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The Trump Admin Is Right To Screen Potential U.S. Citizens For ‘Good Moral Character’, by Nick Pietrowicz – Brown Pelican Society of Lousiana

The Trump Admin Is Right To Screen Potential U.S. Citizens For ‘Good Moral Character’, by Nick Pietrowicz

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Pres. Donald Trump. The White House. Image Credit, daniel torok/white house/flickr

By Nick Pietrowicz, The Federalist, September 18, 2025

Nick Pietrowicz is an attorney with the Department of State and author of “Stanwood Shot Dead! Death, Diplomacy, and the Dawn of American Power” (Sunbury Press 2025).

 

If Lafayette, William Penn, and Winston Churchill were subject to individualized examination before a grant of honorary citizenship, then certainly the same should apply to the millions of aliens who wish to become Americans today.

A recent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo announced that foreigners aspiring to become American citizens must meet a “Good Moral Character” standard. This directive is a return to policies that existed before the loosening of naturalization requirements in the early 1990s. That USCIS is now again requiring foreigners to demonstrate “character commensurate with the standards of average citizens” is positive.

Critics argue the change will make acquiring citizenship too difficult or political. But as the USCIS memo relates, naturalization is not simply “a procedural immigration benefit.” And the grant of citizenship has never been completely apolitical. Naturalization is a gift from the American people, not a status earned by ticking administrative boxes. So important is that gift that a congressional grant of mere honorary citizenship to the universally esteemed Winston Churchill in 1963 engendered thoughtful, bipartisan debate before its passage. …