WASHINGTON - Starting today immigrants
and legal aliens can use the Internet to file two of their
most common forms for the Bureau of Citizenship and
Immigration Services, a step immigration advocates hope will
relieve some of the burden on overworked field offices.
The I-765 work permit for temporary foreign workers and the
I-90 form to replace the "green card" for permanent legal
residents will be available for filing online. The two forms
make up a combined 30 percent of the 7 million applications
for benefits handled by the bureau each year.
Six other forms may go online this fall.
"Ultimately, electronic filing will go a long way toward
speeding up the processing time and improving customer service
delivery," said bureau spokesman Dan Kane.
In Tennessee, foreign nationals from as far away as
Knoxville and Johnson City have to renew their work permit
each year at the Memphis office at 1341 Sycamore View Road,
sometimes waiting for hours.
Even after filing their forms electronically, work permit
applicants will have to visit a bureau office for
fingerprinting and signature verification, but that can be
done at the Nashville office.
Applicants for green cards from Tennessee, north
Mississippi and eastern Arkansas also go to the Memphis office
for their required interviews by examiners and sometimes wait
two years or more for an action on the application.
Tennessee lawmakers have pushed unsuccessfully for several
years to persuade immigration officials to open a full service
office in Nashville. That wish was expressed in a 2001
appropriations bill, but no money was earmarked for that
purpose.
Electronic filing might relieve the Memphis office of some
routine paperwork, freeing examiners to concentrate on more
important cases, said Greg Suskind, a partner in the Memphis
law firm of Siskind, Susser, Haas & Devine, which handles
immigration cases nationwide.
Suskind said the bureau has a "dismal track record" in
start ing new programs, but he said electronic filing is
definitely the way to go.
"The less I have to deal with people at immigration the
better," Suskind said.
Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration
Forum, a pro-immigrant advocacy group, said the plan sounds
good.
"Much of what they have down on paper seems to make a lot
of sense," she said "The question is whether they're going to
be able to deliver."
For more information go to http://www.bcis.gov/.
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