It has been 9 months since Chapin’s citizenship application was DENIED for “lack of good moral character” because of a discrepancy between his earlier applications and this one. They didn’t ask him about it in the 15-minute joke of an interview he had in January 2007, didn’t give him a chance to explain, did not even raise it as an issue — nope, just DENIED 8 months later. And, by the way, you suck. Oh, and we might just deport you if we feel like it. But, hey, no hard feelings. 
According to the New York Times, this scenario is apparently playing out in living rooms across the United States. Hard-working, law-abiding people who have obeyed the process and taken the appropriate steps throughout every part of their immigration journey get to what should be the end and find out that they have hit a stone wall.
Largely overlooked in the charged debate over illegal immigration, many of these are long-term legal immigrants in the United States who were confident of success when they applied for naturalization, and would have continued to live here legally had they not sought to become citizens.
As applications for naturalization have surged, overburdened federal examiners, under pressure to make quick decisions and also weed out any security risks, prefer to err on the side of rejection, immigration lawyers and independent researchers said. In 2007, 89,683 applications for naturalization were denied, about 12 percent of those presented.
In the last 12 years, denial rates have been consistently higher than at any time since the 1920s.
Though precise figures are not available, an increasing number of these denials involve immigrants who believed they were in good legal standing, according to lawyers and researchers. Under the law, a number of grounds for naturalization denial can lead to an order of deportation, and appeals are more limited than in criminal cases.
“It’s no wonder there are so many illegal immigrants,†said Brad Darnell, an electrical engineer from Canada living in California who applied for citizenship but is also now fighting deportation. “The legal method is so intolerant and confusing.â€
We have submitted an appeal. But, as I mentioned, it’s been 9 months and we have an immigration attorney we don’t necessarily trust who charged us almost $5,000 for a 3-page brief. The appeal process for these cases is purely administrative. Unlike all of the other immigration filings, you do not get a receipt from a central office and there is no one you can contact to find out the status. You just sit and wait and pray that sometime soon some immigration manager will either a) decide they screwed up and reverse the decision or b) call you in for a second hearing. In the meantime, Chapin plans to head to his country next month to visit his family. Although they said he’s still a legal resident for now, I’m praying he won’t get stopped at the border on his way back in…
Where did the semester go? Yikes. I have way too much to do so of course I spent the day running errands and generally doing everything except taking care of my school To Do list. I’ve been working on my outline for my major exam but decided to take a blogging break (in addition to Facebook breaks and Bloglines breaks and e-mail breaks throughout the day. Ack – cut me off!!!).
