Immigration authorities are swamped in new bureaucratic backlogs resulting from an unanticipated flood this summer of applications for citizenship and for residence visas, officials said.
In July and August alone, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency received 2.5 million applications, including petitions for naturalization as well as for the entire range of immigrant visas. That was more than double the total applications the agency received in the same two months last year, said a spokesman, Bill Wright.
In the 2007 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30, the agency received 1.4 million petitions from legal immigrants to become US citizens, about double the number in the previous year, Wright said.
The surge began after Jan. 31 when the immigration agency announced fee increases averaging 66 percent for most applications, official figures show. The increases went into effect on July 30. The contentious tenor of the immigration debate also prompted legal immigrants to apply for citizenship.
"We did our absolute best to foresee the surge we would have," Wright said. "We certainly were surprised by such an immediate increase with such a volume."
The deluge has been so great that the agency is struggling to send out notices acknowledging it has received the applications. According to a Web page the agency set up for applicants, as of Friday last week the agency's processing center in Texas is sending out receipts for petitions that arrived by July 26.
Also contributing to the surge are about 300,000 applications in July and August for legal permanent resident visas, commonly known as green cards, from highly skilled immigrants. The jump in applications for the employment-based green cards resulted from the resolution of a mix-up in June between Immigration and Citizenship Services and the State Department. The agencies first invited the applications, then said they would not be accepted and then reversed course, agreeing to accept them.
The processing backlogs are different from the visa backlogs that have burdened the system for years. Because of annual limits on green cards, immigrants from countries like Mexico and the Philippines often have to wait decades for visas.
In addition to the fee increase, the rush of naturalization requests was also prompted by anti-immigrant language in the debate over immigration policy this year. Also, the immigration authorities had announced they were preparing a new, more difficult test for aspiring citizens, which they unveiled in September.
"People are scared," said Ignacio Donoso, an immigration lawyer at the Monty Partners firm in Houston. "And they want to avoid the fees, and they do not want to face a more demanding test. So you are going to have people running like mad to apply, yet the government doesn't hire any more staff to handle it."
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS