AL.com (Alabama)
By Jonece Starr Dunigan
August 28, 2018
While U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was processing her application to become a naturalized citizen, Ana Nunn’s green card expired.
It was a moment when fear struck a woman who always played by the book. Carrying two children and little funds, Nunn left her tight-knit family in Brazil in 1997 to move to Montevallo with her then-husband who received a work visa known as H1B. Since spouses of H1B visa holders were not allowed to work at the time, Nunn would stay home and take care of the kids.
She said her husband started beating her, so Nunn decided to build an American dream for herself and her children. Even when all she had was a mattress, her kids’ clothes and a television set borrowed from a friend, she made sure to dodge trouble.
“I had met a couple of people who said, ‘Oh, you can get a social security,'” Nunn said. “No. I’m not going to use someone else’s social security to try to get a job because it is illegal. I don’t do illegal things.”
She started along the path that eventually led to her citizenship. The process, known as naturalization, requires immigrants to be Legal Permanent Residents, or green card holders, for five years. Nunn’s second husband, a U.S. citizen, paid the almost $2,000 in legal and filing fees for her green card in 2007, she said. The green card gave her the ability to work. She juggled two jobs every weekday: first as a cafeteria worker — from 5 a.m. until 1 p.m. — and then a store cashier — from 2p.m. until 11:30 p.m. — and sold her car to fund her children’s green cards — which were also about two grand each.
Green cards are valid for 10 years. During that time, Nunn made the decision to become a naturalized citizen. She didn’t expect her application to get stalled by what advocates are referring to as the “second wall.”
A sense of protection
A coalition of immigrant and refugee groups called the National Partnership for New Americans has released reports about the number of pending naturalization applications under President Donald Trump’s administration. Nationally, the backlog increased from 388,832 in the beginning of fiscal year 2016 under former president Barack Obama to 729,400 at the beginning of fiscal year 2018 under Trump.
While the USCIS field office in Montgomery experienced a decrease in applications from 835 in the last quarter of fiscal year 2017 to 797 in the first quarter of fiscal year 2018, the backlog increased by 213 percent to 4,727 in 2018. It was the largest percentage increase in the nation at the time. Maine came in second with 13 percent.
Rank State Application spike or decline Application backlog growth
1 Alabama -4.55% 213.88%
2 Maine 13.91% 13.30%
3 Rhode Island -5.93% 11.78%
4 Iowa 2.38% 9.24%
5 Massachusetts -3.24% 7.68%
A spokeswoman whose region includes Alabama says the Montgomery office was facing a unique situation because it opened in June 2017. Most of the staff was in training and didn’t process the same amount of cases as older offices. Now that the office is up and running, USCIS said constituents won’t know what processing truly looks like in Montgomery until third quarter of fiscal year 2018 numbers are released to the public next month.
USCIS officials are denying NPNA’s claims concerning the nationwide backlog, stating that the agency is keeping up with the input despite an increase in the amount of applications received. But NPNA believes the amount of pending applications are increasing the wait time for an immigrant to become a citizen. A process that is supposed to take six months is now taking up to 20 months, advocates say. When Nunn filed her naturalization application in April 2017, her lawyer said the process would be completed by the time her green card expired the following September.
But as September came and went, panic set in. She kept in her purse a letter from USCIS stating that her application was being processed to use as proof and kept her lawyer’s cell phone number just in case she was pulled over. She would double check to make sure her car tag and other documents were up-to-date. Nunn didn’t do her citizenship test until July 2018. On Aug. 13, she attended a naturalization ceremony at the USCIS field office in Montgomery, where about 40 other immigrants from Jamaica, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Iran, England and elsewhere became U.S. citizens.
Getting her naturalization certificate was a relief. After raising her children and graduating from Virginia College as a medical assistant, Nunn said she couldn’t see a life for herself outside the United States. Even her accent has a southern twang to it, partly because she learned English while watching country music videos and mouthing out the words in the subtitles. Her favorite country artists are Faith Hill and Reba McEntire.
Being naturalized gave her a sense of safety.
“My life was made in this country. After 20 years, I had no plans to go back to Brazil. This is my home,” Nunn said. “I applied for my citizenship so I wouldn’t have to worry about waking up the next day and they come up with some law that would have taken my green card away.”
Ana Nunn, who immigrated into Alabama from Brazil in 1997, accepts her naturalization certificate during a ceremony at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Montgomery field office on Aug. 14, 2017. About 40 other applicants were naturalized that day.
USCIS disputes claims
USCIS has been disputing NPNA’s claims since reports of the backlog started coming out earlier this year. Government officials said the agency naturalized more than 716,000 people in total in fiscal year 2017. In fiscal 2016, 752,772 were naturalized. More than 790,500 people became citizens in 2015.
To increase productivity, ten field offices were expanded, and three new offices were built, including the one in Montgomery. USCIS spokesperson Pamela Wilson said that’s one of the reasons why the totals from the Montgomery field office can’t be compared to the national numbers. Alabama applicants once traveled to Georgia. The agency didn’t separate which applicants came from which state when calculating naturalization totals.
The last quarter of fiscal year 2017, which ran from July until the end of September, was the Montgomery office’s first full quarter since it opened.
“It’s a completely different story than other offices,” Wilson said. “It’s kind of like apples and oranges because that office wasn’t fully functional during that time period of 2017.”
Wilson said the Alabama office is now fully operating. They conducted 600 naturalizations in July and field office officials estimate they will conduct 1,800 naturalizations by the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2018.
Nationally, the amount of applications received increased during the beginning of fiscal year of 2018 from 179,098 in the first quarter to 218,909 in the second quarter. Third quarter numbers have not been released. In total, 384,659 applications were processed during the two quarters, which is an increase from 316,361 in the first two quarters of 2017.
Michael Bars, USCIS acting chief of public affairs, condemned NPNA’s analysis.
“We reject the false and misleading attempts of critics seeking to undermine the good work of agency officials committed to adjudicating all petitions, applications and requests fairly, efficiently, and effectively on a case-by-case basis to determine if they meet all standards required under applicable law, policies, and regulations,” Bars said
Obama also saw an increase of pending applications during his presidency, as well. The largest increase was from 367,009 in fiscal 2015 to 522,565 fiscal 2016, which the last full fiscal year under Obama’s administration. During that same time frame, the amount of incoming applications increased from 782,975 in 2015 to 971,242.
In fiscal year 2017, the beginning of Trump’s presidency, the backlog was 734,209. It stood at 753,352 after the second quarter of fiscal 2018.
Birmingham-based immigration lawyer Jeremy Love said he started noticing a slowdown in the naturalization process about two years ago. A process that is supposed to tale 6-8 months is taking more than twice that time, he said.
“Cases took a while back in the early 2000s — post 911,” Love said. “But this is the slowest I’ve seen in my practice.”
Changes in the process could be partly to blame, he said. Now immigration is requiring everyone who files for legal permanent residency or citizenship to conduct an interview. Before, Love said interviews weren’t required unless it was a spousal case and the couple had to prove the authenticity of their marriage or an immigrant had to prove their relationship to a family member.
“There’s been a number of changes that have been made by the Trump administration that individually don’t seem like major changes but when you add them up, it can make immigration a lot more complicated,” he said.
Wilson explained that the additional interviews were added to the immigration process part of an agency-wide effort to crackdown on fraud.
“USCIS efforts to hold individuals accountable for deliberate acts of citizenship fraud will have no impact on naturalization levels,” a statement from the agency reads.
‘Second Wall’
The National Partnership for New Americans refers to the amount of pending applications as the “second wall” because it is creating a slowdown in the naturalization process during a time when Americans get to decide their next mayor, governor or congressional members. Legal permanent residents can’t vote until they are naturalized citizens. Carlos Aleman, deputy director of the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama, which is part of NPNA, said the backlog is another piece of evidence showing the president’s attitudes towards immigrants.
“We heard quite bit about the president’s attempt to build a wall across the border. This is kind of like a second wall in which the administration’s efforts to slow naturalization is really creating this backlog,” Aleman said. “This is a multi-prong approach by this administration to exclude immigrants.”
Aleman noted Trump’s threat to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) almost a year ago. The program protecting young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children from deportation is now in limbo in the federal court system. Over 300,000 people who fled from earthquakes, famine, hurricanes and war in Syria, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti and other countries lost their Temporary Protected Status. The humanitarian immigration program allows foreigners to remain in the United States, if their native country experienced a situation that prevents their safe return. But advocates say terminated recipients are returning to countries that haven’t recovered from natural disasters or are ravaged by war, disease or gang violence.
Then there is the latest push from White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller to greenlight a new rule in USCIS: immigrants applying for green cards or visas whose families receive government assistance, such as Medicaid or food stamps, will be less likely to be allowed to become citizens.
“These programs exist because there are equity issues in our society economically,” Aleman said. “They are there so people can feed their families and make sure they can function within our society. For the government to turn around and say that anyone using these resources legally are now preventive from citizenship is taking away from our basic moral values.”
Love says Miller’s policy is a more aggressive way to enforce a portion of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which requires a foreigner’s sponsor to be able to support the green card holder financially if they are in need. Love said the requirement to ensure the immigrant doesn’t need government assistance once they become citizens. But enforcement of the statue could hurt one of the most vulnerable populations in the long run.
“Now (the act) is being interpreted differently that in some cases they have been denying green cards for people who they think will become a burden on the state based on family members who have government assistance,” Love said. “There are certain type of cases — humanitarian type cases — where I am really concerned about that because they have been through tough situations, domestic violence for example, where immigration has waived that financial requirement. But I am concerned that it may come up later in the process for them.”
What was once known as the friendly face of immigration has changed its mood, Love said. A few months after Lee Francis Cissna became USCIS’ director in October 2017, he changed the mission statement. Cissna scrapped the quote that once referred the country as “a nation of immigrants” and the agency’s role in granting citizenship and immigration benefits. The current statement calls on the agency to process “requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.”
Demands to hire Americans first and callout for tips about fraud and visa overstays dominate the agency’s social media channels, Love said.
“USCIS wasn’t known as an enforcement agency, but lately they have been kind of showing that they are trying to become more of an enforcement agency,” Love said. “I think in some ways the administration has been arming them to act a lot differently than they used to.”
Love said changing the mission statement denies a part of our nation’s history.
“We have seen in the past with previous administrations who have kind of demonized the immigrant community,” Love said. “It has happened throughout our history, with WWII and Japanese immigrants for example, which was when a lot of our immigration laws were written. It was very racist. It’s unfortunate that, in some ways, we are seeing that again — how the immigrant community is being demonized. I wished we could learn from our past on that.”
USCIS told Al.com that when Cissna was appointed, he outlined several principals focusing on fairness, lawfulness, efficiency, protecting American workers and safeguarding the homeland. During an event sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies earlier this month, Cissna said USCIS is part of a “family of agencies” that includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and Department of State. The Southern Poverty Law Center criticized Cissna for attending an event sponsored by a group that’s been categorized as an anti-immigrant hate group.
“USCIS has a role in enforcement, too. We don’t just adjudicate petitions. We don’t just adjudicate benefit applications or requests,” Cissna said during the event. “If someone is not eligible for a benefit and they appear before us and they’re denied, and they have no status, they should receive a notice to appear. That is the correct and natural consequence, and it is the appropriate place of CIS to fulfill that part.”
In a letter to Congress explaining the change in the mission statement, Cissna said the old one did not accurately describe all the agency does.
“It eroded the dignity and importance of the work of USCIS while confusing employees and the public about who US CIS serves,” Cissna stated. “The text of the new mission statement is structured around the fundamental responsibility of USCIS: administering the nation’s lawful immigration system. The rest of the mission statement describes how users accomplishes that. In particular the mission statement describes how USCIS safeguards the integrity and promise of the lawful immigration system that it administers.”
“I believe that the promise of the U.S. immigration system is that every application or petition will be adjudicated correctly, under the law, and, most importantly, will be adjudicated fairly and impartially,” the letter continued “Everyone- rich or poor, citizen or alien- is treated equally, respectfully, and according to the law. That is the most important promise of our immigration system.”
‘We built our life here’
Love said the entire chain to naturalization is experiencing a slowdown. Green cards are experiencing a backlog as well. In the last quarter of fiscal year 2017, 624,358 applications for status as a legal permanent resident were pending nationally. The amount increased by the end of the first quarter of this fiscal year to 650,479. Although there was a slight decrease in applications received during the second quarter of 2018, the pending caseload increased again to 682,619.
Nunn’s daughter became a naturalized citizen in June in Tennessee. Her 27-year-old son, John Barbosa, waited a little over a year to get his renewed green card.
Although he qualified to apply for citizenship, Barbosa said he held off so he could expedite the adoption process of his wife’s daughter, Ava. Now 5, Ava has grown up with Barbosa since he and his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, started dating when Ava was three months old. As she got older, they bonded over sports like basketball and football. The father and daughter duo are University of Alabama fans all the way.
After moving from Tennessee to Russellville in northwest Alabama in August 2016, Barbosa was advised by his lawyer to renew his green card which he thought would be a swift process compared to naturalization. He said he paid $1,225 and filed his paperwork in May 2017. He expected his new card before his old one expired in December 2017.
But once December crept by, Barbosa said he and his wife checked the mailbox anxiously every day. He didn’t get the new card until earlier this summer but that time period was intense, he said.
“After your card expires, you’re kind of up in the air even though we have been doing it by the rule book ever since we have been here,” he said. “With all that has been going on in the nation right now, it’s kind of a scary situation.”
Being separated from the family was his biggest worry. He doesn’t remember anything about Brazil. He can understand some Portuguese phrases, but only if a person speaks slow enough, he said.
“With all that’s going on in the political side of things, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Barbosa said. “They can pull you over and you have an expired green card. It doesn’t matter what letters you show from immigration. There’s nothing you can do about it. You are pretty much hanging out by faith.”
Love said the USCIS extends an applicant’s status for a year after their documents are received. The agency also sends a receipt stating the immigrant’s documents are received and that their application is pending. Sometimes Love says he would write a letter himself explaining his client’s situation: that documents have been turned in and they are waiting for a new card.
However, Love said some state officials or employers may not interpret that when they see an applicant’s expired card. The misunderstanding can get in the client’s way when trying to renew a driver’s license or apply for a job.
“Oftentimes, the DMV doesn’t know what they are looking at. What they are seeing is an expired green card, so they are saying, ‘No, you no longer have lawful status,'” Love said. “Well, that’s not true. In the court of immigration that status is fine because of their pending renewal or pending naturalization application.”
Nunn bumped into this problem while waiting for her naturalization to be finalized. Her driver’s license and green card expired around the same time. But she said she was able to get her license renewed for a year after she provided workers with the letter she received from USCIS.
Barbosa said he tried to do the same thing when he visited the driver’s license office in Florence when he wanted to transfer his Tennessee license to an Alabama license. But he said he got a different outcome.
“They pretty much said no, ‘I’m sorry.’ You have to turn around and walk out the door,” Barbosa said.
Barbosa and his wife are about two to four months away from finishing the adoption process and another legal journey for Barbosa’s citizenship. The couple is going to celebrate the end of the naturalization process with a second wedding with Barbosa’s family in Brazil — a ceremony that will illustrate the blending of two cultures.
While Barbosa said he never denied were his roots were, he always felt like an American because all his life he had the freedom to create the life he wanted to live. He and his wife started their own business through a supplement company. He said they help people stay healthy.
“Our parents brought us here when we were little kids with a hope and a dream and we built our life here,” he said. “We are one of the only countries in the world where you can be where you want to be without limitation or cap on life.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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