What does it mean to be a US citizen?

The Fourteenth Amendment's citizenship clause is under scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

If you're born here in the United States, then you are, in fact an American citizen.

The fundamental question of who gets US citizenship is in fact evolving.

On President Trump's first day in office, he issued an executive order to end that right for the children of people who are in the US illegally.

Earlier this year, we brought you a story about the Trump Administration's efforts to end birthright citizenship.

If this injunction wasn't maintained or they attempted to lift it, these women would have stateless children.

Today on Latino USA, we're going to bring you an episode from our friends at ELIST, the NPR station in Los Angeles.

This story looks at another side of the citizenship issue, new naturalization guidelines for people hoping to become US citizens.

This is something that has become even more difficult under the Trump administration.

So we're going to play some of the episode from the show In Perfect Paradise, The show's host Nae la Moreno is going to speak with reporter Julia Rajas about the changes playing out inside a citizenship prep class at Pasadena City College.

So, Julia, I'm curious, how did you start looking into this story and what made you decide to explore a citizenship class.

Yeah.

So earlier this summer, our organization got a message from a woman named Melissa Michaelson.

She's an associate professor at Pasadena City College and she also happens to be a loyal LAS reader and listener, and she wrote in saying, you know, right now, it feels very hard to be teaching students from other countries who want to be citizens.

She said she didn't even feel comfortable recommending that they make an appointment for their citizenship exams because she was scared that ice might be there waiting for them.

And who are typically the people who take Michaelson's class at Pasadena City College aka PCC.

They're all adults raging in age, so some of them could be like in their like early twenties, some of them are like almost in their sixties.

And they tend to come from countries like China, Russia, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, and many parts of Latin America.

One of the things we talked about is how some of those countries don't have democratic governments.

So for some students, learning about things like the right to vote for public officials and the ability to wag in on issues is all new.

This is democracy, So the power is within them.

We just need to harness it and power in numbers and know your rights, know what to do, know your history, know what happened before, build upon that, change it and good luck.

That's that's what I hope more students get out of it, on top of becoming an American.

Set of them.

Julia, what do we know about who takes this test on a wider scale?

Yeah, So we have some data from the twenty twenty four fiscal year.

That's the last full year of the Biden administration, and in that year, the country welcomed more than eight hundred eighteen thousand new citizens.

And what I learned is that California is home to nearly one in five of people seeking citizenships, about eighteen percent, and the LA area is actually one of the most popular areas of residency, behind New York and Miami.

The naturalization process has always involved many steps, but there are three big basic parts.

One is that students have to demonstrate that they can read, write, and speak in English.

They also have to pass a civics test that delves into US history and how our government functions.

And then they have to clear like a big background check where the US Citizenship and Immigration Services determines whether they are fit to be citizens, and the Trump administration has introduced a number of changes to that process in recent months.

In the past, applicants would just submit this like fourteen page application that asked a bunch of questions like have you ever you know, participated or assisted with things like killing or trying to kill anyone else?

Or have you prevented someone from practicing their religion?

Things like this that determine someone's moral character.

But that's gonna change.

Being forward and to learn more about these changes and how they're impacting others, I spoke with Julie Mitchell.

She is the legal director at the Central American Resource Center and the center also provides citizenship classes.

She noted that the changes to a test were announced in September of this year, which didn't really give educators a whole lot of time to adjust their lesson plans.

So we're going to have citizenship teachers across the country kind of trying to scramble to be able to quickly change developed teaching materials to a apps to a new.

Tast and tell us about the naturalization test, like what kinds of questions are usually on it?

The questions that are usually on it are things like what does the Bill of Rights protect?

Or like what part of the federal government rights laws?

Questions that some of us might or might not know the answers too.

But starting this week, actually students will have to be prepared to answer more questions correctly during their Civics test, and they will be expected to learn the answers to more questions too, so to explain what that I mean.

It's like.

In the past, students had to learn the answers to the bank of one hundred questions, and then to pass their tests, they had to answer six out of ten questions correctly like verbally.

But moving forward, they have to know the answers to one hundred and twenty eight questions and they'll have to answer twelve out of twenty questions correctly.

The federal government has also announced that moving forward, when federal officials make determinations about a candidate's quote unquote good moral character, your absence of bad behavior is no longer enough.

They're going to have to actually also prove that they've made positive contribution to society.

And the government has also announced that it's reintroducing something called neighborhood investigations into aspiring citizens.

And this is a discretionary practice that's actually been shelved since the nineties.

According to the Trump administration, it could involve covering the candidate's place of residency or employment dating back to at least five years from attemism of their applications, and the government has said that this is just the beginning of the changes they plan to make to the process.

Here's Jullie Mitchell again.

The agency is like attempting to raise the bar and say, like the absence of anything bad isn't enough anymore.

You have to like prove affirmatively your good moral character.

The statute, the regulations Policy Manual have not changed at all.

It's just this memo saying that this is now required, which is kind of vague.

Yeah, Mitchell and other legal experts told me that they're kind of playing it by ear at the moment, waited to see how this will all be implemented.

How are her students reacting to these changes, especially given what's going on in the news right now.

Yeah, so the students I spoke with politely declined to be interviewed for a little more context.

I think it's worth noting that students have become more and more hesitant to speak with the media, especially non citizens.

I cover a lot of college campuses, and this has kind of been like the trend, to be honest, in recent months.

The ones who did speak to me generally said that they're still excited about the prospect of becoming citizens, but they're being careful about not posting anything that could be perceived negatively by the government on social media.

And Michaelson also told me that some of our students are worried about the neighborhood investigations.

They're like, you know, some of us have in apartments and we're not necessarily buddy buddy with all our neighbors.

And how is Professor Michaelson's curriculum kept up with these new changes to the naturalization process as.

So, long story short, she's had to kind of figure out how to teach more in the same amount of time, and she told me that that's probably going to mean moving faster through some lessons and maybe making cuts to some other lessons to ensure that she covers all of the material.

You mentioned to me that professor Michaelson will start encouraging her students to speak to attorneys.

Why is that.

Yeah, for the time being, she does plan to tell her students to speak with an attorney before submitting their applications for naturalization, and she just wants them to have a legal expert weigh in and be on their side to answer questions she may not be able to.

The administration has stated that it aims to make it more challenging to become a citizen, and I should note that probably having to learn the answer to twenty more questions that may not seem like a big deal, but this is a very high stakes test, right.

This is about, like you, being able to become a citizen.

And if candidates fail the English or the Civics test, they do get one more chance, but after that, if they don't pass, they don't get to become US citizens.

So for educators like Michaelson, on top of all concerns, it also really feels like there's a disconnect between what they're teaching their students and what they're seeing unfold or happened to non citizens who engage in activism.

As we mentioned earlier, that.

Was Nei da Moreno hosting Imperfect Paradise.

She was speaking with reporter Juria Rajas about the changes playing out inside a citizenship prep class at Pasadena City College.

Thanks to our friends at ELIST, here are the credits.

Special thanks to Senior Education editor Ross Brunneman and Senior editor Matt Ballinger.

I'm Neri da Moreno.

Angelie Sastri is our senior producer.

James Chowd produced and sound designed this episode.

Catherine Malhouse is the executive producer of the show and our director of content Development.

Mixing and original music by E.

Scott Kelly