Ongoing Citizenship Support at AFIRE
AFIRE remains committed to providing support to those seeking citizenship. From July 1, 2024 until June 30, 2025, we provided 7 Citizenship Application Preparation (CAP) Sessions, where we worked with 54 green card holders to identify and gather information for their citizenship application, or N-400 application. We also co-hosted 6 Citizenship Workshops where 45 green card holders we worked with directly were able to submit their citizenship applications for processing! We celebrate these milestones and make space to acknowledge anti-immigrant sentiment and the impact on our work. Below are some thoughts shared by AFIRE’s Citizenship Support Program Manager, Noel Henry on where the program is now and hopes for the future.
How are things going in your program right now?
NH: The program has done pretty well in fiscal year 2025 and that feels really good. The amount of people we have outreached, the amount of people we have assisted in naturalizing, and the organizational relationships we have created and maintained in the last year has expanded. Communication around what the Citizenship Support Program has to offer has streamlined our intake process, particularly in the ways that we have communicated how we’re able to support and ways we are not able to support. For areas we are not able to offer support, we’ve been able to comfortably refer folks to our North Collaborative partner organizations, as well as organizations like Japanese American Services Committee, Rizal Center, and Chinese American Service League. Through our efforts to create more intentional relationships with the various service-based nonprofit organizations in the Chicagoland area, we’ve established a collaborative foundation with other orgs that feels intentional and meets our community’s needs in this area of the work.
How are you feeling in this moment?
NH: It’s been an uphill battle to feel good about the state of this work for the past few years, especially in these last few months under the current administration. To be clear, the state of immigration in the US has been colossally stacked against immigrant communities since the inception of the country, regardless of the political party in power. In light of this, this current time definitely feels like a new, uncharted era, where the trust in US immigration has dramatically shifted in a net-negative and has impacted the ways that immigrants, and even folks visiting the states, move in and out of the country.
What gives you hope for your programming in the future?
NH: This country would simply not exist in the way it does without the millions of immigrants and their children that live, work, and study here. I have hope in our communities that fight for immigrant rights every day, and that more and more people reach out to us (AFIRE) to find ways to plug into our work. Regardless of the programming I am responsible for, this work will always carry on in one way or another and while it has been extremely difficult to navigate what we have been experiencing and witnessing in recent months, it is very clear that our communities will not back down. In spite of the powers that be exercising violence against our communities, I stay forever hopeful that our programming and the work beyond our programming will not only persevere, but thrive.
What is one thing you want to see for the Citizenship Support Program over the course of this year?
NH: I would love to see the program expand into providing education for our citizenship applicants revolving around the history of citizenship in the United States. This would not be a class for their citizenship interview, but education revolving around the history of immigration in the US and the ways that various communities, especially Filipinos, have been impacted by immigration policy here in the States.
