United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved a total of 833,978 applications for citizenship in the 2019 fiscal year ending September 30, 2019.
This marks about a 10 per cent increase in the number of naturalization approvals over the 2018 fiscal year, when approximately 756,800 people were naturalized. In the 2017 fiscal year, 653,000 naturalization applications were approved.
USCIS adjudicated a total of 931,767 applications for naturalization(Form N-400, Application for Naturalization).
97,789 of the applications were denied during the year according to USCIS data, while 830,877 were still pending adjudication.
According to USCIS, over 8 million foreign nationals have been naturalized in the United States in the last one decade.
A foreign national has to have been a permanent resident of the United States for at least five years to qualify to apply for citizenship, except for military service members and spouses of US citizens. Military service members are eligible to apply for citizenship after honorably serving in the US armed forces for one year, while spouses of US citizens can apply for naturalization after three years of being a permanent resident as long as they are still married and living with the US citizen.
In the 2019 fiscal year, USCIS approved 576,667 green card petitions (Form I-485, Adjustment of Status).
