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Green Card Delay Will Continue, Says Immigration Chief

Arthur J Pais in New York

Last week the Immigration and Naturalization Service was forced to admit -- following persistent questions by reporters and immigration lawyers -- that its outdated computers were not properly handling the applications for citizenship.

Hence some part of the processing was being done manually. About 120,000 citizenship applications were stuck in the computers, and these too were hand-processed, the INS said.

This week INS chief Doris Messinger confessed that the waiting period for green card applicants was growing.

"We do not have enough resources to process the applications," she said. She did not say what the additional waiting period was.

But legal experts believe that while it took about a year for the change in status from a visa like the H-1 to a green card because of the huge backlog, many people may now have to wait for 18 months or even longer before they get their green cards.

Green card holders then could apply for citizenship after two years or so. There are about 900,000 people waiting for their green cards.

"It seems like an unending process, or should I say, nightmare," says attorney Gurbir Bajwa. "Without becoming a citizen, you are really at a big loss in America. Life becomes much more comfortable when you are a citizen."

Messinger, however, said her department -- despite using the manual process -- was streamlining the processing of citizenship applications. Early this Congress allotted $ 171 million to INS to improve its operations especially dealing with citizenship and green cards. Part of the money was used to buy computers and hire more immigration officers.

Early this year, Messinger had told a congressional committee that she would reduce the processing time for citizenship to 12 months from 18 by the first week of October, and then to six months by the start of the new millennium.

Currently, nationwide people wait for 18 months before they take the citizenship tests and qualify to be citizens. The waiting period three months ago was over 28 months, she said. There are about 2 million people waiting to become citizens. About 10 per cent of them are estimated to be from India.

Citizens are allowed to sponsor their parents and siblings to join them in America. Citizens also are eligible for aid from the government when they cannot afford medical insurance. Since many American states restricted the benefits to green card holders last year, governors and mayors of many states and cities with high immigration population have been urging green card holders to seek citizenship.

Messinger said when the agency has met the goals mentioned above, she would release more workers from the citizenship processing units to process the green card applications.

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