INSs bureaucratic culture appears to tolerate and almost expect failure on too many occasions. I want to spend a few minutes setting forth some examples of these rather serious problems. Most people are. by now. familiar with the story of "Citizenship U.S.A.." how what began as a laudable effort to reduce the backlog of legal immigrants waiting to become Americans ended up sacrificing the integrity of the naturalization process. leaving a bitter aftertaste to what should have been the joyous experience of becoming a citizen of this great country. In the course of that effort. thousands of criminal background checks were not completed. leading to the naturalization of people who had committed disqualifying crimes. As a result of the programs deficiencies. INS is already working to revoke the citizenship of 369 immigrants and is considering action on almost 6.000 other cases. Revocation of citizenship. however. is properly an onerous procedure. considerably more difficult than denying it in the first place to those the law says should not receive it. This particular episode has already received considerable attention. and I will not go through the details again. What has received less attention. however. and is in some ways even more worrisome. is what this episode revealed about serious deficiencies in all aspects of INS operations. To begin with. many of the flaws that produced improper naturalizations in Citizenship U.S.A. had been identified years before. but gone unaddressed. A 1994 report of the inspector generals office identified two major problems with INSs background check process. First. it found that the INS did not verify that fingerprints submitted with applications actually belonged to the applicant.
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naturalization immigrants naturalizations