In D.C. Area, Citizenship Test Is One Of Patience

Local Immigrants Face Longest Wait

Eager to become an American citizen? Don't move to the Washington region. Try Omaha.

The federal agency that handles immigration paperwork has been rolling out tidbits of good -- or less bad -- news about last summer's deluge of naturalization applications, which created a backlog that might prevent hundreds of thousands of would-be citizens from voting in November.

Early last month, the agency announced that it would take an average of 13 to 15 months to process the petitions, not as long as previously predicted but longer than the pre-influx average of seven months.

Then last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services projected what the processing times would be at the end of September at 70 offices across the country. There was more good news -- for folks in places such as Omaha, that is, where citizenship paperwork is expected to be polished off in 5.8 months.

Washington area applicants will need to preserve their patience.

Maryland petitioners, whose papers go to Baltimore, can expect a 14-month wait, the agency said. Applicants in Southern Virginia, who file in Norfolk, will probably have the second-longest wait in the nation -- 14.6 months.

Those in Northern Virginia and the District? They will face the nation's longest delay -- 14.7 months.

"You would think that D.C. has an inside track," said William Ramos, head of the Washington office of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

"I'll vote next time, if I'm alive," said Reston retiree Apolonio Marin, 69, a Nicaraguan native who applied for citizenship last summer. He is still waiting.

Those comments and the agency's projections underscore a problem that has long frustrated critics of the bureaucratic and sluggish U.S. immigration system: How long applicants wait depends on where they live. And in this election year, some say, the variations are more important and unfair than ever.

"One of the benefits of becoming a citizen is to be able to vote," said Parastoo Zahedi, a Vienna lawyer who heads the Washington area chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "Why should their cousin who lives in a jurisdiction that processes their application faster get to vote and those who live in Virginia have to skip the vote?"

Officials with USCIS, which is funded by fees, stop short of saying they need more money. Places with more immigrants are bound to have longer waits, they say.