Citizenship and Integration Grant Program of Fiscal Year 2010
According to the announcement made by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the immigrants are provided with two grants. The first grant is to support citizenship service providers and the second grant will strengthen the adequacy of the regional or state wise organizations to provide citizenship services to undeserved communities.
As a part of FY 2010 program, a significant amount of $11 million is authorized by the congress for the improvement of the immigrant integration initiatives within USCIS. The combination of these two grants would help the lawful permanent residents to be more successful by improving their English language skills and learning more about the U.S history and government.
The Citizenship and Integration Grant Program would concentrate on educating the lawful permanent residents through various citizenship preparation programs. These programs would include citizenship focused ESL instruction and citizenship instruction to prepare the lawful permanent residents for English writing, reading, and speaking components of the naturalization test. The Citizenship and Integration Grant Program would also take efforts to assist the lawful permanent residents in preparation of the naturalization application.
Apart from the education component of the grant the Citizenship and Integration Grant Program also helps the lawful permanent residents in terms of assisting them with legal services and case management services. The grant funds may also be used to make the citizens aware of the services offered by the grant program, staff professional development, and volunteer training.
The Citizenship and Integration National Capacity Building Grant Program is to improve the efforts of the non-profit organizations which offer citizenship services to the lawful permanent residents of undeserved communities. Five competitively awarded grants of up to $500,000 each will fund the national and regional organization programs for their various citizenship preparation programs.