About Alfonso Aguilar

 

Alfonso Aguilar is the first and former Chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship. Appointed by President George W. Bush, Mr. Aguilar was responsible for educating immigrants about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and for promoting their integration into American civic culture. Mr. Aguilar developed and led educational initiatives and campaigns to help and encourage immigrants to learn English and U.S. civics and history and to volunteer and become civically engaged. He also led the effort to develop the new naturalization test of the United States, which took effect on October 1, 2008. As Chair of the Task Force on New Americans' Technical Committee, an interagency federal task force created by President George W. Bush, Mr. Aguilar led efforts to enhance and coordinate government-wide immigrant integration initiatives. Before joining the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2003, Mr. Aguilar served in numerous high-level government positions in the Bush Administration and the government of Puerto Rico, including Deputy Director of Public Affairs at U.S. Department of Energy, Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration and Press Secretary to former Governor Pedro Rossello of Puerto Rico.

Mr. Aguilar has a Bachelor of Arts and Letters from the University of Notre Dame and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Puerto Rico. He is a member of the Puerto Rico Bar Association, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. Mr. Aguilar is also a member of the Board of Advisors of the North American Center for Trans-Border Studies at Arizona State University and is the U.S. representative of the Citizenship and Values Foundation based in Madrid, Spain. He writes a bi-monthly Op-Ed column for the daily La Opinion of Los Angeles, California and frequently appears as a guest policy analyst in many radio and TV shows across the country.