A long-time community member of CAIR-Chicago was finally granted citizenship in the U.S. after more than 20 years! 

She was granted naturalization in January 2022 after fighting for her right to live in the U.S. since 2001. After fleeing Syria, and defending against deportation in Immigration Court, she is beyond relieved to know that she will be able to continue her life in the U.S. with her five children. She will finally be able to travel to see her family whom she hasn’t seen since she left in 2001. She was lawfully married in the U.S., but Immigration wrongly accused her of fraud and put her into removal proceedings. She fought those removal proceedings for several years, ultimately succeeding, and she was finally approved for a lawful permanent resident card in 2018.  

After this long fight, she was excited to have the opportunity to apply for U.S. citizenship. Given her long and complicated immigration history, she came to CAIR-Chicago for help, and CAIR-Chicago assisted her by first filing a Freedom of Information request with USCIS, which yielded hundreds of pages of documents. CAIR-Chicago reviewed all her documents, then helped her prepare her application for citizenship. Toward the end of the process, her husband filed for divorce. She was concerned that this would jeopardize her application, especially after a number of attorneys whom she contacted advised her to withdraw her application and then re-file it (resulting in her paying the filing fee twice), or wanted to charge her large amounts of money to help her. 

CAIR-Chicago advised her to continue with her current application, which resulted in her getting a successful interview, and taking her oath of citizenship in January 2022. CAIR-Chicago prepared her for, and accompanied her to, her citizenship interview in December 2021 which resulted in her application being approved. “I am so happy I found CAIR-Chicago because the other attorneys told me I needed to withdraw and pay them a lot of money, as well as the filing fee to Immigration. I am so grateful to CAIR-Chicago for supporting me through this process,” she stated.