POLITICO: Legal cannabis and immigration

She immigrated legally. She married a U.S. citizen. But she was denied citizenship for working in legal cannabis. (POLITICO, Dec. 23, 2023)

As an immigrant, Maria Reimers tried to do everything by the book. She entered the U.S. legally, married an American citizen and secured a green card to work. Together, she and her husband managed to open a small storefront in Ephrata, a dot of a town in Washington state.

But when Reimers tried to become a U.S. citizen in 2017, she was denied for lack of “good moral character.” Federal immigration officials deemed her work “illicit drug trafficking,” because the couple’s business in Ephrata sells state-regulated cannabis. Though it is legal in Washington state, their retail shop has put Reimers’ dream of citizenship in jeopardy. She gets to keep her green card, but her attorney recommended that she not visit her family in El Salvador because of the possibility that she’d be detained at the border when she returned. 

“We didn’t think about the consequences of getting involved, or how the federal law was going to affect us,” Reimers said. “I’ve been in this country 20 years. I am contributing to the country, but I don’t have the moral character to become a citizen? Do you think it is fair?”

Immigrants across the country in states where cannabis has been legalized share Reimers’ frustration. The federal government still considers cannabis illegal, but since states began to legalize sales in 2014, it has largely looked the other way when U.S. citizens get involved in the burgeoning industry. Immigrants, however, still face a litany of consequences — including denial of citizenship, lifetime bans from lawful permanent residency and even deportation. 

It’s difficult to estimate the number of legal immigrants who could be impacted by the policy. The federal government doesn’t track employment in the cannabis industry, and the companies that do don’t collect any data on how many immigrants are participating in the workforce. Foreign-born workers make up about 18 percent of the U.S. workforce, according to a 2022 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While noncitizen workers are only a subset of that group, the number of immigrants like Reimers who could be vulnerable to immigration consequences for their work is likely in the thousands.

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