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By Annan Boodram |
New York, Janaury 2002: Even as the number of immigrants seeking permanent residency in the United States grows, the backlog and waiting times for applicants have declined for the first time in seven years, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said . At present, someone applying for a green card granting permanent residency must wait an average of 12 to 15 months, down from 33 months in 1999, officials said. The wait varies greatly by region, with some cities like Houston and New York faring worse than the national average.
The backlog of applicants in the fiscal year 2001 dipped to 980,000 people, just below the peak of more than one million people a year earlier. The backlog had grown steadily from 121,000 people in 1994, causing delays for students, refugees, spouses of permanent residents, temporary workers sponsored by employers and other applicants.
Immigration officials ascribe the declining backlog and waiting times to several factors. The immigration service has hired 1,200 more adjudicators in the last three years, for a total of 6,559. The budget for processing citizenship and other service claims increased to $650 million this year, from $440 million in the fiscal year 1999. And officials have bought new computers.
"We're beginning to turn the corner," an immigration official said. "We're catching up."
The Bush administration and its new commissioner of immigration and naturalization, James Ziglar, have set a goal to process all claims for permanent residency within six months. Immigration officials said the goal was to meet that national average by this October, and for all regional offices to meet it by the end of the fiscal year 2003.
"There are large pockets of improvement," said Michael Maggio, an immigration lawyer here who said he had noticed faster service for clients in Washington and Baltimore.
The backlog in adjusting immigrants' legal status stems from the mid-1990's when the immigration service, facing mounting delays in processing citizenship applications, shifted resources to address that problem. That starved other parts of the immigration bureaucracy, which were unable to keep pace with a growing number of applicants seeking to change their legal status.
Changes in the law also fueled big increases in applicants. Congress last year briefly reinstated a process that allowed many illegal immigrants to apply for legal residency without first having to return to their country of origin. As many as 400,000 immigrants met the original filing deadline, April 30, 2001, after paying a $1,000 fee to avoid having to return to their home country.
The total number of new applicants for permanent residency in the fiscal year 2001 jumped sharply, to 754,000, from 456,000 in the fiscal year 1999. Immigration officials said the increased personnel and better computers allowed them to approve 695,000 filings last year, compared with 264,000 in 1999.
Even before the attacks on Sept. 11, applicants underwent background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. Since the attacks, Arab and Muslim immigrants who have applied for citizenship and other services have faced increased scrutiny, immigration lawyers said. Lawyers for Arab and Muslim clients said that the number of applications accepted by the immigration service had not declined since the attacks, and that the processing times were consistent with those of other applicants. But the lawyers said their clients faced more questions than non-Arabs.
"There has been a greater scrutiny of naturalization applications, as well as other applications, when it comes to Arabs and Muslims," said Ashraf Nubani, an immigration lawyer in Springfield, Va.
Mr. Nubani said 60 percent of his clients were Arab and Muslim immigrants of legal resident status.
"This may be an unspoken type of thing," he said. "The I.N.S. may have Sept. 11 in the back of their minds."
Of particular interest to immigration officials, Mr. Nubani said, were the previous addresses, employment records and travel histories of his clients.
"Prior to Sept. 11, I would not have gotten the scrutiny on these applications that I have gotten since," he said.
With respect to crackdown in the wake of September eleven the names of the of the Guyanese who have been detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS.
Hassan Azizeldin, Syde Imtiaz Hassan, Mohamed Zahid Mahmood, Muhmmad Jahangir, Wasim Mohammed Khan and Mohamed Maddy are still in INS custody reportedly for running afoul of immigration laws. Another Guyanese, Rehman Sabir Khan who was also detained was released mid-December on bond.
The men, all Indo-Guyanese, range in age from 21 to 36. Among the charges meted out are overstaying their visas, illegal entry into the US, obtaining visa fraudulently to enter the US, not having valid entry document. Two Trinidadians are also in custody but their names have not been released
And in other developments a federal appeals court has ruled that the government's mandatory detention policy is unconstitutional.
The Third United States Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has also ruled that each detainee is entitled to an individualized bond hearing.
"To deprive these individuals of their fundamental right to freedom furthers no government goal," the court said, "while generating a considerable cost to the government, the alien and the alien's family" .
Since 1998, the government mandated that all immigrants who face deportation because of the crimes they have committed must stay in detention after they finish serving their time, regardless of the duration of the deportation process.
But in overturning that policy, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals now says that while the government has a legitimate right to detain those who might flee or pose a threat to community, the blanket detention policy violates the constitutional right to due process.
However, the ruling, which is binding on those in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the US Virgin Islands, does not deal with those detained in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks
The Appeals Court said that due process requires "an adequate and proportionate" justification for detention.