A service that makes NYC’s free financial counseling available to citizenship applicants.
Steps to Citizenship won first place in the US Service Design Network student competition! In the words of Jess Poole, “Steps to citizenship balanced customer and stakeholder needs with a deft hand. The students tested the assumptions of the city about the needs of people in the process of attaining citizenship through qualitative research and pushed back when the assumptions did not match the real needs of people.”
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The Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs asked our Parsons studio course to find a way to connect existing public financial counseling services with their new program providing free one-on-one attorney appointments at public libraries to help people through the citizenship process.
Through research and prototyping, we saw that the most effective motivation to learn new financial skills is their connection to an immediate goal, like buying a house, paying off student loans, or paying the citizenship fee. These can be used as teachable moments to cultivate lifelong skills. Steps to Citizenship cards build on this insight, incorporating financial actions in the frame of three major citizenship steps: “Plan for citizenship application fee payment”, “Prepare citizenship application documents”, and “Prepare for the citizenship interview”. They are designed to be used in one-on-one Card Reading advising sessions, either with the attorney or as part of existing library citizenship classes, to create a unique path forward for each person. The one-on-one context is important as it allows experts to create an informed discussion around assumptions like “Doesn’t financial counseling cost a lot of money?” or “I don’t trust banks to keep my savings safe” in relation to that particular individual’s situation. The cards also incorporate the availability of free, safe resources.
Through initial research at libraries and in citizenship application classes, we learned about a variety of challenges facing those who are applying for citizenship:
Official guides are unable to connect immigrants across silos of services and resources. Financial experts can help patrons with banking and money management, and legal experts can help them with the citizenship process, but there are few people who cross boundaries and can help patrons organize their finances within the context of their pursuit of citizenship.
There is so much information, it is difficult for people to know where to look and who to trust. Fraud is a prevalent issue for recent immigrants – people are often more willing to trust unofficial resources over those they perceive as connected to the U.S. government.
Actual experience is different from the formal expectation. The formal citizenship process begins with unrealistic expectations, assuming—for example—that residents have managed their taxes correctly, and saved every official document from the past five years. Many real challenges stand in the way of these ideals.
Based on these findings, we created an early prototype of a deck of cards that could support citizenship applicants in choosing their own financial goals and identifying actions they could take to achieve them. The cards were meant to serve as an artifact to connect legal and financial services, keeping lawyers and financial advisors on the same page about a client’s goals and plan of action.
“I like to live in the present. I may want to travel someday, but right now I’m focused on getting my citizenship.” –citizenship applicant
After testing this prototype, we found that patrons working on citizenship are deeply engaged in that process, and prefer to focus on that goal. The final deck of cards focused fully on the citizenship process, incorporating relevant financial tasks like paying unpaid taxes or starting an IRS payment plan as a bridge to available financial counseling services.
After working on this project as a student, I joined a small team to pilot a combination of concepts from the class in libraries across New York City.
Building on ideation about how the concepts could work together, we developed an information session and booklet that could guide people interested in applying for citizenship to financial resources, among other support services.
NYCitizenship is now offered in 12 NYC libraries across all 5 boroughs, connecting new New Yorkers with resources to pay for citizenship and build a financially stable lifestyle. Read more about the full process – from conceptualization to pilot – here.
This project was created in collaboration with Valentina Branada and Chengcheng Teng, advised by Lara Penin, Grace Tuttle, Andrew Shea, Dagan Bayliss, Eduardo Staszowski and many others at MOIA, OFE and Citi Community Development.