Americans in Limbo

For all the disagreement over overhauling America's immigration laws, New Yorkers would think that making the current system work smoothly for those legal immigrants who are qualified and who want to become American citizens would be a point of consensus. Well, as with so many things in Washington, even when then political consensus exists, the federal bureaucracy can't rise to the task of getting the job done.

So it is with the hundreds of thousands of applicants for citizenship who, our Sarah Garland reported recently, are waiting up to 16 months and more — 500 days, some have been advised — for a chance to be sworn in as Americans. This wait is not about making America any safer. It doesn't accommodate more detailed background checks. Most of those applying have already spent years as permanent legal residents of America. It's a straight bureaucratic default, the result of immigration officials who, even after being warned that an advertising campaign, an announced plan for a fee increase, and an upcoming presidential election would result in a surge in applications, failed to establish systems to deal with the increased applications.

The only bright side is that the increased demand for citizenship is an encouraging development, especially given the claims by anti-immigrant forces that Mexicans working in America had little desire to assimilate or integrate into American life. Ms. Garland quotes a spokesman for the American immigration agency saying, "Having this many people saying, 'I want to be part of America,' it's good."

We couldn't agree more. Perhaps one of these millions of new citizens will turn his or her attention to improving the functioning of our immigration agency and its technology so that whatever our immigration laws — and we favor the proactive recruitment of more Americans — they are enforced and implemented in ways that represent the best of American efficiency and ingenuity, rather than remind immigrants of the governments in the places they thought they left behind.