FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON, D.C.— During the National Immigrant Inclusion Conference (NIIC), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ur Jaddou, USCIS Chief of the Office of Citizenship, Partnership, and Engagement, Eva Millona, and USCIS Chief of Staff, Felicia Escobar Carrillo, will be meeting with immigration advocates from the National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA) today.
The meeting comes after Betsy Lawrence, Deputy Assistant to the President for Immigration at the White House, announced that the Biden administration is reconvening the Task Force on New Americans. The Task Force will be run by the Domestic Policy Council within the White House, with USCIS playing a critical role.
The meeting with USCIS leadership and NPNA comes the week after USCIS announced that it naturalized 1,023,200 people in the Fiscal Year 2022 – the most it naturalized since 2008. USCIS also made a policy change that naturalization applicants who apply on December 12 and onwards will be able to automatically renew their lawful permanent residency, or green card, in case they continue to wait in the naturalization application backlog.
“USCIS has answered NPNA’s and our campaign partners’ call to naturalize two million new citizens by the end of 2022 by naturalizing 1,878,200 people over the last two fiscal years, or 93% of our campaign objective,” said Nicole Melaku, executive director of NPNA, who last year launched the “Naturalize 2 Million by 2022” campaign and this year launched the “New American Voters” campaign to encourage newly naturalized citizens to vote. “We look forward to meeting with USCIS Director Jaddou and Chief Millona to celebrate the progress made by the agency as well as uplift the NPNA network’s priorities and policy recommendations on increasing access to citizenship, including in the upcoming fee schedule rule, further reducing backlogs, and expanding immigration legal services.”
The annual NIIC, the largest conference in the country focused on immigrant and refugee issues, celebrates its 15th anniversary this year with a powerful in-person, three-day event at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor in Maryland from December 11-13, 2022. It will be the first gathering of the entire sector supporting immigrants and refugees following this year’s consequential midterm elections and takes place just days after the final Senate runoff contest in Georgia.
CONTACT:
Mynellies Negrón | (703) 585-6727 | mynellies@communicationsshop.us
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The National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA) is a national multiethnic, multiracial organization that represents 60 of the largest regional immigrant and refugee rights organizations in 40 states. Its members provide large-scale services for the communities, to leverage their collective power and expertise for a national strategy. Learn more at partnershipfornewamericans.org.