Thousands in Crackdown Face Loss of Citizenship

In an unprecedented crackdown, the federal government is trying to revoke the citizenship of up to 6,323 of the more than 1 million people naturalized in the 13 months before the 1996 elections, and auditors have found thousands more who may also have been improperly naturalized, according to reports released Monday.

In a separate review, consultants found processing errors in 90.8% of the cases handled during the Clinton administration’s aggressive Citizenship USA drive from August 1995 through September 1996. Almost 88% of the files lacked sufficient documentation.

Although many of the errors were minor administrative glitches that do not necessarily indicate improper naturalizations, the reports form an important basis for the federal plan to revamp the naturalization process. Nonetheless, they prompted a renewed call for reform from Republican lawmakers.

“Each independent report on the Citizenship USA fiasco is a more frightening snapshot of how far wrong the politicized program went,” said Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas), who heads the House immigration subcommittee. “This administration has proven that it cannot be trusted . . . to enforce regulations of who is eligible to be a citizen.”

Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) called the reports “alarming” and “appalling” and promised to hold hearings soon on legislation to tighten the naturalization process.

But officials at the Immigration and Naturalization Service said their modernization plan to use technology to improve customer service and the security of information should drastically reduce errors while slashing the massive backlog of 1.7 million people, one-fourth of them in Southern California, waiting to become citizens.

The naturalization and administrative errors were uncovered in a $1.8-million, 18-month review of the 1996 citizenship files conducted by the accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick for the Justice Department. The blueprint for revamping the system is part of a three-year, $5-million study by the consulting firm Coopers & Lybrand.

Both studies were commissioned after widespread criticism of the Citizenship USA drive, including charges that the Clinton administration purposely rushed through unqualified applicants in order to swell the citizenship rolls before the 1996 elections.

A random-sample analysis of the citizenship files by KPMG found that 11,550 people (1.1%) likely would have been rejected for moral character issues--mostly failing to reveal an arrest--and another 27,300 (2.4%) for problems such as not meeting the residency requirement. But the threshold for denial of citizenship is far lower than that for revocation of citizenship. Administration officials say they are confident they have located all the cases in which revocation is likely.

Of the 6,323 people whose citizenship officials will try to revoke, 369 had disqualifying convictions for felonies or crimes of “moral turpitude,” while the rest lied about their arrest records, according to the KPMG audits.

“We were dealing with a system . . . that had been broken for a number of years,” Asst. Atty. Gen. Stephen R. Colgate said at a news conference. “We are addressing the errors of the past and have improved the process significantly.”

Of the naturalizations auditors said should be revoked, INS officials have so far combed through 2,158, and determined that 1,481, or 69%, should get a notice that revocation is imminent. Citizens have the right to an administrative hearing, and revocation can be appealed in federal court.

In a typical year, the INS would move to strip only about a dozen people of their citizenship, a spokesman said. The high number of proposed revocations are the unique result of the huge numbers involved in Citizenship USA and the resulting top-to-bottom audit of the naturalization process.

Citing privacy concerns, officials would not identify the nationalities of those who were improperly naturalized or say which INS offices handled their applications. But the audit of the Los Angeles district showed processing errors in 90.4% of its cases--higher than the 85.3% error rate in San Francisco but below the rates of 99% and above in the Miami, New York and Newark, N.J., offices.

Many of the changes outlined in the proposed overhaul--such as requiring law enforcement agencies to handle fingerprinting and unifying INS computer systems across the nation--are already in the works. Officials on Monday would not set a timetable for completion of the entire package.

“We’re not going to stop today everything that’s been done and start these things. It’s ongoing,” said Robert K. Bratt, the INS director of naturalization operations.

Most immigration advocates welcomed the plans for revamping the naturalization process in hopes that it would cut the backlog, which has kept some applicants waiting as long as two years.

“Any design that would help decrease the inefficiencies and long bureaucratic wait would be an improvement,” Norman D. Tilles, president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, said in a statement. “Citizenship is a crowning achievement for an immigrant . . . Our goal must be to facilitate that process and not burden applicants with a two-year delay.”

Arturo Vargas, head of the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials, also applauded the blueprint, predicting it would “make the process more accessible and alleviate concerns about its integrity.”

But Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), a leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, worried that proposals such as requiring applicants to submit two fingerprints at several stages would slow the process and degrade prospective citizens.

He suggested that INS employees be required to pass the civics test given to applicants.

“This appears to be another example of the INS going out of its way to appease the harshest critics of immigrants, those who want to create substantial barriers to citizenship and who want to spread unsubstantiated rumors and dangerous stereotypes about the people applying for citizenship,” Gutierrez said.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who chairs the panel that handles INS funding, said the errors reveal a “deeply troubling breakdown.”

“INS sacrificed the integrity of the citizenship process in its headlong rush to naturalize as many people as it could in 1995 and 1996,” Gregg said. “To reverse this result, INS must now undertake vigorous efforts to revoke citizenship that was improperly granted.”