Oath Day

The problem

Becoming an American is the most consequential thing the country does to a person, and it does it in a rented hall on a Tuesday. In fiscal 2024 the government naturalised 818,500 new citizens, in ceremonies scheduled by the throughput of a processing centre: a hundred people at a time, a federal employee reading the oath, a recorded message, a flag, and a parking lot. The ceremony is often moving anyway, because the people in it have waited years and know what it means. The country around them does not know it happened.

Meanwhile about 8.7 million lawful permanent residents are eligible to naturalise and have not applied, and about two-thirds of them have lived in the United States for more than ten years. The reasons are the ones surveys find everywhere: the fee, which is several hundred dollars; the English and civics tests, which are a real barrier for older immigrants; the forms; and, for many, the sense that citizenship is a transaction with a government office rather than an invitation from a country. Eight million people who have chosen to live here permanently, pay taxes here, and raise children here have not taken the final step, and the country has not asked them to in any way they would hear.

The Fourth of July shows what the alternative looks like. The immigration service holds a cluster of ceremonies around Independence Day each year, about 195 of them in 2024 with about 11,000 new citizens, at Monticello, at the national parks, at ballparks, and they are the ones that make the news and the ones the new citizens remember. They are one and a half percent of the year's naturalisations. № 017 argued that a dividend paid on a fixed day, in public, is the ritual that makes the fund permanent. Citizenship deserves the same day.

The proposal

Oath Day: every naturalisation ceremony in the United States takes place on the Fourth of July, in every county, in a public place, as a public event. The immigration service completes the year's approvals by June and holds them for the day. The county hosts; the new citizens are named in the programme; the town is invited. Every eligible permanent resident receives, each year, a personal invitation to apply, with the fee waived for anyone who has held a green card for ten years or more.

How it would work

1. One day. Approvals granted through the year are held, and the oath is administered on July 4, in ceremonies in every county with new citizens to welcome, from a few in a rural courthouse square to thousands in a city stadium. A person whose approval comes in August waits until the following July, which is a wait of at most eleven months for a status that took years to reach, and it is a wait for something.

1. In public, hosted by the place. The county or city hosts the ceremony as a civic event: the public square, the fairground, the park. The programme names each new citizen and their country of birth. Local officials attend as hosts, not as speakers; the oath is administered by a judge or by the immigration service as now. Schools, veterans' organisations, churches and the Sponsor Corps of № 052 are invited. The point is that the town sees who has joined it.

1. The invitation. Every lawful permanent resident who becomes eligible to naturalise receives a letter, on the anniversary of eligibility, from the immigration service, inviting them to apply and stating the date of the next Oath Day. Eight million people have never been asked. Most of them will not respond to a letter. Some will.

1. The fee, waived at ten years. The naturalisation fee, several hundred dollars, is waived for any permanent resident who has held that status for ten years or more. A person who has been a lawful resident for a decade has paid the country far more in taxes than the fee, and the fee is the single most cited reason for not applying among those who could.

1. The tests, kept. The English and civics requirements stay, with the accommodations that already exist for age and disability, and № 104's English Hour is where the country pays for the classes that get people through them. Oath Day does not lower the bar. It makes the day of clearing it a day.

1. The card. The new citizen leaves the ceremony with the Citizen Card of № 051, printed and handed over on the day, and with the account of № 091 opened. The first thing a citizen receives is the document that says so.

The numbers

The citizens. About 800,000 a year. On Oath Day, in roughly 3,000 counties, that is an average of about 270 per county, with the large cities holding ceremonies of thousands and the small counties of a dozen.

The eligible. 8.7 million permanent residents eligible and not applying. If the invitation and the fee waiver moved even one in ten of them over five years, that is 870,000 additional citizens, and the honest expectation is that the number would be smaller and worth having.

The cost. The ceremonies cost what they cost now, plus the county's hosting, which is a day's use of a public space. The fee waiver, at about $700 for perhaps 200,000 ten-year residents a year, is on the order of $140 million a year, against the immigration service's fee-funded budget of several billion.

The scheduling. Holding approvals for a single day requires the service to complete the year's cases by June and to plan capacity for one day rather than 365, which the Fourth of July ceremonies already do at small scale. The wait between approval and oath averages six months, with a maximum of eleven; today it averages weeks and is invisible.

The honest objections

"Making people wait months after approval is a hardship for those who need citizenship quickly." Some do: to sponsor a relative, to take a job that requires it, to vote in an election the calendar puts before July. The proposal provides an administrative oath, on request and on showing of need, at any time, without the ceremony. The ceremony is the default, not a cage.

"A naturalisation ceremony is a legal act, not a pageant." It is both, and every country that takes citizenship seriously treats it as both. Canada, Australia and France hold citizenship ceremonies as public occasions with public officials, and the new citizens report that the ceremony is the moment the status became real. A legal act performed in a processing centre is no more legal than one performed in the town square, and it is considerably less American.

"Waiving the fee rewards people for delaying." It rewards people for ten years of lawful residence, taxpaying and good conduct, which is the record the country asks for. The fee was set to fund the agency, and the agency's budget is a rounding error against what a decade of a resident's taxes has already paid.

"Eight million people have chosen not to naturalise, and the country should respect that." Some have chosen, for reasons of their own or their home country's law on dual nationality, and the letter does not compel them. Most have not chosen anything; they have not been asked, and the process has been designed to be found rather than offered. The invitation is the country asking, once a year, in writing.

"Some towns will not want to host." Some will not, and the ceremony will be held there anyway, by the federal government, in a federal building, as now. Most towns, given a day on which they welcome the neighbours they already have, will host it. The ones that do not will have said something about themselves in public, which is not nothing.

Sources

• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Naturalization Statistics, fiscal 2024; USCIS Celebrates Independence Day 2024 with Naturalization Ceremonies
• Department of Homeland Security, Office of Homeland Security Statistics, Estimates of the Lawful Permanent Resident Population in the United States and the Subpopulation Eligible to Naturalize: 2025 and Revised 2024
• Migration Policy Institute, Naturalized Citizens in the United States, on barriers to naturalisation among the eligible
• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and the Department of Home Affairs (Australia), on public citizenship ceremonies
• Proposals № 003 (The Open Door Compact); № 017 (Dividend Day); № 051 (The Citizen Card); № 052 (The Sponsor Corps); № 091 (The Postal Bank); № 104 (The English Hour, forthcoming)