On July 8, in a class action suit filed by the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) against the Department of Homeland Security, charging it with outrageous delays in granting citizenships to many people, the U.S. District Court, Eastern District Judge Edward Korman approved a settlement between NYLAG and the Department of Homeland Security and members of this government conglomerate – the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the FBI. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff was listed as the "defendant" in this case.
This precedent-setting suit was critically important to thousand of applicants who came legally to this country, abided by the green-card probation period, submitted the required documents for naturalization, and went through the interview process, but who have waited for years to be called to take the oath. For all these years, because they are not yet citizens, they were denied the right to vote or be elected, to bring close relatives to this country, to be allowed to work in a number of sectors, or to receive benefits provided by law after residing in the country for seven years, which are vitally necessary for many people.
We remember how social services deprived hundreds of elderly and sick persons of Social Security Insurance, essentially leaving them without the means of survival only because they could not manage the obtain citizenship within the seven years allotted by law. But they were not at fault – Social Services justified the delays saying applications were being reviewed by the FBI.
The public did not remain quiet. Both English-language and Russian-language press, including this newspaper, made public the fate of these luckless people and called for immigration bureaucrats to exercise more responsibility in this matter. The Jewish Immigration Society organized S.O.S., a country-wide campaign that lobbied Congress to extend the time limits for receiving citizenship, registered applicants who suffered from the negligence of the bureaucrats and, in with each case, intervened on behalf of the applicant by contacting immigration authorities or social services directly.
"We took the same path at the beginning," said the director of NYLAG's immigration department, Attorney Irina Matiychenko. “Moreover, beginning in 2004, when large numbers of elderly immigrants began to be deprived of social relief, we conducted legal proceedings against Social Services and proved that leaving people without benefits, since it represented a deprivation of minimum subsistence, violates state law. We also began to file individual suits against the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; however, the number of delays and waiting time to take the oath of citizenship grew steadily. Once the litigation department here at NYLAG, headed by Jane Stevens, understood that the problem had become systemic, we filed a class-action suit in 2006 against the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of the affected residents of New York. The basis of our demands was: if the FBI has suspicion against a specific person, why don't they review that case first? By law, only 120 days should pass from the end of the naturalization interview and when the oath is taken. Why can't an immigrant get an answer about whether he or she has been granted citizenship within the allotted period? Delay in these cases was completely unacceptable.”
First on the list of complainants was the name of an elderly resident of Queens, an immigrant from Uzbekistan who was deprived of SSI benefits in 2005 due to a more than two-year wait to be called to take the oath. Her name will go down in history with this important case, Yakubova v. Chertoff.
This was a long, drawn-out struggle between a small, although expert, human rights organization and the currently all-powerful government conglomerate. There was bitter opposition in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which cast the blame on the FBI. In response (and more believable) the FBI pointed a finger at immigration bureaucrats. The suit was brought against the entire Department of Homeland Security, so let them decide which of its services is the most to blame.
In the settlement reached between the parties, decisions should be made by the end of August on the citizenship applications for at least 90 percent of the 1,426 residents of Brooklyn, Queens, and Nassau, Richmond, and Suffolk counties. This deadline was determined so that people could participate in the presidential election.
