Email this page
Print this page
del.icio.us
digg
yahoo!
CommentsNaturalization Carries Hefty Price of Time, Money
First, there was the months-long delay this summer for getting U.S. passports when it normally took weeks. Now comes the news that people waiting for the final word on their naturalization applications can plan on waiting up to 1 1/2 years – nearly three times the amount of time as before.
Why the latest backlog? Citizenship application fees, which include electronic fingerprinting, rose from $410 to $675 (an increase of about two-thirds) on July 30.
“We never anticipated” the extent of the applications growth, says Michael Aytes, associate director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “It went off the charts.”
Officials also point to legal immigrants’ getting anxious about the tone of the political debate over undocumented immigration and increased interest in the upcoming presidential election as reasons.
In July and August, the agency reported, nearly 2.5 million applications and petitions of all types were received. Compare this to 1.2 million applications and petitions received in the same time period last year. From October 2006 to September 2007, there were 1.4 million applications for naturalization – nearly double the volume received the year before. Just in the quarter ending in September this year, CIS received 560,000 applications.
Overall in fiscal 2007, CIS received 7.7 million applications for all types of immigration benefits, up from 6.3 million. To help deal with the workload, about 1,500 new employees are being added.
