, 21, echoed similar sentiments after having immigrated from India at age 10. The Indiana University student grew up in the Chicago suburbs after obtaining a green card through her father’s job, and recalls a childhood not too different from ordinary citizens besides the inability to vote. Like Lee, obtaining citizenship was a rite of passage.
As a permanent resident, her upbringing “felt very secure and safe,” Jain shared, until the Trump administration threatened the stability of her status. Jain’s father pushed her and the rest of her family members to apply for citizenship as soon as possible.
“My main motivation behind [obtaining citizenship] was to have that security and know that whatever happens, we are gonna be able to live here, because I know green card rules could change anytime [like] when Trump was in office,” Jain said. “It was definitely very stressful for us.”
According to the Migration Policy Institute, the Trump administration implemented an unprecedented 472 administrative changes to immigration policies from 2017 to 2021. The 2022 report details multiple changes that complicated the naturalization process, such as increased vetting through “increasing evidentiary requirements for applying, including requiring applicants to provide details on arrests abroad, up to a decade of international travel history (instead of five years), and other documents (e.g., tax returns and children’s birth certificates).”
In 2017, Trump attempted to rescind the DACA program, exposing approximately 580,000 DACA-recipients to potential deportation and preventing authorized work in the states. The Supreme Court blocked the efforts with a 5-4 decision made in 2020, enshrining protections for the recipients, often known as “dreamers.” Under the current Biden administration, an executive order made in 2021 reaffirmed these protections even further.
While Jain credits her path to citizenship as without significant complications through the help of her parents and immigration lawyers, the business student recalls seeing “lots of happy tears” at her naturalization ceremony in September 2021.
“There were people from like 50 countries here,” she said, “It was really cool to see at the end how much it can change lives.”