Citizenship

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles announced this week that it has received an unprecedented $1 million to use in "Citizenship USA"--an initiative intended to plow through the tremendous backlog of naturalization applications in the county. INS headquarters in Washington granted the Los Angeles branch the money, which will be used to hire more staff and keep interviewers working after hours and on weekends, said district Director Richard K. Rogers.

The county registrar-recorder's office and the district attorney have launched an investigation into allegations of voter registration fraud in the northeast Valley after a preliminary review Wednesday discovered more than a dozen invalid registrations by noncitizens.

Three decades after America eased long-standing restrictions on Asian immigration, Asians are not only the nation's fastest-growing minority, they also have the highest rate of naturalization, according to a new study being released in Washington today. Dispelling a common public perception, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center report says that Asians are as likely as immigrants of European ancestry to become citizens.

Israel will grant citizenship today to Jonathan Pollard, the American Jew serving a life sentence in the United States for spying for the Jewish state. Pollard was arrested outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington in 1985 and convicted of espionage in 1986. He admitted giving Israel information on its Arab enemies. Pollard sought Israeli citizenship in the hope it would bolster any Israeli request for clemency. But U.S. officials have said Israeli citizenship would not affect Pollard's case.

An alleged drug lord deported to the United States by Mexico because of his U.S. citizenship may not be a citizen after all, officials said. Leticia Ramirez of the Cameron County clerk's office in Brownsville, Texas, said Juan Garcia Abrego had obtained a Texas birth certificate in 1965, nearly 20 years after his birth, but that the state voided the certificate in 1993 for reasons that are not clear. The issue raises questions about the legality of Garcia Abrego's deportation Monday.

Memories of hardship and survival are revived as Soo Dong Chong, 83, a Korean immigrant, talks about her past while she completes her citizenship application. She signs the form, reaches for a zippered purse tucked under her sweater and hands over the $95 processing fee. "I should have done this years ago," she says in Korean to Aaron Jin, a 21-year-old immigrant himself and a staffer at the Korean American Coalition, a nonprofit community agency in Los Angeles' Koreatown.

Memories of hardship and survival are revived as Soo Dong Chong, 83, a Korean immigrant, talks about her past while she completes her citizenship application. She signs the form, reaches for a zippered purse tucked under her sweater and hands over the $95 processing fee. "I should have done this years ago," she says in Korean to Aaron Jin, a 21-year-old immigrant himself and a staffer at the Korean American Coalition, a nonprofit community agency in Los Angeles' Koreatown.

Proposition 187 proponent Harold Ezell announced plans for a ballot measure Tuesday requiring the state Department of Motor Vehicles to issue verified, tamper-proof driver's licenses and ID cards to help prevent illegal immigrants and citizens intent on fraud from receiving welfare, unemployment insurance and other government benefits. "This will make a major difference in the way people look at California and how they access our tax dollar benefits," said Ezell, a former INS regional director.

Responding to recent attacks by some of her critics who questioned whether she is a U.S. citizen, Councilwoman Julie Sa shot back Friday, saying she does not have to prove her citizenship and that such demands are "clearly discriminatory." Sa, who had been asked during several council meetings to prove that she is a U.S. citizen, said she was naturalized in 1982. She said she has been targeted by some activists merely because of her race.

They arrived in resolute ones and twos, rippling with newly earned electoral muscle if puzzled about poking all those little holes. Some were spiffy in their Sunday best, toting cameras to capture what in many ways was their real arrival in the United States. On a day when many of their apathy-struck fellow Americans were staying away from the polls in droves, Southern California's newest citizens--whose ranks reached a record level this year--showed up at the polls with a refreshing eagerness.