Mayor Rahm Emanuel is one of nearly 50 U.S. mayors and country executives who delivered a letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Lee Francis Cissna demanding that the agency reduce the backlog of over 753,000 citizenship applications and reduce the time it currently takes to process citizenship applications down to six months, on behalf of a quarter of a million immigrants with pending applications who reside in their cities. At the end of March 2018, Chicago had a backlog of 27,481 citizenship applications with some lawful permanent residents (“LPRs”) waiting as long as 20 months for their applications to be processed.

“The Second Wall created by the massive USCIS backlog is hurting the communities we serve and Chicago as a whole. It is preventing tens of thousands of immigrants from participating in our democracy. We commend Mayor Emanuel and the 50 U.S. mayors for urging USCIS to reduce this backlog and continue to support our immigrant community,” says Raul Raymundo, CEO & Co-Founder of The Resurrection Project, a member of the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), who spearheaded this effort with Mayor Emanuel. Since January 2016, the backlog has increased by over 93 percent. In just the last quarter of this fiscal year, the backlog increased by 23,952 applications, reaching the current backlog of 753,352 applications. In 2017, for the second year in a row, USCIS failed to naturalize more LPRs with pending applications that it actually naturalized. The letter requests a comprehensive and detailed plan describing how USCIS will achieve backlog reduction and a commitment to share the plan with mayors across the country.