NATURALIZATION AND CITIZENSHIP UPDATE

On October 28, 1999, the INS announced that it had adjudicated one-quarter of the pending naturalization applications, and has cut the time between submission of the application and a decision from 28 months to about one year.  According to INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, the agency is well on its way to its goal of reducing the wait to six months by the end of  Fiscal Year 2000 (which is September 30, 2000). These numbers are national averages, and people in some areas are still facing waits of over 18 months. 

Of course, not everyone is pleased with this announcement.  Many are concerned that the INS has made improvements in naturalization at the expense of other services.  For example, there are now one million pending green card applications, with an average wait of about 33 months.  The wait for a renewal green card is 18 months, and will likely increase as more of the cards being expiring.  Others cite decreasing numbers of naturalization applications as the reason for the improved numbers.  In 1997 there were 1.6 million applications filed.  In 1999, there were only about 800,000. 

In San Antonio, 233 people became US citizens on October 28, 1999.  According to the INS San Antonio office, it is on track to break last year's record of 11,000 new citizens. Officials say the naturalization application processing period at the office has been reduced from 16 months to less than 12 months.  

The current problems with processing citizenship applications may have an unexpected result for the US.  Moroccan marathon runner Khalid Khannouchi has been trying to gain citizenship for years so that he may run for the US in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.  After his arrival in the US in 1993, he married a US citizen and applied for permanent residency in 1996.  When the INS officer his case was assigned to came under suspicion of accepting bribes, work on all the officer’s cases were halted, even those, such as Khannouchi’s, where there was no suspicion of bribery.  Because of this delay, Khannouchi did not receive his green card until 1998.  He must wait three years before he can apply for citizenship, until 2001, which means he will not be able to compete in the Olympics as an American.  A private bill has been introduced on his behalf, but private bills are seldom successful, and the bill is opposed by Rep. Lamar Smith, (R-TX) Chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee.  Khannouchi set a world record in October at the Chicago Marathon with a time of 2:05:42.

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