Thread: Arizona Gets 3,000 New Citizens

Sept. 18, 2008

Arizona gets 3,000 new citizens

PHOENIX (AP) -- More than 3,000 people became Americans on Citizenship Day, bringing the total number of new citizens in Arizona to more than 15,000 in the past 12 months.

In the previous year, 10,500 people became citizens.

Nationally, 1.4 million people applied for citizenship in the year up to Sept. 30, 2007, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. That's nearly double from the year before.

In Arizona, there had been a backlog in naturalization applications because of a surge of people trying to gain citizenship in the past year.

The USCIS said the reasons for the surge include a desire by people to become citizens in time to vote in November, people rushing to apply before a significant hike in application fees and a controversy over illegal immigration, which motivated people eligible for citizenship to act.

The new Americans were previously citizens of nations as diverse as Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Croatia, Iceland and Mexico.

The USCIS said 1,545 took their oath in Wednesday morning's ceremony and another 1,545 did the same in the afternoon.
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Information from: The Arizona Republic, http://www.azcentral.com

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/ ... &TEMPLATE=

So legal immigration IS NOT impossible! Good. Now there's no excuse for people to come here illegally.

[quote="JohnDoe2"]Sept. 18, 2008


The new Americans were previously citizens of nations as diverse as Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Croatia, Iceland and Mexico.

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You can be sure that most of them were from Mexico.