The staff at Congressman Ed Pastor’s Phoenix District Office is notifying Valley residents that it will be holding a citizenship drive scheduled for Oct. 17.

The drive is a free public service designed to assist people interested in naturalization with compiling legal documents and paying processing fees required by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

According to Pastor’s district scheduler, Maura S. Cordova, this year’s citizenship drive is part of an ongoing tradition that first began nearly 15 years ago.

In the past, the staff, along with volunteers from local charities like Chicanos por la Causa, would host the event several times a year.

But since the USCIS raised the citizenship application fee to $675, Pastor’s Phoenix office has seen a sharp decline in registration, resulting in fewer drives.

“Some years we have it more often than others,” Cordova said. “But we’re pretty much doing it annually, now.”

Before worrying about legal costs, though, people interested in attending the drive must first face a thorough pre-screening conducted over the phone by Pastor’s staff.

“It perturbs some people when they do call and we pre-screen and ask all the questions,” said Marie Herrera, a community liaison for the office and the citizenship drive’s chief organizer.

But Herrera said she responds to this kind of reaction by explaining, “Look, we just want to make sure we put in a good application, because you won’t get your money back.”

During the pre-screening, applicants are asked about their residency status and whether they owe taxes or child support. Perhaps most importantly, applicants are checked for their English language skills.

“If they’re talking to us in Spanish, we’ll make them speak to us in English just to see the proficiency,” Herrera said.

Once a person has passed the pre-screening, Pastor’s staff will mail out a checklist of documents he or she must later bring to the citizenship drive. Among such documents are a driver’s license or state ID and a permanent resident card.

The checklist also asks applicants to provide information regarding trips they’ve taken outside of the U.S. since becoming a resident, as well as past employment and criminal history.

Herrera said approximately 125 appointments are made for each event, along with 20-25 “stand-bys.”

Although the event requires about 70 volunteers to operate smoothly, Herrera said there is no shortage.

“We’re always turning volunteers away,” she said. “But we always can use more attorney volunteers.”

In the past, ASU law students have assisted with the drive. The job of such attorney volunteers has been to provide legal advice on questionable applications or to advise registrants to seek legal counsel rather than applying for citizenship that day.

While the efforts of the staff and volunteers in preparation for and during each citizenship drive prove exhausting, Cordova said the government agency responsible for naturalization appreciates all the attention to detail.

“[The USCIS] has told us that our applications usually come in really clean,” she said.

As a result, Herrera said, “[rejection] is real minimal.”

Reach the reporter at nakisa.azizi@asu.edu