well going back to know your rights new jersey on your holes ronald potter and today we continue our discussions on immigration issues once again we have here great friend and mark my favorite guest david and today we're going to discuss naturalization and then let's get right into that hall if i can start with you tell us what naturalization is and what the process is ok sure so naturalization is when a lawful permanent resident of the united states applies for u s citizenship and so it's a process of becoming a naturalized u s citizen the process entails filling out an application and the eligibility requirements are that you must be a lawful permanent resident of the united states for at least five years or three years if you're married to a u s citizen you must be eighteen or over you must be a person of good character have continuous and physical presence in the united states so these are the eligibility criteria has to file for an hour to a station so what is the process how do you go about  becoming ok so once you've satisfied these requirements so you've been a permanent resident for five years in the united states you've been physically present for half that time and you have continuous residence you make a formal application process and you file that application which is filed on form and four hundred with the us c i s us citizenship and immigration service there's also a filing fee with that the filing fee is now seven hundred twenty five dollars you submit the application you get called in for an actual ization exam part of becoming a citizen you have to pass the english test so that entails being able to read speak and write english and there's also a civics test component so you have to answer questions about u s government and u s history and if you pass the naturalization exam then you get sworn in to become a u s citizen which then entitle you to a u s passport and so on and so forth so are there any responsibilities that come with becoming a u s citizen well there are rights and responsibilities so some of the responsibilities include you have to defend the u s constitution you have to if you're called to serve in the armed forces you have to be willing to do that you also have forego other foreign allegiances so you have to give up your citizenship basically of your you know country of birth and some of the rights of becoming a citizen include you have the ability to vote ok so that's you know that's major you also can serve on a federal jury ok you can also apply for some federal jobs so these are some of the rights of becoming a s citizen and the key also for a lot of people is you have the ability to petition for other family members to come to the united states so you know that's that's a big one well davis they all gave us a good course is different it has to do with physical presence in the united states oftentimes we're dealing with individuals who once they get their green cards they frequently travel outside the united states for extended periods of time and then they will come and they'll ask us questions about you know can we apply for citizenship and they can apply for citizenship but they have to have accumulated physical presence in the u s for at least one half of the five years if they're waiting five years right now one half of the three years if they're waiting three years another new ones that i've encountered has to do with the fact that mindy vidual sometimes is not able to learn they're not able to learn the civics or they're not a to write english  and the government does allow of course for what's called a medical disability waiver it's done and six forty eight and oftentimes we have to work with the doctors to explain to them what exactly needs to go into this type of  n a report to ensure that the reason the reason why the person can't learn is tied to something that is you know a medical situation that they may have been there in their background so these are some of the some of the nuances that we've encountered in obviously this is a very important process for those who are drug trying to become now tremendous absolutely tremendous yeah i think i just also want to go to one of those that  hell of mention before which is she had mentioned giving up the citizenship from their home kind of treat one of the big questions which we often get has to do with dual citizenship and there are very few countries in the world where you actually have to relinquish a passport from your home country so you can actually hold on to the passports from the foreign countries so for example you can be a dual citizen we get this a lot of time from canadians who are in the united states who made marry us citizen and they've had the green card for the requisite period of time and they say oh well you know if i become a u s citizen do i have to give up the canadian passport and they don't they don't have to give up the canadian passport they actually can travel with both passports so it becomes an issue it's kind of interesting when you become a u s citizen it's your you're a u citizen in the eyes of the united states and so when you travel abroad it really is a question of where you're traveling with you are a citizen of that country or not you always be a citizen of the united states but if you're in the u s then you're deemed to be a writer so that's part group environment i ask because i know that must be a joyful time for you to acquire such a great accomplishment tell us a little bit about the relationship between green card job holders and the naturalization process ok well i think that we kind of touched upon that in the beginning when we talked about how do you become a naturalized citizen so first you hamley base ok so there's really no difference you know the requirement is you must be a lawful permanent resident be there for five years or three years if you're married to a u s citizen to be able to apply for naturalization the process is no different if you have your green card based on employment based or family based are there any red flags that pop up in the process that we should be aware of sure you know part of the naturalization process is you must demonstrate good moral character so if you have any  if you haven't paid your taxes if you hold back child support you know these are issues that would demonstrate a lack of good moral character so it's very important that if you have any of these issues that you speak with you know qualified attorney to go over these things so that you don't run into problems not only with acquiring u s citizenship but potentially losing your green card you know the view she runs into an area of law which sort of there's a requirement for good moral character and they have to demonstrate good moral character for five years so what for example what about not paying thirty parking tickets well i guess it depends on the officer right if i mean parking tickets generally are not an issue traffic tickets generally not an issue d w i those are more of an issue if you have one d w i i've been successful in being able to overcome a d w i even though it was within the five years several de wyze i don't know then right here really in an area where i think that you would probably want to wait the full five years before you file for citizenship so is that does the  environment which seems to be a very anti immigration environment in this country does it one impact the naturalization process and secondly specifically does it bring on an ad why don't you apply for many years i told him and then he moved down to texas he was he was driving a car down in texas one morning he got a fair he was dry being in a neighborhood and a little girl darted out in front of his car and it was an accident of course but it was vehicular homicide and because of that and he didn't he was not a citizen he was a green card holder and he was deported now had he listened to me and gotten his citizenship then that accident wouldn't have ended up resulting in a deportation so you know it's a difference of the way a crime is treated as against a u s citizen versus the way it's treated as against a person who has a green card so it's always best that when you qualify for citizenship to go ahead and do it what wine why not do it especially if you're going to be living and working in the united states i mean it makes sense to do that sure and the opportunity to vote you know and i think that a lot of people who i'm talking to now feel that you know things may not be in the situation that we have with the government being in such a tumultuous mess if they had the opportunity to go to the polls in the last election and to have their voice heard so course that's a very strong reason that pulls people to become u s citizens well this is a good time to take a pause for a break expunged you don't have to disclose this that it's a race from your history while they might be true in terms of when you apply for jobs you know if you had an expungement it's not true for the naturalization process even if you haven't expunged record you must disclose that on the application so that's important for for people to understand that you have to answer that properly in the application have you ever been arrested yes or no  arrested it probably wouldn't come up in the records track if the record was expunged but it's a question of whether or not you're lying so it's not the question isn't you know do you have been expunged record it's have you ever been arrested so it must be disclosed so that would be considered a lie right and then again it goes against you know putting all the arctura yeah and i think it's important to also point out to the viewers that the way it works with any crime in immigration is that you can't get rid of it you can't expunge crime so it's for non immigrants for a green card for citizenship if you have a crime it cannot be made to go away by way of an expungement so i think that's a great point yeah and there and there are several types of crime so i think that it's important to let the viewers know that you have a couple of different you have what are called de minimus crimes where if you have individuals who are charged with less than a year of jail time then those are called aggravated felonies which are very bad crimes and so each crime depending upon its classification impacts on an individual's ability to get a particular type of status or their ability to enter the united states or not enter the united states aggravated felonies make people actually removable so you know so assume these are you know the classification of crime is very important what's also important is that obviously criminal law is different from state to state so if you have a crime in let's say pennsylvania that crime may be interpreted a certain way in pennsylvania but may not necessarily be interpreted the same way you know for federal purposes so you have to do to the question itself is there a gray area what we often do is we say the best thing that you would want to do is and list the services of a criminal lawyer who's working with an immigration lawyer to analyze that crime and the potential impact on a person's immigration status  or or to find an immigration lawyer who actually has a background in criminal law so those are those are the this is again has become a sort of subspecialty within the immigration field let's talk about what happens if your application is denied ok well that is going to depend on the reason for that smile so let's say you're not able to pass the naturalization exam you failed a civics test then you have the they do give you the option to retake the test you have another opportunity if it's denied because of an issue with maybe good moral character then you could wait another i guess five years and  you have the ability to reapply what are there any other reasons for the now about occasion that and then you give us an example of how you would resolve so the one requirement of course in becoming a citizen is having continuous and physical presence so i think i've seen these issues come up with clients that decide to file their own application maybe they're not that familiar with exactly how this works with continuous and physical presence so they may not actually meet the eligibility requirements because they traveled outside the united states more than six months which breaks the continuous residency requirement which means now you have to start over the counting of the five years so that's really where i've i've i've come across that let's go to another issue if you don't mind the the minds of americans about immigrants what is this so chain migration is a derogatory term that's used by president trump to define how  permanent residents and citizens petition for their relatives to come to the united states so he says that it's like a loophole to allow an educated or qualified criminals into the country through family based immigration you know i mean that that's not true you know in practice just because in reality if you become a citizen you don't automatically get to bring your relatives over to the united states it's a process we have already systems in place that allow for sponsorship of family members based on the degree of relationship so for instance u s citizens can petition for immediate relatives which include their spouses  children and parents lawful permanent residents can petition their spouses children under twenty one and then adult sons and daughters and the u s citizens also have the ability to petition for their marri children and also their siblings so these are the family relatives that are able to be sponsored you know you hear stuff in the news constantly about chain migration about bringing nieces and nephews grandparents aunts and uncles but you know that's not part of our quota system and they're already caps on the number of different types of positions that can be granted and then they're also  limits on per country limitations so as to and countries are oversubscribed mexico philippines and india so these country there's huge visa backlogs so for instance if you're a u s citizen from india and you want to petition your brother or sister you know that weight is you know decades your sister or brother potentially are waiting outside the united states for possibly what twenty years i think it is before their will to emigrate so this chain migration concept is just you know not really the reality of our immigration system and the way you can check these backlogs is there's a document that's put out by the u s department of state it's called the visa bulletin and there are charts which show the backlogs depending upon the family classification the training pawing in so you can look to see when a person has applied and then they get an approval of their application they can track the date against what they're currently processing and you can try to figure out how long it's going to take so he's now saying is that some of these classifications for example philippine brother sister i think is backlog like almost fifteen twenty years right so it's a tremendous backlog but it of shows how crazy what the president is saying and i guess i make the word used as derogatory it's really a derogatory way of describing a system that's really in place and that gives a roadmap to the government about how this is all going to work are there are advocates or immigration attorneys like your so who are doing other things besides appearing on on shows like this to correct this incorrect information that's coming from the president i would assume i would assume so i mean i've read many you know many editorials i think a lot of people are writing there's an excellent article that i read over the weekend about the el salvador an issue with c p s and you know what people going to be doing and i think that the author of that article really did a nice job of laying out all of the options that were available and sort of taking on the government with regard to you know why is this being done away with and so on there are other n g o s i think n g o s have been very active i know that there was a march i think on saturday or friday you know for the dhaka people you know who are looking to get some guidance from the government on what the future of doctors i'd like to add there's also a law which is the american immigration lawyers association which is an organization that both david and i are members of and so they have  really great resources for advocates for individuals that are concerned about what's going on it's a very good resource for up and coming things that are taking place all earth how to get involved in your community so that's also a great tool we do another thing which is kind of a back door way to i guess you could say back to a way of explaining and that is when we go to the actually next week we're going to be going to the u s consulate office in india and we're going to be speaking to the consular officials and a lot of the word that they get from that trickles down i guess without them actually reading a lot of the stuff is you know obviously it becomes sort of slanted in the direction th administration wants to take so what we do is we sit with the officer we kind of feel like it's an opportunity for us to explain things and explain the process and how you know how it affects us in the trenches and so it's almost like an educational opportunity talking to the administration itself obviously it's not the big administration but it's up piece of the administration we deal with on a regular basis or gives us the opportunity to to educate them right and one of the reasons that we been doing what really is turning out to be a series on on immigration is to try to bring some clarity rick learning all the confusing images words language policies and communication is not really travel ban and comments on immigration and it impact on this naturalization process i don't i don't know that the travel ban necessarily has had an impact well maybe it has had an impact in so far as obviously folks who i mean i think that it certainly had a chilling effect where folks are coming to us and saying let's apply for citizenship because we don't want to have problems when we travel so he travel as u s citizens then we don't have to worry yeah whereas you know although i think that the last thing that that i had read at least on the travel ban was that people who are holding green cards shouldn't have a problem but you know i think what it does is it's almost a it's a stimulus right to mobilizing people who have actually made the effort to take steps to become naturalized citizens well we're approaching the end of the shown as usual i would like for you to  tell us if there's anything else that our viewers should know that would be hopeful or clarify what they need to know about naturalization process i think one of the things that we we should have mentioned earlier is that when you apply for naturalization you actually have the ability to legally change your name so that's important first for some people so part of the natural processing gives you the option to legally change your name so you don't have to go through a separate procedure with the courts down the road to formally change your name a lot of people don't realize that the naturalization process is a court procedure it's done in the federal courts so it's sort of you know where the federal court and the u s department of homeland security are joining hands and i think it's really important to point out to anyone who's doing naturalization that they make absolutely certain that when they see their just a whole big long but it's best to make sure all that information is accurate before you sign your naturalization certificate you're given the opportunity to check the information so just make sure that your name is spelled properly birthday birth date is done properly so you want to make sure that