Anastasiya Pidhayna

LSP 200
Research Paper
Pathways to Citizenship
The hope for a better life has drawn millions of immigrants all over the
world into the United States. Many of the undocumented people who are in the
US are simply here to have a chance at the American Dream, and give their
children an opportunity for a brighter future. These immigrants choose to leave
their country of origin mainly because of either violence or economic issues. The
majority of the undocumented people living in the US hope to stop fearing
deportation and are trying to find pathways to get legalized, but there arent many
paths for them. Our immigration system is ineffective and many people enter the
country illegally because we do not give enough opportunities to the people who
want to enter legally, therefore the undocumented seek different pathways to
citizenship.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, an estimated 11.4
million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States in January 2012
compared to 11.5 million in January 2011. Refer to Table 1 below, which shows
how the number of immigrants has been steady for the most part. But what does
it mean to be an unauthorized resident? Well according to the Department of
Homeland Security an unauthorized resident immigrant population is defined as
all foreign-born non-citizens who are not legal residents. Most unauthorized
residents either entered the United States without inspection or were admitted

temporarily and stayed past the date they were required to leave. The
Department of Homeland and Security further did some research on the age and
sex of the immigrants and the results were that in 2012, 61 percent of
unauthorized immigrants were ages 25 to 44 years, and 53 percent were male
(see Table 2). Males accounted for 58 percent of the unauthorized population in
the 18 to 34 age group in 2012 while females accounted for 57 percent of the 45
and older age groups. This research shows that mostly younger individuals are
making the big move from their homeland to a new country in pursuit of better
opportunities. But, according to the United States Census Bureau, the total
population of the US is about 324 million and counting. If there are only 11 or so
million illegal immigrants then that accounts for only 3% of the whole population.
This shows that even though 11 million sounds like it could be a big problem, but
when compared to the overall population of the US, it appears to be minor.

Table 1: Unauthorized Immigrant Population 2000-2012

Table 2: Age by Sex of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population: January 2012

To return to the subject, one of the pathways to obtain legal status

includes marrying a U.S. Citizen or a Lawful Permanent Resident in order to
obtain a Green Card. According to the United States Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), around 25% of all Green Cards that were issued in 2007
were to the spouses of American Citizens. There is an overwhelming amount of
cases where there are couples who met over the internet or do not even speak a
language that both understand, but they are trying to receive a petition to get
married and obtain legal status. Not many American know that marriage fraud is
not a victimless, innocent crime ("Marriage Fraud Is a Federal Crime"). Ice
defined the types of marriage fraud as the following:

A U.S. citizen is paid, or asked to perform a favor, to marry a foreign

national;

Mail-order marriage where either the U.S. citizen or alien knows it is a

fraud;

Visa lottery fraudulent marriage; and,

A foreign national defrauds a U.S. citizen who believes the marriage is

legitimate.
Furthermore, ICE believes that many of the marriages are paid for by one

of the parties and that the marriage system has been learned by a lot of lawyers,
which consult and make money off of people who wish to perform such a
transaction. The lawyers help prepare the fake couples in order to pass the
interview and pose as a happy couple. They advise them to take pictures
together, get some friends as witnesses, open up joint bank accounts, and learn
all important dates and details such as their birthdays, engagement and wedding
details, etc. In theory, there arent many ways for the interviewer to realize that a
couple is not a real couple. One of the ways the scam might be revealed is if
someone messes up at the interview or they dont monitor their social media and
post things that dont fit into their story.
So, how fast can one become a citizen after marrying one? Well according
to the source "Marriage Fraud Is a Federal Crime", after one marries a US citizen
they obtain a Green Card. But unlike all other Green Card holders, those who
married a US citizen dont have to wait five years to apply. The process actually

only takes three years and if the person passes the interview and tests, then they
are granted citizenship.
The second pathway to citizenship is through an employer who can
sponsor an employee and therefore provide them with a Green Card. According
to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the employees are split up into
four categories. The first category contains priority workers such as professors,
researchers, multinational executives, etc. The second category contains
Professionals With Advanced Degrees or Persons With Exceptional Ability
(USCIS); these include aliens who are exceptional in their fields such as science
or business. The third category is professional or skilled worker, which contain
professionals with a baccalaureate degree, or someone with skilled labor. Lastly,
the fourth category includes special immigrants such as religious workers.
Pathways to citizenship through an employer are not as popular as
marriage, since the waiting period is unknown for most cases. The law also has a
limit on how many people can immigrate under this pathway. Some cases where
employers would do this for their workers is if someone was in the US on a
student visa, and was very skilled as what they do but had to return to their
homeland because of visa problems. If their field of study were something that is
in very high demand, then an employer would reach out to that person and invite
them to work for the company and go through the process of getting them a
green card. This method is also not popular because according to the USCIS
website, this method does not guarantee that the family of the applicant will

migrate with them. A spouse or unmarried children under 21 can apply as

dependents (USCIS), but besides that other family members can apply for
immigrant visas.
Moreover, the third course to legal status is by filing for asylum. Many
people seek protection from the United States government because they fear
they will be prosecuted or were already prosecuted due to race, religion,
nationality, being part of a particular social group, or sharing a particular political
opinion. According to the USCIS website, this option isnt as widely used
because for the illegal immigrants already in the country, they cannot apply for
asylum if they are applying for permission to work as well. Under these
circumstances, anyone who filed for asylum will usually be granted a green card
in about a year after applying.
Lastly, someone who applied as a victim of crime can be granted
citizenship. According to USCIS.gov, there are many qualifying criminal activities
that would name someone a victim of crime. Such activities as human trafficking,
domestic violence, sexual assault, unlawful criminal restraint, and many more are
part of the qualifying criminal activity. The crime have had to occur in the US or
violated US laws. The government has set a limit of how many petitions it can
accept and that number is 10,000 each year (USCIS). Ten thousand might not
seem like a large number, but to think that there are ten thousand horrible crimes
happening is terrifying.

After learning about the different pathways to citizenship, it became clear

to me that our country is desperately in need of a new system to help us deal
with our immigration issue. Many people are standing up against immigration and
with the Presidential Campaign having two candidates who think different on this
issue it will be very difficult to make decisions. In my opinion, a new system must
be created to control whom and how can obtain citizenship. Granting citizenship
to the 11.4 million undocumented workers will just cause chaos and the same
situation will repeat itself in a short time. As one article mentioned, A pathway to
citizenship for illegal immigrants is blanket amnesty that not only pardons those
whove broken the law, but also rewards them. Rewarding lawbreakers by
handing them the very thing theyre after can only encourage more people to
break the law. ("Should Undocumented Immigrants Get a 'Path to
Citizenship?") . Therefore it would not be clever to grant citizenship to all the
people who have broken the law, because it will encourage others to do it to
thinking that in the future they will get away with it.
My suggestions for this new system will be to combine some of Trumps
ideas and some of Clintons. In order to develop a new system, some sort of
border needs to go up between the US and Mexico, and more agents need to be
patrolling those areas. A new law should come out that anyone who is illegal and
commits a violent crime will be deported back to his or her country. Furthermore,
for the people who are already in here, they will get interviews and will have a
chance to prove that they are citizens who deserve to stay in the country. These
people will also be given temporary status and permission to work until they wait

for their hearing. America is the land of opportunity and therefore it needs to
allow more people to come here and build a life. If they screen the incoming
immigrants then they can allow more of them to come in. This way, the jobs that
are done by the undocumented workers, will be taken over by the incoming legal
immigrants, who later will move on to better jobs and it will be a whole cycle. This
cycle will consist of people progressing from their jobs and advancing as
individuals.
In conclusion, there are four legal pathways to citizenship or becoming a
legal worker in the United States. The first pathway is to marry a U.S. Citizen or a
Lawful Permanent Resident to obtain a Green Card. The second pathway is that
an employer may sponsor someone to obtain a green card by employing them.
The third pathway to obtain legal status is if you file for asylum from your country
of origin. Lastly, a visa can be granted for victims of crime. The most favored
method is marrying a US citizen to obtain a Green Card, and then move on to
receiving citizenship. This method is the most difficult for officers conducting the
interviews to determine whether the marriage is true or is a sham. The United
States is desperately in need of a new system to control the 11.4 million
undocumented workers already in the country, as well as to continuous addition
of more immigrants. My proposed plan is to start out by combining ideas from
both Trump and Hilarys campaigns. From Trump, we can take the idea of
securing some sort of border that is better than what we have, but also not a wall
that Mexico wont pay for. We can also have severe consequences for anyone
who is illegal and commits a violent crime. In addition to this, from Hilarys

campaign we can take in more people if our system is organized and more
controlled and if we can guarantee that the people entering our country will only
benefit it. In the end, America is the land of opportunity and of the free, and it
should continue being this way.

Works Cited
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Just Semantics." NPR. NPR, 30 Jan. 2013. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.
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Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United
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https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ois_ill_pe_
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Sept. 2016. http://upfront.scholastic.com/issues/01_11_16/shouldundocumented-immigrants-get-a-path-to-citizenship/

USCIS. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Oct. 2016. http://www.uscis.gov/
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