India Becomes Second Largest Source Country For New Citizens In US: Report

As per the latest Congressional report, India becomes the second-largest source country for new citizens in America, as nearly 65,960 Indians officially became US citizens. Mexico is the first source country. According to data obtained by US Census Bureau, an estimated 46 million foreign-born people resided in Washington in 2022. It constitutes to 14 percentage of the country’s total population, which is 333 million. Among these, 24.5 million, around 53 percentage, are reported to be naturalised citizens.

In the latest US Naturalisation Policy report published on April 15 by the independent Congressional Research Service (CRS), 969,380 people became naturalised US citizens in the fiscal year 2022. The report said, “individuals born in Mexico represented the largest number of naturalisations, followed by persons from India, Philippines, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic”.

As per the data by CRS, as of 2023, 2,831,330 foreign-born US nationals were from India, which is the second-largest number of individual after Mexico, which is 10,638,429. India is followed by China, with 2,225,447 number of individuals as American nationals.

It is to note that, nearly 42 percentage of the Indian-born foreign nationals residing in Washington are not eligible for the US citizenship. As many as 290,000 Indian-born foreign nationals who were on Green Card or the Legal Permanent Residency (LPR) were eligible for naturalisation in 2023.

Observers expressed concern over the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) processing backlog for naturalisation application, said CRS. Though the backlog reportedly still continues, the agency has reduced the number of application pending completion by more than half since the 2020 fiscal year. By the end of FY2023, the USCIS had approximately 498,000 pending naturalisation application, which is down from the 555,000 reported at the end of FY2022. In 2021, the number was 840,000 and in FY2020, it was 943,000.

The number of foreign-born individuals who are naturalised vary by several reasons, including the country of origin. While immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala, Venezuela, Mexico, El Salvador, and Brazil have the lowest percentage of naturalised foreign born people, those from Vietnam, Philippines, Russia, Jamaica, and Pakistan have highest number of individuals.

For being eligible for the naturalisation, certain eligibility requirements are to be met set forth by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The requirements generally include the individual being a lawful permanent resident (LPR) for minimum of five years.