New U.S. citizens celebrate at a naturalization ceremony at Great Falls national park in Paterson in September 2019. Nonprofit groups that register new citizens to vote have recently been banned from these ceremonies by the Trump administration. (Photo courtesy of National Park Service)
Last October, about 50 people became United States citizens during an annual ceremony at the Great Falls national park in Paterson.
The city’s mayor, Andre Sayegh, told me one of the newly minted citizens, a woman originally from the Dominican Republic, was excited to be presented with an application to register to vote.
“I’m glad you did this. I’m going to vote for Donald Trump,” she said, according to Sayegh.
The mayor relayed this anecdote to me this week to illustrate the idiocy of a new Trump administration policy barring nongovernmental entities from registering new citizens to vote at official naturalization ceremonies. This asinine decision from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will allow federal officials, the administration claims, to make sure only nonpartisan groups are registering new citizens to vote at events like the one held annually in Paterson.
The real reason, I suspect, is that groups like the League of Women Voters have performed this service, and conservatives believe that group has morphed from a little-old-ladies-hosting-debates organization into one led by fire-breathing lefties intent on electing Democrats. I know many of the people at the League of Women Voters, and I don’t doubt there are progressive members — but the group is also sincerely interested in boosting voter participation, no matter the party.
If you want proof, look at the partnership the league had with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the past, even under the first Trump administration. Melissa Marks, who works at the league’s New Jersey chapter, said the group was even able to store voter registration materials in a closet at the federal agency’s Cranbury office.
“We see ourselves as helping them, as providing a service for them and making sure that their clients, these new citizens, are invited to participate in democracy from day one,” she said.
The Trump administration will probably not change course here, which means it’s incumbent on our state and local governments to fill in the gap.
Sayegh told me he’d love for Paterson to step in and perform this service — but the annual Great Falls naturalization ceremonies have been canceled in a move he thinks is related to cost-cutting at the National Park Service, which runs the park and has lost a quarter of its staff this year, according to the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.
“I guess they got DOGE’d,” Sayegh said.
A federal building in Newark is also home to regular naturalization ceremonies. Its mayor, Ras Baraka, said through a spokeswoman that he intends to have city officials step in where the League of Women Voters and other groups are being told to stand down.
“Voting is fundamental to being an American and participating in our democracy, so it’s incumbent upon us to ensure all Newarkers have easy access to voter registration. We can, and will, work with our partners to continue to register voters, including our newest citizens, so that each of us has an equally strong voice in the future of our city, our state and our nation,” Baraka said.
So maybe some cities will indeed help here. But will they be allowed to? Marks told me their partnership with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services required a ton of communication to coordinate — will the same Trump administration that is suing places like Paterson over their sanctuary city orders feel like calling Sayegh’s office to make sure he has city officials at naturalization ceremonies to get new citizens on the voter rolls? Seems unlikely.
What’s truly nonsensical about this revamped policy is new U.S. citizens are exactly the kinds of people we want voting in elections. By all accounts, our immigration system places myriad hurdles between an immigrant and their naturalization papers. Someone who jumps over all those hurdles is committed to being a citizen, and probably more civically minded than even some of us who were born on American soil. We shouldn’t simply tell them, “Here’s how you can register to vote.” We should put the application in front of them and say, “You can register to vote right now.”
A strong democracy is one where we are empowering our eligible voters to participate, not one that creates burdens and extra barriers to do so. That’s what this new policy does.
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