(no subject)

[Guest guest]

This is a little off the topic, yet one that 1) gave me concern, and 2)

ultimately made me ask the question " why " ?

Subject: Immigration Service, DoD Join to Speed Citizenship Process

By Staff Sgt. Kathleen T. Rhem, USA

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, March 27, 2000 -­ A new area of cooperation

between DoD and the Immigration and Naturalization Service

has led to speedier processing of citizenship requests for

service members.

Typically, there is a five-year residency requirement

before an alien is eligible for U.S. citizenship. However,

individuals with three years of military service are

eligible regardless of how long they’ve lived in the United

States. There are roughly 28,000 resident aliens serving in

the U.S. military, DoD officials said.

DoD was running into problems, however, in the time it took

the INS to process requests. Jim Wolfe, a special assistant

to the secretary of the Air Force, said it was taking up to

three years to process citizenship applications. But not

being an American citizen can place hardships on

individuals’ military careers. It can impede security

clearances, promotions, overseas assignments and

deployments, and in some cases, reenlistments.

Extensive processing times aren’t a problem any longer.

Through Air Force and Army administrative offices and

through Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard legal offices,

the services are now assisting service members in

completing all necessary paperwork and presenting the INS

with completed packets.

“A big part of the delay in the past is that applications,

which had to work their way through the system, would get

to the point where someone was ready to work on them and

one piece would be missing,†Wolfe said. Then the packet

would go back, and the whole process would start over

again. With quality-assurance checks along the way, Wolfe

believes the problem should go away.

“In exchange, what the INS has agreed to do is process all

military applications through their office in Lincoln,

Neb.,†he said. “They’ll have people there who know what a

military application looks like and know how to deal with

it.â€

Wolfe called the program a “win-win-win†situation. He said

it’s good for everyone involved: individuals get their

citizenship faster; the services don’t have to deal with as

many restrictions on individuals’ careers; and the INS gets

some of their workload done for them.

“The bottom line is these 28,000 people are every bit as

dedicated to their service as citizens are,†Wolfe said.

“If we could find a way to make this process easier for

them there was no sense not to do it. You can call it

quality of life, you can call it putting people first, but

it just plain made sense.â€