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LOS
ANGELES, Dec. 4, 2007 | Many immigrants who have
satisfied the requirements to become U.S. citizens are left in limbo for
months or years due to slow processing of FBI name checks, according to
a class-action lawsuit to be filed in federal court. The delays
violate time limits in the law that are meant to reduce naturalization
backlogs while ensuring national security.
Today -- Tuesday, December 4 -- the ACLU of Southern
California, the National Immigration Law Center, the Asian Pacific
American Legal Center, and the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson will
ask a federal judge to enforce the time limits on name checks for people
in the naturalization process. The lawsuit, Bavi v. Mukasey,
names Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the FBI, which conducts the
checks, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), which
oversees the naturalization process.
“People’s lives are on hold because they are in a
bureaucratic black hole. They can’t travel abroad without worrying
they will be blocked at the border. They can’t vote. They
can’t get business or school loans,” said ACLU/SC staff attorney Ranjana
Natarajan.
An FBI name check is a routine part of every
naturalization application, along with fingerprint and background
checks. The name checks are particularly prone to cause delays
because similar names result in many false “hits” that are
time-consuming to resolve. The checks can slow the scheduling of
naturalization interviews as well as delay final approval of
naturalization.
The USCIS ombudsman found that the FBI name check
backlogs have grown worse over the past few years, and that the name
checks themselves may have little value in identifying persons who pose
a threat.
“The current USCIS name check policy may increase the
risk to national security by extending the time a potential criminal or
terrorist remains in the country,” the report noted. (View the
report at:
www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/CISOMB_Annual_Report_2007.pdf.)
Thousands of Americans nationwide have been forced to
go to court to unblock the delay of their naturalization cases.
The government routinely fights or settles these cases rather than fix
the underlying problems with name checks.
The plaintiffs in Bavi v. Mukasey include Alex
Lee, 26, who was born in South Korea and emigrated with his family in
1998. He applied for citizenship in December 2006. Last
Friday he watched in frustration as his parents and brother took the
oath of citizenship -- even though they filed their applications months
later.
Another plaintiff, Abbas Amirichimeh, was born in Iran
and came to the U.S. in 1993 to study electrical engineering. He
is now a highly trained microchip designer in Irvine, California.
Despite that, he has waited more than four years for a response to his
naturalization application, which he filed in May 2003.
The ninth of 10 children, he was unable to travel to
Iran after the deaths of his father, aunt, uncle and grandfather because
he feared he would be stopped when he returned. “By training, I
believe that if there is a problem, we should come up with a solution,”
he said. “I feel as if my life is floating.” A government
official he spoke to on the phone recently confirmed that the only thing
holding up his naturalization was a name check -- and suggested he seek
a lawyer.
Bavi v. Mukasey is one of several similar
lawsuits that are pending around the country, and the first to address
backlogs both for people who have had their naturalization interviews
and for those who have not.
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