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NEWS BYTES
From 1996 to 1998, the number of federal law enforcement officials rose by 11 percent, with half of that increase due to growth in the INS.  Between 1996 and 1998 the INS received over 8000 new officials.  This brings the total of law enforcement officials – those who are authorized to make arrests and carry a gun – in the INS to over 16,000.  This is almost 4,000 more than are employed by the FBI. 
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Across the country, waiting times for citizenship have gradually been decreased.  However, there is one INS office where the wait seems to grow longer and longer.  In Charlotte, N.C., people are waiting a minimum of two years, and the INS has ordered the Charlotte office to adjudicate its backlog of 8,700 naturalization cases by September.  While this is great news for those with pending citizenship applications, it will cause longer delays for other benefits because the office is not receiving any new officers or funding.  The waiting period for green cards is expected to grow from 18 months to over two years. 
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The INS has reached a settlement with an official who claimed the agency demoted him in retaliation for his testimony criticizing INS citizenship efforts between 1995 and 1996.  During that time the INS was operating the Citizenship USA program, designed to provide expedited naturalization.  Over one million people were naturalized before the 1996 general election, leading many opponents of the administration that the citizenship program was designed to create voters for the administration sentiments the official echoed in his testimony.  In 1998 he was suspended for 21 days and demoted.  Under the settlement, he will receive back pay for the days he was suspended, and will be placed in a position with similar pay and responsibility to that which he initially held. 
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The environmental disaster at the Newark, New Jersey INS office has finally been cleaned up, meaning thousands of applications that were inaccessible because of asbestos contamination can now be processed.  There were about 500,000 files that have been isolated for almost two years, including 30,000 citizenship applications.  The INS office says it will make finishing these citizenship cases a priority, and will hopefully have most of them completed by the time of the November elections. 
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According to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the California Service Center has clarified the procedure for informing that INS service center of changes in the ownership of companies in employment-based I-485 adjustment of status applications.  If a petitioning employer is taken over by a new entity but still qualifies as a “successor in interest,” then it is only necessary to send the qualifying evidence to the CSC to be included in the file rather than formally amending the underlying I-140 application.  Lawyers should clearly state in their cover letter that the attached documents are for filing with the adjustment application, and should clearly refer to the I-485 case number.  This procedure was sanctioned in an AILA/CSC liaison meeting. 
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There was no decision this week from the federal judge hearing the Elian Gonzalez case.  However, while in the US the story has lost its front-page status, it is still daily news in Cuba.  According to the state newspaper Granma, Elian’s Miami relatives are preventing him from communicating with his father.  According to the paper, the relatives will tell the father Elian is not there, or even hang up on him.  A Miami family spokesman denies these charges, saying it was a story invented by the Cuban government, and that Elian speaks with his father regularly.