(COLUMBUS, OHIO, 11/21/2017) — The Columbus, Ohio, chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Columbus) announced today it has successfully resolved another citizenship delay lawsuit.
The suit, filed in Federal court for the Southern District of Ohio, was on behalf of two Iraqi green card holders who had been waiting for decisions on their naturalization applications for over two and a half years. The applicants, a husband and wife, had no criminal history and no reason was given by USCIS for the extreme delay in adjudication. Until the lawsuit was filed, USCIS failed to even schedule interviews for the couple, despite their repeated inquiries into the nature of the delay.
“We are happy to announce that since the filing of the lawsuit in October, we were able to successfully resolve the delay in adjudication, and our clients will be officially sworn in as a United States citizens next week,” said CAIR-Columbus Executive Director Jennifer Nimer.
Since President Trump took office, CAIR-Columbus attorneys noted that they have seen an increase in delays of all types of immigration applications. Since the beginning of 2017 alone, CAIR-Columbus has filed immigration delay lawsuits for 26 different plaintiffs. Those suits resulted in 20 of the plaintiffs being approved thus far, while others are still pending.
“USCIS has been instructed by the attorney general and the president to ‘rigorously enforce all grounds of inadmissibility and/or denial of immigration benefits’ and we believe this is contributing to USCIS delaying applications in order to look for any reason to deny them, even for minor issues that typically would not result in a denial,” added Nimer. “However what we are seeing with many Muslim applicants is that their cases are just delayed indefinitely with no explanation. Our only option is to continue filing lawsuits until USCIS stops this practice of unreasonable and unexplained delays for Muslim applicants.”
Ohio Muslims who are facing similar delays are being urged to contact CAIR-Columbus for assistance by filing an incident report online at: https://www.cair-ohio.com/
CAIR is America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.