Introduction

There are currently an estimated 8.9 million lawful permanent residents (LPRs) who are eligible for naturalization in the United States.¹ LPRs are non-citizens who have been authorized to live in the United States and may potentially naturalize to become a U.S. citizen. Naturalization offers many benefits, including protection from deportation, access to government jobs and social benefits, the ability to sponsor family members, the ability to vote, and freedom to travel abroad for extended periods of time without losing status. It is also correlated with a boost in wages and home ownership, access to better jobs, and improved general outcomes.²

However, the number of eligible LPRs, which refers to LPRs who meet the naturalization requirement of having a Green Card for five years, that apply to naturalize could be higher. Naturalization applications hover around 750,000 in non-presidential election years, meaning that a large number of eligible LPRs are not applying. Without additional intervention, the growing backlog and mounting anti-immigrant policies from the current federal administration will further decrease the number of immigrants that make it through the process.

We know a lot about eligible LPRs from quantitative studies: According to a Center for Migration Studies report from 2015,³ nationals from Mexico, India, China, and Canada represent the largest population of eligible to naturalize LPRs, with Mexico, Canada, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Brazil naturalizing at the lowest rates in comparison with their overall LPR population. In addition, the report mentions: “High percentages of eligible LPRs have lived in the United States for more than 10 years (78%); are age 35 or older (74%); are married (64%); speak English well, very well, or only English (65%); have access to both a computer and the internet (74%); earn income above the poverty level (79%); and have health insurance (72%).” Eligible LPRs tend to live in major urban areas.⁴ We also know that the longer they wait in LPR status to naturalize, the less likely they are to do it.

It's not that LPRs reject the idea of naturalization. A vast majority of immigrants (80-90 percent) want to become U.S. citizens.⁵ Motivations vary, and include securing legal rights, the ability to travel with a U.S. passport, and sponsoring family members. One study found that, “Among the 18% of Latino foreign-born U.S. citizens who identify civil and legal rights as their main reason for naturalizing, about seven in ten (72%) cite gaining the right to vote.”⁶ This may explain why election years have historically seen an increase in naturalization rates.

Many of the barriers to naturalization have been known for a long time: cost, difficulty in mastering the English language, the information gap between the complex requirements and immigrants’ understanding of them, and concern over losing country of origin citizenship. Increased fear of anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric from the new administration is a relatively new barrier. To combat this, advocacy groups, state governments, and municipalities interested in increasing naturalization rates have tried boosting outreach with immigrant communities; running citizenship workshops, where large groups of LPRs gather to receive free or low-cost assistance from a nonprofit with their naturalization applications; offering free ESL classes; and working to dispel anti-immigration misinformation and fear. Tools centered on improving the usability of the application submission or facilitating the citizenship workshop model have been successfully used by some nonprofits to supplement available resources, and continue to evolve. For example, the New Americans Campaign has developed toolkits, technology, and tools such as a fee waiver calculator. Increasing awareness of the fee waiver and offering payment alternatives, like the NaturalizeNY voucher provided to those who don't qualify for the naturalization fee waiver offered by USCIS, has had mostly positive results.⁷

A large portion of this population is not affected solely by cost or English proficiency barriers, but some barriers are still unclear, and the naturalization numbers remain stubbornly low relative to the number of eligible LPRs. A 2015 survey indicates "Language or Personal Barriers" and "Have not tried yet or not interested" as the two most common reasons preventing Mexican LPRs from naturalizing, leaving a lot of room for interpretation as to why eligible LPRs don’t naturalize or wait to naturalize and what their personal barriers might entail.⁸

With motivations and some barriers known, and many initiatives meant to diminish barriers attempted with various levels of success, some questions still remain: What are the unknown barriers to naturalization? What causes an eligible LPR to take action, and what stops them? What else can be done to naturalize more people in the United States?

To answer these questions as public interest technologists, designers, and researchers, we followed a Design Thinking framework, whereby user research is designed to inform the brainstorm and features of (typically digital) products and services, and rapid prototyping is meant for testing as many ideas as possible, as quickly as possible. The goal is to provide actionable insights, recommendations, and tried-and-tested tools for naturalizing eligible LPRs at all levels of the immigration service ecosystem, and at each step in the journey to citizenship.

Since our research problem is explorative and covers a broad topic, our team used multiple qualitative methods to uncover and dig deeper into patterns. In five months, we conducted 63 directed interviews, spoke with over 20 subject-matter experts, conducted 117 in-person surveys, and completed 22 testing sessions.

Our conversations covered a range of perspectives from the immigration ecosystem including nonprofits, city/state government agencies, lawyers, immigrants, and their family members. However, all of our 63 interviews were with immigrants who are, were, or will be (in the next three years) eligible for naturalization. After each interview, we sifted through the motivations a person experienced in their desire for citizenship. We discovered that a large number of applicants went through a catalysting event or process that ultimately assisted them in overcoming obstacles around naturalizing—what we called catalysts. These catalysts differed from motivations because they were often the primary element responsible for direct action toward naturalization. For example, an eligible LPR may know they should secure their right to stay in the United States (their motivation), but they may not feel pressure to initiate their citizenship application until an upcoming Green Card renewal—their catalyst. We also investigated barriers to naturalization, which were events or situations that stopped someone from naturalizing. These were different from concerns, which tended to be issues LPRs foresee in their naturalization applications but nothing that would stop them from applying.