By Laura Gómez | Arizona Mirror
By the end of 2020, Arizona will have gained more than 49,000 new eligible voters who are immigrants since the 2016.
NPNA, a national coalition of 37 immigrant and refugee advocacy groups, also estimates 3.1 million immigrants will have become U.S. citizens by the end of 2020 since the election of President Donald Trump. In the 2020 election, 1 in 10 eligible voters nationally are immigrants — that is, foreign-born adults who became U.S. citizens through naturalization, the Pew Research Center estimated.
In Arizona, eligible immigrant voters account for 8% of the estimated 5 million eligible voters in 2020, according to Pew. In 2016, that figure was also 8%, according to Census data.
At a naturalization ceremony on March 10, Mona Abubakr’s three boys played at her feet as she sat in a crowded room inside the Phoenix offices of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that adjudicates immigration benefits like visas and green cards.
