Immigrants' lives in limbo through FBI Background Check

Frustrations mount, but feds say security checks take time

Mazin Shalabi wants his wife, Iliana, and children (from left) Adeeb, Areege and Layla to have the freedoms of living in the U.S. After a nearly three-year security check, the commercial jet pilot will become a U.S. citizen on March 30.

Each time Mazin Shalabi settles into the cockpit of an American Eagle jet, he is entrusted with the lives of all passengers on board.

As a Jordanian citizen and a pilot for the regional affiliate of the world's largest airline, Mr. Shalabi is vetted regularly by the Federal Aviation Administration, the FBI and other federal agencies.
But when Mr. Shalabi applied for U.S. citizenship, it took immigration authorities nearly three years to determine that he was not a threat.

Mr. Shalabi is not a devout Muslim (he cites drinking beer as one of his favorite pastimes). But he is one of at least 40 Muslim men from North Texas, and hundreds more across the country, who have waited years on end for an answer to citizenship or green card applications.

They are told their cases are snagged because of security issues, including an FBI background check. Until that hurdle is cleared, their immigration applications can remain pending indefinitely.

In December, North Texas Muslim leaders met with authorities at Mr. Shalabi's Arlington restaurant, Kan Zaman, to address their grievances.

Mr. Shalabi, 38, stood up and challenged authorities to end his application's delay.

"If you think I am a threat to security, remove me from those airplanes. Stop me from flying now," he recalled saying. "If that's what you think, you need to do something about it."

Three weeks later, his application was approved. On March 30, Mr. Shalabi will take the oath and become a U.S. citizen.
Representatives of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the FBI said they could understand the frustration, but they asked for patience in the interest of national security.

Immigration officials have been trying to eliminate a backlog of applications dating from the mid-1990s and have improved processing times dramatically.

But the world changed after 9/11, and all immigration applicants are scrutinized much more closely now, said Maria Elena Garcia-Upson, a regional spokeswoman based in Dallas for the immigration agency.

"We are not closing the door on anybody," Ms. Garcia-Upson said. "The Muslim community might feel like that. But it's not just people of the Muslim religion who are having to wait. Whether it's from country A or country Z, we need to wait until the record comes back clean."

In Mr. Shalabi's case, immigration officials were re-examining a fight he had 15 years ago that they eventually determined to be an insignificant scuffle.

A pilot permitted by federal authorities to work at any airport in America is clearly not a security threat, countered Karen "Saffia" Meek, who is gathering examples of the delays for the Dallas-Fort Worth branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"It's ludicrous. I was just dumbfounded," she said.

Lawyers in some Texas cities regularly sue in U.S. district court for resolution of immigration applications. And the Chicago branch of the Islamic relations council is preparing a class-action lawsuit.

Most North Texas Muslims are reluctant to take that route, and they often go three, six, even 15 years with no decision and no information about the nature of the security clearance holdup, lawyers, advocates and applicants said.
'A common problem'

But not every Muslim is convinced that profiling is to blame.

Jamal Qaddura, 42, a legal assistant and member of the Tarrant County Islamic Association, said he's also seen long waits for European and South American immigration clients at the law firm where he works.

"It's a common problem with everybody," he said.

Mr. Qaddura and others are lobbying Texas congressional members to increase funding for the FBI Name Check program.
"The FBI is acknowledging there is a problem. The problem is they are understaffed and underfunded. It has nothing to do with racism, nothing to do with your background," Mr. Qaddura said. "The backlog is the backlog."

Many other Muslims are convinced that they are being singled out for extra scrutiny because of their faith or country of origin.

"It's the big elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about," said Houston attorney Ali Zakaria.

The immigration agency refuses to release the relevant data on processing times – Freedom of Information Act requests from Muslim advocates, investigative journalists and immigration restrictionists have all been denied.

And a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, chastised immigration officials for not tracking cases pending six months or longer.

Mr. Zakaria said it is clear from his experience as a lawyer that applicants from predominantly Muslim nations undergo extra scrutiny, just as the State Department closely screens visa applicants from certain "countries of interest."

"But it doesn't amount to anything that is beneficial to the United States," he said. "From a security perspective, does it make sense to anyone that you have this person who might be a threat but it's taking you five years or six years to make a decision?"

Mr. Zakaria said he politely threatens to sue the immigration agency several times a year for an answer to cases pending more than two years. District immigration officials usually resolve the matter before he files the mandamus complaint, he said.

Sometimes immigration officials ask the FBI to expedite the name check. Sometimes errors such as misspelled names or even misplaced results of completed security checks are found to have caused the delay, Mr. Zakaria said.

FBI officials said there are other reasons why some groups have a harder time clearing the name check, including commonality of names (a problem for Arabs and Chinese, among others).

"About 99 percent of the name checks are usually resolved within a month. It's that 1 percent that there are some issues," said Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman. "The problem that you run into is if a name matches someone in an FBI file and it matches a country we don't have diplomatic relations with, how do we resolve those situations?

"It's a very complicated process," he said. "But the FBI priority remains to protect the United States from terrorist attack, and to that end we must ensure the proper balance between security and efficiency."

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said immigration control is one of the most important strategies for defending the home front.

"Immigration status is like a ladder. Each step up gives the bad guy more freedom of action, more ability to attack us," he said.

But singling out certain nationalities or ethnic groups is not the answer, Mr. Krikorian added. "Immigration enforcement needs to be across the board," he said. "You can't pick and choose.

"If you're trying to limit immigration enforcement to Middle Easterners, the bad guys are going to find a way around it."
Dallas-area lawyers and politicians who inquire about the delays sometimes receive a form letter from the district immigration office saying background checks have screened out those convicted of rape and child molestation, drug traffickers "and even applicants with known links to terrorism."

A research paper presented this summer by Janice Kephart, a former counsel to the 9/11 commission, found 23 terrorists who became legal permanent residents and 21 terrorists who became U.S. citizens.

Some settled in North Texas, including Wadih el Hage, an Arlington resident and naturalized U.S. citizen who traveled the world as Osama bin Laden's personal secretary before he was sent to prison for life for conspiracy to murder Americans.
But immigrant advocates say the wide majority of upstanding newcomers to this country should not be punished because of a few criminals.

The Chicago branch of the Islamic relations council and the Arab American Action Network started assembling a class-action lawsuit last spring on behalf of Muslims experiencing citizenship delays.

"These people have never gotten into trouble. They've been law-abiding citizens since they stepped onto U.S. soil. There's no reason for them to be waiting," said Christina Abraham, the branch's civil rights coordinator.

"You see delays across the board, with people from the Hispanic community, from the Jewish community."

But the Islamic relations council believes that Muslims are experiencing far greater delays than anyone else.

"It's a huge problem and an infringement of their civil rights," Ms. Abraham said.

The delays have been a strain for many North Texas Muslims. Those waiting for permanent residency can renew work permits, but they have difficulty getting permission to attend college. And if they leave the country before their papers are finalized, their cases are usually closed.

Ayman Alasad's father died of heart problems in Jordan while his son waited for a green card. Now Mr. Alasad's mother is sick with cancer, and he doesn't know if he should abandon his six-year quest.

Mr. Alasad, a 29-year-old computer network engineer for the Fort Worth branch of an international golf shaft manufacturer, is expecting his third child this month.

"I've never been in trouble. I'm paying my taxes every year," he said. "It drives us crazy. If I did something wrong, come tell me.

"It makes you feel you're not welcome."

Many successful businessmen and professionals waiting for citizenship want the ease of traveling with a U.S. passport.

Aamer Rehman, a 40-year-old director of consulting for a Dallas supply technologies firm, passed his citizenship interview in August 2004, but his background check is still pending.

"It's more of an inconvenience than anything else. I have my green card; I can travel. But I have to always apply for a visa with my Pakistani passport," he said.

Mr. Rehman believes his application is caught in a bureaucratic snarl, but he questions why authorities cannot tell him when the background check will be finished.

Some give up the wait, like Mr. Alasad's cousin and her husband. They decided to sell their Irving restaurant and move to Jordan.

Others, like Mr. Shalabi, refuse to back down. The pilot moved to Texas in 1986 as a 17-year-old aviation student.

"If it's not America, I don't belong anywhere else," he said. "I can breathe here. I have rights."