DALLAS — In a plastic red top hat flashing “VOTE” with blue stars, voter registrar Benny de la Vega is hard to miss in a crowd of hundreds who will soon become the country’s newest citizens.
The volunteer voter registrar wears a bright orange shirt to stand out to the crowd waiting to enter their naturalization ceremony at the Plano Event Center. He remembers being nervous and all alone when he became a U.S. citizen and hopes these new Americans will feel some comfort in recognizing him in a sea of people.
“For them, it’s nice to have a familiar face, somebody they can relate to, so that when they do register [to vote], it’s not with some stranger,” de la Vega, 54, said.
De la Vega, originally from the Philippines, became a U.S. citizen in 1995. He now lives in Farmers Branch and volunteers with the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan group of men and women who help people vote. On a brisk morning in September, he distributed and collected voter registration forms at naturalization ceremonies hosted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Of the 1,500 candidates and their friends and families who came through the three ceremonies that day, 1,040 voter registration forms were collected, according to Ellen Steger, president of the League of Women Voters of Richardson.
In a state with low voter turnout, the right to vote is often unexercised in Texas. The responsibility to vote has special meaning for these new Americans and newly registered voters, who made the cut less than two weeks before the Oct. 7 registration deadline. If they cast a ballot in November, they’ll help decide their new country’s next president.
Alexandra Denys, 31, filled out her voter registration card as she sat in the crowded event hall ahead of her September ceremony.
Like hundreds beside her, she ensured the form was ready to be signed following the oath of allegiance confirming her American nationality. Originally from Montreal, Canada, Denys has lived in the U.S. since 2016 and said she is definitely voting in November.
“I love this country, and I live here, and I want to make a difference here and do good,” Denys said. “[Voting] is a right. It’s a huge responsibility to have your say in which direction you want the country to go.”
Foreign-born Americans have power at the polls. Pew Research found that naturalized citizens make up a record number of eligible voters, accounting for about 10% of the U.S. electorate, according to the 2022 American Community Survey.
Their ranks are growing. The government is processing citizenship applications faster than it has in years according to Boundless, a company that helps families navigate the immigration system.
By the end of May this year, the average processing time for an application had dropped to 5 months, a 15% drop from last year and a more than 50% decrease from 2022. USCIS is recovering from a backlog of applications worsened by the pandemic, according to Boundless.
Many new citizens say they’re eager to cast a ballot. A poll of more than 2,600 naturalized citizens who are registered to vote found that 97.3% said that they “definitely” or “probably” will vote in the November 2024 presidential election.
The new American voters polled came from eight states, including Texas. The National Partnership for New Americans and the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at UC San Diego conducted the survey in August.
New citizenship, new right
At the second ceremony of the day, the 500 new Americans came from 73 countries, Oscar Garcia, a supervisor with USCIS in Dallas, said to the crowd. The candidates came from as far as Finland, Egypt, the Dominican Republic, India, Sudan, Vietnam and dozens of other nations.
Many had their children, spouse and family in tow, watching proudly from the back of the hall. Small American flags waved in each row. Some wore suits, dresses or traditional clothing to look their best.
De la Vega and around 80 other volunteer deputy registrars passed out voter registration forms, answering questions and helping people fill out the paperwork as they waited for the ceremony to begin.
Albert Boyer Galindo, 45, waved a small American flag in his seat ahead of the ceremony. He lives in Keller and is originally from Mexico, but moved to the U.S. in 2008. He has many relatives who are U.S. citizens, including his daughter.
“It’s been over 16 years,” Boyer Galindo said. “It’s been a lot of sacrifices, a long journey to become a U.S. citizen.”
He said he wanted to gain citizenship in order to vote.
“Paying taxes, I just really want to raise my voice,” Boyer Galindo said. “It’s a civil right. That’s the only choice. If you’re gonna complain about the government and the benefits and you don’t vote, then you shouldn’t be talking at all.”
The League of Women Voters wasted no time in helping the naturalized citizens exercise one of democracy’s most fundamental rights. Once they take their oath of allegiance and get their certificates, the new citizens can almost immediately get their forms signed by a deputized registrar, just minutes after becoming an American.
In a room near the event hall, voter registrars helped complete the process after the ceremony. It was a buzz of activity, with people trying to find their county’s desk, yelling out, “Does anyone speak Russian?” or finishing their paperwork on a clipboard.
Belita Dube wiped away tears after the ceremony. Originally from South Africa, she has been in the U.S. for more than two decades and now lives in Richardson. Her kids are citizens and Dube said she wanted to join them.
“This is all they know, America,” Dube said. “I got to grow up with them too and love America.”
Dube said she made sure to naturalize before the voter registration deadline, and said she’s looking forward to helping decide the country’s next president. She left her country before she could vote, so this will be her first time casting a ballot.
“The journey that I’ve traveled,” Dube said through tears, “It’s been a long journey.”
An ‘American Dream’ to vote
Texas has one of the worst voter participation rates in the country. In Collin County, where many of the new Americans naturalized at the September ceremony will vote, nearly half of registered voters didn’t cast a ballot in 2022. While 693,753 people registered to vote, 52.6% actually did, around 364,779 voters, according to Texas Secretary of State data.
For many new citizens not born with the right to vote in U.S. elections, voting is a newfound responsibility with heightened importance, and many expressed the duty they feel to participate in democracy. Only 2.7% of polled new Americans say that they are “unlikely to vote” in the presidential election, according to the survey by the National Partnership for New Americans.
Yang Liu, 37, is from China and has lived in the U.S. for 12 years. She now lives in Celina and became a citizen just in time to be eligible to vote in the next election. The November election will be her first time ever voting.
“If you have this right, you should just use it,” Liu said after her naturalization ceremony. “There are so many people, so many others outside this country that don’t have this right yet. They don’t have democracy in their country yet.”
De la Vega wears his own voter registration card around his neck with pride as he jumps from person to person, helping them fill out their forms.
He said he moved to the U.S. when he was 16 years old, leaving the Philippines during the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship of the 1980s. Marcos’ government committed extensive human rights violations and suppressed activism and media, according to Amnesty International.
“I know what life is like under a dictatorship,” de la Vega said. “When I came here to the U.S., my family brought me here specifically for this, the ‘American Dream.’”
For de la Vega, that dream includes exercising the right to vote. He said his parents were part of the uprising known as the People Power Revolution that upended the dictatorship.
“I have been brought up to believe that if you do want something, you have to fight for it, and more importantly, you have to vote for it,” de la Vega said.
In Collin County, he’s doing just that, fighting to protect the right to vote for new Americans by helping them register. In just a few weeks, many will fulfill their responsibility at the ballot box, adding their voice to the country’s millions of voters who will help decide the next president.
