CLINIC’s Advocacy team works on a wide variety of concerns facing immigrants, some which are news flashpoints, like asylum and border policies, and others which never make headlines but affect the lives of millions of immigrants across the United States. 

One less publicized issue they work on is access to citizenship. In 2023, it was estimated that 9 million immigrants in the United States were eligible to become U.S. citizens, but each year only a fraction of that number go through the process of gaining citizenship, due to financial or other logistical barriers.

Citizenship confers many benefits for immigrants, such as long-term stability, the ability to vote, and the ability to sponsor other family members to come to the United States. But, as an expensive and lengthy process, it falls out of reach for many. 

CLINIC has long been engaged in work to change that – and this year, they saw a critical win in their advocacy work for immigrants seeking to become citizens. 

One of the hurdles to becoming a citizen is taking a naturalization test, which already requires extensive knowledge of U.S. government and the English language. 

“Since at least the first Trump administration there has been an effort to change the naturalization exam to make it even harder for immigrants,” explained Pedro Alemán Perfecto, a policy advocate at CLINIC.

“The Biden administration proposed a new rule that would change the test in a way that would have further disadvantaged those with limited English ability or limited means. It would have greatly decreased the number of citizenship applicants and number of individuals gaining citizenship.”  

For more than two years, CLINIC worked steadily with a coalition of other organizations on a campaign to raise these concerns to the administration and have the proposed changes dropped. 

“Through steadfast advocacy, the naturalization pilot test rule was finally rescinded in December 2024,” said Alemán Perfecto. “It was a critical win to ensure access to citizenship.” 

The other issue that saw significant progress in 2024 was related to advocacy on Department of Justice recognition and accreditation (DOJ R&A). DOJ R&A is a government program that gives authorization to non-attorneys working at nonprofits organizations to practice certain forms of immigration law, after receiving rigorous training and mentorship. Once approved, these representatives are known as DOJ Accredited Representatives.

“The program is key for expanding the number of qualified legal representatives for immigrants nationwide,” explained Alemán Perfecto. “But within the government, there are roadblocks to approving applications of those seeking to become DOJ accredited. There just aren’t enough staff at the DOJ who work on the issue and can adjudicate applications. It creates a bottleneck and ultimately harms immigrants, especially vulnerable people in detention, who go without representation in the meantime if nonprofits don’t have enough qualified legal staff.”