INS Official Disputes Naturalization Reports

The top U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service official in Los Angeles denied Tuesday that thousands of new citizens naturalized last month concealed criminal records that may have disqualified some of them from acquiring citizenship.

“This report does a great disservice to our employees, as well as to all those who were naturalized,” INS District Director Richard K. Rogers said in response to an article that appeared Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times.

The article quoted an INS agent, James Humble-Sanchez, who alleged that officials had learned that about 5,000 of the 60,000 immigrants naturalized in mass ceremonies in Los Angeles last month had concealed criminal records. The same agent repeated his charges Tuesday before a House subcommittee examining the citizenship effort.

In fact, Rogers said, the 5,000 number was an estimate of those applicants whose fingerprints showed that they had previously been arrested, mostly for immigration violations. Most were never convicted of anything, Rogers said, and many had acknowledged their previous arrests to the INS.

“In this society, an arrest should not indicate any kind of guilt,” Rogers said.

Of the 60,000, Rogers said, only 69 may have committed offenses serious enough to disqualify them from U.S. citizenship. The INS plans to revoke the citizenship of anyone naturalized improperly, officials said.

In addition, Rogers denied allegations by Humble-Sanchez that the White House has put pressure on the INS to speed up the process, thus creating as many new voters as possible before November.

“We built a system with integrity in it, and that integrity still stands,” said Rogers, who noted that the INS Los Angeles district had more than doubled its citizenship personnel since last fall.

The waiting time between filing an application and swearing in will soon be down to six months, Rogers said, noting previous delays of a year or more.

The INS is experiencing an unprecedented demand for citizenship, which is expected to result in the naturalization of more than 1 million immigrants this year. About one-quarter are from the Los Angeles area.

As the number of new citizens has skyrocketed and they become eligible to vote, the issue of naturalization has become increasingly politically charged.

Some Republicans have accused the INS of expediting the process without paying sufficient attention to safeguards against abuse. But the Clinton administration, while calling citizenship a priority, has maintained that the process remains sound.

INS officials acknowledge that reports from the FBI in some cases do not arrive until after applicants have been sworn in.

Times staff writer Sara Fritz contributed to this story from Washington.