INS to Bolster Staffing to Handle Surge in Applications : Immigration: Commissioner says more workers and funds are needed to reduce the current delay in processing citizenship forms.

Federal officials plan to bolster the nation’s reeling citizenship application system with additional funding and staff in coming months, while simultaneously working to streamline the cumbersome process, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner said Tuesday.

The projected funding increases, Meissner said in a telephone interview from Washington, would translate into personnel reinforcements of about 30% nationwide, and even more in Los Angeles, where the national surge in citizenship applications is most acute.

The plan would create more than 100 new positions in Los Angeles, augmenting a staff of about 260 that currently handles citizenship and other applications. However, authorities cautioned that new staffers would probably not be on duty for six months or so, after recruiting and training, meaning that backlogs are likely to continue ballooning.

The plan for increasing citizenship funding--which the commissioner said involved tens of millions of dollars, though she declined to be more specific--is currently before Congress, Meissner said.

Congressional approval is expected, said Meissner, who noted that the money would come from user fees and penalties collected by the INS, not from tax revenues.

Last year, she said, Congress failed to provide most of an additional $30 million requested for citizenship activities. Although citizenship efforts are widely lauded, lawmakers have focused instead on funding INS enforcement operations, such as building up the Border Patrol.

Citizenship applicants in Los Angeles are facing delays approaching a year in completing the process. As of last week, the INS here s was receiving 2,500 citizenship applications a day--five times as many as a year ago, and 10 times the number just 18 months ago.

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Nationwide, the INS received what officials termed a record 555,407 citizenship applications during fiscal 1994. That number is expected to jump to 760,000 during the current fiscal year and to 925,000 next year.

Behind the unprecedented surge in citizenship-seekers are several factors--including fear of what many call an increasing anti-immigrant sentiment, planned congressional cuts in benefits for non-citizens and a glut of 3 million amnesty recipients from the 1980s now becoming eligible for U.S. citizenship. In addition, a requirement that longtime holders of so-called green cards renew their documents has prompted many to apply belatedly for citizenship.

Under current naturalization procedures, most would-be citizens must complete a detailed application form, which, among other things, asks if they were ever Communist Party members, Nazis, prostitutes, drunkards or polygamists.

Applicants must also pass a test in U.S. civics, and most must demonstrate some ability to speak and understand English.

The INS, Meissner says, is now planning to “re-engineer the entire naturalization process,” streamlining, automating and simplifying procedures.

An INS task force will recommend a strategy by mid-May to reduce delays and cut into the expanding backlog of citizenship applications, Meissner said.

Among other things, the INS plans to increase the involvement of community organizations in assisting citizenship applicants. One possibility: enabling community groups to enter application information electronically into INS computers, thus saving time.