Chicago Tribune - Septamber 17, 2014, by John Byrne - Chicago will join New York and Los Angeles in a corporate-funded push to try to get more legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens.

The Cities for Citizenship initiative is getting a $1.1 million contribution from Citigroup to help pay for the three cities to expand their naturalization programs. The effort also calls for additional counseling, legal assistance and financial help for immigrants in the urban centers.

The program will be coordinated by two nonprofits — The Center for Popular Democracy and the National Partnership for New Americans — with the aim of encouraging cities across the country to invest in their citizenship drives, according to a news release from Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office and the other participants.

The mayors said naturalization would provide the new citizens with access to better jobs, academic scholarships and other benefits, while providing economic boosts to the cities in which they live, according to the release.

For Emanuel, it's the latest pro-immigrant move during his first term, after his early political career was marked by positions that drew the ire of immigrants' rights groups. And it's a chance to grow the Democratic Party voter base, since naturalized urban residents tend to vote Democratic.

Emanuel announced this summer that he would seek to expand the amount of shelter space available in Chicago for unauthorized immigrant children apprehended at the southern U.S. border. And he appeared with U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez in Washington DC in May to talk about the need for immigration reform.

The Cities for Citizenship program is another chance for Emanuel to try to shore up his progressive credentials and improve his standing among Chicago's sizable bloc of Hispanic voters ahead of the February 2015 municipal election. A Tribune poll in August found just 40 percent of Hispanic respondents had a favorable opinion of the mayor, down from 52 percent in 2013. And Ald. Bob Fioretti launched his mayoral bid last weekend by blasting Emanuel for policies Fioretti said favored wealthy people over Chicago's working class.

The citizenship push is also an opportunity for Emanuel to share the spotlight with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, an important figure in the re-emerging progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

Earlier this summer, Emanuel traveled to New York for a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting, where he talked about early childhood education and the need to raise the minimum wage alongside de Blasio. Emanuel's office invited Chicago reporters along for the event.

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