Joni Mitchell’s new U.S. citizenship closes a six-decade personal journey while opening a fresh political chapter for an artist who has often criticized the country she now formally joins.

Mitchell, 82, announced that she had completed the naturalization process after moving to the United States in the 1960s. “A journey that began 62 years ago,” she wrote alongside images from the ceremony.¹ She will retain her Canadian citizenship, reflecting the two countries’ dual-nationality rules.¹

The move is both practical and symbolic. Mitchell has long lived, worked and built her career in the United States, from the folk scenes of New York and Los Angeles to the Laurel Canyon community that helped define her musical legacy. Yet as a Canadian citizen, she could not vote in the elections governing the country where she spent most of her adult life.

That frustration became explicit during a 2024 performance, when Mitchell urged Americans to vote and said, “I wish I could vote ... I’m a Canadian. I’m one of those lousy immigrants.”² Her citizenship now gives her that political voice, but it does not signal a retreat from her criticism of U.S. leadership. She has attacked President Donald Trump in performance and contrasted the American political climate with Canada’s under Prime Minister Mark Carney.¹

The two accounts emphasize different meanings. The conservative report foregrounds Mitchell’s clashes with Trump and immigration politics, while the liberal account presents citizenship as the culmination of her artistic and personal integration into American life. Both, however, depict a long-term immigrant who became central to U.S. culture without severing her Canadian identity. Her naturalization is therefore less a rejection of one country than a formal recognition of belonging to both.