In short, the administration is signaling that it’s not enough to just boot the bad guys; we must also thoroughly and vigorously vet those foreigners who wish to stay in the U.S. permanently and become citizens.
A new memo from the Trump administration to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) lays it all out in glorious detail. Entitled “Restoring a Rigorous, Holistic, and Comprehensive Good Moral Character Evaluation Standard for Aliens Applying for Naturalization,” the memo emphasizes that it’s not enough for applicants to not have any disqualifying behaviors; they must also be able to prove they are of good character.
You would have thought this standard already existed in the naturalization process, but that is apparently not the case. Per the memo, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which was passed during the Clinton administration, lowered the bar on problematic issues like prior “drug offenses, fraud, and misrepresentation” amongst applicants. A checklist was thus created that equated an applicant’s “good moral character (GMC)” with not having a rap sheet. Their good works within their community, if there were any, were not taken into account.More