Yet the MSM consistently poRtrays the myth that the LIAR ASSHOLE BUSH is for them.
He BROKE a PROMISE, dammit!!!
C'mon, shit MSM!!!!
"Service members battle for US citizenship"
"by Fernanda Santos, New York Times News Service | February 24, 2008
NEW YORK - Despite a 2002 promise from President Bush to put citizenship applications for immigrant members of the military on a fast track, some are finding themselves waiting months, or even years, because of bureaucratic backlogs. One, Sergeant Kendell K. Frederick of the Army, who had tried three times to file for citizenship, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq as he returned from submitting fingerprints for his application.
About 7,200 service members or people who have been recently discharged have citizenship applications pending, but neither the Department of Defense nor Citizenship and Immigration Services keeps track of how long they have been waiting. Immigration lawyers and politicians say they have received a significant number of complaints about delays because of background checks, misplaced paperwork, confusion about deployments, and other problems.
"I've pretty much given up on finding out where my paperwork is, what's gone wrong, what happened to it," said Abdool Habibullah, 27, a Guyanese immigrant who first applied for citizenship in 2005 upon returning from a tour in Iraq and was honorably discharged from the Marines as a sergeant. "If what I've done for this country isn't enough for me to be a citizen, then I don't know what is."
The long waits are part of a broader problem plaguing the immigration service, which was flooded with 2.5 million applications for citizenship and visas last summer - twice as many as the previous year - in the face of 66 percent fee increases that took effect July 30. Officials have estimated it will take an average of 18 months to process citizenship applications from legal immigrants through 2010, up from seven months last year.
But service members and veterans are supposed to go to the head of the line. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush signed an executive order allowing noncitizens on active duty to file for citizenship right away, instead of having to first complete three years in the military. The federal government has since taken several steps to speed up the process, including training military officers to help service members fill out forms, assigning special teams to handle the paperwork, and allowing citizenship tests, interviews, and ceremonies to take place overseas.
At the same time, post-Sept. 11 security measures, including tougher guidelines for background checks that are part of the naturalization process, have slowed things down.
The FBI, which checks the names of citizenship applicants against those in its more than 86 million investigative files, has been overwhelmed, handling an average of 90,000 name-check requests a week. In the fiscal year that ended in September, the FBI was asked to check 4.1 million names, at least half of them for citizenship and green card applicants, a spokesman said.
"Most soldiers clear the checks within 30 to 60 days, or 60 to 90 days," said Leslie B. Lord, the Army's liaison to Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that processes citizenship applications. "But even the soldier with the cleanest of records, if he has a name that's very similar to one that's in the FBI bad-boy and bad-girl list, things get delayed."
Overall, 312,000 citizenship or green card applications are pending name checks, including 140,000 that have been waiting more than six months, immigration officials said. This month, immigration authorities eased background-check requirements for green cards, saying that if applicants had been waiting more than six months, they could be approved without an FBI check, and approvals could be revoked if troubling information was found....
Frederick, a 21-year-old immigrant from Trinidad, would be awarded citizenship only posthumously, on the day of his burial. He is one of more than 90 immigrant service members to be naturalized after losing their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Frederick's mother, Michelle Murphy, said he had filed his citizenship application a year before he was deployed to Iraq in 2005, but that his application was sent back to her Maryland home three times - once because of incomplete biographical information, again because he had left a box unchecked, and once more because he had not paid the fee.
Finally, Murphy said, Frederick received a letter saying the fingerprints he had included with his application could not be read. She contacted immigration officials, who arranged for him to submit a new set on Oct. 19, 2005, near his base in Tikrit. On the way back from the appointment, his convoy hit a roadside bomb.
"If somebody is fighting for a country, if he's deployed, if he's in the middle of a war, it shouldn't be that hard for them to become a citizen," Murphy, 42, said in a telephone interview.
After his death, the immigration service began accepting enlistment fingerprints with service members' citizenship applications, provided applicants authorized the military to share their files with immigration officials."A little too late for that kid though, huh?
How do you think his mom feels, readers?
