Legal Accreditation Approved
Effective March 23, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Access Program (OLAP) has approved accreditation for Nuestra Casa to provide citizenship legal services. These citizenship legal services would increase the availability of competent, legal immigration representation for the low income people of Yakima County.
OLAP has also approved Dulce Gutierrez, with the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, to be their Accredited Representative.
Currently, the Yakima United States Citizenship and Immigration Services field office has a processing time of 8.5 to 13.5 months to process naturalization applications – the process by which green card holders apply to become U.S. citizens. In addition to escalating backlogs, qualifying legal permanent residents face other barriers such as high application fees and the required English and Civics exam that is part of the naturalization interview process.
Nuestra Casa will continue to provide citizenship preparation classes each quarter as well as English as a Second Language programs to prepare interested persons for the exam..
Due to the current health pandemic a start date for these services has not been set.
For more information this and other Nuestra Casa programs please contact Caty Padilla, Executive director of Nuestra Casa at 509-839-7602 or via email at caty@nuestracasawa.org.