Crime Checks Fell Short for 180,000 New Citizens

Admitting a breakdown of citizenship procedures, the Justice Department conceded Monday that 180,000 immigrants were naturalized during the last two years without undergoing the full criminal background checks required by law.

“Clearly the system was broken, and it is being corrected,” said Carole Florman, spokeswoman for the Justice Department, which is conducting an exhaustive review of more than 1 million citizenship petitions granted during 1995-96.

House Republicans immediately labeled the review as “alarming” confirmation of allegations that the Clinton administration improperly expedited citizenship applications in a politically motivated effort to bolster Democratic ranks in California and other key states before last November’s elections.

“If there is one action that government takes that shouldn’t be politicized--that shouldn’t be outside the law--it’s citizenship,” said Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the House Judiciary immigration and claims subcommittee. “Are we devaluing the citizenship process by letting it become politicized?”

Florman said it is “nonsense” to impart political motives to a flawed citizenship application process that was in effect long before Clinton was first elected president in 1992.

And she cautioned that only a small proportion of the 180,000 new citizens whose applications did not undergo full background checks will have their cases reviewed and could face revocation of their citizenship, since most probably do not have criminal records.

In fact, Florman said that only about 10,800 of the 71,000 with known FBI “rap sheets” may have been charged with felonies that would disqualify the applicants from citizenship if convictions resulted. “That’s the universe we’re looking at most closely,” Florman said.

In those cases, the spokeswoman explained, authorities plan to review each case history to ensure that none had been convicted of crimes that should have barred them from becoming citizens.

But Florman conceded that the number ultimately facing likely revocation almost certainly will exceed previous official estimates of fewer than 100 people nationwide.

While the basic citizenship application process has been in effect since the early 1980s, Republicans say that administration efforts to streamline procedures in the last two years have left it more susceptible to abuse and manipulation.

Rep. Smith, along with Rep. J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight subcommittee on national security, unveiled the findings of a Justice Department report on the citizenship issue in a statement Monday. The agency then commented on the report.

The two congressional panels have scheduled a joint hearing for March 5 on Citizenship USA, the Clinton administration’s controversial--and successful--blueprint to boost naturalization numbers.

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The lawmakers’ announcement resurrected the politically tinged controversy that last year enveloped Citizenship USA, which helped produce an unprecedented million new citizens during the 1995-96 fiscal year. More than one-quarter of all applications nationwide came from Southern California.

Federal law bars citizenship for “aggravated felons,” a category expanded by Congress last year to encompass anyone from murderers to thieves who received jail sentences of one year or more. Other categories of people barred from citizenship include users of illicit drugs, terrorists and those who lie about their criminal pasts on citizenship applications.

At the heart of the controversy is the widespread failure of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to submit accurate fingerprint cards to the FBI from each applicant, as required by law. The FBI background checks are meant to determine whether would-be citizens have criminal records that could disqualify them.

Congressional allegations of wrongdoing prompted the Justice Department last December to implement a number of reforms. Among other things, the INS now approves no naturalization applications without hearing from the FBI on the fingerprint check, and supervisors are now assigned to review all cases involving a criminal history.

In addition, the Justice Department hired an independent auditor to oversee an INS review of more than 1 million naturalization cases from September 1995 through December 1996. It is that ongoing review, headed by Assistant Atty. Gen. Stephen Colgate, that produced the finding that 180,000 citizenship recipients did not have full FBI background checks.

Of those, officials said, about 113,000 appear to have had fingerprint cards sent to the FBI, but the reviews could not be completed. In many of those cases, the cards could not be processed for technical reasons, such as missing fingerprints or the omission of correct names and addresses, officials said.

In the other cases, there was no evidence that the fingerprint information was ever forwarded to the FBI. Why the prints were not sent remains a mystery.

In Los Angeles, an INS clerk last year alleged publicly that the fingerprint cards of between 4,000 and 6,000 citizenship applicants had been discarded instead of being forwarded to the FBI. The INS denied any impropriety and said that the cards did not meet FBI specifications and had been discarded properly.

Of the more than 1 million citizenship petitions reviewed from the 1995-96 period, the Justice Department said that about 71,000 showed up in FBI records as having a rap sheet. That usually means a past arrest but is no guarantee of a conviction, much less a serious conviction that would bar citizenship. FBI records typically give no information on disposition of a case, officials said, complicating the search.

Citizenship USA was created in August 1995 amid an unprecedented surge in citizenship applications that has been attributed to two major factors: legislation restricting benefits for noncitizens at the federal and state levels and the eligibility of about 3 million amnesty recipients who were just completing their mandatory five years as legal U.S. residents.

The INS says that citizenship applications continue to surge and are expected to reach new records in 1997. However, the new safeguards have slowed down processing times, resulting in bulging backlogs in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

McDonnell reported from Los Angeles and Fritz from Washington.