EVICS family resource center provides free legal clinics for immigrants

Story by Barb Boyer Buck

Over the last year as America prepared to elect a new president, immigration was one of the most talked about political issues, including heated rhetoric about deporting those who are in the country without legal authorization.

On Oct. 30, a week before the election, during a campaign rally in Rocky Mount, N.C., Donald Trump promised that “on day one,” he would “launch the largest deportation program in American history.” He went on to say he would ban all “sanctuary cities.”

Although the word sanctuary never appeared in the bill, in 2019, Gov. Jared Polis signed HB19-1124 which protects individuals from being arrested or detaining solely on the basis of their immigration status. Additionally, the law prohibits law enforcement or any other authority from providing an individual’s immigration status to federal officials. Colorado is one of 11 states identified by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services and one of 13 states identified by the Center for Immigration Studies as a sanctuary state.

With the inauguration just two weeks away, Trump’s campaign threat has many people worried.

Immigrants make up 14% of the U.S. population, or roughly 46 million people out of a total of almost 335 million people. This includes about 11 million people who are undocumented, about 50% of whom have entered the country legally, but have overstayed their visa. The other half entered without authorization.

Together, immigrants and their U.S.-born children make up more than a quarter of U.S. inhabitants. According to the American Immigration Council, in 2022 there were 160,000 undocumented persons in Colorado, 70% of whom have lived in the state for 10 or more years. More than five million citizen children live with undocumented parents in the United States, 72,000 in Colorado alone.

The journey to citizenship

Becoming a U.S. citizen is an arduous process that can take years, first to be given the opportunity to immigrate, and then to go through the application process which includes a citizenship test.

Those wishing to become a U.S. citizen need to know how many voting members make up the House of Representatives, list the three branches of the government, and name the 13 original states.

They need to be able to recite information about major wars the United States has engaged in, what century the wars took place, and which president was in office during these wars.

They need to know what the stars and the stripes represent on the American flag, why the Colonists fought the British, and the name of at least one of the more than 20 American Indian tribes still living in the United States today.

The answers to up to 100 questions need to be studied and recited in English during the civics test to become an American citizen.

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