A New Source for Naturalization Delays

The Washington Post has a nice expose of a new source of delays for the naturalization proceedings for thousands of legal permanent residents.  The Post article quotes the report by the USCIS Ombudsman, dated December 16, 2008, which finds that while USCIS naturalized more than 1,000,000 new citizens in Fiscal Year 2008 and while there is a significant improvement on eliminating processing bottlenecks such as FBI security checks, there are some new and unexpected sources of delays – the U.S. federal courts.

For example, in one of the nation’s busiest courts (unnamed in the report), a judge’s delay caused nearly 2,000 people to not receive the oath in time to register for November’s general election.  There are four cities in the U.S. where the federal courts retain exclusive jurisdiction over naturalization cases – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit.  One of the examples cited in the report refers to an unnamed judge’s refusal to schedule more naturalization appointments or to allow USCIS to administer the oath to new citizens.

It  turns out that federal courts are being paid by USCIS for each naturalization ceremony they perform, and as a result federal judges are reluctant to give up their authority to do so.  The report urges USCIS and federal courts to work together and set rules on how each party handles ceremonies in order to “to ensure a consistent customer service ethic that safeguards the significance of the event for new citizens.”