A new study has revealed that the number of immigrants choosing to become citizens of the United States has significantly increased in the 2022 fiscal year.
According to a report that has been published by the Pew Research Center, over 900,000 immigrants became citizens of the United States in the last fiscal year – from October 1, 2021, until September 30, 2022, VisaGuide.World reports.
The Pew Research Center explains that such an estimate has been made based on the data released by the government for the first three quarters of the year, and the same noted that the annual total would be the highest since 2008.
According to the report, the naturalizations’ number dropped to 81,000 in the 2020 period, and this was mainly linked to the restrictions imposed to prevent the further spread of the Coronavirus pandemic.
“The quarterly number of naturalizations plummeted to 81,000 in the April-June 2020 period – during the first months of the US outbreak – compared with an average of about 190,000 per quarter in the previous eight years,” the statement Pew Research Center reads.
Nonetheless, as soon as the restrictions got dropped, the number started to increase drastically. Data from the Pew Research Center show that quarterly naturalizations are back to the same level they were before the outbreak of the COVID.
The number of naturalizations in the US reached 200,000 in January-March 2021 quarters, which is higher than the total for the same quarter in the nine previous years.
In addition, the same source has highlighted that the number of naturalizations for the 2022 fiscal year hit a total of 940,000 and the number is expected to increase even more in the upcoming fiscal year.
Data have further shown that there have been an average of around 200,000 applications for citizenship in the US for each quarter over the past decade.
The quarterly number of applications for naturalizations has been about 160,000 to 250,000 since 2012. Before the Coronavirus pandemic, the number of applications started to increase significantly, and then they dropped again in the April-June 2020 quarter.
In addition to the above-mentioned, the report has further shown that more immigrants are seeking US citizenship than currently being naturalized. By the end of June 2022, the US had a backlog of around 673,000 pending applications. This backlog was down by over a million compared to December 2020 but still higher than during the period between 2012 and 2016.
Naturalizations for immigrants from most countries have increased by about 20 percent this year, and it has been revealed that green card holders from Asia as well as Europe have the highest chances of becoming US citizens.
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