In a small classroom in Little Haiti a dozen people practice answering questions with their instructor. Questions like “how many constitutional amendments are there,” and “who’s your representative in the U.S. House.”
These are possible questions on a test not everyone born in the United States could pass: the citizenship test.
It’s a test that each of the 1.3 million legal permanent residents in Florida will have to take in order to become citizens. Almost one in five people living in Miami-Dade County are LPRs, and this week the county launched the Office of New Americans to help these immigrants become naturalized citizens.
Of the roughly 450,000 LPRs in Miami-Dade County, upwards of 300,000 are eligible to become citizens. A push to make that a reality could have big impacts on the local economy and political body.
Ketline Thomas, has been one of the students in the citizenship class offered weekly at Haitian Women of Miami, a local non-profit. The 53-year-old has been living in the states for seven years, went to school to become a nursing assistant and now wants to be able to travel back and forth to Haiti without worrying about it jeopardizing her legal status here.
When you’re a citizen, she says, “you have so many privileges.” They include the right to hold federal jobs, vote and especially interesting to Thomas, serve on a jury.
Getting to walk through the doors of the Citizenship and Immigration building to take the citizenship test, though, is not always easy.
The fee to apply for naturalization is $680 and if there are complications with yourapplication, can cost even more to hire a lawyer. Compare that to the $450 it costs to renew a green card for 10 years.
Language is also an issue. The test requires most people to demonstrate a grasp of the English language, which can take a lot of time.
“We want to explore different alternatives to reduce those barriers,” says Maria Rodriguez, executive director and founder of the Florida Immigrant Coalition.
Her organization has teamed up with Miami-Dade County and Citi Bank to open the Office of New Americans. It’s part of a national initiative called Cities for Citizenship, which is designed to help immigrants navigate the sometimes-scary process of applying for naturalization. For example, it will be hosting classes to help people fill out the applications or provide guidance on how to get fee waivers. In December, the office hopes to equip the 311 phone service with information on naturalization resources.
“It’s been shown that when a family or person becomes naturalized, it’s beneficial for their income,” says Rodriguez. “It’s good for your pocketbook. And that aggregated for a whole community could represent billions of dollars.”
Some studies estimate naturalization increases earnings by anaverage of 8% nationally.
But economic impact is only part of it. Outside most naturalization ceremonies are people with stacks of voter registration forms: new citizens mean new voters. And an influx of a couple hundred thousand new voters?
“That’s seismic,” says Fernand Amandi, partner at Bendixen and Amandi, a public opinion research firm that does political analysis in South Florida.
He points to the 527 votes that decided the 2000 election. “It quite literally decided the presidency of the United States,” said Amandi, “so you put close to half million people in that mix? I don’t have to tell you it’s potentially apple -art turning.”
Especially now, just under a year out from the next presidential election. Especially in Florida, which tends to be a big decider in those elections.
Amandi is quick to emphasize that all permanent residents aren’t going to be naturalized and those who are won’t all register and vote.
But even some naturalized citizens voting could make waves.
“You think about what the Cuban community did,” says Amandi. “There was a push in the 70s and 80s to transform that [legal permanent resident] status into citizenship. And it upended the political and civic life of Miami-Dade County.”
Cubans are still the largest group going through the naturalization process each year in South Florida. But naturalized Haitians are becoming a larger part of that mix and people from Haiti tend to vote Democrat.
The big shift Ketline Thomas is thinking about, though, is not one of political leanings. On Tuesday she joined 29 other immigrants and became a U.S. citizen. Before she left the building, she registered to vote and listed “Democrat” as her affiliation.
