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

"It does seem unfair if someone's applying in a small area of the country versus someone applying in Los Angeles or Washington or Detroit or Dallas. And it is unfair," said Bill Wright, a USCIS spokesman. "But if we have more in Washington, D.C., there's really not a whole lot we can do about it. It's based on the demand. It's based on the resources available to us."

USCIS officials say they were overwhelmed by last year's surge, which was triggered by a fee increase and bolstered by interest in the presidential election and tensions over immigration. The cost of an application, including fingerprinting fees, jumped from $410 to $675 on July 30. Between October 2006 and September 2007, USCIS received 1.4 million naturalization applications, nearly twice as many as in the previous 12-month period. Of those, 460,000 arrived in July.

Wright said it was "not appropriate" to estimate how many of the 1.4 million applications would be finalized by Election Day.

The influx did not hit all offices to the same degree, officials said.

In July, the Baltimore immigration office received 4,549 naturalization applications, up from 1,374 in the same month in 2006. Intake at the Washington office, which handles applications from the District and Northern Virginia, jumped from 1,453 in July 2006 to 7,192 last July. Each of those offices had 31 adjudication officers to process all types of applications. Norfolk received 1,590 naturalization petitions in July, a sixfold increase over July 2006. Seven employees were on staff to process them.

"A lot of this is the result of some grass-roots efforts on the ground to get folks to apply for citizenship, and the filings depended on where those efforts were," said Don Neufeld, acting associate director of domestic operations for USCIS. "Some offices were better situated to be able to absorb a surge."

USCIS officials say they are tackling the naturalization backlog by hiring employees and holding citizenship interviews during off hours. Six hundred adjudication officers have been hired nationally, and 637 are in the pipeline, officials said. The agency wants to bring the processing time for naturalization down to a five-month average by 2010.

In February, the Baltimore office began conducting citizenship interviews on one Saturday a month; Saturday interviews will begin this month in the Washington office, which is in Fairfax County. Washington and Baltimore have each added nine adjudication officers; Norfolk, three, officials said.

Surge aside, immigration processing times have long varied by location. It is a topic that generates angst on immigration-related Web sites and uproar among USCIS watchdogs. A report last year by the USCIS ombudsman singled out the variations as one example of the agency's "continued lack of standardization."

Critics say USCIS should be aware enough of immigrant settlement patterns to staff offices accordingly. They also say that delays are not always longest in immigrant-heavy regions: The recent projections put the processing time of Chicago at 8.6 months and that of Yakima, Wash., at 14.1 months.

Prakash Khatri, a District lawyer who served as the USCIS ombudsman from 2003 until the end of February, said his investigations revealed that planning at the national level does not always account for needs in offices such as the one in Norfolk, which Khatri said was already busy with applications from service members who qualify for expedited citizenship. Some offices focus on simple cases to meet "production quotas," Khatri said, then get backed up with complicated ones. Others, he said, are more efficient because of good management or interest from their congressional delegation.

"But there is no excuse for a five-month processing in one part of the country or a 15-month processing in another, when there is a national law that should be administered by the federal government fairly and equitably across the country," Khatri said, referring to the Immigration and Naturalization Act. "This does impact people's lives in terms of benefits and grants and in terms of jobs."

It's all a bit baffling for immigrant applicants.

Marin, the Nicaraguan native who lives in Reston, said he hopes to be able to vote for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in November. He applied for citizenship with his wife and son in June. His daughter applied later and has taken her citizenship test. She must be lucky: She applied in Norfolk.

"I belong to here now," said Marin, who teaches English at Hogar Hispano, a Falls Church program run by Catholic Charities. He has lived in the United States for two decades. "I was trying to vote, that's my biggest concern. For this reason, I'm disappointed."