Potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants may secure United States citizenship ahead of the 2020 presidential election, adding a bloc of first-time foreign-born voters to the electorate.
After months of delayed naturalization ceremonies due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency has restarted the ceremonies. So far this month, at least 2,000 immigrants were naturalized.
Other immigrants, who were supposed to secure citizenship this year, are suing the federal government in a demand that the ceremonies immediately commence so they can vote in the 2020 election.
Before the crisis, USCIS was naturalizing about 60,000 immigrants every month — with nearly a million new citizens set for this year, the overwhelming majority of which would be able to vote in the election.
Legal immigration levels — where 1.2 million immigrants secure Green Cards and nearly a million obtain naturalized citizenship annually — has driven up the nation’s foreign-born voting population to record levels.
In February, Pew Research Center revealed that for the first time since 1970, one-in-ten U.S. voters will have been born outside the country in the 2020 election. High legal immigration levels have also ensured that Hispanic voters will replace black Americans as the largest voting minority for the first time in U.S. history.
Research from The Atlantic, the New York Times, and Axios has determined that Democrats hugely benefit from a booming foreign-born voting population.
The Atlantic‘s Ronald Brownstein reveals nearly 90 percent of House congressional districts with a foreign-born population above the national average are won by Democrats. This means every congressional district with a foreign-born population exceeding 14 percent has a 90 percent chance of electing Democrats and only a ten percent chance of electing a Republican.
For example, among native-born Americans, Trump won 49 percent to Clinton’s 45 percent, according to exit polling data. Among foreign-born residents, Clinton dominated Trump, garnering 64 percent of the immigrant population’s vote compared to Trump’s mere 31 percent.
The U.S. is on track to import about 15 million new foreign-born voters in the next two decades due to existing legal immigration levels. Those 15 million new foreign-born voters include about eight million who will arrive through chain migration, where newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.