Becoming a United States citizen–what ought to be a solemn yet joyous occasion–over the past few years has become an exasperating fiasco of delays and interminable paperwork.
Caught in conflicting political crosswinds, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has swung from the slapdash procedures that in 1996 allowed thousands of convicted felons and other ineligibles to obtain U.S. citizenship, to today’s bureaucratic catatonia–a system so constricted and overburdened that, as reported by Teresa Puente in Saturday’s Tribune, some applicants in the Chicago-area office have been waiting as long as four years to be naturalized.
Bills introduced in March by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) properly call for a Justice Department investigation and a report to Congress on what needs to be done by the INS to cut the waiting period to six months or less.
Just don’t expect any cost-free solutions: Barring a miracle, experts say the beleaguered agency can’t be expected to cut into the huge backlog and maintain proper screening standards without some $100 million extra for equipment and personnel.
Since 1996, the number of pending citizenship applications nationwide has almost quintupled to 1.6 million from 342,000. This has been largely because a large bloc of illegal immigrants granted amnesty during the late 1980s and early 1990s have become eligible for naturalization, and because immigration and welfare reforms of the last two years have prompted tens of thousands of permanent residents to seek U.S. citizenship.
Processing this flood of applications has been complicated by scandals and by INS ineptitude. Prior to the 1996 election, there were indications that community organizations, including some in Chicago, goosed up the naturalization process in order to beget new voters–preferably with pro-Democratic inclinations. That and other political pressures led to all sorts of horror stories, as applications from even convicted criminals somehow got through.
Amid all the bad news, the Chicago INS office is making some headway. Satellite offices and a new computer have enabled it to nearly double the number of citizenship interviews to 300 a day. And the backlog at least is not worsening; naturalizations and new applications are about even at 92,000.
But clearly that is not enough: The average processing period is still 17 months, or three times what even the INS itself considers ideal.
