Evolution of a Logjam: Citizenship Delays and Promises to Do Better

By PATRICK J. McDONNELL

Oct. 5, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The complex process by which immigrants become U.S. citizens has virtually come full circle during the 1990s.

The system careened wildly from a moderate demand early in the decade to unprecedented numbers of new citizens in the mid-1990s to what is now a record backlog of almost 2 million people nationwide on the new-citizen waiting list. One-quarter of them are in Southern California.

During that span, applying for citizenship has gone from what many considered an intimidating and inaccessible matter to a relatively user-friendly system to its current incarnation--a delay-plagued procedure that is once again scaring off would-be applicants, even as federal officials strive to complete another make-over.

The benefits of citizenship were being conferred on a previously unknown scale just two years ago, enabling masses of new immigrants to become full-fledged Americans and to exercise their right to vote. Now, many are caught in an ever-tightening bottleneck.

“We were really on the right track there for a while with citizenship,” said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a Latino think tank that has studied the issue extensively. “But in the past 10 years, we’ve taken two steps forward and three steps backward.”

Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner insists that the system will be back on track in a year or so, better than ever. The INS points to additional funds and staffing, along with improved automation and new safeguards instituted after congressional Republicans assailed the system for lax security.

“We don’t want anyone not to apply for citizenship because it’s a cumbersome process or it takes too long,” said Rosemary Melville, the INS deputy district director in Los Angeles, which leads the nation in citizenship applications. “The good news is, things are getting better.”

For instance, the agency’s L.A. district has scheduled 38,000 citizenship interviews for this month--more than three times the number conducted in October 1997. But other problems persist: The agency still hasn’t figured out how to meet the heavy demand for fingerprint services from citizenship applicants, especially in Los Angeles.

Social service groups and attorneys in Orange County who help immigrants legalize their status or apply for citizenship have also complained about the new delay by the INS in processing applications.

Most believe that the change from 1996, when applicants were whisked through the citizenship process, to today, when delays of up to three years are common, is due to a combination of politics and INS incompetence.

“In 1996, before the presidential election, they were processing some applicants in 60 days,” said Orange immigration attorney Ron Kamran. “ . . . Just one year ago it was only taking six months for a green card application to be processed. Today, the wait is 14 months. It’s ridiculous.”

Giessepie Espinosa said that “plain, old-fashioned INS incompetence” is to blame for many of the delays.

“My name is a perfect example of how the INS screws up. It used to be Guissepe, but when I was naturalized the INS spelled it Giessepie on my citizenship certificate. I didn’t dare change it for fear of being deported,” he said.

Espinosa, legal administrator of American Immigration Services in San Juan Capistrano, said the INS is overwhelmed in processing applications because “they’ve hired extra people, but most of them aren’t properly trained.”

“Incredibly, many don’t know how to process or review applications. They’ll reject applications for the most stupid of reasons, like the photos are one-eighth of an inch too small,” Espinosa said.

Moreover, some of the INS’ optimism hinges on the prospective availability of $171 million in additional funding for next year. That proposal still needs the approval of skeptical Republican lawmakers dismissive of the agency’s ability to improve a system they say went awry.

Cost of Applying to More Than Double

“The INS has come in at the 11th hour, asking for more money from Congress,” complained Allen Kaye, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Lamar S. Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House immigration subcommittee. “That is not the mark of an agency that is handling the citizenship crisis. . . . There are still terrible problems in the system.”

With so many obstacles, many doubt that the momentum of 1996 can ever be regained, despite the continuing interest among immigrants in securing citizenship.

Among other factors, the cost of applying for citizenship is more than doubling in January, from $95 to $225, a fact that may discourage many working-poor families, the kind who provided the bulk of the recent new Americans. Also, Congress has modified social service cuts to noncitizens that were a hallmark of the 1996 welfare overhaul, easing the pressure on many, especially the elderly, to become U.S. citizens.

Overall, some see the loss of a historic opportunity to fully integrate this population of legal immigrants into U.S. society.

“There are enough people out there to sustain massive citizenship drives for years to come, but I don’t think we’ll see that,” said Greg Simons, citizenship coordinator for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “Once the process corrects itself, which eventually it will, I think we’ll see more people filing for citizenship again. But not in the numbers we did.”

Until the beginning of the 1990s, relatively few immigrants, especially those from Mexico, opted to try for citizenship. The Los Angeles area, with its swelling population of recent arrivals from Mexico and Central America, had a particularly low rate of naturalization.

Along with dreading the process, many immigrants hesitated to cut formal links with their homelands. An oft-repeated rumor was that new citizens had to stomp on a Mexican flag to show their new allegiance.

Perceptions began to change, however, as the decade progressed. A wave of perceived anti-immigrant sentiment helped push record numbers to naturalize as new Americans. Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot initiative that sought to cut benefits for illegal immigrants and speed their deportation, drove many longtime legal residents down the path to citizenship. The 1996 welfare law, which federalized many of the changes sought by Proposition 187, sent even more to the citizenship queues.

Southern California became by far the country’s leading source of new citizens, eclipsing New York and signaling the region’s emergence as the nation’s new-immigrant capital.

A veritable reborn “Americanization” movement--reminiscent of mass assimilation efforts undertaken during the last great wave of immigration early in the 20th century--seemed to have arisen by 1996. That’s when more than 1 million people were naturalized as part of the Clinton administration’s “Citizenship U.S.A.” initiative. The number more than doubled the previous record, set just the year before.

Teams of energetic volunteers canvassed immigrant neighborhoods from Los Angeles to New York, Miami to Seattle, soliciting multitudes of new citizens-to-be.

“There was this great sense of pride,” recalled Simons of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “We lived through a very historic time that they’ll be talking about 100 years from now, like they talked about immigrants coming through Ellis Island at the beginning of the century.”

New Americans exercised their newfound clout at the polls in 1996, helping Clinton to victory and helping Democrats score surprising victories in the California Legislature and elsewhere. In the view of many immigrants, the GOP could not escape its link with anti-immigrant politics, especially after Gov. Pete Wilson championed Proposition 187.

But soon after the November 1996 elections, House Republicans exposed a shoddy system in which tens of thousands of people were naturalized without the required background checks for criminal records.

Eventually, it turned out that only a tiny minority--perhaps fewer than 400 of the more than 1 million who took the oath in 1996--were ineligible for citizenship because of serious criminal convictions.

But the system’s obvious flaws and sloppiness made it difficult to defend. Democrats soon ran scared from Citizenship U.S.A.

“There have been no mainstream political champions of naturalization,” lamented Pachon of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute. “No one is out there on the forefront, except for community-based organizations and ethnic-based organizations.”

A chastened INS brought in outside auditors and experts to redesign the entire process. Henceforth, no one would become a citizen before undergoing a full criminal background check, its centerpiece being an FBI check of applicants’ fingerprints. Though admittedly ill-prepared, INS officials were directed by Congress to take over fingerprinting duties, replacing hundreds of small shops nationwide that had provided the service. The task was overwhelming.

Both Espinosa and Kamran said the new fingerprint requirements are a major reason for some delays. Until last year, applicants could be fingerprinted at police departments or by business offices authorized by the INS to do fingerprinting. The fee then was usually $10.

Now, all fingerprinting must be done by the INS at a cost to the applicant of $25, said Kamran.

“It was intended to minimize fraud, but I’m getting more rejections because of bad fingerprints than ever before,” Kamran said. “The INS is rejecting the work of the person or persons they’ve hired to do the fingerprinting for them. That’s how incompetent they are. It seems that they look to hire the most incompetent of people, or they just don’t do a good job of training them.”

Today, a process that took six months in the fall of 1996--from filing an application to being sworn in--may now consume two years or more. Once again, confusion is rampant. The number of new citizens sworn in nationwide plunged by 50% last year.

Almost 500,000 people languish in the citizenship queue in Southern California alone. Some have waited for three years or more, consigned to what INS Commissioner Meissner herself has described as a “black hole.” No one should have to wait more than six months, Meissner agrees.

Many applicants have waited so long that, through no fault of their own, their security checks have lapsed and they must have their fingerprints taken anew--”re-fingerprinting,” in INS parlance. The FBI, it turns out, discards fingerprints submitted for background checks after 15 months.

Times staff writer H.G. Reza contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Quest for U.S. Citizenship

Demand for citizenship rose dramatically during the 1990s. Applicants and newly naturalized citizens reached record numbers in 1995 and 1996. But as new safeguards were put into place, those figures plummeted. The national trend has been mirrored in the INS’ Los Angeles District, which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

SEEKING STATUS

Applicants for citizenship in the Los Angeles District.

98: 112,000*

* Projected for 1998

NUMBERS NATURALIZED

People who were sworn in as new citizens in Los Angeles District.

*98: 96,000

* Projected for 1998

BULGING BACKLOG

The number of applicants in line for citizenship in the Los Angeles District.

98: 423,000*

* As of August 1998