[Infowarrior] - Rules Eased to Expedite Green Card Applications

[Richard Forno]

February 12, 2008
Rules Eased to Expedite Green Card Applications
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/washington/12checks.html?hp=&pagewanted=pr
int

Searching for ways to reduce a huge backlog of visa applications,
immigration authorities have eased requirements for background checks by the
F.B.I. of immigrants seeking to become permanent United States residents,
federal officials said Monday.

If an immigrant¹s application for a residence visa has been in the system
for more than six months and the only missing piece is a name check by the
F.B.I., immigration officers will now be allowed to approve the application,
according to a memorandum posted Monday on the Web site of the federal
Citizenship and Immigration Services agency.

The memorandum states that ³in the unlikely event² that the F.B.I. name
check turns up negative information about an immigrant after a residence
visa has been granted, the authorities can cancel the visa and begin
deportation proceedings.

The document was written by Michael Aytes, the agency¹s associate director
for domestic operations.

Under the new policy, which was first reported by the McClatchy news
service, immigrants applying for the permanent visas, which are known as
green cards, will still be required to complete two other security checks:
an F.B.I. criminal fingerprint check and a search in a federal criminal and
anti-terrorist database known as Interagency Border Inspection Services.

The F.B.I. will eventually complete name checks for all green card
applicants, officials said. Immigrants seeking to become citizens will still
have to wait until the name check is completed.

³Only after we received assurances that this would not compromise national
security or the integrity of the immigration system did we go forward,² said
Christopher S. Bentley, a spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration
Services. ³This will allow us to give benefits to people who deserve them in
a much quicker time frame.²

The policy is intended to speed processing for tens of thousands of
immigrants with no criminal records who are living in the United States and
have been waiting for years for green cards because their names turned up
matches in the F.B.I¹s records. Often an immigrant¹s name hits a match,
immigration lawyers said, because the F.B.I. files include a vast range of
names, including those of people mentioned in criminal investigations, even
if they had no role in a crime. F.B.I. agents must investigate each name
match by manual searches of voluminous records.

The previous policy ³was just stalling adjustment of status for hundreds of
thousands of people who posed no security threat, without any demonstrable
improvement to our national security,² said Bo Cooper, an immigration lawyer
who was formerly general counsel for the immigration service.

Currently the agency processes about 1.5 million applications requiring name
checks each year, Mr. Bentley said, and 99 percent are cleared by the F.B.I.
in less than six months. But about 140,000 applications have been hung up in
the system for more than six months because of the name checks, he said,
including applications both for green cards and citizenship.

Some critics said the agency would be cutting security corners and bending
federal law.

³They are knowingly granting a benefit to a person who may be a national
security threat or a serious criminal,² said Rosemary Jenks, director of
government relations for NumbersUSA, an organization that favors reduced
immigration.

³These are people who are asking permission to stay in this country
permanently,² Mrs. Jenks said, ³and we have a right to make sure we know who
they are. If it takes a few extra months, so be it.²

But Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the
House immigration subcommittee, said the number of immigrants who had ever
been rejected solely as a result of an F.B.I. name check was ³microscopic.²