Feds slash wait time for citizenship (to 10 months)
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Feds slash wait time for citizenship
$500 million overhaul helping agency cut paperwork, boost its staff
By STEWART M. POWELL AND SUSAN CARROLL
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
Dec. 10, 2008, 5:39AM
WASHINGTON — World-class diver Vera Ilyina lived in the United States for a decade, competed on the University of Texas diving team and won two Olympic medals for her native Russia before applying for American citizenship.
She waited two years to be approved, snagged by a perennial backlog in routine background checks by FBI agents. Finally, on Oct. 29, the 34-year-old University of Houston graduate student was made a citizen, with all the duties, rights and privileges attached.
Until that day, she was one of 5,300 people in the Houston area waiting for the coveted grant of citizenship. For some of those, and the others nationwide who will follow her, the wait may not be nearly as long.
That's because the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, which processes applications, has completed a $500 million overhaul, boosting its work force. And the FBI has added personnel to cut the backlog of security checks. Now, the wait for citizenship has been slashed to an average of 10 months across the U.S.
The overhaul positions the $2.6 billion-a-year federal agency to handle an expected surge in applications if Congress enacts comprehensive immigration reform during Barack Obama's presidency, said Jonathan Scharfen, who stepped down as acting director earlier this month.
"We have a system in place that is turbocharged," he said. "We're ready to take on a much greater number of" applications.
The immigration agency's preparations are far ahead of the political realities on Capitol Hill. The incoming Obama administration faces immediate pressure to deal with the economic crisis before pursuing any sweeping changes to the troubled immigration system that would generate a surge in applications.
Yet the immigration services agency is looking ahead, having signed a new $500 million contract with IBM to computerize a cumbersome paper-based system in five years.
Turning the tide
Changes already have reduced average processing times for citizenship applications in Texas below the national average, with applicants waiting 8.4 months for final processing in Houston, 7.3 months in Dallas and five months in San Antonio, the agency said.
Gordon Quan, a Houston immigration attorney, said the agency gets "an A for effort" for trying to reduce the backlog.
"There aren't as many people now having these long, long waits, like we've seen in the past," Quan said. "It's not perfect, but I think progress has been made."
Scharfen said his agency's overhaul will serve immigrants well.
"We want to have the best, most modern, most efficient, most secure immigration system in the world," he said.
His upbeat assessment contrasts to a bleak evaluation of his agency's performance by the Government Accountability Office in a report to Congress 17 months ago.
At that time, the agency remained "hindered by inefficient, paper-based processes" that led to a backlog of 3.8 million cases in 2004, loss or misplacement of "tens of thousands of files" and approvals of some applications before determination of "eligibility and potential risk to national security," the GAO reported.
Since then, the agency has added more than 2,000 employees, including 1,600 to interview applicants. The FBI, meanwhile, has added 200 analysts to check their backgrounds.
The reductions in the backlog, Scharfen said, "show a real improvement and a move toward greater efficiency" that should restore Congress' faith in the agency's ability to handle a surge of applications in the event that immigration laws are changed and some illegal immigrants are given a path to citizenship.
The agency already has had a taste of a surge. It received 1.4 million applications for citizenship from legal residents during the year ending on Sept. 30 — twice the 748,000 applications the year before.
New citizens who have made it through the bureaucratic process say the long wait has been worth it.
"It feels great," said Ilyina, who has lived in the United States for 12 years and is working on a master's in business administration at UH.
"It's a great country to be a citizen of — and it makes me proud to be one."
Powell reported from Washington, Carroll from Houston.
stewart.powell@ chron.com
susan.carroll@ chron.com
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