If you have suffered an unreasonable delay waiting for an answer on your Bolingbrook citizenship application, there are steps you can take to improve the process. It is first wise to look for the cause of a delay and ascertain whether it meets a current standard as “unreasonable”.
An experienced immigration lawyer could help resolve a citizenship process in limbo. Consulting a Bolingbrook unreasonable delay for citizenship lawyer could help you find answers and ensure that you have taken the right steps to achieve your objectives.
Delays associated with the processing of citizenship applications are more common and of longer duration than in the past. Therefore, it can be challenging to determine whether a delay is unreasonable and justifies taking extraordinary measures such as filing a lawsuit. An experienced citizenship delay lawyer in Bolingbrook could provide an educated opinion on the excessiveness of a delay.
Under 8 U.S.C. §1447(b), a citizenship applicant gains the right to file a lawsuit if the agencies have not made a determination within 120 days after the applicant’s examination. This would seem to imply that after four months, a delay might be considered unreasonable. But high volumes of applications and an increasing backlog could indicate that four months is no longer an unusual or unreasonable time to wait. Moreover, this law does not provide any benchmarks for determining whether delays earlier in the process are unreasonable.
The increase in citizenship delays has sparked studies such as the one released by the Colorado State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in September of 2019. The results of the study suggest that policies calling for increased scrutinization of citizenship applications and the addition of interviews in situations where interviews may have been waived in the past combined to slow the rate of processing for citizenship applications in general.
An individual Bolingbrook applicant may find that the process is slow in their particular case for reasons beyond the backlog experienced by others applying in the same jurisdiction. In some cases, delays are caused by problems with a security check. In other situations, delays may result from information that is incomplete or even simply misplaced. A Bolingbrook unreasonable delay for citizenship attorney could investigate to determine the cause for a delay.
Applicants who have waited an unreasonable length of time for an agency to act on a citizenship application or to issue a decision have options for seeking relief through the judicial system. If the applicant has already been through an interview and has not received an answer within 120 days, the applicant may file a suit under 8 U.S.C. §1447(b).
If delays occur earlier in the process, a Bolingbrook citizenship delay lawyer might recommend filing a suit for mandamus relief. Both types of lawsuits ask the court to compel a federal agency to stop stalling and make a decision. The court will not make the decision on behalf of the agency but merely require the agency to complete the process.
You worked hard to prepare for citizenship, and it seems unfair to make you wait so long after you have come so far and accomplished so much. While some delay is to be expected in the process, when the delay becomes unreasonable, it may be time to act.
An experienced Bolingbrook unreasonable delay for citizenship lawyer could review the circumstances of your case and explain your options for seeking relief. Some investigation on the part of an experienced attorney could resolve a difficulty and get the process moving. For more information about how an immigration lawyer could assist, call today.
