Under President Donald Trump’s administration, the backlog for processing citizenship applications has increased 87 percent.
There were nearly 730,000 pending applications for naturalization at the end of 2017, an 87.59 percent increase from 2015 under President Barack Obama, a report from the National Partnership for New Americans said.
"The Trump admin has built a second wall that prevents legal immigrants in the U.S. from becoming voting U.S. citizens,” said the partnership’s executive director Joshua Hoyt, NBC News reported.
The rate at which an application gets processed is as high as 20 months. The report said that over 925,000 people applied for U.S. citizenship in 2017.
The report said that the backlog in 2015 during Obama’s administration was 388,832.
“They may be waiting as long as 20 months after submitting a 21-page application, paid the $730 fee, submitted their fingerprints for a security check and then sat and waited to take an exam, Hoyt said, NBC reported.
“This is either absolute gross incompetence affecting close to a million legal immigrants who want to become U.S. citizens, or it is an intentional second wall that is designed to slow the pace at which lawfully present immigrants can become voters,” Hoyt said.
The state with the largest increase in pending applications in the last fiscal year is Utah, where pending applications are up 53 percent, and Texas, which is up 50 percent.
The backlog not only denies the potential citizens the ability to vote, it could lead to their deportation while their applications are pending, said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, NBC reported. "The rules have changed—legal permanent residency does not protect you from deportation under Donald Trump… people want to participate in the Democratic process, they also want to protect themselves," Gutierrez said.
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