Despite a 2002 promise from President Bush to put citizenship applications for immigrant members of the military on a fast track, some are finding themselves waiting months, or even years, because of bureaucratic backlogs. One, Army Sgt. Kendell Frederick, who had tried three times to file for citizenship, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq as he returned from submitting fingerprints for his application.
About 7,200 service members or people who have been recently discharged have citizenship applications pending, but neither the Defense Department nor Citizenship and Immigration Services keeps track of how long they have been waiting.
Immigration lawyers and politicians say they have received a significant number of complaints about delays because of background checks, misplaced paperwork, confusion about deployments and other problems.
The long waits are part of a broader problem plaguing the immigration service, which was flooded with 2.5million applications for citizenship and visas last summer — twice as many as the previous year — in the face of 66 percent fee increases that took effect July 30. Officials have estimated that it will take an average of 18 months to process citizenship applications from legal immigrants through 2010, up from seven months last year.
But service members and veterans are supposed to go to the head of the line.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush signed an executive order allowing non-citizens on active duty to file for citizenship right away, instead of having to first complete three years in the military.
At the same time, post-Sept. 11 security measures, including tougher guidelines for background checks that are part of the process, have slowed things down.
The FBI, which checks the names of citizenship applicants against those in its more than 86 million investigative files, has been handling an average of 90,000 name-check requests a week.