The caseworker reported that when she contacts INS about a certain application, she is promised a response within 35 to 40 days, but it is often much longer.

INS says they are trying to speed up their processing of applications which have been steadily increasing due to a tangled web of state and national anti-immigration legislation. When California’s Prop. 187 passed in 1994, its threats to withhold health and educational services for anyone who was not a U.S. citizen sent immigrants rushing to INS for application forms.

Nationwide, Arellano points to welfare reform and the passage of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which reallocated fees, funneling the majority to border control, detention, and cracking down on undocumented workers rather than to processing of the applications for immigrants trying to escape from those circumstances.

In 1995, more than 1 million immigrants applied for citizenship nationwide, nearly double the number from the year before. By 1997, applications had increased to 1.5 million. The Los Angeles office handles one-third of the nation’s naturalization requests. This year has been a bit slower. The INS is predicting that the number will drop to well below 1 million. But the decrease does not necessarily imply a decrease in the number of immigrants. To the contrary, the statistics may signal a backlash of sorts, where frustrated immigrants have given up all together.

"It’s possible that people got discouraged and dropped off due to the length of the wait," says Arellano.

Attorney Peter Schey knows this sentiment all too well. He founded the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law nearly 20 years ago to offer legal representation to those who feel disenfranchised by the naturalization process.

"I was interested in the plight of immigrants," Schey says. "They’re a very vulnerable community and there aren’t a lot of people out there pulling on the oars for these people."

Schey speaks articulately and somewhat wearily, as though this is a story he’s told too many times before.

"Naturalization is an obstacle course that defeats many applicants with meritorious applications. It is not uncommon for applications to gather dust for years at the INS office."

Schey attributes the backlog to "the INS kowtowing to the anti-immigrant forces in Congress that allocate more money for detainment than for the service side of the agency.

"A lot of people think the INS mission is to arrest and detain," he says. "Some think it is to legalize and unfortunately the immigrant often gets caught in the middle. What happens is that people remain undocumented, continue to be exploited on the job, to live in housing that violates codes, and they are fearful to report crimes. It’s obviously not good for the community and extremely injurious to the immigrants."

Schey questions why cases that once took five or six months to process now take four or five years.

"There is no way that the INS would let a detention case sit around for this long," he says. "But they do it all the time for green cards and citizenship."

On a blazingly sunny Saturday afternoon, a dozen or so immigrants from all over SLO County have come to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in the sun-burnt fields of rural Nipomo to get help filling out their N-400 citizenship applications.

Saucedo-Rodriguez is sitting at a table with an elderly Latina woman, asking in Spanish if she considers herself a "prostituta."

"No, no," the woman says, shaking her head so fervently that she almost smacks herself in the face with her long gray braid.

"But, have you ever used a prostitute?" Rosa persists, to which the woman laughs and shakes her head more slowly than before. Rosa has asked these questions so many times that her voice takes on a singsong, almost chantlike quality as she continues down the list: "Eres comunista?" "Nazi?" "Boracha?"

But Saucedo-Rodriguez’s favorite question is 15b: "Have you ever knowingly committed any crime for which you have not been arrested?"

"Can you believe that?" Saucedo-Rodriguez asks. "I’ve never had anyone say yes."

Maria Trevino, a Promotoras volunteer, sits across from Saucedo-Rodriguez. There are not enough people for her help to be needed today, so she sits picking at a fruit cup and taking in the scene.

"It would be a lot, a lot easier if there were services here," she says. Trevino is diabetic and needs to eat at frequent interviews. During her first visit to the Los Angeles INS office, she had no idea that she would be stuck waiting in line for most of the day. She began to feel dizzy from low blood-sugar level.

"You can’t leave, though," she says. "Because then you lose your place in line. Luckily my daughter was with me, so I sent her to go get food. The second time, I got smart and brought my own."

Trevino completed her citizenship process in just one year. Arellano says the INS is now quoting people a citizenship processing time of 18 months.

"But," she admits. "It often takes much longer."

Arellano does not try to sidestep the issue of fingerprints expiring within 15 months. The funny thing about the INS is, despite their seeming omnipotence in determining an immigrant’s future, once you get through to them, they appear just as wrapped up in the red tape as everyone else, aware that changes are needed, but uncertain of how to implement them in a system as convoluted as the current naturalization web.

In January of 1999, application and fingerprinting fees will more than double, going from $120 to $250 for these first two steps of the citizenship process. Arellano says there has never been an increase this great, and she is not certain yet where the additional money will go. When asked if it might be used to streamline the process, she seems startled by the novelty of the idea.

"Well, I guess it could lead to more automation or additional staffing to speed things up," she says. "Yes, it definitely could."

Whether perceived changes will be transformed into actual, real change in the coming year is another question altogether.

Two weeks after his latest Los Angeles INS visit and just a few days before the November elections, Steve McGrath sits on the porch of his SLO home, facing the collection of campaign signs that decorate his lawn.

McGrath knows politics. His wife, Sandi Sigurdson, made an automobile accident-shortened try for the county Board of Supervisors two years ago.

"It really killed me to not be able to vote in these elections," he says, his face wrinkling in visible frustration.

After numerous complaints from both Promotoras and Capps’ office, something finally clicked between McGrath and the INS process. On his third visit to the L.A. office, things finally went as they are depicted to be in a two-page INS flow chart outlining the smooth circuit of the naturalization process. Things went so well, in fact, that McGrath e-mailed Peter Schey to call off filing the INS class action suit that he had discussed with him.

"I cooled off," McGrath says. "Things get supplanted by other causes." He says this calmly, his anger of the past few months distilled into something resembling acceptance.

The INS has said McGrath may be called for his swearing-in ceremony as soon as late November. Although this doesn’t negate the missed days of work, the hotel costs, the numerous trips to Los Angeles or, most upsetting to McGrath in this moment, the missed opportunity to vote, he is still hopeful. There’s always the year 2000.

Staff writer Lea Aschkenas is an American of Hungarian-German descent.

photos by Doug Allen