A local effort by a government bureaucrat to scale back on the pomp of citizenship ceremonies is encountering opposition from Rep. Vito Fossella.

Officials in all three branches of government are now involved in the debate over the future of a New York tradition: the courthouse naturalization ceremony. The dispute is raising questions about the place of civic rituals in modern America.

Following a recent report in The New York Sun about proposed changes to the ceremony, Mr. Fossella, who represents Staten Island and a portion of Brooklyn, has become the first elected official of New York to publicly back the tradition of courthouse naturalizations.

Under the proposed changes, the naturalization ceremony would be moved to a federal office building and would involve the screening of two videos — an address by President Bush and a history of immigration to America. Videos are not part of the current naturalization ceremony in the U.S. Courthouse in Brooklyn, where the majority of the city’s newest citizens are naturalized.

In a letter sent last week to the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, the congressman voiced his opposition to that plan and said federal judges should continue to preside over the ceremonies.

“The naturalization ceremony is the defining moment in a new citizen’s life,” Mr. Fossella wrote. “The importance of the moment is reinforced by the surroundings — a federal judge in his black robe standing before the assembled in his courtroom.”

Of the significance of the ceremony, Mr. Fossella told the Sun yesterday, “I think that when you begin to dilute the naturalization process, you begin to dilute the essence of America.”

The changes to the ceremony being proposed in New York have already occurred elsewhere in the last 15 years. In all of New Jersey, the courthouse ceremony has been replaced by administrative naturalizations performed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Mr. Fossella told the Sun that he was thinking of introducing a bill that would seek to reverse the trend.

“I would consider introducing legislation requiring that naturalizations be held in courts,” Mr. Fossella said, adding that he would first need to conduct “a little bit of due diligence” before drafting such a bill.

The proposed changes in New York were made earlier this year by a local immigration official. The official, Andrea Quarantillo, the director of the city’s office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the changes would both shorten the time immigrants must wait before being naturalized and be more convenient for immigration officers.

Citizenship and Immigration Services is under Mr. Chertoff’s supervision.

Under Ms. Quarantillo’s proposal, immigration officials would perform naturalization ceremonies for immigrants on the some day their applications were approved. Such a move would have its advantages for new citizens, Ms. Quarantillo said, because no additional day off from work would be necessary to attend the courthouse ceremony.

The plan has also been criticized by at least two judges of the federal court in Brooklyn. The judges have questioned whether the ceremony’s dignity would suffer under the proposed changes. More than 40,000 new citizens are naturalized each year at the U.S. courthouse in Brooklyn in a ceremonial courtroom on the second floor. The walls bear panels from a mural that once hung in the immigrant station at Ellis Island. Far fewer naturalizations happen in federal court in Manhattan.

Under the current law, if the courts fall behind in conducting their ceremonies, Ms. Quarantillo’s office can conduct its own naturalizations. A spokesman for citizenship services, Shawn Saucier, said the office does indeed conduct about 10,000 ceremonies in the greater New York area annually.

If Ms. Quarantillo’s proposal is approved, USCIS would get the authority to begin conducting naturalizations even when there were open slots in the courthouse ceremonies.

A 1991 law allowed federal judges to deputize immigration and citizenship officials to conduct the naturalization ceremonies in their stead, as Ms. Quarantillo is now asking for the courts to do. Under the law, federal courts have the authority to reject the request.

Ms. Quarantillo is expected next month to submit a formal written request to court officials in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
“There’s no moving forward with it if the federal courts don’t want to do it,” Mr. Saucier said of the proposal.