Judge orders feds to process immigrants' citizenship papers

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_6950801


Afghan refugee Shazia Aminzada has been in limbo for more than two years, waiting for the FBI to complete a final background check so she can become a U.S. citizen.
Until she is a citizen, the young widow who has adopted Utah as her home cannot visit her sick parents overseas or begin the naturalization process for her two children. The wait has stretched out so long that Aminzada filed suit along with other immigrants seeking a court order to compel the federal government to move their citizenship quest along.
On Thursday, her wish came true. U.S. District Judge Dee Benson gave immigration authorities 45 days to finish the background checks on Aminzada and three other refugees, plus another 30 days to swear them in as citizens if the investigation turns up no disqualifying information.
"My sympathies go out to these plaintiffs," Benson said of the delays in the processing of their citizenship applications.
The deadlines set by the judge mean Aminzada likely will take her oath of citizenship by Nov. 8, the seventh anniversary of her arrival to the U.S. and 2- years after she completed the requirements for naturalization.
Her three fellow plaintiffs are all refugees from Somalia. One of them, Abdirizak Ahmed, has been in the United States for more than 12 years and passed a required English and civics test -
generally the final step in the application process - in May 2003.
This spring, lawyers for Catholic Community Services of Utah and private law firms filed federal lawsuits asking a judge to order U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to issue timely decisions in the cases of Aminzada, Ahmed and 21 other immigrants.
The plaintiffs are legal residents with work permits who have no criminal records and who have passed the English test. They have been waiting, some of them for years, for the completion of a final "name check" by the FBI.
In that check, the FBI runs a search through a database that lists not only exact matches but also ones with similar spellings or pronunciations. The number of hits that need follow-up - which can be matches with names of witnesses and others who are not part of an ongoing investigation - can cause long waits for final citizenship approval.
The immigrants' lawsuits say the law requires Citizenship and Immigration Services to make a decision within 120 days on whether to grant a naturalization application of an immigrant who passed the English and civic exam.
At a Thursday hearing, assistant U.S. attorney Stephen Sorenson asked that the Aminzada lawsuit be thrown out and the matter returned to Citizenship and Immigration Services with an order that decisions be made within a "reasonable" time.
Sorenson said the 120-day period begins after the name check is completed and also contended that setting a deadline for a decision in the plaintiffs' cases would allow them to unfairly cut in line ahead of other immigrants who had applied for citizenship earlier.
Jacquelyn Rogers, a lawyer for the refugees, countered that "there is no line."
"It's more a morass of unfinished name check investigations," she said.
The Aminzada suit originally had eight plaintiffs, but four were approved for citizenship over the summer. After Thursday's ruling, about half of the immigrants in the Catholic Community Services legal actions are still awaiting decisions.
The Utah immigrants are among thousands of applicants nationwide waiting for adjudication of their citizenship applications. A host of other lawsuits have been filed around the country claiming unreasonable delays in processing.
Citizenship and Immigration Services officials have said fewer than 1 percent of the millions of naturalization applications that have been submitted for a name check since December 2002 have required special attention from the FBI.
pmanson@sltrib.com