Some Immigrants Resort To Lawsuits For Green Cards

Monday, December 18th 2006, 10:17 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) Immigrants demanding an answer on their requests to become permanent U.S. residents have filed at least 30 lawsuits this year in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma.

The lawsuits typically name Michael Chertoff, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has oversight over the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Douglas Stump, a national board member for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, has filed 18 such cases in Oklahoma, mostly for highly skilled medical researchers.

``Every case to date has resulted in action: Either they've been granted green cards or naturalization,'' Stump said.

Chao Li filed a lawsuit this fall. The Chinese doctor had been waiting for permanent residency status for more than two years.

Until he got his green card, he could not apply for grants, which are vital to his career as a researcher at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Under the terms of his employment-based visa, he could not change jobs.

Immigration officials told him numerous times they were waiting for an FBI name check.

``I was so desperate. I had no idea what to do,'' Li said.

He filed the lawsuit on September 29th demanding that the government provide an answer to his request for permanent residency. A month later, he had his green card.

Local immigration lawyers say slow processing of these requests occurs because the FBI is slow in performing the immigrant security checks that were introduced after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In May, immigration officials reported 235,802 FBI name checks pending. Sixty-five percent of those had been pending for 90 days or more, and 35 percent had been pending for a year or more, the report said.

The initial check takes about two weeks, and 80 percent of cases are cleared in that time, according to immigration service documents. Most others are resolved within six months.

But in less than 1 percent of cases, it takes the agency six months or longer to determine whether the immigration applicant is a threat to the country, the agency says.