INS Opens New El Monte Center to Ease Backlog

As a new center in El Monte swings into full gear this month, immigration officials hope to speed through a massive backlog of citizenship applications and slash in half the yearlong wait faced by people applying to become naturalized citizens.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner on Friday officially opened the office, the last of three new centers in the Los Angeles district--which processes one-fourth of the nation’s applicants.

“It’s about time,” said Father David O’Connell, a leader of the Active Citizenship Campaign, one of several immigrant outreach groups that have been demanding that the INS clear the bottleneck of more than 220,000 applications in the seven-county district.

The overburdened system threatened to prevent applicants from voting in November, O’Connell said, noting that some people who applied for citizenship 14 months ago still are waiting to be processed.

At a news conference Friday at the El Monte center on Flair Drive, Meissner repeated the pledge she made in August to reduce the national backlog by the end of this September and to shorten the processing period to six months.

“We are absolutely meeting the goals we set for ourselves,” Meissner said. “We want squarely to support legal immigration.”

The new office was created under Citizenship USA, a national initiative aimed at plowing through the pile of applications that has grown in recent years. Part of the sharp rise in California applications has been attributed to anti-immigrant sentiments unleashed by the Proposition 187 debate.

Nearly 1 million applications are anticipated this year nationwide, twice the number in 1995. The other cities targeted for Citizenship USA are San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Miami.

At full capacity, officials said, the El Monte center will be able to finish as many as 1,500 applications a day. Combined with offices in Bellflower and Laguna Niguel, the district will be able to handle 2,500 cases daily, up nearly fourfold from 650 in August. The offices will operate six days a week.

The Los Angeles District’s naturalization staff has increased in one year from 99 to 234, Meissner said, and soon will reach 292.

A new direct mail system, which allows applicants to send forms directly to the regional service center in Laguna Niguel, began in January.

Officials have been adding more frequent and larger naturalization ceremonies--swearing in as many as 10,000 new citizens in one day at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The total number of citizens sworn in by the end of this calendar year is expected to top 320,000.

Activists say the improvements come after months of lobbying of local INS officials.

Although the agency should have anticipated the increased load of applications and acted sooner, O’Connell said, “at least they’re responding now.”

At the El Monte center, applicants with scheduled interviews are tested in English and civics in one room. If they pass, they move on to interview booths. Most are approved there and assigned a date for their swearing-in ceremony.

Applicants asked to complete a more detailed interview are taken to another area with private examination rooms.

With a full staff of 60 officers, it should take an applicant about 20 minutes to go through the process.