Citizenship applications rose 15 percent in the months after Donald Trump announced he was running for president.
Trump might not be the only reason people are applying for citizenship, but he’s definitely a factor. Immigration activists across the nation have held citizenship and voter-registration fairs to try to rally voters against Trump.
The same is true here. In Nevada, more than 2,000 people recently became citizens, and many indicate Trump was a motivating factor.
New citizen and former UNLV instructor and graduate student Juan Martinez told KNPR's State of Nevada that his mother and Donald Trump were behind his decision to finally change his status from permanent resident to citizen.
"My mom called and said ‘you gotta do this!'" Martinez said.
Martinez first immigrated to the United States from Columbia when his father was doing his graduate studies here.
He said he put off becoming a citizen for several years partly because of the cost of the application fee. But when Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president, he decided that was enough.
While some immigrants might site some of Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants and his promises to build a wall along the border with Mexico, as reasons to not vote for him, Martinez had other reasons.
“It had less to do with the initial anti-immigrant comments and more to do with the fact that this person feels unfit to be anywhere near a seat of power," he said.
Martinez said in the elevator to the courtroom where the citizenship ceremony was taking place there were several other people going for the same ceremony. All of them said they were becoming citizens to vote against Donald Trump, he said.
Yvanna Cancela is the political director of the Culinary Union. The union has partnered with other local groups to promote citizenship in Las Vegas' immigrant communities.
“There is no question that people are paying attention the political rhetoric to what’s being said in particular about immigrants and feeling like they want to be involved in the political process,” she said.
She said she didn't talk to anyone in their citizenship campaign that said they were changing their status to vote FOR Donald Trump. She believes what he has been saying about immigrants has many people - even those in the country legally - in limbo.
"The idea that you could deport 11 million people is not that far off from saying there will no longer be green cards," she said, "That kind of sense of insecurity changes the way that people feel about the one guarantee you have as an immigrant in this country, which is citizenship."
Juan Martinez, new citizen; Yvanna Cancela, political director, Culinary Union Local 226