Requests For Citizenship Up Sharply Immigration Officials Flooded With Record Numbers Of Applications

An unprecedented wave of immigrants is expected to seek U.S. citizenship in the new year, including as many as 20,000 people in Washington state.

Among those is Ricardo Mena of Federal Way, a former migrant farm worker from Mexico who now co-owns a restaurant in Tacoma. He got his green card in 1989 and eagerly anticipates the privileges of citizenship.

Mena, 42, said he will vote on school levies and other public programs important for his four children. He also plans to petition for his mother to become a resident of this country as well.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service received a record 1 million applications for citizenship in 1995, a 73 percent increase from 1994.

The increase may have come about, in part, because of measures such as California’s Proposition 187, which would cut off welfare for illegal immigrants, and two bills in Congress that would limit federal benefits for immigrants.

A judge has blocked the implementation of the California measure.

Mena qualified for permanent residency under the broad 1986 federal amnesty program. He was living in the Yakima Valley at the time and had only to show that he had worked in the fields for at least 90 days.

Now, he and thousands of other legal resident aliens in the Pacific Northwest who once entered the United States illegally have lived here long enough to become eligible for citizenship.

In Washington state and a portion of Idaho, 14,664 citizenship petitions were filed with the INS in fiscal year 1995. That’s a 67 percent increase from last year.