Abi Rodriguez acknowledges that she's not a decisive person. The 19-year-old isn't sure how long she'll stay in her job as a cook. The high school dropout is debating whether she should go back to school. She hasn't made firm plans for the weekend.

But she is dead certain of one thing: She wants to be a U.S. citizen. Now.

"If I tell people I'm a citizen, they'll trust me more. I'll be better off, not like a stranger from the outside," said Rodriguez, a Nicaraguan who has a Permanent Resident Card, more familiarly known as the green card.

Since Sept. 11, the United States has seen a large increase in the number of people seeking citizenship. Nearly 470,000 people have applied in the seven months after the terrorist attacks, nearly a 61 percent increase during the same period in the previous year, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Immigrant advocacy organizations say members of most ethnic groups are rushing to apply in the aftermath of Sept 11.

"People are scared, and they don't want to get kicked out of the country," said Cesare Allesandre, a director of INS Experts Inc., an online immigration consulting firm in California's Silicon Valley.

Rodriguez says she was not nervous, much less scared until after the terrorist attacks. Although she was born in Nicaragua, she has lived in Maryland for almost 15 years and says she has no recollection of her native country.

She also has the green card, which gives an immigrant the right to live and work in the United States. Although it does not give her the right to vote and must be renewed every five years, "it was good enough," Rodriguez said.

She has a driver's license, a Social Security card, a job at Ledo Pizza in Mount Airy, "so what else did I need?" she asked.

When Rodriguez's 18th birthday came, the date she could have applied for citizenship, she let it slide by without much thought.

Even after the attacks on Sept. 11, Rodriguez spent little time thinking about her citizenship, at first. She says she was not hassled and did not begin to think about changing her citizenship status for several months.

But she says she began hearing reports that more immigrants were being detained by the federal government, and she started to fear what could happen to her.

In October, President Bush signed the USA Patriot Act, a law that strengthened police powers to search for and detain immigrants or visitors who are suspected of terrorist activities. And recently, the INS proposed tough regulations that would require immigrants with final removal orders to surrender themselves within 30 days.

"I've never seen immigrants being targeted the way they have been by the federal government," said Jose Pertierra, an immigration lawyer who works primarily with Hispanics in the Washington area.

After submitting her application, Rodriguez began to study U.S. history. She says she is not worried about the background check, essay or English fluency test she must undergo, but she is slightly concerned about the 10-question citizenship test, which requires applicants to answer questions such as "Who wrote the 'Star-Spangled Banner'?" and "In what month do we vote for the president?"

Applicants generally must get six questions correct to pass, but standards vary from office to office.

"I should know all this stuff," Rodriguez said, but she is studying "just in case."

Rodriguez's anxiety seems mild when compared with that of other immigrants, especially in the Arab-American community. According to INS Experts, the number of people applying for citizenship from countries such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey has increased by 89 percent.

"Communities are feeling incredibly vulnerable, and the best protection against deportation is to get your citizenship. People that have been lax about getting their citizenship just aren't feeling that way anymore," said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington.

Ammar Rai, who immigrated to the United States from his native Pakistan 10 years ago, is among them.

Rai, who also has a green card, applied for citizenship in early May. He moved to the Washington area when he was 12, and though he was homesick for the first several years he lived in the United States, "this is home now," he said in a recent interview in his parents' Rockville home.

Rai switches between his native language of Urdu to English with no hesitation and no discernible accent. He wears baggy jeans and T-shirts, studies at Montgomery College and works at Pier One Imports in his spare time.

"I'm pretty much like everyone else," he said.

Rai says he fits in especially well in Washington. One of the things that he likes best about the area is its diversity. "Seeing so many people of different races made me feel at home."

But Rai acknowledges that after Sept. 11, he became less comfortable. He could feel people staring at him. He felt jittery going to the mosque. Wearing traditional clothing was "out of the question," he said.

"I don't know if it was because I was paranoid ... but you start to wonder -- what does that person think of me?" Rai said.

He also worried about a backlash against noncitizens applying for jobs or admission to schools. Rai's father, Tariq, has also applied for citizenship; he said he has been turned down for jobs because he has only a green card.

"No one wants to be left behind," said Tariq Rai, a security guard.

Immigration specialists are unsure if the wave of citizenship applications will continue. During the mid-1990s, applications spiked in the face of tough new laws, rising as high as 1.4 million a year before falling to about 500,000 last year.

"But we've never had anything like Sept. 11 before, so I wouldn't be surprised if the idea that becoming a voter and protecting yourself and your family become more ingrained," said Margie McHugh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition in New York City.

INS officials are preparing for the increase to continue, said Chris Bentley, a department spokesman.

The Baltimore INS office has added several officers, with the hope of reducing the processing time for applications to an average of six months, Bentley said. The average processing time now is six to eight months.

As Rodriguez waits for her interview date with the INS, she has made another firm decision. When she gets her citizenship paperwork, "I'm going to keep it in my wallet.

"That way, I'll always feel secure," she said.