These Bay Area communities are most vulnerable to Trump's immigration crackdowns

San Francisco Chronicle​

2 days ago

With the Trump administration clamping down on immigration, experts say some Bay Area immigrants may pursue one of the surest ways to protect their ability to remain in the country: becoming a citizen.
That is, if they want to — or even can. Just 25% of Bay Area residents born in Guatemala, excluding children of American parents, are citizens. The same was true for 35% of Mexico-born residents. Meanwhile, nearly 60% of residents born in China and Nicaragua are naturalized.
Still, overall more than half of the Bay Area's foreign-born population has already won citizenship, 2023 data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey shows, similar to the national figure. That means many of the region's immigrants are likely protected from deportation and scrutiny from border officials, said Bill Hing, a professor of law and migration studies at the University of San Francisco — though there have been some exceptions.
As President Donald Trump continues to restrict immigration, more people who are eligible for naturalization will likely pursue that option, Hing said. It might not be the first time — naturalizations rose during Trump's first term. Naturalized citizens are less likely than lawfully present immigrants to report fearing detention or deportation, though about 1 in 4 say they are worried for themselves or a family member, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll.
Hing expects a particularly large surge in people born in Mexico, Central America and South America to seek U.S. citizenship, hoping to avoid getting caught in Trump's mass deportation plans. Many immigrants from those countries who can pursue citizenship often don't, due to a variety of factors. Deportation fears could change that for some immigrants.
'The kind of enforcement that's going on right now is racially profiling those groups,' Hing said.

The reasons some groups have relatively low naturalization rates vary, said Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Many immigrants from Honduras, for example, arrived in the past two decades, meaning they've had less time to seek citizenship. Even among groups for whom naturalization is more common, such as China- and India-born immigrants, few of those who came to the U.S. in the past two decades are citizens. Indian immigrants in particular can face long wait times for permanent legal status — the longest of any nationality, according to some research.
Naturalization applicants must have a green card for at least five years or be married to a U.S. citizen or permanent resident for at least three years, with exceptions for members of the military.

Even with those hurdles cleared, there are often others, including language barriers. And undocumented immigrants are, of course, completely ineligible to become citizens. That likely explains why so few people among certain foreign-born groups, such as those born in Guatemala, are naturalized, McGhee said.
While the Trump administration has targeted immigrants who are in the U.S. lawfully, such as by targeting international students, the crackdown will undoubtedly affect undocumented immigrants the most.
'There's a lot in flux and in play, but there's no question that the flexibility and range of options for the Trump administration are greater on the undocumented side,' McGhee said.
There are additional reasons immigrants from some countries might be more likely to be citizens than others. Bay Area nonprofits previously encouraged Chinese-born residents to become citizens so they could gain the right to vote and become a political force, Hing said. The effort, made possible by the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Acts in 1943, was a success. More than 90% of Bay Area Chinese-born residents who immigrated to the U.S. from 1970 to 1990 are citizens.

Whether immigrants seek to become citizens also depends on the situation in their home country, Hing said. For example, Taiwan's political upheaval in the 20th century, and now its tensions with China, may give immigrants born there more of an incentive to seek naturalization. But those factors may matter less for immigrants from wealthy, stable countries like Japan, Singapore and Australia, especially for those who plan to travel often (or ultimately return) to their birth country.
But anti-immigrant sentiment can also lead to an increase in naturalization, as Hing predicts will happen again. After California Proposition 187 was passed in 1994, cutting undocumented immigrants' access to social services, the state saw a surge in naturalization applications.