[NYTr] FBI Bumbling Bureaucracy Leaves Immigrants in "Black Hole"

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[They're not called Famous But Incomptetent for no reason... -NYTr]

LA Times - Sep 10, 2007 via rick kissell
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-citizenship10sep10,1,5647808.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true

Caught in a bureaucratic black hole

Applicants seeking U.S. citizenship languish for years as the FBI 
conducts cumbersome records checks. Lawsuits are a result.

By Anna Gorman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Seeking to become a U.S. citizen, Biljana Petrovic filed her 
application, completed her interview and passed her civics test.

More than three years later, she is still waiting to be naturalized -- 
held up by an FBI name-check process that has been criticized as slow, 
inefficient and a danger to national security.

Petrovic, a stay-at-home mother in Los Altos, Calif., who has no 
criminal record, has sued the federal government to try to speed up the 
process. She said it's as if her application has slipped into a "black 
hole."

"It's complete frustration," said Petrovic, who is originally from the 
former Yugoslavia and is a naturalized Canadian citizen. "It's not like 
I am applying to enter the country. I have been here for 19 years."

Nearly 320,000 people were waiting for their name checks to be
completed as of Aug. 7, including more than 152,000 who had been
waiting for more than six months, according to the U.S. Bureau of
Citizenship and Immigration Services. More than 61,000 had been waiting
for more than two years.

Applicants for permanent residency or citizenship have lost jobs,
missed out on student loans and in-state tuition, and been unable to
vote or bring relatives into the country. The delays have prompted
scores of lawsuits around the country.

Already this fiscal year, more than 4,100 suits have been filed against 
the citizenship and immigration agency, compared with 2,650 last year 
and about 680 in 2005. The mandamus suits ask federal judges to compel 
immigration officials to adjudicate the cases. The majority of the
cases were prompted by delays in checking names, spokesman Chris
Bentley said.

"There is nothing in immigration law that says that a citizenship 
application should take two, three, four years. That's absurd," said 
Ranjana Natarajan, an ACLU staff attorney who filed a class-action 
lawsuit in Southern California last year on behalf of applicants
waiting for their names to be checked. "People who have not been any
sort of threat . . . have been caught up in this dragnet."

In addition to the bureaucratic nightmare that the lengthy delays 
present, attorneys and government officials say there is a far more 
serious concern: They could be allowing potential terrorists to stay in 
the country.

*Fallout from 9/11*

The backlog began after 9/11, when Citizenship and Immigration Services 
officials reassessed their procedures and learned that the FBI checks 
were not as thorough as they had believed. So "out of an abundance of 
caution," the agency resubmitted 2.7 million names in 2002 to be
checked further, Bentley said.

Rather than simply determining if the applicants were subjects of FBI 
investigations, the bureau checked to see if their names showed up in 
any FBI files, including being listed as witnesses or victims. About
90% of the names did not appear in the agency's records, FBI spokesman
Bill Carter said.

But for the 10% who were listed, authorities carefully reviewed the 
files to look for any "derogatory" information, Carter said. Because 
many documents aren't electronic and are in the bureau's 265 offices 
nationwide, that process can take months, if not years.

"It is not a check of your name," said Chuck Roth, director of 
litigation for the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago, which 
also filed a class-action suit. "It is a file review of anywhere your 
name happens to appear. It has just created a giant bureaucratic mess."

Although many of those stuck in the backlog are from predominantly 
Muslim countries, there are also people from Russia, China, India and 
elsewhere. They include government employees and Iraq war veterans.
Many have been in the U.S. legally for decades.

In one case decided in Washington, D.C., recently, a federal judge
wrote that a Chinese man's four-year wait for permanent residency was 
unreasonable and ordered the government to decide on the application 
within three months. Petrovic, who has two U.S.-born teenagers, doesn't 
know what delayed her application. The only explanation she can think
of is that her name is common in her native country.

She and her husband, Ihab Abu-Hakima, also a Canadian citizen, applied 
for citizenship in April 2003 and had their interviews in February
2004. Her husband was sworn in that summer, while her application
continued to languish. She checked the mail daily.

When she still didn't hear anything, Petrovic contacted immigration 
officials, who told her that the FBI had her file and that it was still 
active. She also contacted her representative and her senator, whose 
offices asked Citizenship and Immigration Services to expedite the 
application. She filed a Freedom of Information Act request for her FBI 
file, which simply showed that she had never been arrested.

"I have a feeling that the system has broken down," she said.

*Joining a different group*

In August, Petrovic joined an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit 
filed in Northern California against the federal government. She is 
waiting to become a U.S. citizen so she can sponsor her elderly
parents, who live in Canada and visit often.

"Every time they leave, I feel bad," she said. "This is their life
here, more than there."

The problem extends beyond the disruption of personal lives.

In his yearly report to Congress in June, immigration services
ombudsman Prakash Khatri wrote that the policy on checking names "may
increase the risk to national security by extending the time a
potential criminal or terrorist remains in the country." Khatri
questioned the overall value of the process, writing that it was the
"single biggest obstacle to the timely and efficient delivery of
immigration benefits."

The Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the threat, last 
month announcing plans to work with the FBI to address the backlog and 
reduce delays. Citizenship and Immigration Services will reassess the 
way name checks are done and earmark $6 million toward streamlining the 
process, Bentley said.

Though 99% of the agency's name checks are completed within six months, 
Bentley said, the lengthy delays for some applicants is "unacceptable."

"That requires a lot of patience on the part of an applicant because 
they have to wait sometimes multiple years," he said.

Nevertheless, he said, no benefit will be approved until that name
check comes back clear. Security checks have produced information about
sex crimes, drug trafficking and individuals with known links to
terrorism, according to the agency.

Carter, the FBI spokesman, said he understands that applicants waiting 
for answers are anxious, but he said the process is complicated and 
involves dozens of agencies and databases -- and, in some cases,
foreign governments.

"The FBI's No. 1 priority remains to protect the United States from 
terrorist attack," Carter said. "To that end, we must ensure the proper 
balance between security and efficiency."

In addition to clearing the backlog and processing the 27,000 new name 
checks it receives each week from immigration officials, the FBI is 
trying to accelerate the process by making more documents electronic.
It is also adding more staff and moving resources to a new records
facility in Virginia, Carter said.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the conservative Center for 
Immigration Studies, said the government needs to make sure that it 
carefully checks every application. And working with foreign
governments is inevitably going to slow the process down, he said.

"We correctly have much more stringent standards for immigration," he 
said. "I am not really sure that there is any way to do this kind of 
deep background check efficiently."

But attorneys said that because of the inefficiency, the program isn't 
serving its purpose.

"Let's say this guy is a terrorist or a criminal," Los Angeles 
immigration attorney Carl Shusterman said. "Why wouldn't the FBI rush 
the case?"

Mervyn Sam, a South African native who got a green card in 1998, has 
been waiting more than four years for the FBI to complete his name 
check. Sam said his career has been affected by the delay. He lives in 
Anaheim and is a project manager at a software company but cannot work 
on certain government projects because he is not a U.S. citizen. He has 
sued the federal government.

"I am not sure what the hiccup is on my end," he said. "It is very,
very frustrating."

Shusterman, whose office is representing Sam, said applicants waste 
their time by contacting the immigration services agency, the FBI or 
their legislators.

"There is only one thing that works, and that is suing them in federal 
court," he said.