Demand for citizenship classes on the rise in Sonoma County

Sergio Ballinas sat in the back of the classroom, waiting for instructor Bridget Hayes to wave the next numbered card. She selected one with the number 9 written on it.

“Nine supreme court justices,” students said in unison during a recent citizenship class at the Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa. Moments later Hayes flashed a card with the number 435 on it. The class answered that it stood for the number of voting members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The exercises are part of the preparation that Ballinas and his classmates undergo each week in advance of the formal test and interview they must they must pass before they can become U.S. citizens.

Catholic Charities is among the few agencies locally that prepare immigrants for the exam and assist with their naturalization paperwork. It currently provides two classes a year in Santa Rosa and Napa County that each draw about 40 to 50 students, said Mary Lowe, the agency’s naturalization representative. The classes are offered in English.

The nonprofit will be doubling the number of classes it offers within the next two years thanks to a $250,000 grant it recently received from the Department of Homeland Security. Enrollment only seems to be growing, Lowe said.

“The phone has been ringing off the hook,” she said. “There’s a need.”

Agencies that provide citizenship services nationwide could see an even greater spike in demand if President Barack Obama after the election takes action on immigration and creates a path to citizenship for the millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

More than 8.5 million immigrants living in the country were eligible for citizenship in 2012, though fewer than 800,000 went through the process, according to the latest Department of Homeland Security numbers.

If statistics hold, nearly 60 percent of the remainder eventually will take the leap - a percentage that has been slowly rising, according to the Associated Press.

The the biggest barrier is the cost of the process, now at $680 - nearly double what it was seven years ago.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had to raise its fees to cover its bills, according to a spokeswoman in San Francisco. The agency is funded by the fees it collects, not taxpayer dollars.

Fee waivers are available for some applicants for naturalization.

California Human Development, the Santa Rosa-based nonprofit, for years has helped immigrants for a nominal fee fill out the naturalization applications, which can be complicated and if filled out incorrectly can result in the applicant losing their money. But the agency saw a significant drop in the number of applicants after the government fees were raised and the economy began to tank, said Kathy Differding, immigration and citizenship services manager for California Human Development.

“The main hurdle is financial,” said Chris Paige, the nonprofit’s chief executive officer.

Ballinas, 45, a native of Mexico, started attending the citizenship class offered by Catholic Charities in August. The father of three American-born children said his younger brother, Manuel, encouraged him to enroll after he went through the class and obtained citizenship earlier this year.

Immigrants often want to become American citizens to travel freely and for longer periods abroad, petition for family members to come live with them in the U.S., and obtain better jobs and higher wages. Some also fear they could someday be stripped of their legal residency and deported, officials said.

Sergio Ballinas did it because he wanted to vote in the next elections and participate in this country’s democratic process.

“Many of us have kids,” said Ballinas, who moved to Santa Rosa from Oaxaca in 1992. “It’s our priority to learn English and assimilate to this country.”

Twenty miles down the road, Carol Waxman, principal of the Petaluma Adult School program, has seen a “steady stream” of students like Ballinas who are taking the civics and citizenship class, which has been offered for decades.

“This is their home,” Waxman said. “They want to be citizens of this country.”

Most students come from Mexico and Central America, but some are from India, Pakistan, Russia and Southeast Asia, she said about the current classes. Students, many who also are taking English-language courses, get to learn about local government and observe a Petaluma City Council meeting.

The 12-week class that currently meets at McDowell Elementary School draws anywhere from a dozen to 20 students, Waxman added.

The demand was greatest in the late 1980s after Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. The law made nearly 3 million immigrants eligible for naturalization.

“We went from one class at Petaluma High to six,” Waxman recalled.

When California Human Development offered citizenship fairs at that time they handled 80 applications in one day. In 2009 they held a fair but saw only 20 applicants, according to Differding.

In 2010, California saw the number of new naturalized citizens drop to about 130,000 in 2010, the lowest number in the past decade, according to figures from Homeland Security.

The numbers are now on the rise. Last year, 165,000 California residents took the naturalization oath, affirming their allegiance to the United States. Figures for Sonoma County were not immediately available.

If Obama pushes an immigration overhaul through executive action, it would likely take several years before any large wave of immigrants become eligible for citizenship and start filling citizenship classes, local instructors said.

The naturalization process most of the time takes about seven years.

But it’s a proud moment that’s most often worth the wait for both the new citizen and family members when they’re sworn in, said Hayes, the instructor at the Catholic Charities class who has been teaching the citizenship course for about a dozen years.

“They glow... (The) whole family celebrates,” Hayes said. She also owns the Language Truck, a mini-bus she outfitted into a classroom to teach people English, Spanish and how to use computers.

“They’re the most motivated students I have. They have a focused goal,” she said. “We’re trying to give them everything they need to know, including confidence.”

Catholic Charities officials said their students have scored an average of 89 percent on their naturalization tests in the past three years. And every student has received his or her citizenship, officials added. They help about 200 people with the naturalization process each year.

Manuel Ballinas had been a legal resident for 14 years when he decided to take the nonprofit’s citizenship course. The 42-year-old Santa Rosa resident, who previously had taken English classes, said it gave him the boost he needed to take the naturalization test, which must be done in English unless a person gets a special exemption.

Manuel Ballinas, who is a landscaper like his brother Sergio, said that in addition to the weekly three-hour class, he studied at least an hour each night, forgoing television. He said he couldn’t wait to be a citizen. He was sworn in on July 27 in Oakland.

“My wife was born here. My daughters were born here, too,” Ballinas said. “I wanted to be part of this country.”

You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com.