A settlement has been proposed in the suit against the INS on behalf of disabled immigrants with pending naturalization applications whose applications for medical waivers were denied. The settlement must be approved by the Justice Department and a federal judge. If it does become effective, the INS will be required to review all applications that were rejected between March 1997 and December 1998, about 3000. New applications would not be required, but if the original application is found unacceptable, the petitioner will have two more opportunities to submit sufficient applications. The applications will be judged according to criteria issued last April 7 and reviewed in our Visa Spotlight article last April at www.visalaw.com/99apr.

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The INS has introduced a new "electronic" N-400 form for people filing for naturalization. The new system allows people to fill out their form on their computer and print the form out with a bar code that captures all of the information. The INS can then scan the bar code instead of hand typing in the information, thus ensuring greater accuracy and speeding up data entry. The system is fairly similar to the commonly used bar code scanning that you see at your typical grocery store.