Waiting to Obtain U.S. Citizenship

“A Waiting Game” (Sept. 18), describing the frustration of becoming a U.S. citizen nowadays, failed to mention one of the chief reasons why many applicants must wait for more than two years to be naturalized. No applicant may even be interviewed for naturalization unless his or her case contains the original file. For example, if a person entered the U.S. in 1953 at the port of Detroit, his or her papers are still there. That citizenship candidate must then rely on the personnel in the district where he or she applies to ask for the Detroit Immigration and Naturalization Service office to send the original file. The office is allowed to ask three times for the candidate’s original file.

That is why citizenship applicants can wait years before they even get an interview. Their files are so ancient they don’t even exist. They require hand searches. Since no candidate’s fingerprints may age more than 15 months, a missing file can cause an applicant’s having to submit more than three sets of fingerprints. This is not due to an unresponsive INS. It is the the result of draconian legislation passed by Congress in 1996. That’s why the 500,000 persons in the Los Angeles district backlog--hundreds of them clients at the nonprofit agency I serve--can hardly wait to vote.

MARY GREENE

Palm Springs

*

According to the article, INS examiners test U.S. citizenship applicants’ ability to speak, read and write in English and for basic knowledge of U.S. government.

Can someone please tell me who the parents are of LAUSD’s 1.4 million limited-English proficient students? Are they not U.S. citizens? Why do parents (who speak, read and write in English) send their children to school fluent only in the parents’ native language? Why have they placed on the backs of their own children the burden of learning to speak, read and write English?

J. EDWIN ROGERS

Los Angeles

*

A shameful waste of another $160,000 to print voter pamphlets in Korean as well as a half-dozen other foreign languages (Sept. 16), when the INS tests for ability to speak, read and write in English prior to attaining U.S. citizenship.

DOUGLAS MILLER

Glendora