Biden’s Tone-Deaf Naturalization Tweaks

January 19, 2023

By Matt O’Brien

Shortly before the holidays, CBS News announced that the United States added a total of 1,023,200 citizens in 2022 – the highest number in 14 years and the third-largest conferral of citizenship on record. CBS attributes the increase to a Biden administration directive instructing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to promote naturalization and speed up the process.

But why does the Biden administration think it needs to encourage aliens to naturalize? Why are we trying to speed up the naturalization process? And why would we waste taxpayer dollars encouraging foreign nationals to apply for something that they are already requesting in droves?

There are two sets of answers to these questions. The first set is based on logic and on what is right. The second set of answers is only logical if you are an anti-borders globalist who believes all of the problems of the world have been caused by the United States.

The logical set of answers is as follows: We don’t have to promote U.S. citizenship and we don’t have to streamline the process to cater to the whims of foreign nationals. U.S. citizenship is about the closest thing in existence to a self-advertising product.

The United States is distinct from all other nations in the world. Americans are not bound together by ethnicity, tribal affiliation, language or loyalty to a monarch. Rather, our Republic is built on a set of ideas about personal freedom and the nature of the obligations that a government owes to its citizens. Those ideas and the social, political and economic freedom they have created resonate worldwide with those who wish to live in an environment of peace and prosperity.

So, what’s really going on? That’s where the anti-borders, One-World answer comes in: Americans who believe that U.S. citizenship is a precious gift that should be distributed carefully are a stumbling block to the globalist elites currently running this country. Votes cast in favor of America First policies by troublesome, native-born American voters who care about territorial sovereignty, border security and individual rights are problematic to the grand plan. Those votes tend to hinder the plans of One-World-Government advocates like Bill Gates and George Soros, who claim they know better than you do what is really good for you.

In reality, the Biden White House couldn’t care less about improving the lot of anyone from Africa, South Asia or Latin America. It is interested in mass migration solely to ensure a steady supply of newly-minted Americans who are likely to vote for Big Government expansionism and a borderless One-World agenda. But that’s bad news for the United States.

Per the results of a 2018 Gallup poll, there are more than 750 million people throughout the world who would migrate someplace other than their home country, if they could. The vast majority of those people would prefer the U.S. as their final destination.

A sizeable number of those 750 million have decided now is the time to try and make their dreams a reality – almost entirely due to the Biden administration’s intentional abandonment of any type of immigration enforcement or border control. The Border Patrol has encountered a record 2.4 million newly arrived illegal aliens along the frontier with Mexico during FY2022 alone – all of whom want a quick and easy “path to citizenship.” And USCIS currently has a mind-blowing backlog of over 8 million cases.

We cannot accommodate 750 million wannabe new Americans, nor should we. America is under no obligation to grant citizenship to any foreign national. Moreover because, as a matter of law, it’s virtually impossible to strip away U.S. citizenship once it is granted – even if a newly naturalized alien turns out to be a serial killer, terrorist or foreign spy – the U.S. has a vested interest in taking every opportunity available to fully vet and screen all applicants for citizenship. Claims that a particular administration is “removing bureaucratic barriers to naturalization” are almost always swamp-speak for cutting corners.

Drive-through naturalization is a menace to national security and public safety. It’s also the endgame: Destroy the border and erase any distinction between natural-born U.S. citizens and recent arrivals from abroad. It’s the fastest way to negate the political voice of those noisome patriots who believe that membership in the American polity is something special that shouldn’t be given out willy-nilly to anyone able to make it to the north bank of the Rio Grande.

Matt O’Brien is the director of investigations at the Immigration Reform Law Institute. Immediately prior to working for IRLI he served as an Immigration Judge. He has nearly 30 years of experience in immigration law and policy, having held numerous positions within the Department of Homeland Security.

Also published at American Liberty News, January 18, 2023.