A hundred people are sworn in at a naturalization ceremony hosted by the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park in celebration of the former president’s 100th birthday on Tuesday, Oct. 1, in Plains, Georgia. Migrants endure a lengthy and complex process to receive citizenship status. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)
Holding her two-year-old son with one hand while raising the other, Ana Aguayo-Jenkins recited an oath to become a naturalized United States citizen during a ceremony in Fort Smith last year.
This month, the Mexican immigrant posed for a photo with her husband and baby daughter after voting for the first time.
“It felt like a dream fulfilled and also part of the responsibility as a new citizen to participate in the democratic process,” she said.
When Donald Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election, Aguayo-Jenkins’ elation turned to concern. Not only has Trump promised to carry out mass deportations and end birthright citizenship, his pick for deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, has proposed a program to strip naturalized citizens of their U.S. citizenship.
“While it feels wildly outrageous, I still don’t know…So that builds a level of anxiety,” she said. “It also erodes a level of the beautiful promise that is this country formed by immigrants. It’s like we’re being selective about what immigrants get to stay versus those that don’t.”
According to the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2,528 Arkansans became naturalized citizens in 2022, less than 1% of 969,380 people naturalized nationally.
Cameron Murray always had an interest in politics, but it wasn’t until after the 2016 election that he decided to pursue U.S. citizenship so he could participate in the process.
“I think it just made me think harder about the role of more local politics,” he said. “Even outside of national elections, I can still actually have an impact if I vote in our local elections and become a little bit more engaged there.”
Murray was born in Saudi Arabia while his Scottish parents were working as nurses in the Middle East. He spent the first few years of his life in Scotland before his family moved to Arkansas for work. A citizen of the United Kingdom, Murray visited his home country frequently, and while he lived in the U.S. with a green card for decades, he couldn’t vote.
A green card, officially known as a Permanent Resident Card, allows an immigrant to live and work permanently in the U.S. The steps needed to apply for a green card vary depending on an individual’s situation, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
There are a variety of immigration statuses that allow immigrants to legally live and work in the U.S., but the country doesn’t have a good system for representation for people who aren’t citizens, he said.
Murray became a naturalized citizen during the pandemic and cast his first ballot during the 2022 midterms. This year was the first time he voted in a presidential election, and while Murray said he didn’t love the outcome, democracy means that sometimes you lose.
“Honestly, it’s another good thing about our system — the person who gets the most votes usually does win and they have a mandate from the voters to carry out what people think is important,” he said.
Sasha Mirzoyan became a U.S. citizen and voted for the first time in 2020. Although the Electoral College “throws away votes” with its winner-take-all system in states like Arkansas, Mirzoyan said it’s still important to participate because “it’s any citizen’s duty in any democratic society and a privilege.”
Mirzoyan, who is of Armenian and Russian heritage, grew up in Russia after his family fled an ethnic war in Azerbaijan. He attended schools in North America before meeting his wife and beginning his pathway to citizenship.
While there weren’t specific local issues driving him to the polls this year, Mirzoyan said nationally, he voted on the fundamental differences between the presidential candidates, one of whom “is just not a nice individual, to put it lightly,” he said.
“I’m disappointed overall in the presidential election result,” he said. “As an immigrant, it makes no sense whatsoever that people would choose this kind of negative narrative, but I understand why people bought that.
“[A]s an immigrant I can recognize certain beliefs that may cause people to build some negative views of certain types of immigrants. But at the end of the day, it’s kind of like, well, those things aren’t real because the immigrants that we’ve got here in America throughout the entire history were picking up slack. Period.”
Immigrants have worked “dirty jobs” and completed tasks citizens didn’t want to do for decades, Mirzoyan said. While many Americans are struggling financially, Mirzoyan rebutted arguments that immigrants are taking citizens’ jobs.
“It’s an absurd idea, and if you repeat the same negative story over and over again, you only have to say it so many times before it sounds like it’s really true,” he said.
Criminal charges
Mirzoyan said he sees parallels between the U.S. and his native Russia where he said President Vladmir Putin entered the political system as a way to avoid jail.
“It’s the same exact thing happening here — somebody who’s being charged for felonies and all that, at his age, he just doesn’t want to go to prison,” Mirzoyan said. “You’re better off trying to get as much power in your hands as possible, so that then you can go around pardoning yourself.”
Immigrants in Arkansas struggle to achieve better life they came to the U.S. to find
All court proceedings for Trump’s guilty conviction in New York are paused as the prosecution examines what his election means for the case. U.S. special counsel Jack Smith has also asked a federal judge to delay proceedings in Trump’s 2020 election interference case.
Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felonies of falsifying business records in a New York state court in May, is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 26. A judge has yet to rule on a motion to dismiss the case based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s July ruling that U.S. presidents enjoy full immunity from criminal charges for official acts.
Having lived in the U.S. for about 20 years, Mirzoyan said he “felt the pivot” in the country following President Barack Obama’s second term in office. While having a Black president was supposed to change the country’s “negative history of being anti-minority,” Mirzoyan said it instead energized some to develop policies that appear to be on a “white nationalist trajectory,” which could lead to the dismantling of democratic institutions.
One solution to anti-immigrant rhetoric is education, which can lead to tolerance, said Mirzoyan, who noted he was exposed to students and cultures from around the world by attending an international school.
Many Americans “don’t have an environment that will teach you that those are people just like you, albeit with different belief systems or whatever, and if you’re not exposed to it, you just will not form ideas that allow for acceptance and tolerance and other liberal values that I consider just human values,” he said.
Choosing citizenship
Naturalization can be a complicated, years-long process, so when someone becomes eligible, Aguayo-Jenkins said it may seem like a “no-brainer” to apply. But she said there are several factors to consider, including having enough money to pay for the application fees or being confident enough in English skills to pass an oral exam.
Additionally, as was the case for Aguayo-Jenkins, some immigrants wrestle with an identity crisis.
“Once I came to terms grappling through that identity crisis, I was so excited to move forward, and my husband was incredibly supportive,” she said.
Although he spent much of his life in Arkansas, Murray also said he felt culturally different from his peers.
“I guess you always have sort of a kinship with your family’s culture,” he said. “…You sometimes feel like you’re 50/50 or something, like not truly one or the other, but both.”
Murray said he didn’t have a real appreciation for his decision to become a U.S. citizen until he attended his naturalization ceremony and saw the other hopeful new Americans in the room.
“I think that’s something most citizens don’t have an innate understanding of is a lot of people are pretty down on U.S. politics and just the promise of America, but when I was there I was like ‘Man, this really matters to these people,’” he said.
Immigrants don’t have to become U.S. citizens, but for many, it’s a big deal, Murray said.
“I think it makes you feel more American because most people are just born into it, and you know we actually had to choose,” he said.
It’s that choice, Murray said, the separates the United States from other countries. While you can become a citizen of other nations, Murray said you’re often still viewed as an outsider. But here, he said, you can really become American, and part of being American is accepting the outcomes of democratic elections.
“I’m proud to have made that choice to become an American,” Murray said. “One thing I won’t say is that I’m going to leave the country. I still think this is a good place to be and there’s a reason a lot of people really want to be here, and we should be proud of that.”
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