By Ling-Mei Wong
Free citizenship clinics attract plenty of folks, as the Greater Boston Citizenship Initiative can attest. With seven large group workshops in 2011, each event drew 150 to 200 registered individuals eligible for U.S. citizenship. About 20 smaller clinics also took place, resulting in more than 2,000 citizenship applications completed in 2012.
GBCI was launched by Boston-based Fish Family Foundation in May 2011. Immigration had long been a priority for the foundation and it identified naturalization as the best way to make a difference.
“Currently 200,000 individuals in Massachusetts are eligible as legal permanent residents,” said Sher Omerovic, GBCI program manager. “In the last two years, only 15,000 to 20,000 individuals have naturalized. We ourselves have completed more than 2,000 applications.”
Sher Omerovic, GBCI program manager. (Image by Ling-Mei Wong.)
At the citizenship clinics, individuals are screened by volunteers to make sure they have all the necessary documents. They complete paperwork at the application station, review it at the quality control station and copy all documents at the final packaging station. Snacks are served and processing services are free. Low-income individuals can qualify for a waiver toward the $680 application fee as well.
“We do it from beginning to end,” Omerovic said. “We give applicants a complete and packaged envelope, then tell them to go to the post office and mail it.”
The foundation sought agencies with naturalization services and then pooled their resources. Six organizations are part of the GBCI collaborative: the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, Centro Latino, the Irish International Immigrant Center, the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers, Jewish Vocational Services, and the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. Each agency does its own outreach to targeted communities, then registers eligible individuals for citizenship clinics.
“We are only able to do this with the collaborative,” Omerovic said. “We would not able to do with a single organization.”
GBCI is unusual for being funded solely by the Fish Family Foundation. “Others national partners with similar models are funded by multiple foundations,” Omerovic said. “There is no national model when one foundation took on this issue, then funded it all by itself.”
The collaborative’s efforts have paid off, surpassing its goal of 2,000 applications a year. “I know that were it not for the program, I would have had a difficult time gaining citizenship like many others do,” wrote Sheriffa Ali Diaz. “So, I thank you and am forever grateful that you gave me the chance to succeed in the future. A program like this only comes around every so often if at all, and it is something that is needed because everyone deserves the chance to live the American dream.”
For more information, please visit gbcinitiative.org.
This post is also available in: Chinese
Open all references in tabs: [1 – 3]