  Dear Friends:  Please read the second articlebelow for some good news around immigration processing (more immigration processing staff coming to Memphis and Nashville!). If you areconcerned about theissue of immigration backlogs, please attend the press conference today at noon!
This event will be held at the Somali Community Center, on 201 Thompson lane, Suite 202 in Nashville.Thank you! - David Lubell  TIRRC   http://tennessean.com/local/archives/04/02/47583283.shtml?Element_ID=47583283  By ANITA WADHWANI Staff Writer On today's one-year anniversary of the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, immigrant groups in Nashville and across the country are asking that the agency's ''major flaws'' be corrected. The mammoth department created last year, with 180,000 on its payroll, absorbed the former Immigration and Naturalization Service along with new post-Sept. 11, 2001, national security operations. ''The complaints we've heard about immigration processing have only gone up since the creation of USCIS,'' said David Lubell of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refuge Rights Coalition. Lubell was referring to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, the arm of Homeland Security that is devoted to immigrants seeking benefits such as citizenship or legal permanent residence.
Lubell said the USCIS had inherited many of its problems from the former INS and has made them worse. The problems include longer waits for processing citizenship requests and plans to increase fees for services, Lubell said. Related story. Not everyone is upset over the changes, however. The backlog in applications are ''good indicators right here that we're taking in more legal immigrants than we can possibly keep up with,'' said Donna Locke of Tennesseans for Immigration Control and Reform.
The number of applications waiting for approval by the USCIS have jumped about 60% in the past year, according to a report by the General Accounting Office released last month. There were 6.2 million applications for people wanting to become citizens, permanent residents, or seeking some other immigration status by the end of September, compared with 3.9 million two years earlier, according to the report. In addition, the agency has proposed increasing application fees for immigration paperwork by about $55 per application.
Immigrant advocates in at least nine other cities are planning events to highlight the Department of Homeland Security anniversary, Lubell said. Anita Wadhwani covers race and demographics for The Tennessean. Contact her at awadhwani@tennessean.com or 259-8821. http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/04/02/47583284.shtml?ELEMENT_47583284 Nashville will soon have its first federal workers devoted to helping immigrants become citizens, according to staff in U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper's office. At least four new ''citizenship interviewers'' will begin working out of Nashville, said Greg Hinote, Cooper's chief of staff. At least four others will beef up the staff in the Memphis office, the only existing immigration service office in the state. The effort to establish a federal immigration office in Nashville has been going on for more than a decade, according to congressional staff members and immigration lawyers.
The Nashville area is home to more immigrants than any other part of the state. Currently immigrants living in Nashville  anywhere else in the state ive to Memphis to do business with the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Memphis service is understaffed and overwhelmed by the number of people it has to work with every day, immigrant advocates say. Cooper, along with Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bill Frist, have met with USCIS officials for several months to negotiate for the new personnel, Hinote said.
ita Wadhwani 
