A coalition of immigrant rights groups, including the New York Immigration Coalition, the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, issued a report card for the Bush administration’s immigration policies.  While the administration received an ‘A’ for its position on immigration, it also received an ‘F’ for failing to reduce the massive backlogs for the processing of citizenship applications and for proposing to increase processing fees. 

Backlogs and processing delays for those seeking citizenship or legal permanent residency have continued to increase.  There are currently 6.2 million petitions awaiting adjudication and the wait time for naturalization is close to three years.

The Bush administration has proposed a nearly $100 million cut in USCIS funding in an effort to reduce the backlog.  The cutback would be recovered in part by increasing processing fees.

USCIS was also given a grade of ‘incomplete’ for its efforts to change the citizenship test to gauge more accurately an immigrant's command of English and of American culture and government.  The coalition stated that if the test is changed, ten percent of those who take it will probably fail.

The coalition also said that the division of the INS into three parts - one for investigations within the US (ICE), one for the border (CPB), and one for the adjudication of immigration applications (USCIS) - has allowed for a lack of communication between the new agencies, which has led to the harassment of immigrants by investigators.  Cases have been reported where immigrants are picked up by investigators and charged with being in the country illegally, when they are actually waiting for adjudication of a petition for citizenship or permanent residence.