Wine Country man finds path to citizenship not always smooth


Jose Arias likens his quest to attain citizenship to blowing up a balloon.

There are times when it seems like the balloon's almost full, the Wine Country resident says. Then, something happens and the air gets out and he has to start all over again.

Since Arias, 58, first applied in 1995, the path to becoming a United States citizen has been fraught with starts and stops. He's submitted stacks of documents to immigration officials, he says, and he's passed the necessary test and interview.

Yet Arias says he doesn't believe he's any closer to becoming a citizen than he was when he started. It's left him and Vera, his wife, deflated.

"We keep waiting for this big party, but it's not happening," Arias said.

Every year, thousands of immigrants are granted citizenship. To do so, they have to have established permanent resident status, they have to pass a civics test as well as a background check and they have to prove they have a handle on the English language.

After establishing permanent resident status through a green card, it's a fairly straightforward process that, unlike what can be a years-long wait for a temporary visa, shouldn't take all that long.

Yet with millions of citizenship applications pending each year, lawyers and immigration officials say, cases can get lost in the system.

For Arias, citizenship might finally be coming. Immigration officials say they are planning to meet with him in the near future to discuss his case.

But he says that doesn't ease the frustration he's felt over the last decade.

Arias' family and friends say he is an upstanding member of the community, a man who came here legally from Tijuana in 1964 and has settled nicely into life in Temecula. He runs his own hauling company and is an active member of his church.

He was even drafted into the military during the Vietnam war and was later honorably discharged.

Though he admits the citizenship process has been frustrating, Arias says he isn't looking to place blame.

"It's not like I want to point fingers at anybody," he said. "I just want to get it over with."

Slipping through the cracks

From the time an application is submitted to the time a decision is made, the citizenship process typically takes about six months, says Marie Sebrechts, West Coast spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

If there's a delay, she said, it's usually because of an error made when the application is initially filed: the wrong fee being sent in, for example, or a check made out to the wrong place. Sometimes, Sebrechts says, applicants forget to sign their forms or they don't send in the proper documents.

When something like that happens, she said, the agency notifies the applicant and gives them about 80 days to correct the error. The agency processes hundreds of thousands of citizenship applications a year and doesn't have the resources to follow up if the applicant doesn't respond in that window, she said.


