"I will be helping more, and can do a better job, when I have this clearance. We're in the U.S. Army. We're fighting for this country," said Janabi, who said he faced gunfire and rocket attacks in Iraq.
"I don't understand what's a name check. How can it take two years?" he said.
Pfc. Rafed al Janabi, left, and Pfc. Kadhim al Kanani -- refugees from Iraq -- hope to become U.S. citizens but have waited more than 16 months for a routine security check to be finished.
(Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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Immigration authorities insist that they are not singling out any nationality for extra scrutiny. But they note that people with common names -- like many from the Middle East -- are more likely to get a match in the databases of records from dozens of federal agencies.
Authorities also check variations of applicants' names, especially those transliterated from non-Roman alphabets, which further raise the chances of a hit. Someone with a long Arab name could be entered in dozens of ways. Bill Yates, a top official at the citizenship service, said an investigation after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks showed why such checks were necessary: Officials found 255 versions of the hijackers' names and birth dates in identity and immigration records, he said.
"Since the 9/11 attacks, we started to go through the records and say: 'This was our experience with the 19 [hijackers]. We've got to do more,' " he said.
When there is a hit, the investigation can last months or years, with FBI agents at times having to manually dig through files across the country. Officials said intelligence information is sometimes so fragmentary that it is hard to determine whether it involves the same person. But they do not want to risk making the wrong judgment.
Only about 5 percent of name checks take longer than a few days, officials said. But they involve thousands of people. In the Arlington immigration office, which handles D.C. and Virginia residents, 420 would-be citizens are awaiting the results of security checks, said Bentley, the spokesman. In the Baltimore office, 780 are waiting, he said.
Some cases are slowed by yet another measure. In late 2002, immigration authorities decided to rerun about 2.6 million applications through the FBI security databases because the initial checks had not been thorough enough, Yates said. Thousands of immigrants seeking citizenship and other benefits await their second check.
Some immigrant advocates said U.S. authorities appear to be scrutinizing applicants so closely that they get meaningless hits.
"The system is a fiasco. It is antiquated. It involves hand searches that are like looking for a needle in a haystack," said Peter A. Schey, president of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles.
According to immigration law, would-be citizens are supposed to get an answer on their applications within 120 days of passing their exam, lawyers said. At least four lawsuits have been filed in the past year asking federal courts to intercede for people who have waited longer, many of them from Muslim and Arab countries.
"If there were some serious evidence against someone . . . let's put them in deportation proceedings," said Robert Gibbs, a Seattle lawyer involved in two of the cases, which are pending.
But in many cases, he said, "nothing happens. Which suggests [officials] don't have anything negative. They can't find enough to give them a comfort level that this guy's not going to do something wrong."
In one example of the system's arbitrariness, he said, he discovered that one of his clients, an Indian software specialist, had been flagged with a "Code T," for terrorist, in a security database. It turned out that a customs official had simply entered that designation because terrorist groups have operated in India, Gibbs said.
However, one of the other lawsuits filed by applicants illustrates the government's concerns. In that case, brought in Boston by a Libyan, federal prosecutors said the man was being investigated because of his ties to a group associated with Osama bin Laden.
Immigrant advocates say, however, that many people caught up in the delays clearly have no relation to terrorism. For them, the wait can be frustrating and costly.
"You know how many opportunities I lost to work as a translator?" asked Fatin Hannaney, 48, an Iraqi who lives in Fairfax County. She applied for citizenship in 2001 and has encountered the security-check delays. She said she wanted to work for the FBI but had to be a citizen.
Janabi and Kanani appear to be particularly unlucky. The U.S. military typically offers an expedited path to citizenship. But the Iraqis said they were told that the Army could not help them because their applications were in the system when they joined.
"I sacrifice myself and my family to fight for this country," Janabi said. "But now I feel really down."
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
