INS Tightens Criminal Checks of Applicants for Citizenship

The Immigration and Naturalization Service, under fire in recent months for granting citizenship to criminals, announced Wednesday that it will tighten the criminal background checks required of all applicants.

The INS said that it will hire consultants to recommend improvements in the problem-plagued naturalization process and hold up swearing-in ceremonies for any immigrants who have not been through the required FBI background check.

Previously, in its rush to process applications, the INS sometimes granted citizenship to applicants before the FBI had finished computer fingerprint reviews.

The new policy, which the INS put into effect across the country Friday, already has delayed the processing of hundreds of prospective citizens poised to take the citizenship oath. In Fresno, 72 immigrants were told Monday after they arrived at a downtown arena that they could not join 641 others in the swearing-in ceremony because their FBI background checks were not complete.

The INS announcement prompted renewed criticism on Capitol Hill, where Republicans had been investigating the INS for allegedly lowering citizenship standards to round up prospective Democratic voters before November’s presidential election. By changing its policies, members of Congress charged, the INS is implicitly acknowledging that it mishandled the citizenship process for political ends.

“The INS has been dropping its standards to increase the numbers and help the White House,” said retiring Rep. Bill Zeliff (R-N.H.), who has called on Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to look into the matter. “Instead of letting murderers, rapists and drug runners become citizens, we ought to be swearing in law-abiding people.”

Reno said Wednesday that she would not appoint an independent counsel to look at the involvement of President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore in the citizenship drive.

INS officials denied that political motives were behind Wednesday’s announcement or Clinton’s “Citizenship USA” program, launched in the fall of 1995 to speed up naturalizations and reduce a processing time for citizenship applications that had grown to two years.

“The election has absolutely nothing to do with the new policy or the timing of the new policy,” said INS spokesman Eric Andrus. “We have been working with the FBI since the summer to further tighten the process.”

Federal law says that new citizens must be of “good moral character” and without “a criminal past.” The INS has acknowledged that some criminals have slipped through the system and obtained citizenship improperly. The number of cases could range from a few hundred to 100,000, according to differing estimates by INS officials and congressional critics.

Before imposing the new criminal background procedure, the INS went forward with naturalization proceedings if the FBI had not indicated a problem within two months of the time applicants’ names were submitted. The waiting period was extended to four months last summer after critics charged that the FBI checks sometimes took longer than two months.

Now, the INS will not swear in a new citizen until it hears specifically from the FBI that the person has not committed crimes that bar eligibility.