INS Reduces Delays on Citizenship : Immigration: Agency has cracked down on bureaucratic backlog, commissioner says, and hopes to streamline operations even further.

The line outside the Immigration and Naturalization Service headquarters in downtown Los Angeles moved too quickly Thursday for Guadalupe Garcia to describe all the bureaucratic horrors he has faced since applying for U.S. citizenship three years ago.

Halfway through his tale of computer foul-ups and rude clerks, Garcia was quickly shuffled through a set of waiting room doors to try his luck again. Maybe it was a good omen.

Upstairs, INS Commissioner Doris Meissner was announcing a huge reduction in the federal agency’s backlog of applications that has delayed citizenship for hundreds of thousands of immigrants.

In the last 11 months, the Los Angeles district office--one of the busiest in the country--has pared down about 420,000 pending applications to 290,000 cases, Meissner said.

The time to process a citizenship application is now about 13 months, compared with 41 months as of last fall. By next September, Meissner hopes applicants will have to wait only six months for a decision.

The enormous backlog followed a dramatic spike in citizenship applications during the mid-1990s. Anti-immigrant sentiments prompted large numbers of eligible non-citizens to seek U.S. citizenship, overwhelming INS offices in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

The hundreds of citizenship applicants who form a line that snakes around the federal building in downtown Los Angeles each weekday morning come from around the globe. But they are united by weary tales of red tape and apathetic INS caseworkers.

“Eight hours I waited once to ask a question that took one second, about something that was their fault,” Garcia recalled. “And the lady [at the counter] told me that it was my problem, not hers.”

Boosted by a $171-million increase in her agency’s budget last year, Meissner at her news conference promised a friendlier and more efficient INS.

She and U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), who also attended, made appeals for Congress to approve an additional $124 million to ensure continued progress.

Becerra, who represents large immigrant neighborhoods downtown and in east Hollywood, championed INS improvements last year in response to many complaints.

A year ago, “we were in distress,” he said. “Now, you can see what happens when you give an agency the resources it needs to work.”

Some immigration service groups, however, remain critical.

Greg Simons, a coordinator for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, noted a sixfold increase in citizenship denials over the last year in Los Angeles. Since January, he said, roughly 90,000 applications have been denied in the Los Angeles district--more than 40% of the application total, compared to an average of 6% in previous years.

“Those people were just basically steamrolled,” Simons said, in an effort by the agency to quickly complete as many cases as possible. Simons said the INS lets thousands of cases fall through the cracks because of computer errors or staff mistakes.

Manmohan Singh Sukhwal, for instance, has thought of abandoning his five-year effort to gain citizenship after being required by INS officials to provide a set of fingerprints six separate times before his application could be advanced.

Although he has written to the INS and several elected officials, the 69-year-old Indian immigrant has had no success. “I feel frustrated, very much,” he said.

INS officials deny that applicants have been treated unjustly as the agency attempts to pare down the backlog. The higher rate of application rejections is largely the result of a newly created INS branch responsible for complex applications that were routinely set aside by workers in previous years.

Meissner said the majority of denials result from applicants moving to new addresses or abandoning their efforts to become citizens. In several instances, she said, “we’ve been unable to locate them,” so the cases are closed.

The agency hopes to correct that problem with a soon-to-be established toll-free number for applicants to call when they change addresses or update their applications, Meissner said.

Becerra said his staff monitors INS approval procedures very closely and often acts on behalf of immigrants in his district.

But improving the process is a two-way street, he said. Unless people speak up, he said, “we’ll never know they’re out there. They need to call in.”