Ike put their citizenship — and their votes — on hold
Storm delayed swearing-in event till after Monday's deadline to register for Nov. 4 election
By SUSAN CARROLL Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 1, 2008, 11:06PM


KAREN WARREN CHRONICLE
Citizenship applicant Agustin Puga worries he may not be able to vote this year. His wife, Juanita, is in background.

Share Print Email Del.icio.usDiggTechnoratiYahoo! BuzzAgustin Puga and his wife, Juanita Cortina, rose before dawn on the morning of Sept. 24, some 11 days after Hurricane Ike hit Houston.

She put on her best pearls and persuaded Puga, a 47-year-old factory worker, to don a button-down shirt and dress slacks. It was Puga's big day — the day he would become a U.S. citizen after waiting 15 years, and just barely in time to register to vote for the November election.

But shortly after the Pasadena residents pulled into the parking lot of the M.O. Campbell Education Center in north Houston, they realized something was wrong. The building was dark. Cars were leaving quickly. Immigration officials were turning away immigrants arriving for their naturalization oath and promising to send the 1,241 citizenship applicants letters in the mail rescheduling their ceremony.

Puga's first thought was that would he become a citizen in time for the Oct. 6 voter registration deadline.

"Don't worry," Cortina, a U.S. citizen, reassured him, "they'll get to you in time."

But as Monday's registration deadline approaches, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials said Ike-related damage to the area that holds the files in their main office in Houston on Northpoint has made it impossible for them to reschedule the ceremony until Oct. 29, well after the voter registration deadline.

The situation prompted the administrative judge for U.S. District Court in Houston to offer to hold an emergency ceremony and request an extension from the Texas secretary of state. Immigrant advocates and attorneys are calling for a last-minute administrative decision to allow those cleared to become citizens before the deadline.

So far, it appears that USCIS officials are unable to move up the ceremony.

"For people to put the onus on the agency about Mother Nature's wrath is unfair," said Maria Elena Garcia Upson, a USCIS spokeswoman in Texas. "We had no idea this was going to happen. We understand this is a very important year for a lot of people becoming United States citizens. However, these are circumstances totally out of our control."

U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, said he was bothered that would-be citizens are missing out on what is "probably the most important election in their early citizenship." Green said he would be in touch with USCIS today to see if the ceremony could be expedited.

The Southern District of Texas has a long-standing tradition of swearing in new citizens in Houston, defeating a push in the late 1980s by the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service to administer the oath administratively.

So while new citizens in much of the country, including Dallas, are often sworn in by immigration officials on the day they pass their naturalization exams, naturalization ceremonies in Houston are large-scale events.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, the administrative judge for the Houston federal courts, said federal judicial officials were prepared to administer the oath on Sept. 24, and are now waiting on word from USCIS. Hughes said he called the Texas secretary of state's office on Wednesday to see about the possibility of an extension, but was not optimistic since the date is written into state law.

Hughes said he has the court's clerk on standby, and is ready in case USCIS can get the paperwork together by Friday for an emergency ceremony.

Gordon Quan, a Houston immigration attorney, said his office had received calls since the ceremony's cancellation with questions about whether it would be possible to register in time to vote in November.

"They were excited about being able to cast a vote and exercise their rights as an American citizen," he said. "It's really frustrating, because I don't know what they can do."

USCIS officials have been swamped with naturalization applications in the run-up to the election, in part because of a fee increase that took effect in the summer of 2007. The agency received 1.4 million naturalization applications in the 2007 fiscal year.

Immigration officials said they have worked hard to process as many applications as possible, cutting the wait time in Houston to an average of less than six months.

Dee Young, director of Houston Votes, a nonpartisan organization that registers voters, called the rescheduling of the ceremony for after the registration deadline "very unfortunate."

"The thing that concerns me about it is that it came so far after the hurricane," Young said. "I could understand if it was two or three days after, when everything was canceled."

susan.carroll@chron.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 35368.html