DHS proposes raising citizenship fee to $1,280, ending waivers

Mount Vernon naturalization ceremonies to mark Fourth of July

George Washington’s former residence at Mount Vernon, Virginia, will host naturalization ceremonies on July 4 as part of the nationwide America 250 celebration. The events are among dozens of naturalization ceremonies taking place across the country as the United States marks its 250th anniversary.

Dahni Tsuboi, chief executive officer of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that provides citizenship application workshops and legal services, said the Mount Vernon setting carries symbolic weight because the nation’s founders were themselves individuals who chose to build a new sense of peoplehood after leaving their country of origin. “Every time somebody becomes a naturalized citizen, they are re-enacting that founding moment,” Tsuboi said. “It’s very American.”

The celebrations come as the Department of Homeland Security proposed last week raising citizenship application fees to $1,280 for online filings or $1,330 on paper and ending fee waivers. Tsuboi described the contradiction between the festivities and the proposal. “Here we are celebrating our democracy while at the same time proposing a formal act that would make joining our democracy financially inaccessible for the most vulnerable people,” Tsuboi said.

Since October 2025, applicants have also faced a tougher civics test. Tsuboi said some people who sought legal consultation at her organization have since chosen not to proceed with the naturalization process, citing fear, cost and other barriers amid immigration enforcement actions that have included permanent residents and citizens.

The naturalization process has grown more burdensome under the Trump administration. If approved, the fee increases would represent a significant rise in the cost of naturalization. Tsuboi described what naturalization represents for many applicants. “It’s survival,” she said.

In June, Yesica McKeone became a US citizen at a naturalization ceremony in Pasadena, California. The 32-year-old mother of two, who left Michoacán, Mexico, with her family at age two and settled in California as a permanent resident, raised her hand and took the oath of allegiance alongside thousands of others. Some wept. “I’m finally here,” McKeone said she remembered thinking. But the pride was tempered by federal immigration arrests in her surrounding neighborhood. As a new citizen, she said she feels more legally protected but also conflicted. “You see around you people constantly being pushed out,” McKeone said. “It’s just weird times.”

Kwan “Dawn” Tang, 32, born in Hong Kong, took the naturalization oath in June after nearly a decade living and working in the US as a student and permanent resident. The everyday friction of permanent residency — extra screenings at airports — pushed him to start the process. “At some point, I just wanted to get it over with and leave,” Tang said about the ceremony. “I just wanted to go back and be in my little shell.”

Tang became a citizen last month after six months from application to oath. He plans to celebrate the Fourth of July with a citizen-themed party in a park, cheekily dubbed “Dawn of a New Citizen” as a play on his nickname, complete with stars-and-stripes decor and a trivia game using the civics test questions he had to master to take the oath. “Let’s see how much his friends know about the US,” Tang said with a laugh.

The same questions about who can become a citizen have surfaced before in US history. The first naturalization law of 1790 limited citizenship to “free white persons.” In an 1858 speech in Chicago, Abraham Lincoln said anyone who believed in the Declaration of Independence’s principle that “all men are created equal” was an American. In the 1920s, Congress built a restrictive quota system that narrowed immigration from much of the world, which the 1965 Hart-Celler Act dismantled by ending national-origins quotas.

As the US enters its 250th year, the nation is again confronting those questions, said Rogers M Smith, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Smith said Americans are living in a period more like the restrictive period of the 1920s than any time since, though recent immigration restrictions have largely come through executive action rather than Congress and may not reflect a broader national consensus. “We are a country that right now is sending signals that Americans are putting America first,” Smith said. “And not being as welcoming as in the past.”

Compared with other countries such as Qatar and Kuwait, the United States overall has an accessible naturalization process, said Irene Bloemraad, a political science and sociology professor at the University of British Columbia. “The United States is remarkable in saying: ‘Come here. Spend some time here. Learn a little bit about us, and then you can become one of us,’” Bloemraad said. “You can become a citizen.”

McKeone said she plans to celebrate her citizenship milestone on the Fourth of July, marking the nation’s semiquincentennial. For her, the ceremony closed a long chapter of uncertainty, but her sense of true belonging remains tenuous in a country with narrowing pathways to immigration and citizenship.