Your citizenship interview may be coming sooner than you think

The government is pushing up its interview dates, sometimes by several months.

Daniela Santos figured she has seven more months to prepare for her N-400 Naturalization Interview. That’s what her USCIS web page had been saying for weeks. But then she got a surprise: Thursday she checked her webpage, and it said her interview could be coming in the next 3 months! “I thought it must be some kind of mistake,” she said. But it wasn’t an error. USCF students across the nation are reporting big changes to their estimated wait times.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices across the nation have been shortening the interval between the date green card holders apply for citizenship and the date of their naturalization interviews. And they do not send notification of the changes! It’s up to the applicants to log in and check their status pages online. Daniela’s projected interview date had changed from seven months away to just 3 months out overnight. And more changes could be coming.

“I’m just glad I checked my file online. Otherwise there’s no way I would have been ready,” Daniela said.

The U.S. Citizenship Foundation gives free Zoom classes to help immigrants and refugees prepare for their N-400 Citizenship Interviews. To learn how you can enroll in our free citizenship classes visit yourcitizenship.org or call us at 801-475-7800.