March 17, 2008 - Immigration officials announced this past Friday that they expect to complete approximately 930,000 pending citizenship applications by September 30, 2008, the end of the fiscal year. This would reduce the huge backlog of cases currently pending with USCIS and allow these new citizens the opportunity to register to vote in the November 2008 presidential election. USCIS also announced that overall wait times for immigrants seeking to become U.S. citizens is now 16 months.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have criticized Emilio T. Gonzalez, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, for underestimating the surge in citizenship applications last year which was driven by both the anticipation of fee increases and a rising interest in the 2008 presidential election.

USCIS indicates of the 1,051,186 citizenship applications currently pending, over 75% are still in the early phases of being logged in and placed in line for scheduling of several required steps. Only 262,780 applications are in the later phases where fingerprints are taken, background checks completed, and an English and civics test conducted.

Lawmakers have noted that even if the agency meets its projection of completing 930,000 citizenship applications by September 30th, hundreds of thousands of immigrants will not be naturalized in time to vote in the presidential election this November.