The Trump administration plans to bring back interviews of neighbors and colleagues as part of applications for U.S. citizenship, reviving a practice that hasn’t been used in three decades.
In a memo, dated August 22 but released Tuesday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services described how it would bring back “neighborhood investigations” for applicants.
The interviews will “corroborate an alien’s eligibility for naturalization, which includes scrutiny of an alien’s residency, good moral character, attachment to the U.S. Constitution, and disposition to the good order and happiness of the United States,” according to the memo, which was obtained by CBS News.
Immigrants are also encouraged to submit letters and testimonials from friends and colleagues on their behalf.
“Americans should be comforted knowing that USCIS is taking seriously its responsibility to ensure aliens are being properly vetted and are of good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States,” agency director Joseph Edlow said in a statement.
While such checks are part of federal immigration law, they have generally been waived in favor of FBI background checks since the early 1990s.
“It sounds to me like the idea is to create a more intimidating atmosphere that discourages people from pursuing naturalization,” Doris Meissner, who oversaw USCIS’s predecessor agency during the Clinton administration, told CBS.
The former official added that the government moved away from such interviews because they were labor-intensive and rarely produced valuable information.
The Trump administration, in addition to pursuing a campaign of mass deportation against undocumented immigrants inside the U.S., has also sought to impose new requirements on legal immigrants seeking citizenship and other visas.
Last week, it announced it was expanding its scrutiny of the “good moral character” of citizenship hopefuls, as well as probing their records, including social media, for “anti-American” activity.
Earlier this year, the State Department and Department of Homeland Security announced expanded social media surveillance of visa applicants, screening for support of terrorism or opinions the administration considers antisemitic.
The requirements came about as the administration arrested numerous international students with ties to campus pro-Palestine protests.
Elsewhere, the Trump administration has functionally shut down refugee resettlement into the U.S., while reportedly mulling a new 40,000-person refugee cap with most slots going to white South Africans.
The White House has also pushed for a non-traditional mid-decade census that would exclude undocumented immigrants, breaking with over two centuries of precedent of the census counting all residents of particular states, U.S. citizens and otherwise.
The Trump administration has also revoked more than 6,000 student visas since January and has moved to end a variety of Biden-era legal immigration and humanitarian immigration parole programs.
